The Palestinian prisoners’ plan: whose political weapon?

The western media have given quite a lot of attention to the agreement reportedly concluded recently by leaders of the various political factions among the 7,000-plus Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. As far as I can see, the best and most complete text of this agreement in English seems to be this one, published yesterday by AP.

Most of the (western) commentary around this document has presented it as a strong political weapon in the hands of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fateh. Certainly, Abbas himself has tried to package it that way, giving Hamas a public “ultimatum” that he would give them ten days to accept the plan, and if they didn’t then he would submit it to popular referendum. (It is not even clear to me whether he has the right to organize such an ultimatum? Help, anyone?)
But I’ve read that AP version of the prisoners’ plan, and it seems to me its political content is at least as favorable to the Hamas view of the world as it is to Pres. Abbas’s– perhaps more so.
(In which case, his “threat” to submit the plan to a popular referendum might have just about the same degree of effectiveness as a politically coercive threat as Sen. Biden’s “threat” to the Iraqis that if they don’t shape up and do what he tells them then maybe the US will have to pull out of Iraq?)
Let’s look at that version of the agreement in some detail.
AP tells us that the signatories were, for fateh, Marwan Barghouthi, and then other named prisoner leaders from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the PFLP. Here’s what they tell us about the content:

their right to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital on all the land occupied in 1967, guaranteeing the right of return for the refugees, liberating all the prisoners and detainees

There is little there for Hamas to disagree with. They can agree to establishing a palestinian state within all the Palestinian lands occupied in 1967 fairly easily if there is no requirement there at all that they “recognize” or indeed say anything at all about Israel’s right to exist within the rest rest of the area of Mandate Palestine.
But of course, the content of that #1 clause is distinctly different from what Abbas concurred with during the Camp David and Taba negotiations, in the Geneva Initaitive, etc– in relation to all of which fora he had signaled his readiness to make significant concessions from this “historic” (and international-law-based) Palestinian position…

the joining of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in this organization as the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people wherever they exist;

This one could look like a Hamas concession, given Hamas’s long-held opposition to Fateh’s claim that the PLO is the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people. On the other hand, giving the PLO this leading role was already agreed during the early 2005 negotiations for the tahdi’eh, so this is not new. I’m not sure whether the idea of re-forming the PNC “on the basis of proportional representation, attendance, and effectiveness in the political, struggle, social, and popular domains” is new or not. But that clause would certainly tend to favor Hamas over the chronically ineffective Fateh.
Then we come to–

upholding the choice of resistance by all means, and concentrating the resistance in territories occupied in 1967, alongside political action and negotiations and diplomatic work,

Similarly, it was already agreed in the tahdi’eh negotiations to “concentrate” resistance inside the occupied territories– that is, not to undertake armed resistance actions inside Israel…
Number 4 doesn’t seem to add much. Then we come to,

Protecting and developing the Palestinian National Authority as the nucleus for the upcoming state, this authority that was founded by our people, and their struggle, sacrifices, blood and suffering of its children;

the importance and need of creative cooperation between the presidency and the government

This seems neutral between the two sides.

national coalition government in way that would guarantee the participation of all parliamentary blocs, particularly Fatah and Hamas,

Well, forming a coalition government was Hamas’s project; it was Fateh that balked at it. Forming a government that “has Arab and international support” would seem to support Abbas; but specifying that it be one that can actually carry out an extensive reform program would seem to favor Hamas.

7. Managing the negotiations is the authority of the PLO and president of the PA on the basis of upholding Palestinian national interests and realizing them, provided that any fateful/decisive agreement be presented to the new PNC to ratify or be put up to public referendum if possible.

This looks like the most pro-Fateh of the 18 points. But again, this approach is not a new one for Hamas. It is almost exactly what Dr. Mahmoud Ramahi described to me as Hamas’s position when I interviewed him in Ramallah at the end of February…
Specifying that any “fateful or decisive” agreement should be submitted to the PNC or to a public referendum “if possible” may be a new level of detail– but certainly, the Hamas people who have talked about this idea always made clear that any agreement would have to have some effective form of popular ratification.
The PNC is a good body to ratify it from the point of view that it represents Palestini exiles from the homeland as well as those still resident in it. If the provisions in #2 regarding the re-formation of the PNC have been implemented, this would certainly give the PNC much more legitimacy as the ratifying body.

Liberating the prisoners and detainees is a sacred national duty

Well, what do you expect the prisoners to say? This is, however, an extremely sensitive point within Palestinian politics and society, given (a) the number of prisoners, many of them detained for long periods of time without trial or on the basis of only the flimsiest evidence, and (b) the massive failure of Pres. Abbas to win anything like full implementation from the Israelis of any of the successive prisoner-release agreements that they committed to– a fact which served yet further to undermine his political credibility for Palestinians.

popular representative conference of the refugees must be convened, which would yield agencies that would follow up on reaffirming the right of return, upholding it, and calling on the international community to implement Resolution 194

Once again, a good idea there regarding a representative conference for (just) the refugees, and dedicated to meeting their special needs and pursuing their special claims. (Note that many of the residents of the OPTs are refugees– including some 80% of the population of Gaza. Of course, all the Palestinians living in exile from the homeland are refugees, whether they are registered with UNRWA as charity cases or not.)
The political content of #9, once again, is very far from Camp David, Taba, and Geneva…
Number 10 thru 14 are pretty non-controversial, though #14 has some good language regarding “banning the use of weapons between the children of the same people” and upholding the right to peaceful protest.
I found No. 15 intriguing:

15. National interest requires searching for the best appropriate means to continue to engage our people and their political forces in Gaza in their new situation in the battle for freedom, return and independence, liberating the West Bank and Jerusalem in a way that forms a real force for the steadfastness and resistance of our people there. National interest requires a reevaluation of the most successful ways and means of struggle against the occupation.

This most certainly does seem to allow for a degree of political and even administrative distinction between the situation in Gaza and that in the West Bank. (This, in line with the readiness Dr. Mahmoud Zahar evinced to me, to take Gaza out of the Paris Agreement and let it develop to some degree along a path separate from that in the West Bank. For further discussion of this, see my Boston Review piece.)
The West Bank is meanwhile bracketed there not with Gaza but with [East] Jerusalem, which makes sense in two ways: (1) Jerusalem was always the metropolitan hub of the West Bank and is still regarded by Palestinians as being that, and (2) with the building of all the walls in and around East Jerusalem the situation of the city’s Palestinian residents is now more similar to that of their brothers and cousins in other walled-in West Bank cities and villages than it used to be…
Finally (in this short analysis), #17 is interesting and significant:

Calling on the legislative council to continue to issue laws that regulate the work of the security institutions and their different branches, and to ensue a law that would ban political party membership (action) for those who are members of the security bodies

Keeping the power to regulate the security institutions with the PLC is, in current circumstances, something that is obviously in Hamas’s favor. Forbidding the members of the security institutions from being party members would also seem similarly to favor Hamas…
All in all, therefore, I think it is quite possible the Hamas leaders might be happy to call Abbas’s bluff by either giving their “generous agreement” to this document, or by allowing him to present it to a referendum and then campaigning strongly in its favor.
Meantime, AP’s Sarah El Deeb is reporting that Hamas withdrew its militiamen from the streets of Gaza today, cpulling them back into six concentration areas. She also wrote that Hamas seemed to be “divided” over the referendum issue, ” with some in the group threatening to fight the referendum idea and others embracing it.”
She also wrote that Palestinian PM Ismail Haniyeh,

So, we’ll wait and see what happens, I guess.
(Comments– as courteous as usual, go here.)