Israel-Hamas prisoner talks, intra-Palestinian reconciliation, etc

Ha’aretz, Reuters, and others are now reporting that Israel seems close to presenting a prisoner-exchange proposal involving Hamas-held Israeli POW Gideon Shalit and a large number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees that might (imho) win acceptance from Hamas. Conclusion of this prisoner-exchange agreement could then in some way accompany conclusion of the Gaza ceasefire-stabilization agreement between the two parties, the terms of which seem to be just about agreed upon.
Notable among the names mentioned of Palestinians to be released is that of Marwan Barghouthi, a veteran Fateh activist who has often challenged Fateh’s ossified political leadership in the past and who has worked since his imprisonment in an Israeli jail in 2002 to help improve relations between Fateh and Hamas.
Israel’s still-PM Ehud Olmert has insisted that the ceasefire-stabilization agreement can’t be concluded without Hamas freeing Israeli POW Gideon Shalit. Hamas has resisted linking the two issues and has its own very compelling demands for the release of political prisoners and detainees in exchange for Shalit. Indeed, negotiations over that prisoner release have continued, in an on-again-off-again way ever since Shalit, an IDF corporal, was captured by Gaza-based militants back in early summer 2006.
(One further note: Several Hamas leaders have been trying to spread uncertainty about whether Shalit actually survived Israel’s recent assault on Gaza. It is at least possible that he didn’t; but somehow my gut-instinct judgment is that he would have been given as much protection during the war as the top Hamas leaders.)
As I have written before, Egypt, which is now mediating both these parallel negotiations, should be able to find a neat “diplomatic” formula on linking them in an acceptable way, even if only temporally. And indeed, the Haaretz writers write today,

Egyptian officials are now busy on a formula that would allow both sides to claim that their stance [on linking or not linking the two negotiations] was accepted.

The Haaretz article reports that the “troika” that’s still in charge of Israel’s security policy (Olmert, Barak, and Livni) would present a concrete proposal regarding the prisoner-exchange deal to the full cabinet on Wednesday.
The Haaretz writers report,

Another key issue is the identity of the Palestinians that each side is willing to see freed. Hamas has demanded a large proportion of the prisoners on its list of 350 to 450 names. Significant progress has been made, and Israel now opposes only several dozen names.
A spokesman for Hamas’ military wing, Abu Obeida, said Sunday that the group insists on the release of three senior figures: Ibrahim Hamed, the leader of the military wing in the West Bank; Abdullah Barghouti, responsible among others for the bombings at the Sbarro pizzeria and Cafe Moment in Jerusalem; and Abbas al-Sayed, mastermind of the Park Hotel massacre in Netanya.
On the other hand, there seems to be support in Israel for the release of Marwan Barghouti, the jailed leader of Fatah’s more militant Tanzim faction.
Hader Shkirat, attorney for Barghouti, told Haaretz on Sunday that there will be no deal for Shalit without the release of Barghouti.

Of course, it is not Shkirat but the Hamas leadership that is responsible for the Palestinian side of the negotiation. But if Shkirat seems to have that degree of confidence that Barghouthi will be involved, he must have gotten it from somewhere.
Many Palestinian analysts believe that a released Barghouthi could help to save the political fortunes of Fateh, which have been extremely badly battered by the recent Gaza war. If the Hamas leadership is indeed insisting that Barghouthi be part of the present prisoner-exchange deal that indicates to me that they actually want to see the emergence within Fateh of a new kind of leadership with which they could have a functional working relationship, and that that is worth more to them now than the possible downside risk that a re-energized Fateh might win back some support from Hamas.
Certainly, Hamas’s relationship with Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), the current head of Fateh, the PA, and the PLO, has been extremely difficult over the past three years.
Meanwhile, moves toward a new reconciliation between Fateh and Hamas are proceeding, albeit still slowly. At the end of last week high-level (but not top-level) delegations from the two parties had preliminary discussions in– again– Egypt; and more formal and substantive reconciliation talks are scheduled to open there February 22.
The participants in last week’s talks were, from Fateh, former PM Ahmed Quei (Abu Alaa’) and Nabil Shaath, and from Hamas Dr. Mahmoud Zahhar and politburo member Mousa Abu Marzook.
That Al-Manar report linked to there said this about the talks:

Fatah and Hamas sources said that the Egyptians presented the two sides with a plan aimed at ending the power struggle. The plan, the sources added, calls for the formation of a Fatah-Hamas government, the release of all “political” detainees held by the two parties, holding parliamentary and presidential elections, reforming the PLO and reconstructing the Palestinian security forces.
According to the sources, the two parties have already reached an agreement in principle to form a joint government that would serve for two years. The proposed government, which would be headed by current PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad and would include several Hamas ministers, would be entrusted with preparing for new elections and solving all problems between the two sides ahead of the vote.

Al-Manar is run by Lebanon’s Hizbullah and can therefore be judged somewhat slanted toward the Hamas side. However, the website also has some very solid news reporting, so this piece may be part of that.
(Update at 12:34 p.m.: I just realized the whole Manar report was lifted verbatim off the Jerusalem Post website— though without attribution. Mnar does often do this with news reports its editors think are valuable. I guess the fact that both they and the J. Post stand behind this report gives it added credibility.)
… As a broader observation, I would simply note that it is possible to view the role Fateh has played in recent years as in many ways equivalent to that played in the dying days of South Africa’s apartheid by Buthelezi’s ethnic-Zulu-based “Inkatha Freedom Party”. During the “last throes” of the apartheid regime, the IFP became majorly co-opted by the state security forces in a campaign to terrorize and oppose the ANC at many levels. Despite the enormous numbers of deaths and the the amount of suffering and pain that the IFP inflicted on ANC supporters– especially, I should note, on those ANC supporters who were closest to it, that is, who were themselves ethnic Zulus– the ANC leadership worked hard to always hold out a hand of friendship to Buthelezi and, while criticizing many of the IFP’s actions, never sought to delegitimize his political role.
Many people have described the role Fateh’s security forces have played in recent years as analogous to that of the Nicaraguan Contras– a force that was almost entirely created from outside through US funding and arming. However, I think that viewing Fateh’s role as closer to that of the IFP is more helpful. Buthelezi did have some indigenous political credibility before he became involved with the apartheid regime’s nefarious anti-ANC campaigns. Plus, at the political level, he played one crucial step that helped to stymie the aparheid regime’s big push to solve its problems through the creation of a string of tightly controlled “Bantustans”, or nominally independent Black African “homelands.”
(We can note that Israel was one of the very, very few governments around the world that ever gave formal recognition to the six or seven Bantustans that were established. No other significant government ever did that.)
But Buthelezi– who had many supporters and admirers in the west, including Margaret Thatcher and Ronald reagan– crucially never gave in to the Pretoria regime’s pressures that he declare Kwa-Zulu to be a Bantustan. That political position that he held to really helped the national struggle.
Within Fateh, we can also see that it has significant, pre-existing political legitimacy. Plus, despite Abu Mazen’s lengthy participation in the never-ending tragicomedy of “peace negotiations” with Israel and the many harsh actions he has taken against Hamas, we can see that thus far he has never signed off on any of the extremely humiliating political deals the Israelis have waved before him (though never even finally offered.) And indeed, on February 7, even his very, very pro-US “prime minister”, Salam Fayyad, said he saw no hope that any Israeli leader could come up with a reasonable peace proposal.
Bottom line: closer to the IFP than to the Contras?