(CNN) Fareed Zakaria - The Fatah-Hamas reconciliation deal is a sign of the weakness of both Fatah and Hamas. In the last election, Hamas won 40% of the vote in a situation that was unusual, and since then they have lost a lot of that support. Both Fatah and Hamas were motivated to do something to show the Palestinian people that they're trying to get their act together. Ultimately, I don't think it matters that much because Hamas will need to forswear its charter and its talk about eliminating Israel for there to be any realistic prospect the Israelis will want to negotiate with them. So as far as I can tell, the reconciliation is a smaller move than meets the eye and ultimately will not have much effect on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. For a long time, I have felt that there was much less prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian peace than people thought. So far for the last 10 years, I've been proven right.
2011-05-12 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive