Congratulation to Hamas and Fatah for their unity deal. Until the Egyptian revolution the Egyptian head of intelligence, Omar Suleiman, had monopolized and sabotaged the unity negotiations on orders from the United States.
With Suleiman and Mubarak gone, the deal was rather easy to make. Fatah and Hamas will create a unity government and will, in eight month, hold new parliament and presidential elections.
The U.S. and Israel will do their best to sabotage the deal. The first by withholding money (and thereby making itself more irrelevant) and the second likely by some kind of force. Currently the Israelis say that they will not negotiate with any government that includes Hamas. So what. They did not negotiate with a Palestinian government that did not included Hamas so the threat is actually in keeping the status quo.
The Egyptian revolution may not have brought much new yet for the Egyptian people, but the already visible foreign policy changes, topmost the exchange of ambassadors with Iran, are huge. The “western” media talked down how much the general anti-Israel feeling was part of Tahrir Square. Now it is coming into full view. There were demonstrations against the Israeli embassy in Cairo yesterday and the pipeline that carries cheap Egyptian gas to Israel was blown up for a second time. The guy who sold the gas to Israel for a much too low price is now in jail. My bet is that Israel will have to get used to live without that energy source.
Despite the Saudi-U.S. counter-revolution efforts, more changes will come to the Middle East.
Today a bomb blew up in a tourist restaurant in Marrakesh. After protests in February and March the Moroccan king has pledged some constitutional reforms and released some political prisoners. But the people are not yet convinced that real reforms will come. There were more protests, peaceful ones so far, over the last few days. Today’s explosion is likely a provocation (I have no idea from which side though) to attempt a change of the current peaceful contest. Morocco may be the next domino to fall.