What happened when the Palestinians formed a national unity government in 2007?
Following democratic elections in January 2006 that brought Hamas to power, Israel and the international community implemented crippling sanctions against the Palestinian Authority. The sanctions quickly led to a severe fiscal crisis in the aid-dependent PA. In early 2007, Fatah and Hamas began efforts to form a ‘national unity government’ with the hopes that this would result in a lifting of the sanctions. Such a government was formed on March 17, 2007 after eight days of intensive talks between representatives of Fatah and Hamas in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Israel and the international community, however, refused to accept the results of the Mecca Agreement, and failed to lift the sanctions imposed on the Palestinian Authority. When the new national unity government failed to bring an end to the sanctions, tensions between Hamas and Fatah rose – eventually resulting in an outbreak of armed conflict in the Gaza Strip in June 2007 between the two factions. The nine-day battle – which many h
