Gaza crowds loot strongholds of Fatah

Byrnzie

OutOfBreath wrote:

It seems some here are a bit too rosy-eyed about Fatah, positing them as the good democratic boys, and Hamas as the bogeyman....

This is an article you may find interesting Dan....

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=13084

A setback for the Bush doctrine in Gaza
by Ali Abunimah

June 17, 2007

The dramatic rout of the US and Israeli-backed Palestinian militias in Gaza by forces loyal to Hamas represents a major setback to the Bush doctrine in Palestine.

Background

Ever since Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in the occupied territories in January 2006, elements of the leadership of the long-dominant Fatah movement, including Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his advisors have conspired with Israel, the United States and the intelligence services of several Arab states to overthrow and weaken Hamas. This support has included funneling weapons and tens of millions of dollars to unaccountable militias, particularly the "Preventive Security Force" headed by Gaza warlord Mohammad Dahlan, a close ally of Israel and the United States and the Abbas-affiliated "Presidential Guard." US Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams -- who helped divert money to the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s and who was convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal -- has spearheaded the effort to set up these Palestinian Contras. (This background has been extensively detailed in a number of articles published by The Electronic Intifada in recent months). Abrams is also notorious for helping to cover up massacres and atrocities committed against civilians in El Salvador by US-backed militias and death squads.

Two recent revelations underscore the extent of the conspiracy: on 7 June, Ha'aretz reported that "senior Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip have asked Israel to allow them to receive large shipments of arms and ammunition from Arab countries, including Egypt." According to the Israeli newspaper, Fatah asked Israel for "armored cars, hundreds of armor-piercing RPG rockets, thousands of hand grenades and millions of rounds of ammunition for small caliber weapons," all to be used against Hamas.

From the moment of its election victory, Hamas acted pragmatically and with the intent to integrate itself into the existing political structure. It had observed for over a year a unilateral ceasefire with Israel and had halted the suicide attacks on Israeli civilians that had made it notorious. In a leaked confidential memo written in May and published by The Guardian this week senior UN envoy Alvaro de Soto confirmed that it was under pressure from the United States that Abbas refused Hamas' initial invitation to form a "national unity government." De Soto details that Abbas advisers actively aided and abetted the Israeli-US-European Union aid cutoff and siege of the Palestinians under occupation, which led to massively increased poverty for millions of people. These advisors engaged with the United States in a "plot" to "bring about the untimely demise of the [Palestinian Authority] government led by Hamas," de Soto wrote.

Despite a bloody attempted coup against Hamas by the Dahlan-led forces in December and January, Hamas still agreed to join a "National Unity Government" with Fatah brokered by Saudi Arabia at the Mecca summit. Dahlan and Abbas' advisers were determined to sabotage this, continuing to amass weapons, and refusing to place their militias under the control of a neutral interior minister who eventually resigned in frustration.

A setback for United States and Israel

The core of US strategy in the Southwest and Central Asia, particularly Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon is to establish puppet regimes that will fight America's enemies on its behalf. This strategy seems to be failing everywhere. The Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan. Despite its "surge" the US is no closer to putting down the resistance in Iraq and cannot even trust the Iraqi army it helped set up. The Lebanese army, which the US hopes to bolster as a counterweight to Hizballah, has performed poorly against a few hundred foreign fighters holed up in Nahr al-Bared refugee camp (although it has caused death and devastation to many innocent Palestinian refugees). Now in Gaza, the latest blow.

Israel's policy is a local version of the US strategy -- and it has also been tried and failed. For over two decades Israel relied on a proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, to help it enforce the occupation of southern Lebanon. In 2000, as Israeli forces hastily withdrew, this militia collapsed just as quickly as Dahlan's forces and many of its members fled to Israel. Hamas is now referring to the rout of Dahlan's forces as a "second liberation of Gaza."

A consistent element of Israeli strategy has been to attempt to circumvent Palestinian resistance by trying to create quisling leaderships. Into the 1970s, Israel still saw the PLO as representing true resistance. So it set up the collaborationist "village leagues" in the West Bank as an alternative. In 1976, it allowed municipal elections in the West Bank in an effort to give this alternative leadership some legitimacy. When PLO-affiliated candidates swept the board, Israel began to assassinate the PLO mayors with car bombs or force them into exile. Once some exiled PLO leaders, most notably Yasser Arafat, became willing subcontractors of the occupation (an arrangement formalized by the Oslo Accords), a new resistance force emerged in the form of Hamas. Israeli efforts to back Dahlan and Abbas, Arafat's successor, as quisling alternatives have now backfired spectacularly.

In the wake of the Fatah collapse in Gaza, Ha'aretz reported that Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert will advise President Bush that Gaza must be isolated from the West Bank. This can be seen as an attempt to shore up Abbas whose survival Israel sees as essential to maintaining the fiction that it does not directly rule millions of disenfranchised Palestinians. A total collapse of the Palestinian Authority would expose Israel's legal obligation, as the occupying power, to provide for the welfare of the Palestinians it rules.

What now for the Palestinian under occupation?

Abbas has declared a "state of emergency" and dismissed Ismail Haniyeh the Hamas prime minister as well as the "national unity government." The "state of emergency" is merely rhetorical. Whatever control he had in Gaza is gone and Israel is in complete control of the West Bank anyway.

Haniyeh in a speech this evening carried live on Al-Jazeera rejected Abbas' "hasty" moves and alleged that they were the result of pressure from abroad. He issued 16 points, among them that the "unity government" represented the will of 96 percent of Palestinians under occupation freely expressed at the ballot box. He reaffirmed his movement's commitment to democracy and the existing political system and that Hamas would not impose changes on people's way of life. Haniyeh said the government would continue to function, would restore law and order and reaffirm Hamas' commitment to national unity and the Mecca agreement. He called on all Hamas members to observe a general amnesty assuring any captured fighters of their safety (this followed media reports of a handful of summary executions of Fatah fighters). He also emphasized that Hamas' fight was not with Fatah as a whole, but only with those elements who had been actively collaborating -- a clear allusion to Dahlan and other Abbas advisors. He portrayed Hamas' takeover as a last resort in the wake of escalating lawlessness and coup attempts by collaborators, listing many alleged crimes that had finally caused Hamas' patience to snap. Haniyeh emphasized the unity of Gaza and the West Bank as "inseparable parts of the Palestinian nation," and he repeated a call for the captors of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston to free him immediately.

The contrast between Abbas' action and the Hamas response is striking. Abbas, perhaps pushed by the same coterie of advisors, seems to be escalating the confrontation and doing so when there is no reason to believe he can prevail. Hamas, while standing firm and from a position of strength, spoke in a language of conciliation, emphasizing time and again that Hamas has a problem with only a small group within Fatah, not its rank and file. Abbas, Dahlan and their backers must be surveying a sobering scene -- they may be tempted to try to take on Hamas in the West Bank, but the scale of their defeat in Gaza would have to give them pause.

Both leaderships are hemmed in. Abbas appears to be entirely dependent on foreign and Israeli support and unable to take decisions independent of a corrupt, self-serving clique. Hamas, whatever intentions it has is likely to find itself under an even tighter siege in Gaza.

Abbas, backed by Israel and the US, has called for a multinational force in Gaza. Hamas has rejected this, saying it would be viewed as an "occupying force." Indeed, they have reason to be suspicious: for decades Israel and the US blocked calls for an international protection force for Palestinians. The multinational force, Hamas fears, would not be there to protect Palestinians from their Israeli occupiers, but to perform the proxy role of protecting Israel's interests that Dahlan's forces are no longer able to carry out and to counter the resistance -- just as the multinational force was supposed to do in Lebanon after the July 2006 war.

Wise leaders in Israel and the United States would recognize that Hamas is not a passing phenomenon, and that they can never create puppet leaders who will be able to compete against a popular resistance movement. But there are no signs of wisdom: the US has now asked Israel to "loosen its grip" in the West Bank to try to give Abbas a boost. Although the Bush doctrine has suffered a blow, the Palestinian people have not won any great victory. The sordid game at their expense continues.


Ali Abunimah is cofounder of the online publication The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

mammasan

OutOfBreath wrote:

It seems some here are a bit too rosy-eyed about Fatah, positing them as the good democratic boys, and Hamas as the bogeyman. Fatah became after a while not much more than Arafat's personal party. A pretty authoritarian and corrupt structure. Now for ages noone has asked what the palestinians want. When the election finally came, they showed their dislike for (corrupt, power-grubbing) Fatah, and instead voted for the self-proclaimed crusaders against corruption, Hamas. Hamas is also an organization that does a lot at the grassroots, while also being very religiously oriented, and having radical views towards Israel. (which is very understandable given Israel's treatment of palestinians inside their territories and whatnot.) That Hamas got voted in does not say the majority of palestinians are insane islamist nuts who never wants peace.

Hamas got nothing for free when they won. They had to literally kick and shoot the Fatah-people out of their offices, as they weren't exactly taking their loss very well either. And Hamas were neutered at once given no funding, no help and in fact being directly acted against in many quarters.

And now, Fatah staged a coup and very illegitimately threw out the democratically elected government to reinstate their own people.

This is complicated stuff to say the least, and there are no clearcut good or bad guys to be found. That Hamas got thrown out by a military coup I see as the biggest defeat imaginable. What do the palestinians now know? They know that if they dont vote for the party picked by the west, their government will lose all contact, and will be thrown out by force, and the party supported by the west will rule regardless. That is the message sent here. Reinforced by everyone suddenly giving their money when the coup happened, rewarding it and giving it a big fat OK stamp.

Ah fuck it. It's too complicated, and I guess we'll have to wait until the smoke clears to see how this can and will go.

But I dont think Fatah deserves an automatic OK stamp, or Hamas an automatic NO stamp. I think what was missed here was a great opportunity to moderate Hamas, and get them to cooperate more. Radical parties given a say in a parliament setting always moderate after a while, history has shown again and again. Parties with nothing to lose are harder to talk sense to then those that have. But I guess it was clear pretty early on that noone were gonna use this chance for good.

Peace
Dan

I don't think that Fatah is a bunch of saints by any means, but out of the two they are the party that is most likely to achieve peace with Israel. Peace in that region will never exist if the Palestinian government is headed by Hamas. They will not even recognize Israel right to exist. Both parties screw over their own people for personal gain.

Byrnzie

mammasan wrote:

I don't think that Fatah is a bunch of saints by any means, but out of the two they are the party that is most likely to achieve peace with Israel. Peace in that region will never exist if the Palestinian government is headed by Hamas. They will not even recognize Israel right to exist. Both parties screw over their own people for personal gain.

As Robert Fisk said it in this article a couple of days ago...

Independent
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=13092

....No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over ?

And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word "occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment" rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority".