Fratricide in Palestine

FATAH-LOYALIST SECURITY forces confront Hamas supporters as they try to prevent the latter from holding a rally in the West Bank town of Ramallah. - MUHAMMED MUHEISEN/AP

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' move to hold fresh elections triggers clashes between Hamas and Fatah gunmen.

THE brief calm in the lives of the beleaguered people of Palestine has come to a sudden end with fighting breaking out once again. Ominously, this time the violence is intra-Palestinian, with the Israelis as spectators and cheerleaders. In the last week of November, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) signed a truce, which temporarily brought a halt to the Israeli attacks on Gaza after five long months. The spark for the new round of violence was provided by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' statement on December 16 announcing his intention to hold fresh elections to the presidency and the Assembly. The Hamas-led government is vehemently opposed to elections at this juncture. The Hamas leadership described the President's move as an attempt at a coup d'etat.

Hamas came to power through elections in January 2006. The Fatah leadership never reconciled itself to the surprise reversal in its fortunes. Hamas has a comfortable majority in the Palestinian Parliament, and elections are due to be held only after four years. But Washington and Tel Aviv have been encouraging the President to get rid of the Hamas government. Under the Palestinian Constitution, the President has no right to dissolve Parliament without its consent. Since Hamas took over in early 2006, the West has put Palestinian territories under an economic blockade. Until late November, Gaza was under a brutal military siege by Israeli forces; its infrastructure was destroyed and the people were traumatised.

Abbas in his speech accused the Hamas government of wasting the opportunities created by the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and indirectly blamed Hamas for the deaths of more than 500 Palestinians and the destruction that followed the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh had to cut short his first official foreign visit to deal with the crisis. He said that the President's speech was "inflammatory and insulting to Palestinians everywhere".

The Prime Minister's entry into Gaza from his visit abroad was preceded by high drama. During his visit abroad, he managed to raise $700 million for the P.A. from the governments in the region. He was carrying an estimated $3 million in cash meant to pay civil servants who had gone without salaries for long. The officials manning the immigration post did not allow him to bring in the cash. During the standoff that resulted, there was a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas gunmen. Shots were fired at the convoy of the Prime Minister, resulting in the death of a Hamas security man. The Hamas leadership described the incident as an attempt on the life of the Prime Minister. The Fatah leadership was livid at some of the statements made by Haniyeh during his visit abroad. In Teheran, Haniyeh had said that Iran provided Palestinians the required "strategic depth" to confront Israel.

Tel Aviv, Washington and London were quick to support the Palestinian President's gamble of calling for early elections. British Prime Minister Tony Blair was in Ramallah in the third week of December to express his support for Abbas. However, events on the ground have shown that overturning the will of the people expressed less than 12 months ago was easier said than done. Hamas refused to be cowed down by the threat of use of force. Members of the two groups have been fighting gun battles since the announcement of elections. There was a mortar attack on the President's office in Gaza and an assassination attempt on the Palestinian Foreign Minister.

Egyptian and Jordanian security officials have been working overtime to see that the fighting does not escalate into civil war. After every serious incident of violence in December, they have got both sides to agree temporarily to a truce. It is evident that after the spontaneous outpouring of anger witnessed in the Palestinian territories in the third week of December, following Abbas' announcement of early elections, getting rid of the Hamas government by short-circuiting the Constitution is going to be extremely difficult.

Hamas, like many other Palestinian groupings, has made it clear that if Abbas holds elections, it will boycott them. Recent opinion polls have shown that the popularity of Abbas is at an all-time low, with the majority of the Palestinian people now opposing his leadership. Abbas' inability to curb corruption and nepotism has cost him a lot of goodwill. Abbas took over as President two years ago after the death of the charismatic Yasser Arafat. As chief negotiator with Israel, Abbas has failed to deliver any tangible peace dividend. Despite the various concessions he has been making in a bid to achieve a comprehensive peace settlement, the Israeli government has given back little.

If Hamas boycotts the polls, the whole exercise the President is planning will prove meaningless. Voter surveys have shown that Hamas still retains majority support despite the travails the people have suffered as a result of the economic embargo. Most observers of the Palestinian scene believe that no final peace settlement will be possible without taking Hamas on board.

As things stand, there is a real danger of the situation degenerating into a full-blown civil war. Some senior Fatah officials have been talking about the inevitability of an internecine war. According to them, the Palestinians' position will remain untenable as long as Hamas continues to be in government. The contention of Fatah hardliners is that as long as Hamas refuses to adhere to the Oslo accords and recognise the state of Israel, the international community will continue with its sanctions and diplomatic pressure on the P.A., causing greater hardship for the Palestinian people.

They say that Hamas contested the January elections on the basis of the Oslo accords. The Fatah officials say that a final showdown with Hamas is inevitable. Fatah still controls key security outfits but recent fighting has shown that Hamas retains a lethal capability.

U.S. officials have been training Palestinian security forces loyal to Abbas in counter terrorism techniques. Egypt, Jordan and Turkey are providing training for Fatah forces. Britain, Spain and the European Union have provided communications equipment and logistical support. After Abbas took over, the Presidential Guard has been beefed up. It consisted of 90 officers when Arafat passed away. Today the elite forces number more than a thousand. Hamas, after coming to power, has also formed its own special force called the Executive Force. Its head, Jamal Samhadana, was killed by the Israelis in June 2006.

A Palestinian journalist, Khaled Abu Toameh, wrote recently in the Jerusalem Post that American meddling in Palestinian affairs "is backfiring, because many Palestinians are beginning to look at Abbas and Fatah as pawns in the hands of the U.S. and Israel". The sight of Tony Blair and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert jointly pledging to strengthen the hand of the Palestinian President only reinforces this view. While the West is proffering support for the Palestinian President's plan for early elections, there is no effort on their part to get the stalled peace plan back on track.

The Hamas leadership has reiterated that it would do its utmost to prevent a fratricidal war. In a televised address, Haniyeh said that Palestinians would "remain united" in their struggle against the occupation.

"The smallest drop of Palestinian blood is dear to us and it should not be spilled except to defend our land. We are all aboard the same boat," he said. At the same time, the Prime Minister alleged that the announcement by the Palestinian President about holding elections was a "direct decision to bring down this government and make it collapse, and the Americans are behind this policy". He also accused the President of trying to undermine his government from the outset. He said that Abbas had not attended a single government meeting since Hamas took over the government and had conducted diplomacy with the outside world without keeping the democratically elected government in the loop.

Haniyeh stated that on the issue of forming a government of national unity, it was the Fatah that had put up roadblocks at the eleventh hour. He said that Hamas had agreed to give up the premiership and keep only nine Ministries out of the 24 in the Cabinet. When the deal seemed to have been finalised, Fatah brought up extraneous issues, such as the release of the kidnapped Israeli soldier. Importantly, Haniyeh offered a 20-year truce to Israel, provided Israel withdrew to its 1967 borders. The top Hamas leader, Khalid Meshaal, told a German magazine in December that Hamas was willing to coexist peacefully with Israel, provided it withdrew from all the territories it occupied after the 1967 war.