Threat of civil war

PALESTINIAN MOURNERS CARRY the body of Jamal Abu Samhadana, commander of the Popular Resistance Committees, in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah. He was killed in an Israeli air strike. - MAHMUD HAMS/AFP

The referendum called by President Mahmoud Abbas is a recipe for civil war given that Hamas and the Fatah are on either side of the debate.

THE killing of 10 Palestinians, including six women and three children, in Gaza on June 9 may have effectively ended the ceasefire between Hamas and the Israeli state. They were relaxing on the beach on a hot day when in yet another unprovoked act, Israeli gunboats opened fire. Forty Palestinians were seriously injured. Among the dead were eight members of a family.

The Israeli security forces have resumed targeted killings of Palestinian activists, including senior Hamas functionaries, since the new Hamas-led government took office. They have been on the offensive in the Occupied Territories, striking at will. In the first week of June, Israeli special forces assassinated Jamal Abu Samhadana, the head of the Hamas-led resistance forces in Gaza. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has no love lost for Hamas, has described the Israeli actions in Gaza as "bloody genocide" and called on the international community to intervene. Palestine Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said that the shelling was a "war crime". Haniyeh, who represents Hamas, also called for an end to the internecine fighting among Palestinians, which had erupted in May. The Fatah, which was defeated in the parliamentary elections, has so far refused to cede control of the Palestinian security apparatus to the Prime Minister. Serious clashes have broken out in Gaza between the Palestinian security forces owing allegiance to Abbas and the Hamas militia on the issue. The clashes were mainly the consequence of the President's refusal to integrate the Hamas militia into the regular Palestinian security force or allow the formation of a parallel security force. Israel and the United States have objected to the Hamas militia being absorbed into the Palestinian security force.

Sixteen people have been killed as a result of inter-Palestinian rivalry since May. Haniyeh has called the clashes "regrettable". He said that the chaos on the Palestinian street could affect the entire region. "Civil war is not in our vocabulary," he said.

Hamas reacted to the Gaza killings by immediately calling off the "truce" with Israel and firing a barrage of locally fabricated "Kassam" rockets into Israel. The ceasefire, which Hamas had observed since February 2005, had brought down the level of bloodshed considerably. Now things could change dramatically. Abu Abir, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committee, an umbrella group of Palestinian militant organisations, vowed that "rockets would rain into the Zionist entity and our heroes will blow themselves into their dirty bodies".

At the same time, Israel, aided by its main ally, the U.S., has been successful in starving the Palestinian people through an economic blockade. Millions of dollars, legitimately belonging to the Palestine Authority (P.A.), are locked up in Western and Israeli banks. Arab banks are afraid to remit legitimate Palestinian funds, fearing sanctions by Washington. Salaries for civil servants have not been paid for months. Hospitals have been paralysed as they have run out of essential medical supplies. Israel and the West are trying to subvert the will of the Palestinian people, expressed in the parliamentary elections held earlier in the year, by all the means at their command. In the second week of June, Washington abruptly called off a ministerial meeting that was expected to approve urgent measures to alleviate the cash flow problem into the Palestinian territories. A European diplomat was quoted as saying that the U.S. was motivated by the desire to effect an immediate "regime change". Washington has pulled out all the stops to undermine the Hamas-led government. U.S. media reports say that U.S. and Israeli officials have met at the "highest level" to discuss "starving" the P.A.

Recent events have pinned Hamas against the wall. The Israeli government, not satisfied with the financial and political stranglehold it has established on the Palestinians, now wants to grab even more territory. Prime Minster Ehud Olmert on a recent visit to Washington, announced grandiose plans for a final settlement of the Palestinian issue. The plan proposes the creation of a Greater Israel by the year 2010. The Israeli state plans to annex formally the whole of Jerusalem and significant sections of the West Bank, including those already gobbled up by the "apartheid wall", which Israel is constructing at breakneck speed. "We will fight the Israeli plan and continue to struggle until the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Israel is trying to set up a country with a Jewish majority and preserve Jerusalem as its capital. This shows that the Israeli government wants to maintain the occupation. Unfortunately, the Americans are also on their side," Haniyeh said recently.

To complicate matters for the Palestinian government, Abbas has come out with a plan to hold a referendum at the end of July. The document, based on the recommendations of senior Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails, calls for a national unity government, an end to attacks on Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli state, which will be confined to the pre-1967 borders. The obvious aim is to undermine the credibility of the Hamas government. Abbas did not consult Haniyeh before announcing the plan. The Hamas leadership has let it be known on several occasions in recent months that it is willing to recognise Israel on the basis of equality and reciprocity.

Hamas leaders also question the need to hold the referendum just after the Palestinian people had spoken through the ballot box. Khalid Mashal, the Hamas leader who resides in Syria, said that there was no way that his organisation would bend to the combined pressure exerted by the U.S., Israel and the Fatah. He said an attempt was being made to form an alternative government "attempting to find the authority and the right to steal from the nation. There is difference between political opposition and conspiracy. What is happening is conspiracy".

The international community is aware that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians support key points in the referendum document. Some analysts predict that Abbas will use the referendum results to sack the Hamas-led government and get the sanctions imposed by the West removed.

Hamas supporters have been rallying in large numbers to protest against the referendum proposal. According to the Palestinian Constitution, new parliamentary elections can be held only in 2010. According to reports from Palestine, Hamas continues to be the most popular group. The Fatah is said to be a demoralised and discredited party. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Khaled Abu Hillal, said in the second week of June that the "referendum is a recipe for civil war".

There is considerable speculation that the killings on the beach in Gaza could trigger a "third intifada". As things stand now, the Palestinians have precious little to lose. A humanitarian crisis is anyway looming over the Occupied Territories as a result of the sanctions imposed after elections, earlier in the year.

Palestinians are dying in their thousands owing to lack of medical care. Women are selling their precious possessions to buy essentials. An entire nation is being starved owing to the whims of a superpower and its client state.