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http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article7030.shtml
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 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. |
