[Marxism] Palestinian split hampers solidarity

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/03/hamas-fatah-israel-west-bank

Factional divide rules out show of solidarity from the West Bank
Despite a week of bombing, the long-standing rift between Hamas and 
Fatah prevents a united front against Israel

     * Rory McCarthy in Ramallah
     * The Guardian, Saturday 3 January 2009

The bodies of the senior Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan and his family, who 
were killed in an Israeli strike on their home on Thursday, are carried 
aloft in Jabalya. Photograph: Mohammed Salem/Reuters

One cold morning this week a group of two dozen protesters walked 
through Ramallah carrying flags and singing quietly as they reached the 
steps of the Palestinian parliament building. It was supposed to be a 
display of Palestinian unity, a gathering of MPs of all parties brought 
together in shared outrage at Israel's devastating, week-long bombing of 
the Gaza Strip.

But such scenes of unity are rare and mask a reality that has become 
glaringly apparent to most Palestinians: the vast physical, political 
and social gulf that now divides the beleaguered Gaza Strip from the 
West Bank barely 20 miles away.

After lunchtime prayers yesterday a much larger crowd gathered in 
Ramallah to protest, but it descended into fist fights between 
supporters of rival factions. Police fired into the air. Although there 
have been some street protests in the West Bank this week, they have 
been relatively few, less copious than the demonstrations in countries 
abroad. Instead, while there has been sympathy for the suffering of the 
Palestinian citizens of Gaza, there was also - from the president down - 
publicly voiced criticism of the strip's rulers, the Islamist movement 
Hamas.

After the MPs' march, Ibrahim Kharish, a senior Fatah official, spoke - 
with al-Jazeera's live coverage of Gaza on the television above his desk 
- of his extraordinary anger at Hamas. "We should have courage enough to 
say that this could have been avoided and that actually Hamas led to 
this," he said. "By taking our people and our land in Gaza under its 
control by force they are treating the people as hostages ... Hamas is 
responsible for what is going on in Gaza, not only Israel."

He said Hamas, under Iranian influence, was trying to isolate Gaza to 
set up its own miniature Islamic state and that it had vastly 
miscalculated what the Israeli reaction would be to a return to rocket 
fire from Gaza. "The people didn't elect them to act like this," Kharish 
said.

The Hamas-Fatah antagonism goes back years. They were at each other's 
throats a decade ago, in effect fighting to lead the Palestinian 
national movement. Fatah won then, but its position gradually evaporated 
until it lost parliamentary elections in January 2006 to Hamas, with its 
preference for armed struggle over further negotiations with Israel. 
Within a year there was a near civil war on the streets of Gaza, one 
that claimed the lives of hundreds of Palestinians. It resulted in the 
better-organised Hamas routing Fatah and seizing full control of Gaza in 
June 2007 and left a bitter mutual hatred that months of mediation and 
talks have failed to calm. This week's bombing of Gaza has widened, not 
narrowed, that gulf.

In the first hours after the bombing began, Mahmoud Abbas, the 
Palestinian president and Fatah leader, blamed Hamas for not extending a 
six-month ceasefire with Israel, even though it had been violated by 
both sides. When demonstrations were held in the West Bank on Sunday, 
the second day of the bombing campaign, anyone flying a Hamas flag was 
roughed up and arrested by Abbas's security forces. That apparently 
produced such disquiet among younger Fatah ranks that Abbas has since 
moderated his words, calling for a ceasefire. On Thursday he even issued 
an order banning criticism of Hamas.

Hamas was quick to respond, accusing senior Fatah officials of 
collaborating with Israel by offering advice and intelligence for 
targeting the bombing. Some fear Abbas's forces may yet ride back into 
power in Gaza graced by Israeli tanks.

It took an outsider to capture the depth of the crisis. "This terrible 
massacre would not have happened if the Palestinian people were united 
behind one leadership, speaking in one voice," Saudi Arabia's foreign 
minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said on Wednesday.

These concerns are reflected among the public, and this fragmentation 
between the two territories may account for the relatively subdued 
protests. There were demonstrations in Hebron, Ramallah and Nablus at 
the start of the bombing, but they have not been widely repeated. More 
demonstrations were held by Arab-Israelis in Israel, particularly in 
Haifa, Jaffa and Nazareth. The gathering in Ramallah yesterday was the 
largest of the week. There was also some sporadic stone throwing against 
Israeli police in east Jerusalem after lunchtime prayers yesterday.

In Gaza itself, with foreign journalists still banned, it remains 
impossible to gauge whether Hamas's support has fallen or rebounded as a 
result of the bombing. Attitudes in Ramallah were mixed.

"Hamas made a mistake by entering politics," said Naji Mourad, 31, who 
stood at a market stall in Ramallah. "They should give up their position 
and go back to armed resistance. It's more honourable." Others have 
little time for Hamas. "This is the involvement of Iran and Syria that 
we're seeing in Gaza," said Nasser Tubaisi, 34, who was out shopping for 
a mobile phone. "We're not compassionate for Hamas - their leaders are 
all hiding. But we are compassionate for the people of Gaza."

Those Palestinian figures who are neither members of Fatah nor Hamas 
tend to see the challenge most clearly. Qais Abdul Karim, a 
long-standing leftist MP, said he believed Israel's bombing was intended 
to force on the Palestinians a provisional state, rather than true 
independence and sovereignty. "The idea is to isolate Gaza from the West 
Bank completely and to throw Gaza into the arms of Egypt and to subject 
the West Bank to perpetual domination by Israel," he said. "Our priority 
must be to find a way to end our division."

His concerns are not without foundation. Israelis speak openly of 
alternatives to a viable, independent, contiguous Palestinian state. In 
recent weeks Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel's national security 
council, proposed Jordanian control over the West Bank or a multilateral 
land swap between Israel, the Palestinians and Egypt which would let 
Israel keep a large slice of the West Bank for itself and see Gaza slide 
closer to the reluctant embrace of the Egyptians.

Mustafa Barghouti, an independent MP who ran for the presidency at the 
last election, said Hamas and Fatah had been seduced into fighting over 
leadership of a largely powerless institution, the Palestinian National 
Authority - created under the Oslo accords a decade and a half ago and 
which gave the Palestinians the trappings of power without a state itself.

"The two sides were fighting for an authority that exists only in their 
minds, an elusive authority," said Barghouti. "Now they see this 
authority is being destroyed by bombing in Gaza, and in the West Bank by 
an absence of credibility. Now everybody realises we are all targeted.

"I say to hell with this authority if it's going to get us divided. We 
don't need it. Let's go back to a unified leadership. Now they are 
losing everything."

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