[Marxism] Fatah fears Gaza conflict has put Hamas in the ascendancy

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

     Fatah fears Gaza conflict  has put Hamas in the ascendancy

Palestinian party created by Yasser Arafat suffers sharp decline in  support

By Patrick Cockburn in Nablus

January  23, 2009 "_The Independent_ 
(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/fatah-fears-gaza-conflict-has-put-hamas-in-the-ascendancy-1513430.
html) " -- The Islamic movement Hamas is taking  over from Fatah, the party 
created by Yasser Arafat, as the main  Palestinian national organisation as a 
result of the war in Gaza, says a  leading Fatah militant. "We have moved into 
the era of Hamas which is now  much stronger than it was," said Husam Kadr, a 
veteran Fatah leader in the  West Bank city of Nablus, recently released after 
five-and-a-half years in  Israeli prisons.

"Its era started when Israel attacked Gaza on 27  December."

The sharp decline in support for Fatah and the  discrediting of Mahmoud 
Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority,  because of his inertia during 
the 
22-day Gaza war, will make it very  difficult for the US and the EU to pretend 
that Fatah are the true  representatives of the Palestinian community. The 
international community  is likely to find it impossible to marginalise Hamas 
in 
reconstructing  Gaza.

"Hamas has been highly successful in portraying itself as the  party of the 
resistance, and Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas as the opponents of  resistance at a 
time [when] the public wants to resist," said Ghassan  Khatib, a former 
Palestinian minister of planning. He adds that Mr Abbas  was badly damaged in 
the eyes 
of Palestinians when he blamed Hamas for  Israel's assault on Gaza in the 
conflict's first two days.

Mr Kadr,  who says he was tortured by Israeli interrogators during detention, 
does  not welcome Hamas's triumph. But he is convinced that, just as Fatah's  
long reign was launched by the battle of Karamah in March 1968, when Fatah  
fighters aided by the Jordanian army, repelled an Israeli attack on their  HQ 
in the Jordan valley, so Hamas will gain from the Gaza war. "The Hamas  era 
comes 40 years after Karamah began the Fatah period," he  says.

Hamas is conscious of its political success even if it was  able to do little 
against the Israeli army. Mr Khatib, in his office in  Ramallah, the 
Palestinian capital on the West Bank, says the first  priority must be the 
formation 
of a Palestinian unity government between  Hamas and Fatah. But he adds 
gloomily that "the chances of this happening  are slim" because the Gaza war 
has 
exacerbated hatred between the two  sides as Fatah supporters are hunted down 
and 
sometimes executed in  Gaza.

Aside from Gaza there is another reason why President Abbas  and Fatah are 
weak. Long years of negotiations with Israel have achieved  nothing while 
red-roofed Israeli settlements have sprouted on every West  Bank hilltop. 
Driving 
into Nablus, a city of 250,000 people that was once  the bustling heart of the 
West Bank, the streets are empty and row after  row of shops are shut.

"We had eight years of complete closure when  people could not get in or out 
of Nablus aside from the 3 per cent who had  permits," complains the city's 
mayor Adly Yaish. "Most factories shut and  60 per cent of people live below 
the 
poverty line." The closure became a  little looser three months ago, but 
yesterday there were long lines of  vehicles at the Israeli checkpoints around 
the 
city.

The rise of  Hamas and the demise of Fatah is best explained by the failure 
of  President Abbas to achieve anything through negotiations for ordinary  
Palestinians. "We in Fatah have failed to remove a single Israeli  checkpoint," 
admits Mr Kadr. "It takes me as long to reach Ramallah 50  kilometres away as 
it 
would to fly from Jordan to Ankara."

He  believes the Gaza war has spread the seeds for another Palestinian  
uprising. "The coming uprising will be very hard for both the Palestinians  and 
the 
Israelis," he warns, though he does not forecast when it will  occur. He 
points to a television in his office on which a young  Palestinian girl called 
Dalal is shown picking through the ruins of her  house in Gaza where all her 
family had died and only her cat had survived.  "Can you imagine how 
Palestinians 
feel when they see this?" he  asks.
 
 
_http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21826.htm_ 
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21826.htm) 
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