Sam PF's Journal - Gaza
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10:14 pm
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Gaza
When I arrived at the Big Session on Friday, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) borusa asked me what my thoughts were on the events in Gaza. I said my immediate reaction could be summed up in three letters, namely 'WTF', and that a more detailed analysis would require beer. Plenty of this commodity was available, but not really much time between listening to excellent folk music. But anyway, more detailed analysis now.
So, to summarise the evnts. Last week, Hamas forces routing those of Fatah last week, and taking full control of the Gaza strip. 120 Palestinians were killed in the fighting. Previous rounds of fighting had been temporarily halted by February's Mecca agreement between the parties, which led to the creation of a unity government, in place of the Hamas-led government following their victory in the January 2006 elections. The Hamas victory led to an international boycott of the Palestinian authority, greatly exacerbating the already dire conditions in the West Bank & Gaza. This boycott was maintained despite the formation of the unity government.
There has been plenty of analysis of this, much of it bullshit, but also some very good stuff. I would recommend among others Karma Nabulsi, Uri Avnery, Ali Abunimah et al. and Juan Cole.
My thoughts? Well, let's start with, WTF? Whatever the external forces were that created the situation for this (and they were very real), for Palestinians to be turning their weapons on each other is the height of folly. It is hard to read (and fairly meaningless) who 'started' the latest round of bloodshed, what was the trigger, and from what level the orders were coming from on each side, but neither Fatah nor Hamas come out of this with any credit. To call this a pyrrhic victory for Hamas is almost superfluous; they have taken control of a prison.
However, as Juan Cole points out, most nations have civil wars at some point, and the thing to ask is what are the politcal and economic circumstances driving this particular conflict. There the finger can be pointed very firmly at Israel, the US and Europe.
We could start with the fact that Gaza has for years been a large open-air prison, blockaded, impoverished and subject to regular bombardment by Israeli forces. Hardly helps. But the more immediate causes come from the reaction of the international community to Hamas' election victory: namely to refuse to accept it, to refuse to deal with the democratically elected Palestinian government, and to impose an unprecedented boycott of an occupied people. The whole aim of this was to try to engender a 'soft coup' against Hamas (Jeffrey Aaronson) to drive them from power.
What is more than this, the United States actually armed Fatah forces, in particular supplying weapons to Fatah's Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan. With a Fatah President (Mahmoud Abbas) and a Hamas government there was a huge bone of contention as to who actually controls the Palestinian security forces, as well as both parties having their own militia. As so often, the US policy was to try to get one side to do their dirty work for them against the other. Fatah, as a party used to having a monopoly of power in the Palestinian camp, seems to have been willing to play ball. Just how much the US was pushing for confrontation is revealed by retiring UN Envoy Alvaro de Soto's leaked end of mission report savaging international policies towards the conflict. He quotes a US envoy as twice saying 'I like this violence' in meetings in Washington during the fighting prior to the Mecca agreement.
The last straw, perhaps, was the continuing refusal of the international community to deal with the unity government and end the boycott. If working together could not win any advances, what was the point? Why should Hamas share power with their defeated opponents? Why should Fatah allow a continuing Hamas presence in government when this meant continuing international isolation? It made renewed confrontation pretty much inevitable. With two gangs of armed men in a small, densely populated, impoverished and isolated area with 70% unemployment, it wouldn't take much to light a spark.
So the US (and Israel) fully intended for a conflict between Hamas and Fatah to break out. (Europe probably wasn't so keen on the idea, but has never been willing to step out of line with the US on this). What they weren't planning on was Hamas winning. Quite possibly Hamas were unprepared for such a victory, as they were unprepared for an unconditional victory in the January 2006 elections. I doubt they had much of a game plan for what they're going to do with it.
But for the US and Israeli agenda, this is far from all bad (although Israel probably isn't over the moon about having a Hamas-controlled territory on its border). The Palestinians are greatly weakened by the division into two warring parties and the separation of Gaza from the West Bank, with Hamas controlling one and President Abbas' Fatah the other. Divide and rule always works well for occupiers.
Mahmoud Abbas has now sacked the Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and sworn in a new government excluding Hamas, enacting decrees enabling him to do this without the consent of Parliament (A large proportion of whose members are in jail, having been kidnapped by Israeli forces). In consequence, the EU and US have decided to resume ties with the Palestinian Authority, and end the aid boycott. Israel is to release frozen customs revenues they collect on Palestinian goods and are supposed to pass on to the PA.
This will undeniably be very good economically for the Palestinians in the West Bank at least. But it is politically catastrophic. It means that Mahmous Abbas holds power now only as a puppet dictator of Israel and the West. He cannot do what from the Palestinians' internal point of view would make sense, which is to try to negotiate with Hamas and restore peace and unity - that would only lead to renewed isolation. He cannot allow democracy to take its course; if Hamas were to win again, we'd be back to the boycott. His rule can no longer hold any legitimacy, and can only be upheld by the support of the US and Israel. In other words, they have him exactly where they want him.
Israeli moves to isolate the Gaza strip even more than in the past, closing the crossing points into Israel and Egypt, cutting off fuel deliveries, and imposing financial isolation (including government funds), is extremely concerning. The blockade is already leading to some severe shortages, including of food. To quote Juan Cole again, "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says that it will be a humanitarian blockade; if you believe that, I have a bridge over the River Jordan you can purchase inexpensively from me".
Where do we go from here, to quote Joss Whedon? No idea. But we can safely say nowhere good. Unless both Hamas and Fatah start thinking very smart very fast, then this could set back the prospects for Palestinian freedom back a decade.
Tags: palestine
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Heartily concur with your WTF, there.
>>But the more immediate causes come from the reaction of the international community to Hamas' election victory: namely to refuse to accept it, to refuse to deal with the democratically elected Palestinian government.
Yes, probably, but then how could Israel and allies of Israel possibly work with a group who includes stuff like this in its constitution:
"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews) when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say: O Muslims (…) there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. "Only the gharkad tree [evidently a certain kind of tree] would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."
-x-
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/23473356/948446) | | From: | smhwpf |
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| Date: | June 20th, 2007 08:31 pm (UTC) |
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There is certainly some ghastly stuff in the Hamas constitution. But if you look at both what they've been saying recently and their behaviour, you get a different picture. They have been talking consistently about a goal of establishing a Palestinian state on the West Bank (inc. E. Jerusalem) and Gaza, alongside Israel. While they have refused to 'recognise' Israel (which would be a highly open-ended commitment, given that Israel refuses to define its borders), they have said that they recognise that Israel is going to remain there. (In any case they couldn't do anything about that, even if they wanted to.) They have offered a long-term truce with Israel.
In terms of actions, for some years now they have not carried out suicide bombings. They maintained a unilateral ceasefire for over a year, despite continuing Israeli attacks. Despite the fact that haf their MPs have been kidnapped and interned by Israeli forces, the extent of their response has been rocket fire into Sderot.
In other words, if Israel wanted to deal with Hamas with a view to achieving peace, they could. Not saying that I like Hamas' philosophy, or that they've turned into nice fluffy bunnies, but the evidence is that they are not the insane, implacable, genocidal foe they are sometimes portrayed as.
Things like formal recognition of Israel and changes to the Hamas constitution to eliminate the sort of language (I don't know for certain if the line you quote is genuine or a piece of malicious Zionist propaganda you've picked up somewhere; either is perfectly possible, but I know there is nasty stuff in the Hamas constitution, so for the sake of argument I'll assume the former), is the sort of thing that would naturally come at the end of a peace process, if peace is what is genuinely desired. To insist on that sort of symbolic gesture as a precondition for any sort of engagement is a sign that you are actually not interested in peace, but want an excuse to avoid it while maintaining some sort of moral high ground. If, for example, the UK government had insisted that the Republic of Ireland remove the articles of its constitution laying claim to Northern Ireland before they'd agree to talk to them, then we'd have never reached the relatively benign position we have today.
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/50910970/7617382) | | From: | srk1 |
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| Date: | June 20th, 2007 10:15 pm (UTC) |
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As I said in PD's journal, the reason that Israel insists on recognition as a precondition of talks is that the 'recognition' chip has already been cashed in by the Palestinians, in the deal which led to the Oslo accords in 1993. At that time, Israel accepted it in return for recognition of the PLO and granting some territorial autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza.
The counterpoint to this is that the Palestinians' representative on the international stage is not the PA - which exists merely to govern the nominally 'autonomous' territories in Palestine itself - but the PLO, which formally recognises Israel's "right to exist in peace and security". So, nominally at least, there is no reason why Israel could not have continued dealing with the PLO on the matter of peace negotiations while suspending its diplomatic and financial obligations to the PA until Hamas were removed from it.
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/26661742/948446) | | From: | smhwpf |
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| Date: | June 21st, 2007 11:42 am (UTC) |
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...the 'recognition' chip has already been cashed in by the Palestinians, in the deal which led to the Oslo accords in 1993. At that time, Israel accepted it in return for recognition of the PLO and granting some territorial autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza.
Against this
1) Israel has systematically ignored its obligations under Oslo, continually expanding settlements and tightening closures in a way that every independent organisation affirms has nothing to do with security.
2) Hamas (nor any other Arab state or body) has no capacity to threaten the existence of the state of Israel. So not having recognition from Hamas while talks progress does not threaten their security, or inhibit their ability to take legitimate measures to preotect themselves.
3) You make peace with your enemies, not your friends. If you want peace, you deal with the people who are there, not the ones you'd like to be there. The fact that Israel does not (and indeed didn't even progress with peace talks with Abbas even before Hamas won the election) shows that actually they don't want peace, they want to grab more land and contain the Palestinians as best they can.
The counterpoint to this is that the Palestinians' representative on the international stage is not the PA - which exists merely to govern the nominally 'autonomous' territories in Palestine itself - but the PLO, which formally recognises Israel's "right to exist in peace and security". So, nominally at least, there is no reason why Israel could not have continued dealing with the PLO on the matter of peace negotiations...
A fair point.
...while suspending its diplomatic and financial obligations to the PA until Hamas were removed from it.
Diplomatic, yes (though as I say I don't think that's wise), financial no - the money they collect as customs revenues on Palestinian goods is not aid, it is Palestinian money. It is not Israel's to hold back.
| | From: | srk1 |
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| Date: | June 21st, 2007 09:32 pm (UTC) |
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I agree with everything you say, I was more trying to give an explanation as to why Israel insists on 'recognition' as a precondition of talks. It is only the total political and economic weakness of the Palestinian people which prevents Abbas imposing his own set of preconditions on resumption of talks with Israel.
I wasn;t insisting on anything or looking to maintain some sort of moral high ground. I really, truly hope for peace. Given the positions of both sides, I'm not confident it will ever happen, though.
-x-
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/23473246/948446) | | From: | smhwpf |
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| Date: | June 21st, 2007 11:31 am (UTC) |
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Sorry, by 'you' I mean 'one', or more specifically Israel/the US, rather than 'you' as in yourself.
The best thing in the Hamas constitution is all the stuff about how Palestine must be protected from The Rotary Club. I bet leading US/UK politicians are pawns of the Rotary Club, and this explains their opposition to Hamas. |
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