[News] A re-run of the Lebanon war in Palestine?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

A re-run of the Lebanon war in Palestine?
Hasan Abu Nimah & Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 11 October 2006
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5838.shtml

While Gaza starves, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shakes 
hands with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as they attend a joint 
press conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah, 4 October 2006. 
(<http://www.maanimages.com>MaanImages/Fadi Arouri)

There are ominous signs that the long-contemplated plan to overthrow 
the democratically-elected Hamas-led Palestinian Authority cabinet is 
about to enter its most dangerous phase: a political coup, supported 
by local militias, with foreign and regional backing. This could 
ignite serious intra-Palestinian violence. With Iraq providing a 
dreadful warning of how foreign occupation can foster civil 
bloodshed, everything must be done to expose and thwart this 
dangerous conspiracy.

The head of Palestinian Authority intelligence, and Fatah militia 
leader, Tawfiq Tirawi, said in an interview with the Sunday Times on 
8 October, "We are already at the beginning of a civil war, no doubt 
about it. They (Hamas) are accumulating weapons and a full-scale 
civil war can break out at any moment." The paper cited Palestinian 
sources saying that Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas "has 
notified the US, Jordan and Egypt that he is preparing to take action 
against Hamas." And, asserting that Hamas "are preparing for a war 
against us," Tirawi "forecasts that the violence would begin in Gaza 
and spread to the West Bank." Hamas leaders, including prime minister 
Ismail Haniyeh, have issued strenuous reassurances that they will 
never allow civil war, even as a Fatah-affiliated militia recently 
released a statement explicitly threatening to assassinate them.

Let us recall that in last January's legislative council elections 
the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, resoundingly defeated Fatah, 
the nominally nationalist and secular faction founded by Yasir Arafat 
and which has dominated the institutionalized Palestinian movement 
since the 1960s. Fatah, led now by Palestinian Authority chairman 
Mahmoud Abbas, was widely rejected for its corruption and 
mismanagement of the Palestinian Authority which was founded under 
the Oslo Accords in 1994.

Coming a week after more than a dozen Palestinians were killed in 
fighting between Hamas and Fatah followers, Tirawi's latest comments 
could be seen as laying the groundwork for a full-scale and 
premeditated confrontation. A senior Fatah "security source," 
probably also Tirawi, had already told the same Sunday Times 
journalist last May that "[c]ivil war is inevitable" and that "Time 
is running out for Hamas." He warned that "We'll choose the right 
time and place for the military showdown. But after that there will 
be no more of Hamas's militias."

Is that time approaching? Abbas is being encouraged by his sponsors 
outside the country to take on Hamas. Tirawi's warnings followed US 
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's visit to the region which 
included a warm public embrace of Abbas. On October 5, Reuters 
reported that militias loyal to Abbas are receiving arms and training 
from the United States. "Expanding the size of the presidential 
guard," Abbas' personal militia, "by up to 70 percent under a U.S. 
plan," the report stated, "has become a central part of American 
policy since [Hamas] beat Abbas's Fatah in elections and took over 
the government." This apparent encouragement to resort to the bullet 
when use of the ballot failed to produce the desired results is a 
direct contradiction of the simplest principles of democracy, apart 
from its sheer immorality. This sounds bad enough, but it also looks 
like a repeat of the strategy in Lebanon where western powers 
apparently thought that Israel, as a local client state, could be 
used to strike a lethal blow at Hizbullah. The human and political 
results of that adventure, last summer's systematic Israeli 
destruction of Lebanon, speak for themselves. This time, Abbas and 
his forces would fill the role of local US client, and Hamas would be 
cast as Hizbullah.

The only outcome of such a confrontation will be another orgy of 
bloody violence. And almost certainly, support for Hamas would be 
strengthened, but among the Palestinian people there would be only losers.

There is good reason to fear that the moment is coming when this 
conspiracy will turn to the naked use of armed force, as the campaign 
to overthrow Hamas has escalated in stages. Just weeks after the 
January election, The New York Times reported that US and Israeli 
officials met at the "highest level" to plot the downfall of Hamas by 
"starving" the Palestinian Authority. It started with the US-EU aid 
cutoff, ostensibly to force Hamas to "recognize Israel" and "abandon 
violence." (When it was elected Hamas had already observed a 
year-long unilateral suspension of attacks on Israel, and its leaders 
strongly indicated a willingness to reach a "long-term agreement"). 
Israel escalated its military attacks on Gaza, killing and maiming 
thousands of civilians, and destroying civilian infrastructure 
including the only power station. Most Palestinians now face 
difficulties feeding their families. Israel kidnapped eight Hamas 
cabinet ministers and a quarter of the elected members of the 
legislative council, while Fatah leaders have continually agitated 
against Hamas, including organizing strikes and protests by Fatah 
loyalists among Palestinian Authority civil servants who have been 
deprived of salaries by the very international siege that Fatah 
leaders have winked at and even encouraged.

Efforts to bridge the political impasse by forming a "national unity 
government" have also failed because the Fatah election losers, 
backed by foreign powers, are demanding that Hamas, the election 
winners, abandon their policies and principles and endorse those of 
the defeated party. But none of this has worked. Despite the 
punishment, Palestinians under occupation are no more willing than 
ever to submit to Israeli tyranny: 67 percent "do not believe Hamas 
should recognize the state of Israel in order to meet international 
donor demands" even though "63 percent would support a Palestinian 
recognition of Israel as a state for the Jewish people after a peace 
agreement is reached and a Palestinian state is established," a 
September poll by the Palestinian Center for Survey Research found.

As violent incidents and provocations by followers of both factions 
mount, Abbas is considering other coercive means amounting to a coup: 
dismissing the Hamas cabinet, forming an "emergency" administration, 
and dissolving the Hamas-dominated legislative council to make way 
for new general elections which can be postponed indefinitely or at 
least until a Fatah victory can be engineered.

The danger facing Palestinians is acute. But let us be clear: it is 
not a threat of civil war. Among millions of ordinary Palestinians, 
whether under Israel's brutal occupation, living as second class 
citizens within the "Jewish state," or in forced exile, there is no 
disagreement remotely great enough that could get them to turn 
brother against brother and family against family in a civil war. On 
the contrary, Palestinians are united in their understanding of what 
afflicts them -- Israeli colonialism armed, backed and bankrolled by 
western powers. The danger is of an armed coup staged on behalf of 
these powers by a small minority, but which could drag more 
Palestinians into internecine fighting whose consequences are awful 
to contemplate.

Perhaps the most serious miscalculation Hamas has made is to 
underestimate the determination with which the results of democratic 
elections will be undermined and opposed if they do not suit the 
interests of Israel and other world powers. The reality is that the 
Palestinian Authority is not and has never been a government for the 
Palestinian people. The Palestinian Authority receives western 
backing only to the extent that it directly and exclusively serves 
their own and Israeli interests. It was designed to protect the 
Israeli occupation against its victims; no one will be permitted to 
turn it into a representative body that fights for the rights and 
interests of Palestinians. To avoid the lethal trap that is being set 
for them and the Palestinian people, Hamas will either have to sell 
out or get out.

Hamas has done the right thing by abandoning its campaign of suicide 
attacks on Israeli civilians, observing an ongoing voluntary truce 
and embracing politics. It should now abandon the effort to hold on 
to the wreckage of the powerless and discredited Oslo institutions. 
Instead, it should turn its considerable popularity, organizational 
skills and increased legitimacy into a full fledged campaign of civil 
resistance, mobilizing together with other sectors of Palestinian and 
global civil society against every aspect of Israeli colonialism and 
racism. This is the only thing it has not yet tried, and it holds out 
the best hope for a way out of the dark tunnel.

EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah was Jordanian Ambassador in several 
European Union countries and at the United Nations in New York. Ali 
Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805080341/theelectronic-20>One 
Country, A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse 
(Metropolitan Books, 2006)


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