The recent three-week war in the Gaza Strip was a showcase for bitter Palestinian rivalries and a reminder that efforts to defuse the internecine warfare among Palestinian factions have failed miserably.
As Israel and Hamas fought a series of battles that ended with an uneasy truce last month, Hamas and its rival, Fatah, squabbled openly and demonstrably, pushing back the already dim chances for Palestinian reconciliation and unity. Yet long before the Gaza war broke out, Fatah, secular nationalist in orientation, and Hamas, steeped in Islamic piety, were deeply at odds.
Fatah, having recognized Israel, has negotiated with the Jewish state and supports a two-state solution to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Hamas, having rejected Israel’s very existence, calls for an Islamic state in its place.
This past December, Fatah urged Hamas to renew the six-month ceasefire along Gaza’s border with Israel, but Hamas archly ignored the plea, thereby touching off the war.
As well, Fatah and Hamas cannot agree on the nature of a future Palestinian state. Should it be built on the foundations of secularism or Islamic fundamentalism?
A fourth contentious issue turns on power. Should the Palestinian Authority – an organ controlled by Fatah and backed by Israel, the United States and the European Union – be the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people? Or should Hamas, supported by Iran and Syria, be in charge?
The Palestinians are also at loggerheads over which faction should control the Rafah border crossing adjacent to Egypt. With Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the Rafah terminal was administered by the Palestinian Authority and European Union monitors, but this arrangement fell by the wayside, and today, Hamas wants a role in its operation.
These contentious issues assumed greater prominence and stoked still more tension after Hamas won the parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories in January 2006 on a platform of reform and change. With Hamas’ victory at the polls, Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza – a Hamas stronghold – in an attempt to undermine the Islamic regime. The Israeli government also convinced the United States, Canada and the European Union that the siege should remain in place until Hamas recognized Israel, renounced terrorism and accepted previous agreements entered into by Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Meanwhile, the security forces of Fatah and Hamas engaged in periodic armed clashes, particularly in Gaza. Early in 2007, Saudi Arabia intervened, inviting Fatah and Hamas representatives to meet for reconciliation talks in the city of Mecca. The purpose of the negotiations was two-fold: to stop the intermittent fighting and end Israel’s blockade.
The two sides finally signed a power-sharing accord – the Mecca Agreement – in February 2007, under which Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas retained the presidency of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh was named prime minister of the national unity government. Israel was disappointed by the outcome, Abbas having failed to convince Haniyeh to recognize Israel or give up violence. Hamas, however, expressed “respect” for agreements that Israel and the Palestinian Authority had signed.
To no one’s surprise, the shelf life of the two-headed Palestinian government was of brief duration. Tensions escalated, climaxing with a full-blown civil war in which Hamas seized Gaza in June 2007. Appalled by Hamas’ rout of Fatah, Israel tightened the blockade of Gaza, an impoverished enclave with 1.5 million inhabitants, many of them refugees.
Egypt, playing the role of honest broker, tried to defuse the power struggle by tabling a set of proposals. A new Palestinian government, consisting solely of politically independent figures, would be established. The Palestinian security forces would be restructured. Hamas would rescind its takeover of Gaza. Fresh presidential and parliamentary elections would be held in Gaza and the West Bank.
Yet even as these sweeping proposals were discussed, Hamas announced it would not recognize Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority after his five-year term of office expired on Jan. 9, 2009.
With the impasse deepening and Fatah and Hamas blaming each other for the failure of Egypt’s mediation efforts, the Egyptians threw up their hands in despair, suggesting that the Fatah-Hamas split was morphing into a permanent phenomenon. By the autumn of 2008, it was reported, many young Palestinian men in the West Bank affiliated with Hamas had begun to shave their beards out of fear of being arrested by Fatah police.
Shortly afterward, following Hamas’ refusal to extend the shaky truce and its shelling of Israeli communities near the border, Israel uncorked Operation Cast Lead.
In response, Abbas pointed a finger of guilt at Hamas, blaming its leaders for having provoked Israel with “acts of foolishness.”
As Israel escalated its offensive in Gaza and Hamas called for a third intifadah, the Palestinian Authority banned protesters in West Bank towns from expressing solidarity with Hamas by hoisting its flag, chanting pro-Hamas slogans or marching toward Israeli army checkpoints and Jewish settlements. In one instance, Palestinian police used tear gas to break up a demonstration. As part of its crackdown, Fatah rounded up hundreds of Hamas supporters, including a number of journalists. These measures were reportedly carried out in co-ordination with Israel.
On a rhetorical level, the Palestinian Authority stepped up its verbal attacks on Hamas. Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a senior aide to Abbas, charged Hamas with holding the Palestinians in Gaza hostage and exploiting “the Israeli massacres against our people to strengthen its position.” Yasser Abed Rabbo, another senior Fatah official, accused Hamas of seeking to create an “emirate of darkness” in Gaza and permanently separate Gaza from the West Bank. Still other Fatah officials said that supporters in Gaza had been detained, kneecapped and murdered.
Once Israel expanded its military operation with a ground invasion of Gaza, Abbas shifted course, lashing out at Israel. He denounced Israel’s action as “barbaric and criminal,” called for an immediate ceasefire, claimed Israel had no interest in peace and threatened to pull out of peace talks with Israel.
Even as he excoriated Israel, Abbas declined to suspend the Palestinian Authority’s security co-operation with Jerusalem.
Once the war wound down, Hamas’ top official in Syria, Khaled Meshal – the object of an Israeli assassination attempt in 1997 – claimed that the Palestine Liberation Organization, controlled by Fatah, had deepened “divisions” in Palestinian ranks. In a bombshell, he declared that the Palestinians required a brand new leadership. Meshal’s schismatic statement won the support of such radical Syrian-based Palestinian groups as Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.
The Palestinian Authority was livid, saying that Iran and Syria had encouraged Hamas to challenge its leadership. Since then, Abbas has ruled out further reconciliation talks with Hamas unless it accepts the supremacy of the PLO. Adopting a cooler approach, Egypt has proposed a renewal of such negotiations later this month.
There have been suggestions that the war strengthened Hamas – which fought back, never surrendered and continued firing missiles at Israel until the last day – and weakened Fatah, which, critics said, was essentially in league with Israel and did not do nearly enough to stop the carnage in Gaza. This analysis may prove to be correct one day, but for now, Fatah and Hamas are still bitterly vying for dominance and for the hearts and minds of Palestinians.
