War between brothers
Jun 15th 2007 | RAMALLAH
From The Economist print edition
The Palestinians' two main groups are on the verge of a struggle that could split the two parts of a putative Palestinian state in half
BY THE end of this week, the Islamists of Hamas will have either destroyed the secular-minded Fatah in the Gaza Strip or shown that they can. The relative quiet after a deadly burst of violence between the rival Palestinian parties in May was broken by a series of tit-for-tat killings that quickly got out of hand. After troops from the presidential guard of Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, rocketed the house of Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister, the Islamist party launched a full-scale attack. As The Economist went to press, Hamas troops had taken control of most of the Gaza Strip and had chased Fatah forces out of their bases, while several top Fatah commanders had either fled Gaza or had been killed.
Fatah arrested Hamas men in the West Bank and suspended its participation in the Palestinian Authority (PA) coalition government, which the two parties formed in March in an attempt to stop such fighting, and threatened to pull out altogether. But Fatah has little to bargain with. Hamas has already shown that its fighters, though less numerous, are better armed, trained and disciplined. In contrast, Fatah field commanders have been complaining loudly about their lack of equipment and leadership. Several of Fatah's top people in Gaza have been out of the strip for weeks.
The frustrated head of an Egyptian mediating team this week called on ordinary Gazans to take to the streets in protest against the violence, which has included kneecappings, summary executions and throwing handcuffed captives off tall buildings. Some protesters did sally out; one was shot dead.
They seem powerless in the face of a conflict that has been building since Hamas ousted Fatah from the PA in last year's election. From the start, Fatah tried to prevent Hamas from getting full control of the PA security services, which are a cornerstone of political power and a job scheme for unemployed militants, and which had become bloated with Fatah loyalists during the secular party's long and corrupt rule. Hamas countered by adding a tough, disciplined “Executive Force” of its own loyalists to the PA roster in Gaza, where it is much stronger than in the West Bank.
Fatah then won backing from the United States to turn the presidential guard into an elite force to counter that of Hamas. Under the guise of strengthening Mr Abbas as a moderate (unlike Hamas, which still refuses to accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state), America has provided $59m for training and supplying the presidential guard with non-lethal equipment, which Israel has let enter Gaza.
Israel has also let through at least one shipment of weapons from other Arab countries. Fatah officials have asked for more, but to no avail. Recently the Americans have been pressing Mr Abbas to adopt a new “action plan” to beef up his office, clean up Fatah, and boost training for the security services under his control, all with a view to giving him enough clout to call new elections later in the year.
Not surprisingly, Hamas sees Western support for Mr Abbas's troops, along with the now 15-month-old Western boycott of the PA, as part of a conspiracy to force it out of power. The official American line is that it is strengthening the presidential guard in order to “build law and order in Gaza” and to secure the border crossings where goods for the strip's 1.4m residents enter and leave. But occasionally the elite force has attacked Hamas positions, with notable success, and mid-level Fatah officials want more of that. “The only way Fatah can win, or at least get out with some self-esteem, is if the political leadership takes a decision to engage the presidential guards in this battle,” says Nasser Jumaa, a Fatah legislator from the West Bank town of Nablus.
Within the Israeli establishment, opinion is split on whether to let in more weapons. But Gaza is already awash with arms smuggled in through tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border; any meant for Fatah could easily end up in Hamas's hands. This week Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, took up an earlier suggestion by his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, for an international force to patrol the Egypt-Gaza border strip to prevent weapons-smuggling. Egypt has, up to now, said no.
Messrs Abbas and Haniyeh are trying to pull things back from the brink and to negotiate. But some predict a total split between a “Hamastan” in Gaza and a West Bank ruled by Fatah. No Israeli leader—including Ehud Barak, the former prime minister, who this week won the Labour party's primary election and could return to power next year—will feel any pressure to talk peace with a Palestinian leadership so definitively divided.
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