'Feed and starve' as a foreign policy won't work
Sunday, June 24, 2007
By AREF ASSAF
SPECIAL TO THE HERALD NEWS
We could see it coming when, upon a recent visit to Palestine, a young
Palestinian child asked me if I was with Fatah or with Hamas, the two rival and
politically irreconcilable groups in the Palestinian territories. I answered,
spontaneously, that I was simply a Palestinian -- to which the young man seemed
bewildered.
The Palestinian people, we are being told, no longer have Israel's 40-year-old
occupation as a common enemy, but a bloody and almost tribal war to decide who
should speak for the Palestinians.
What we are witnessing is a civil war in Palestine.
But it is civil war by proxy, where the populace is merely a victim of the
warring factions' desire for power. Still, what led to the recent coup d'etat
that ended Fatah's political presence in the Gaza Strip? A more reasoned
assessment must lead to at least two root causes: The immediate factor is rooted
in unhappiness -- mostly among members of Hamas's armed wing but also by some in
the political leadership -- with the Mecca agreement. Critics of Mecca were
unhappy that Hamas had been forced to offer political concessions to Fatah,
which they saw as too weak or too corrupt to deserve them.
Not only may Hamas not have been ready to transition completely from opposition
group into a governing entity, but it seems Fatah, Israel and the United States
attempted to torpedo it at every turn.
Political divisions in daily lives
We recall Hamas's surprising electoral victory last year that ended Fatah's
one-party rule over the Palestinian movement. This was followed by Fatah's
deliberate attempts to destabilize Hamas, thus hampering a smooth transition to
governance. At every turn, clashes would occur between enriched Fatah operatives
and the new cadre of Hamas-appointed heads of public entities and government
posts.
In the West Bank, Fatah ruled and Hamas supporters were rooted out; in Gaza,
Hamas ruled. The political divisions slowly seeped into the daily lives of every
Palestinian. President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement is still not prepared to
accept the result of the elections held in spring 2006, which brought the
Islamist Hamas to power. In Gaza, meanwhile, Hamas' takeover may soon be seen to
be shortsighted.
While the Islamist movement has shown itself to be strong militarily, it has
weakened its position politically. The recent battles have exposed the
ideological and sectarian side of Hamas, and the brutality exhibited during the
weeklong fighting has damaged the movement's standing among ordinary
Palestinians.
Hamas, it would seem, did not think of the day after. Still, much of the cause
for the infighting between Fatah and Hamas leads us back to Tel Aviv and to
Washington.
Weakening the moderates
Over the years too often Israeli governments have systematically destroyed or
weakened moderate Palestinian leaderships, from the destruction of the Palestine
National Front in the mid-1970s, through the failure to undertake measures to
strengthen Abbas as leader in the eyes of his people, and to the recent
imprisonment of the few Hamas leaders willing to speak with Israel. Fatah
obviously carries its share of responsibility for the situation as well, through
its own internal divisions, corruption, and indecisiveness.
Let us not forget, however, the underlying, critical matter: Israel's failure to
end the occupation throughout these 40 years of increasing hardship, poverty,
and disappointment, loss of land and lives and hopelessness for the public --
over which Hamas and Fatah are competing.
And while our U.S. government talks of its support for a two-state solution, it
has done little to build up Palestinian institutions capable of dealing with the
depraved economic conditions in the occupied area. The recent offer to give
Abbas some $70 million would not go to feed the poor but to strengthen his
security force in Gaza, a move seen by Hamas as a direct threat to its de facto
military superiority there.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has either been indifferent to or supportive
of Israel's expansion of settlements and its systematic maltreatment and
humiliation of Palestinians.
It's no wonder that the course of "moderation" adopted by Fatah has yielded few
tangible benefits to the local population. Add to this Fatah's endemic
corruption, abuse of authority and nepotism, and no one should be surprised at
the rise of Hamas.
Palestinian frustration with Fatah, Israel and the United States reached its
zenith, when after demanding parliamentary elections, those powers refused to
accept the outcome -- the Hamas victory.
It is an accepted alternative to the continued instability in the Middle East to
argue for the two-state solution -- one Israeli, the other Palestinian.
However, if the United States and Israel proceed with their unwise policy of
creating a third Palestinian state in Gaza, we can be assured of a bleaker
future, and a massive humanitarian crisis where close to 2 million people will
face an uncertain destiny.
Divide-and-conquer -- a mark of the British colonial legacy in the Middle East
-- will only fail in modern Palestine. Hamas cannot be isolated. A different
approach besides one showering money and accolades on Abbas and his Fatah
organization is badly needed.
Aref Assaf is president of the American Arab Forum, based in Paterson. Reach him
at aref@americanarabforum.org
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