Tuesday
Jan062009
Gaza: The Israel-Fatah Collaboration
Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 12:48
This could be the most significant background story of the Gaza crisis. From The Washington Post in May 2007:
How big was this? So big that even Scott Wilson, the Post reporter, didn't realise the full significance. He writes, "The Bush administration recently approved $40 million to train the Palestinian Presidential Guard, a force of about 4,000 troops under Abbas's direct control." That was only the latest installment of aid, however. Washington had sent millions of dollars in "security assistance" --- funds, equipment, and even US personnel --- to bolster Fatah forces since 2006.
The official line, of course, was that this assistance is to build up a force to take over and maintain security in the West Bank. This has always been accompanied by the objective, however, of ensuring that this force could win a showdown with Hamas. Initially, this was in conjunction with building up a militia in Gaza as an alternative to Hamas --- stories from 2006 pointed to Mohammad Dahlan, then allied with Abbas, as the possible political leader of such a formation. However, when Dahlan departed from view after Fatah forces were defeated in 2007 and Hamas consolidated its control, the issue was whether a Palestinian force could again be brought in "from the outside".
The immediate significance of this is that Mahmoud Abbas, who is in New York today ostensibly to press for a cease-fire, may be playing a double game. On the one hand, he is issuing public statements affirming "Palestinian unity" and condemning Israeli operations. On the other --- given recent history --- he could be manoeuvring with Washington to get regime change in Gaza.
Why revive this possibility now? Tony Blair's calls this morning for a cease-fire to be conditioned on a shutdown of the tunnels from Egypt into Gaza, with a force to monitor that closure, points to a "package" worked out with both Tel Aviv and Cairo. And behind Egypt, Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan --- while their diplomats go through the motions in the Arab League and at the United Nations --- could support this security and political arrangement to constrict and possibly remove Hamas from power. (It is notable that Syria and Iran have made their own counter-manoeuvres with meetings with Hamas representatives in Damascus.)
The only flaw? It could be the Gazan population. In effect, they would be asked after weeks of bombardment and months of economic restrictions to accept the Palestinian Authority --- whom they dismissed at the polls in 2006 --- as their leadership, not through a democratic process but through a US- and Israel-backed imposition.
If the lesson was learned from 2007, it would be that it is not that easy to re-install "any Palestinian but Hamas" in power in Gaza. But Santayana wrote, he who does not learn from history....
Israel this week allowed the Palestinian party Fatah to bring into the Gaza Strip as many as 500 fresh troops trained under a U.S.-coordinated program to counter Hamas, the radical Islamic movement that won Palestinian parliamentary elections last year.
How big was this? So big that even Scott Wilson, the Post reporter, didn't realise the full significance. He writes, "The Bush administration recently approved $40 million to train the Palestinian Presidential Guard, a force of about 4,000 troops under Abbas's direct control." That was only the latest installment of aid, however. Washington had sent millions of dollars in "security assistance" --- funds, equipment, and even US personnel --- to bolster Fatah forces since 2006.
The official line, of course, was that this assistance is to build up a force to take over and maintain security in the West Bank. This has always been accompanied by the objective, however, of ensuring that this force could win a showdown with Hamas. Initially, this was in conjunction with building up a militia in Gaza as an alternative to Hamas --- stories from 2006 pointed to Mohammad Dahlan, then allied with Abbas, as the possible political leader of such a formation. However, when Dahlan departed from view after Fatah forces were defeated in 2007 and Hamas consolidated its control, the issue was whether a Palestinian force could again be brought in "from the outside".
The immediate significance of this is that Mahmoud Abbas, who is in New York today ostensibly to press for a cease-fire, may be playing a double game. On the one hand, he is issuing public statements affirming "Palestinian unity" and condemning Israeli operations. On the other --- given recent history --- he could be manoeuvring with Washington to get regime change in Gaza.
Why revive this possibility now? Tony Blair's calls this morning for a cease-fire to be conditioned on a shutdown of the tunnels from Egypt into Gaza, with a force to monitor that closure, points to a "package" worked out with both Tel Aviv and Cairo. And behind Egypt, Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan --- while their diplomats go through the motions in the Arab League and at the United Nations --- could support this security and political arrangement to constrict and possibly remove Hamas from power. (It is notable that Syria and Iran have made their own counter-manoeuvres with meetings with Hamas representatives in Damascus.)
The only flaw? It could be the Gazan population. In effect, they would be asked after weeks of bombardment and months of economic restrictions to accept the Palestinian Authority --- whom they dismissed at the polls in 2006 --- as their leadership, not through a democratic process but through a US- and Israel-backed imposition.
If the lesson was learned from 2007, it would be that it is not that easy to re-install "any Palestinian but Hamas" in power in Gaza. But Santayana wrote, he who does not learn from history....
Reader Comments (1)
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, 5 November 2008:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians
"The attack comes shortly before a key meeting this Sunday in Cairo when Hamas and its political rival Fatah will hold talks on reconciling their differences and creating a single, unified government. It will be the first time the two sides have met at this level since fighting a near civil war more than a year ago.
"Until now it had appeared both Israel and Hamas, which seized full control of Gaza last summer, had an interest in maintaining the ceasefire. For Israel it has meant an end to the daily barrage of rockets landing in southern towns, particularly Sderot. For Gazans it has meant an end to the regular Israeli military raids that have caused hundreds of casualties, many of them civilian, in the past year. Israel, however, has maintained its economic blockade on the strip, severely limiting imports and preventing all exports from Gaza.
"Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, had personally approved the Gaza raid, the Associated Press said. The Israeli military concluded that Hamas was likely to want to continue the ceasefire despite the raid, it said. The ceasefire was due to run for six months and it is still unclear whether it will stretch beyond that limit."
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Well we now know what Israel was cooking up during the ceasefire months, and I'd like to hear from anyone who thinks that the November raid was anything but a provocation designed to bring about this evil war.
Israel learnt a lot from their most recent Lebanon debacle, but so did Hezbollah, and they are far too strong, militarily and politically, to be pushed around. Hamas is almost completely isolated, with nowhere to run and no way to resupply.
Israel is conducting a virtual rerun of 2006, but this time it has carefully stacked the deck in its favour. Maybe when this operation inevitably fails its objectives the Jewish state can dream up some other way to redeem itself.