Israel
Stokes Up Hamas-Fatah Strife
In Gaza, Considers Ground Invasion
By
Jean Shaoul
21 May, 2007
World
Socialist Web
On May 17, Israel gave the
go-ahead for 500 Fatah fighters to cross into the Gaza Strip from Egypt,
so as to lend support to the forces loyal to Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas who are fighting Hamas forces loyal to Prime Minister
Ismail Haniyeh. The 500 are reported to have been trained under a US-sponsored
programme. Many Fatah security personnel have received training in Arab
and European Union countries, often by American and Russian personnel.
The previous day, an Israeli
military helicopter had fired at a target in Rafah, in the southern
Gaza Strip, killing four members of Hamas’s Executive Force and
injuring 18. Israeli troops opened fire at Gaza’s only cargo terminal
at the Karni crossing, where a shoot out occurred between Hamas and
Fatah, killing one person.
Also on May 17, Israeli Defence
Minister Amir Peretz, of the Labour Party ordered the Israeli Defence
Forces (IDF) to launch air strikes against Hamas and suspected militants.
In one strike, Israeli forces hit the headquarters of Hamas’s
Executive Force, its armed security group that has operated in Gaza
since Hamas took power in January 2006. The Israeli military carried
out targeted assassinations, blowing up cars it claimed were carrying
suspected militants. Hamas said that three of its members were killed.
Two further missiles hit a pick-up truck killing a family, including
13- and 18-year-old brothers.
Artillery forces massed on
the border and some tanks crossed into Gaza. A ground force entered
the northern part of Gaza, but Israel’s military stopped short
of an all-out invasion. This was followed on May 18 with several more
air strikes. In all, at least 20 people have been killed and dozens
injured by the Israeli attacks.
Israel claims that its actions
were aimed at destroying the ability of Hamas to launch crude missiles,
known as Qassem rockets, against Israel’s southern towns. In the
past week, Hamas has fired more than 80 rockets, injuring at least seven
people, damaging several houses, and forcing several hundred to flee
their homes. Sederot, a border town of impoverished Israelis of North
African and Middle Eastern descent, which has a high unemployment rate,
has born the brunt of the missiles.
A senior Israeli military
officer said that the goal of the current operation in Gaza was to “make
Hamas pay” for its rocket attacks against Israel. But he then
made clear that this was not the main issue for Israel by adding that
the IDF operations could continue even if Hamas stopped firing rockets.
Israel is not “conducting
a dialogue” with Hamas, he said, and the IDF operations were not
necessarily dependent on the continuation of rocket attacks. “We’re
not just attacking real estate. We want to make Hamas pay for the terror,”
he said. The officer said the IDF would present its plans for continuing
the operation to the cabinet.
The military has tried to
pretend that its actions are unrelated to the ongoing factional fighting
between Hamas and Fatah, but the sheer scale of the attack and the Palestinian
casualties gives the lie to this.
On May 20, Israel’s
security cabinet approved plans to step up operations against Hamas
and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. It authorised operations to dismantle “terrorist
infrastructure,” but stopped short of authorising a full-scale
ground invasion.
The violence that flared
up a week ago has resulted in by far the worst casualties in the warfare
that has simmered on and off between Hamas and Fatah for two decades.
Peretz says his sources tell him the infighting has left 73 dead so
far, mostly Fatah members. Dozens more have been wounded, including
civilians caught in the crossfire.
Raging street battles broke
out as tensions mounted, threatening to bring an end to the Hamas-Fatah
coalition government sworn in on March 17. Israel never recognised the
government and has continued its efforts to isolate and starve Gaza
and hasten its political descent into civil war.
Palestinian Interior Minister
Hani Kawassmeh repeatedly found that his plans to coordinate Fatah and
Hamas’ militias were countermanded by his security chief, Rashid
Abu Shbak, who is on the payroll of Mahmoud Dahlan, a Fatah warlord
in Gaza. Shbak ordered Fatah forces out onto the streets of Gaza without
either Hamas’s agreement or Kawassmeh’s instructions, precipitating
the violence of the past week. For Kawassmeh, this was the last straw
and he resigned his post in the government.
Later, Hamas forces attacked
Shback’s home, killing at least five of his bodyguards. Shback
and his family were not at their heavily guarded residence at the time.
A colour photograph in the
Financial Times of Shback’s home shows something more like the
Alhambra Palace in Grenada than the average slum in Gaza City or the
refugee camps. It adds fuel to the widespread belief that the real reason
for the Palestinian Authority’s burgeoning security forces, the
largest per capita in the world, is not to protect the Palestinian people
from Israeli attacks, but to police a US- and Israeli-dictated settlement,
while protecting the Palestinian millionaires and billionaires from
the Palestinian people.
Last Wednesday, when casualties
had mounted to 41 in just four days, there were mass demonstrations
in Ramallah in the West Bank and Gaza City calling for an end to the
fighting. But in Gaza City, at least eight were wounded when shooting
broke out, scattering the crowds of people. According to the UN Office
of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 150 Palestinians have been killed
and 650 wounded in the factional fighting since the beginning of the
year.
There is no agreement within
Israel’s ruling elite as to what approach to take to the near-civil
war raging in Gaza and whether to authorise a full-scale ground operation.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
has so far rejected an invasion. He clearly fears a second military
debacle after Lebanon, particularly in light of reports from the security
services that Hamas has doubled its military forces to 10,000, and allegations
that it has smuggled large numbers of anti-tank missiles and weapons-grade
explosives into Gaza. In any event, it would be difficult to move directly
and immediately to such an option, after Israel’s 2006 debacle
in Lebanon.
His stance at this point
appears to have the support of Washington, which fears that an Israeli
invasion could destabilise the Middle East. The US is focused on continuing
to support Abbas as its local puppet. To this end, Israel has allowed
money to be transferred to Abbas’s forces and for Fatah to receive
training in Jordan.
But this policy has backfired.
The more that Abbas is seen to have US and Israeli backing, the more
the Palestinian people become alienated from Abbas and Fatah, already
widely despised because of their corruption and inefficiency. Reports
that the US has been supplying Abbas’s forces with guns and millions
of dollars to take on Hamas’s supporters have added fuel to the
fire.
One veteran Fatah member
admitted that it lacked the support of the Palestinian public. “Most
Palestinians still don’t trust us,” he said. “Most
Palestinians still hold us responsible for the financial corruption
in the Palestinian Authority. And what’s worse is that many Palestinians
don’t like the fact that we are being supported by the US and
Israel.”
Israeli leaders supporting
the pro-Abbas policy have argued that Fatah did well against Hamas’s
forces, which were better armed, better trained and numerically stronger,
in the clash last Tuesday at the Karni checkpoint.
Whatever the hesitations
and internal differences among Israeli policymakers, the general drift
is towards an open military conflict. Many of Israel’s military
and intelligence chiefs and the most hawkish political elements led
by Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu have insisted that Abbas is incapable
of policing the Palestinian Authority.
Speaking at a Likud faction
meeting at the Menachem Begin Heritage Centre marking the 30th anniversary
of the party’s 1977 rise to power, Netanyahu said that the government
“could evacuate whomever necessary, enact a closure on the Gaza
Strip, stop providing services like electricity and water, or decide
on a limited invasion of four or five kilometres to distance the range
of the Qassems.”
For his part, Deputy Prime
Minister Avigdor Lieberman of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu has called
for more intense ground activity in the Gaza Strip. He even threatened
to withdraw his eleven Knesset members from the government and bring
it down, stating, “The present coalition has reached the moment
of truth. Either we dismantle Hamas, or we dismantle the government.”
The Gaza Division commander,
Brigadier General Moshe Tamir, has long urged that infantry and tank
brigades be deployed on the ground in the Gaza Strip. He has been pushing
a hard-line approach at cabinet meetings on Gaza, urging Olmert and
Peretz to give the green light for an invasion.
He and others in the army’s
high command want to crush Hamas “before Gaza turns into another
southern Lebanon,” said a source. Their plan is to divide Gaza
into three parts, seal its borders, and crush Hamas by flooding its
towns and villages with troops in an operation intended to last no more
than a week. Israel would rely on speed, superior technology, better
training and intelligence, numerical superiority and, not least, sheer
brutality to smash Hamas.
The aim—for which they
seek US backing—is not so much to install another government as
to create such devastation and privation that the Palestinians will
finally submit to being penned into impoverished ghettoes, or leave
altogether. With the Palestinian territories virtually sealed off from
the outside world, unable to get the agricultural produce upon which
the Palestinian economy depends, poverty is the rule and shortages are
widespread.
When Saudi Arabia brokered
an agreement between Fatah and Hamas in Mecca last February leading
to the establishment of the unity coalition, promises were secured from
several Arab states to bankroll the Palestinian Authority, but as yet
only the United Arab Emirates have come up with any cash.
The US and the European Union
have maintained their own boycott of the Palestinian Authority. And
while foreign aid has doubled to $900 million, Israel has refused to
release the $800 million in taxes it has collected on behalf of the
PA, and the total is rising by $55 million a month. Without funding,
neither the PA nor the coalition government can survive much longer.
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