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News Analysis
Sliding towards civil war

From Graham Usher in East Jerusalem

October 12th, 2005 -- For the first week of October concerted efforts were made to arrange a meeting between Ariel Sharon and Mahmud Abbas, their first since Israel’s successful withdrawal from Gaza and four small settlements in the northern West Bank. On 10 October the meeting was shelved. Instead, joint Israel-Palestinian committees are to be formed to “prepare” adequately for the event, now presumably to be held some time after Abbas’ parley with George Bush in Washington on 24 October.

Despite stiff pressure from the Americans and Jordan’s King Abdullah, it is easy to see why the meeting was called off. Very simply, neither side has anything to say to the other. Abbas has a whole raft of demands, some outstanding from the Sharm al-Shaykh summit in February (such as meaningful prisoner releases and Israel’s redeployment from occupied towns in the West Bank), some of more recent vintage (such as the fate of Gaza’s Rafah crossing into Egypt, closed since 7 September). He knows Sharon will not give ground on any of them.

Sharon has only one demand — that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority take action to disarm the Palestinian militias, especially those belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He has also launched a diplomatic campaign with the same message: unless Hamas disarms its militia and renounces its charter calling for the destruction of Israel, Israel will withdraw all “cooperation” with the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council — the PA parliament — which are scheduled to take place on 25 January 2006.

The Israeli leader appears to have the support of Condoleezza Rice in this, despite the United States secretary of state knowing full well that, without Israeli “cooperation”, there can be no elections in East Jerusalem and that, without East Jerusalem, there will be no Palestinian elections. She may feel she is helping Abbas. She could not be more wrong.

Abbas is now facing the sternest crisis of his leadership. On 3 October the Legislative Council voted to sack the existing cabinet, giving Abbas two weeks to form a new government, with or without the existing prime minister, Ahmad Quray. The cause of the breach were the worst armed clashes in years between Hamas and the PA police in Gaza and a storming of the parliament building by police officers outraged by their government’s inability to end the “chaos”.

First rain

The origins of the clashes lay in Hamas disastrous decision to fire mortars into Israel following what now appears to be a self-inflicted explosion at a rally in Jabaliya Refugee Camp in Gaza on 22 September (MEI 759). The explosion left 24 Palestinians dead. The mortars gave Israel the pretext to set new ground-rules for its military policy in the post-disengagement era. It was called “First Rain”. As veteran Israeli military correspondent Alex Fishman put it: “It was less of a rain, more of a tornado.”

Over the next seven days, the Israeli army not only resumed assassinations of wanted Palestinian militants (leaving three Hamas and one Jihad man dead), bombed civilian infrastructure in Gaza and launched massive arrest sweeps in the West Bank, for the first time since the 1967 war, it deployed heavy artillery to clear “mortar-firing” regions in Gaza and flew F-16 sorties through the sound barrier at a ratio of one every two hours, spreading absolute havoc below.

Israel’s aim was twofold. In Gaza it wanted to produce such a groundswell of Palestinian fear that — laced with the anger over the decision to fire the mortars — the PA would be forced to “act” against Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In the West Bank the aim was to destroy Hamas as a political force, especially at a time when it was gearing up to contest a third round of Palestinian municipal elections on 4 October.

Of the 415 West Bank Palestinians the Israelis arrested between 22 and 29 September, 250 were members of Hamas, most of them civilian activists, including 14 local government candidates and 15 campaign managers. It also imprisoned high-profile political leaders like Hassan Yusuf in Ramallah and Muhammad Ghazzal and Ismail Hajj Ali in Nablus. All three belong to the moderate wing of the Hamas leadership and have been driving forces behind its switch to electoral politics.

Bitter harvest

It was at this moment of absolute threat — and after Hamas had announced its resumed adherence to a “cease-fire” — that the PA’s interior minister, Nasser Yusuf, gave orders on 27 September to his police in Gaza to “arrest any armed Palestinian not in uniform”. The decision was taken without consultation with the Legislative Council, the Palestinian factions or perhaps even Abbas. Hamas saw it as a pre-emptive move to disarm them. The seeds of confrontation were sown.

Confrontation erupted on 2 October, when Palestinian police in Gaza city allegedly tried to arrest Muhammad Rantisi, Hamas activist and son of the slain Hamas leader, Aziz Rantisi. In a ferocious response, dozens of Hamas men attacked police stations in Gaza’s Shaykh Radwan neighbourhood and Beach Refugee Camp the next day, leaving three Palestinians dead, including a police officer and a 32-year-old woman. Shots were also fired at the home of Mahmud Zahar, Hamas’ political leader in Gaza. And the police stormed Gaza’s parliament building.

The violence was staunched by the rapid intervention of the Egyptians and the other Palestinian factions. But it may be only a reprieve. On 5 October two Hamas students were abducted by men “wearing police uniforms” in Beach Camp. Then an officer in the PA’s General Intelligence Service was snatched and badly beaten, allegedly by Hamas.

A day later the vendettas spread to the West Bank, with the abduction of four Hamas officials in Tulkarm, Bethlehem and Hebron, ostensibly by an unknown group called the “Umar Ibn al-Khattab Battalions”, but probably by disaffected General Intelligence officers, sources suspect.

Interior Ministry spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khusa warned that the day was fast approaching when the arms of non-PA militia would have to be “confiscated”. Zahar warned of “civil war”.

Elections

The only light on this utterly bleak horizon was that the local elections did take place, with an 85% turn-out, on their scheduled date. Fatah lists won 55 of the 104 municipalities contested; Hamas lists won 35. But the victory was not quite as clear-cut as it appeared.

Hamas did not run in 48 of the councils. It won 15 of the 32 larger municipalities, as against Fatah’s nine. Its organization had also been disabled by the arrests. The view of many Palestinian observers was that Fatah had indeed performed better than in the earlier rounds (largely because it avoided a plethora of competing lists) but that what Hamas lost in seats it had gained in sympathy.

Is there any exit from this recurring, deadly PA versus Hamas impasse, short of armed conflict? Yes, says Palestinian analyst, Hani al-Masri:

The resistance must be allowed to maintain its arms. But this does not mean it is a collection of private fiefdoms which alone decides when and how to act. Resistance is a national activity that should be decided by all Palestinians through their legitimate national institutions.

This is why, he says, the Palestinian leadership must proceed with the elections in January, since “only they can result in a single legitimacy to which all parties will be bound”.

It is also why the Palestinians must resist all attempts to determine who and on what platform the parties can run, whether from Sharon, Rice or indeed Nasser Yusuf. And this is for one basic reason, says Masri. “Without Hamas there can be no legitimate national elections.”


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