Below we republish an article from FRFI 198 (August / September 2007), which describes the attempted coup by Fatah forces against the Hamas administration set up in Gaza following the January 2006 Palestinian elections in which Hamas won the most support (34% vs Fatah’s 31%). The coup, prepared by Britain, the US as well the Zionist state, was led by President Abbas, but failed completely. The response of the Zionist state was to complete the blockade of Gaza. Now the imperialist are slating Abbas once again to take over Gaza once the Zionists complete its destruction and genocide.
In June Hamas in Gaza crushed those sections of Fatah which have been bought off by imperialism. It was necessary to defend not just the democratically elected Palestinian government but more importantly the continued existence of the Palestinian resistance. As Hamas spokesperson Ahmed Yousef, political adviser to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, said:
‘Hamas’s actions to secure Gaza from the horrific recent violence of the Palestinian contras have been out of self-defence. The assassinations of Hamas officials and supporters, attempts on the life of the elected prime minister and kidnappings and bombings by some in President Mahmoud Abbas’s paramilitary groups had to stop.’
Yousef’s use of the term ‘contras’ was a reference to those Fatah forces led by imperialist stooge Mohammed Dahlan, Abbas’s head of security in Gaza. Yousef continued:
‘The Bush administration never intended to honour the outcome of fair and transparent elections in the Occupied Territories. The embargo, designed to punish the electorate for its choice, was the first step towards crushing new democratic institutions. The second has been to find collaborators for the American agenda and to supply them with advisers, funds and weapons for their campaign of destabilisation.’
Abbas, Dahlan and their allies have proved to be willing collaborators of imperialism and Zionism. That imperialism was trying to engineer a Palestinian civil war was evident to Alvaro de Soto, former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East. In his final report before he resigned in May this year, he wrote: ‘The US clearly pushed for a confrontation between Hamas and Fatah, so much so that, a week before Mecca [where the National Unity government was agreed between Hamas and Fatah] the US envoy declared twice in an envoy’s meeting in Washington how much “I like this violence”, referring to the near civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured because “it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas”.’
In FRFI 197 we reported how Dahlan’s Palestinian Preventative Security Force (PSF) had been deployed in mid-May in Gaza against the Qassam Brigades (Hamas’s military wing), under the guise of combating crime and disorder. Their attacks on Hamas had been supported by Israeli air strikes. A ceasefire agreed on 20 May held only to the beginning of June when the PSF again began to target members of the resistance, killing a Hamas militant in Rafah on 10 June as he was about to confront Israeli forces. The following morning there was an assassination attempt on the Hamas Minister of Youth in Gaza City. Later, shots were fired at the building where the Palestinian Authority (PA) Council of Ministers was due to meet, forcing its cancellation. Hamas reported that the same day the Israelis allowed a shipment of arms and munitions to cross into Gaza for Dahlan’s contra forces. In the evening Fawzi Barhown, a Hamas spokesperson in Gaza, said ‘matters are getting more serious and we cannot any more stand idle before them as the mutineers [Dahlan’s PSF] are systematically targeting Palestinian legitimacy through attacks on the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the PA public institutions and now the PA Council of Ministers.’
The following day, 12 June, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at Haniyeh’s house. Hamas forces went on the offensive over the next two days. By 14 June Dahlan’s contra forces had been routed and Hamas had taken control of most of Gaza. PSF commanders fled in panic to be given safe passage by Israel out of Gaza. Dahlan himself had been in Egypt receiving ‘medical treatment’ during this period. The rapid collapse of his forces and the relatively few casualties in the fighting confirmed that the contras had no social base in Gaza, being no more than the hirelings of a section of the Palestinian bourgeoisie whose wealth derived from crime and corruption. This stands in contrast to Hamas, whose social base is the poor and oppressed of Palestine. An article posted from Gaza in the Christian Science Monitor on 28 June reported, ‘Residents are enjoying visiting large swathes of beachfront that had once been closed off, taken over and privatised by Fatah kingpins’.
On 24 June Haniyeh confirmed that the problem the Palestinian people faced was ‘with a certain faction within Fatah which has come to control Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, a faction that used American money and arms and backing to bully and destroy the legitimate Palestinian government, all in order to serve Israeli interests’. Ridiculing Abbas’s allegation that Hamas had carried out a coup, he said ‘we were elected by the people, how can we revolt against ourselves?’. Indeed it was Dahlan’s forces that had attempted a rebellion: ‘Large arms caches were sent to Gaza, overtly and covertly, millions of dollars were provided, clandestine meetings were held all under the noses of this government in an attempt to carry out this coup’.
Abbas’ coup
With Gaza isolated from the West Bank, Abbas dissolved the National Unity government and declared a state of emergency on 14 June. Events in Gaza, he declared grotesquely, ‘constituted a military coup against Palestinian legitimacy’. One of his first acts was to ban the Qassam Brigades and Hamas’s Executive Force in the West Bank. On 17 June he appointed a new ‘emergency’ government with Salam Fayyad, a former representative of the IMF and World Bank, as Prime Minister. Fayyad’s unelected government, which can only operate in the West Bank, proceeded to annul all decisions and laws made by its National Unity predecessor. The reward from the imperialists came on 18 June when the US formally lifted its ban on financial dealings with Abbas. Meanwhile Abbas revoked the licences of all NGOs operating in Palestine, insisting that they submit new applications so that he could weed out any that did not conform to his government’s requirements.
Alongside this, Fatah forces organised a series of raids and arrests of Hamas members and supporters in the West Bank. On 18 June they burned down the Ramallah home of Dr Aziz Deweik, the Speaker of the PLC, who is one of the 40 Hamas PLC members held hostage by Israel. In the last week of June alone Hamas reported that over 240 of its members and supporters had been arrested in the West Bank. Hamas recorded 750 Fatah attacks on its personnel and institutions in the 40 days up to 23 July. On 2 July Israel and Abbas’s PA security officials met to discuss ‘security co-ordination’ in the West Bank. The talks were reportedly about the safety of PA security installations during Israeli raids into Palestinian towns and the crackdown against Hamas. Israeli forces have been active in raids on Nablus and surrounding areas where Hamas has wide support.
Zionists support Abbas…
On 14 July Israel announced that in consultation with the PA it had drawn up a list of 178 wanted Fatah-affiliated fighters whom it would pardon if they handed in their weapons, pledged to cease activities against Israel, and agreed to certain restrictions on where they live. The next day the Jenin Al Aqsa Brigades leader Zakaria Zubeidi announced that Al Aqsa Brigades activists had signed the pledge.
In another attempt to boost Abbas’s standing, Israel released 255 prisoners on 20 July, the vast majority affiliated to Fatah. There were two conditions for their release: first, that the Zionists were satisfied that they had not been involved in any action that had resulted in the death or wounding of an Israeli, and second, that they also sign the pledge ceasing resistance. The Zionists continue to hold nearly 11,000 Palestinian prisoners, including over 300 Fatah supporters that the Zionists had seized in the two weeks leading up to 10 June.
…as do the imperialists
On 19 June Israeli Prime Minister Olmert met President Bush in Washington. Bush declared his support for Abbas: ‘Our hope is that President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad will be strengthened to the point where they can lead the Palestinians in a different direction’. Olmert agreed: ‘Like you I want to strengthen the moderates’. On 1 July Israel released $118 million of Palestinian tax revenues it had withheld illegally since the election of Hamas. Like every Zionist action it came with a condition: that Abbas reject all contact with Hamas. The Zionists will retain the rest of an estimated $700 million for six months to see if Abbas toes the line. None of the money will go to Gaza.
Both Abbas and Olmert attended the Sharm El Sheik Arab League summit on 25 June which gave its full backing to the new ‘emergency’ government. On his return to the West Bank on 26 June, Abbas banned all armed resistance groups and ordered his Fatah forces to confiscate weapons and explosives. On 27 June Israel invaded Gaza killing 12 Palestinians. Two days later Prime Minister Fayyad declared on CNN that resistance had only brought misery to the Palestinian people and that it ‘has destroyed our national project completely’, a statement of abject capitulation.
On 16 July President Bush repeated his support for Abbas, saying:
‘The alternatives before the Palestinian people are stark. There is the vision of Hamas, which the world saw in Gaza… By following this path, the Palestinian people would guarantee chaos, and suffering, and the endless perpetuation of grievance…There’s another option, and that’s a hopeful option. It is the vision of President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad… So in consultation with our partners in the Quartet…the United States is taking a series of steps to strengthen the forces of moderation and peace among the Palestinian people…The conflict in Gaza and the West Bank today is a struggle between extremists and moderates.’
As a reward for the ‘moderates’, Bush committed more than $190 million in US assistance for the PA this year plus a programme to generate $228 million for Palestinian businesses. He also announced an $80 million grant for Abbas’s Palestinian security forces. ‘With all of this assistance’, Bush declared, ‘we are showing the Palestinian people that a commitment to peace leads to the generous support of the United States.’ The imperialists have the support of the Arab League: on its behalf the Jordanian and Egyptian foreign ministers visited Israeli leaders on 25 July to push for a settlement with Abbas.
The imperialists and their allies will now be determined to ensure that the funds and military support they give to Abbas are sufficient to buy off or crush resistance on the West Bank whilst they keep the Palestinian people in Gaza isolated and on the edge of starvation. However, senior Fatah leaders such as Farouq Qaddumi and Hani Al Hassan have signalled their opposition to Abbas’s actions, specifically rejecting his order that Palestinian resistance fighters disarm while Israeli occupation continues. Hani Al Hassan, at the time the Palestinian president’s senior political adviser and member of Fatah’s central committee, stated on Al Jazeera TV at the end of July that the events in Gaza had been a defeat for US Major General Keith Dayton, security co-ordinator to the PA, and his Fatah followers. Following the interview Abbas sacked Al Hassan, and Fatah gunmen fired at his home; no one was injured, as Al Hassan was abroad for the interview. This is a critical moment for the Palestinian liberation struggle, and it is essential that we in Britain continue to oppose Labour’s support for the Zionists.
Bob Shepherd with additional reporting from Jerusalem by Barnaby Mitchell
FRFI 198 August / September 2007
