On 21 January, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, addressing a meeting of prominent Palestinians in Gaza City, declared that the US had decided to topple the Hamas government. He said that the US and Israel’s strategy was to prevent the formation of a national unity government and instigate a Palestinian civil war. ‘They wish to punish the Palestinians for their democratic choice, and as a result, we live the economic, financial and informative dimensions of warfare’, he added. BOB SHEPHERD reports.
Later that day Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority (PA), met with Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus to discuss yet again without agreement the formation and make up of a national unity government. The reasons for this are clear. Abbas and his Fatah faction are acting at the bidding of imperialism, and their idea of a national unity government is one where Hamas has little or no influence. Fatah leader Nabil Amr spelled out its position in an interview carried by Al Ahram Weekly (11 January). When asked what conditions Hamas would have to accept if Fatah were to join a national unity government, Amr answered: ‘Hamas must accept President Abbas’s platform and political programme.’ Amr also made it clear that Hamas’s ministerial nominations to any national unity government would have to be agreed by the Quartet (US, EU, Russia and the UN): should Hamas put forward candidates ‘we must ask the parties, the Quartet…we tried this with Hamas before, they gave some names for ministerial positions and we contacted the Quartet’. He did not continue, but when the Quartet said ‘no’ to Hamas’s nominations in previous discussions Fatah followed with the subsequent breakdown of the talks. Abbas had anyway declared on 16 December that all progress towards a national unity government had stopped and that he was going to call new parliamentary and presidential elections.
Both Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice visited Israel and Palestine in December and January, looking to bolster and strengthen Abbas in his confrontation with Hamas. Blair gave Abbas his full backing in his call for new elections, saying at a joint press conference in Ramallah on 18 December: ‘I will not rest for a single moment until we have delivered what we both want to achieve’.
December saw over 40 Palestinians killed in clashes between Fatah and Hamas forces in Gaza. On 14 December Fatah units attempted to assassinate Haniyeh at the Rafah border crossing on his return from the hajj. This was after European Union monitors and Fatah-affiliated border guards first prevented him from entering Gaza on the orders of Israeli Defence Minister Peretz because he was carrying millions of dollars in cash to help break the financial blockade – he was forced to leave the money behind in Egypt. When Haniyeh was eventually admitted, Fatah attacked his motorcade, killing one of his bodyguards and wounding his son.
On 23 December Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Olmert held their first summit meeting in Jerusalem. Olmert agreed to allow Egypt to deliver a shipment of arms to Abbas’ Presidential Guard and to release directly to Abbas $100 million of illegally-held PA funds, provided they were used to bolster PA security forces and not to pay PA government employees. Five days later 2,000 automatic rifles and two million bullets were delivered across the border. On Israeli army radio Israeli Cabinet Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said that the arms were designed to give Abbas ‘the capability to hold his own against those organisations that are trying to spoil everything’. The Zionists sanctioned the weapons shipment on the strict understanding that the weapons would be for internal Palestinian use and would not be used against Israeli forces. This hardly needed to be spelt out as Abbas’ PA security forces have been conspicuous by their absence from all recent confrontations between Israeli forces and the Palestinian people. A recent example was in Ramallah on 4 January. When Israeli troops invaded the city with a convoy of 20 vehicles to arrest a militant from the Fatah-affiliated Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the only opposition came from stone-throwing youth and the Palestinian resistance. As it happened, the Zionists failed to seize their intended target, but they killed four civilians and wounded 22 more. PA security forces disappeared from the streets.
Abbas and Fatah are now stepping up their attacks on Hamas. On 6 January Abbas declared that the Hamas-controlled Executive Force was illegal and should either be disbanded or integrated into his own security forces. Hamas had set up the Executive Force because the mainly Fatah-affiliated PA security forces refused to carry out orders from Hamas Ministers. The reaction of Hamas was to announce that the Force would be doubled in size to around 12,000 men. On 7 January Fatah held a mass rally in Gaza City, reported to be tens of thousands in size and including many members of the PA security forces. US favourite Mohammed Dahlan was the main speaker, launching an open attack on Hamas and branding them as ‘a gang of murderous agents of Iran’ declaring that ‘if anyone from Fatah is attacked we will hit back twice as hard’. In response a Hamas spokesman said ‘Dahlan and his cohorts are CIA agents…[they] are trying to plunge the Palestinian people into chaos and civil war in the service of America and Israel…even the gasoline in their cars is paid for by the CIA’. Dahlan has made millions from his monopoly of the import of oil into Gaza; he has been a US and Zionist stooge for many years. Abbas appointed him as the ‘general commander of the PA security apparatuses’ at the specific request of the US and Israel in return for which the US gave Abbas $86 million to boost his Presidential Guard.
The visit of Condoleezza Rice to Ramallah on 14 January resulted in an announcement of informal talks between Abbas, Olmert and herself sometime in February about the nature of a future Palestinian state. Imperialism has already defined this: it will be bounded in the West Bank by the Apartheid Wall and the advancing colonial settlements. On 15 January, the day Rice met Olmert in Jerusalem, the Israeli Housing Ministry announced it was building 44 more housing units in the Maaleh Adumim colony to the east of Jerusalem. The checkpoints in the West Bank, far from any being dismantled as Abbas and Olmert had supposedly agreed, are being reinstated around Nablus with the commercial crossing to the east of the city permanently closed by Israel. Abbas and his Fatah supporters, in attacking Hamas and attempting to undermine support for the elected Hamas government, are acting as open and willing tools of Zionism and imperialism.
Israel’s Chief of Staff resigns
The repercussions of Israel’s defeat in Lebanon last summer now include the scalp of former Israeli army Chief of Staff Dan Halutz who resigned on 16 January. Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah welcomed the announcement and forecast that Labour Defence Minister Amir Peretz and Prime Minister Olmert would have to follow. He added that Israel staged the war on instructions from the imperialists to ‘open the western gate to the so-called New Middle East,’ and that it was also aimed at ‘forcing a major demographic change in Lebanon, not allowing residents of south Lebanon who fled the area to return to it…and changing Lebanon into mini states’. Halutz’s resignation showed that Hizbullah achieved a ‘historic, strategic victory’ over the Israelis and that it was ‘the first war that Israel has lost and failed to achieve its objectives’.
It is a time of deepening crisis for the Israeli government. Olmert languishes in the opinion polls with a mere 14% support. He is openly feuding with Peretz. The avowedly racist Avigdor Lieberman, himself a recent cabinet appointment (see FRFI 194), has condemned Peretz’ nomination of Ghaleb Majadale as Sports, Science and Culture minister, the first Arab cabinet minister. ‘This is a lethal blow to Zionism’, Lieberman declared. Former Justice Minister Haim Ramon is awaiting a verdict on sexual assault charges whilst Israeli police are calling for charges of rape and sexual assault of an undisclosed number of women to be laid against President Moshe Katsav. This is not all: Olmert is facing a third criminal investigation for corruption. A recent poll revealed that 42% of Israeli citizens regard Olmert’s public behaviour as corrupt to very corrupt, compared to 26% and 24% for Lieberman and Peretz respectively.
FRFI 195 February / March 2007
