The outbreak of fighting between Hamas and Fatah forces in Gaza in May was predictable. Imperialism wants to see Hamas and the resistance option it represents destroyed. President Mahmoud Abbas and his allies in Fatah are openly collaborating with imperialism and are being financed, trained and armed in the hope that they can take on and defeat Hamas. Imperialism’s economic boycott of Palestine continues despite the establishment of the Hamas-Fatah National Unity Government on 17 March. Bob Shepherd reports.
Such aid that the EU and other governments are sending to Palestine is being directed to Abbas and Fatah, bypassing the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority (PA). A report issued by Oxfam in April, Poverty in Palestine: the human cost of the financial boycott, shows how the imperialists are using aid in an attempt to bolster the pro-imperialist forces around Abbas and undermine the influence of Hamas. ‘The fact that Western donors have channelled aid to Fatah-led institutions, such as the Office of the President, has increased tensions between Fatah and Hamas’, the report says. The report shows the appalling effect of the blockade:
• The number of Palestinians living in poverty has risen by 30% since the start of the blockade in April 2006.
• It has caused the income of the PA to drop by over 60%. Now over 70% of the 161,000 PA workers, with an estimated one million dependants, live in poverty.
• The number of Palestinians living in deep poverty, defined as existing on less than 50 cents a day, nearly doubled in 2006 to over 1 million.
• 46% of Palestinians do not have enough food to meet their needs.
Since the formation of the National Unity Government, Israel has still not released any of the customs revenue and taxes it is illegally withholding from the PA, and the US refuses to have any direct dealings with the new government. On 23 April a meeting of the European Union Foreign Ministers reiterated their ban on direct aid to the PA. They declared that they would only deal with non-Hamas members of the government and stated that their Temporary International Mechanism aid programme for Palestine, bypassing the PA, would continue for a further three months ‘to ease the humanitarian crisis in the territories’. The cruelty of the imperialists knows no bounds as it is their support for Israel and their blockade which is the cause of the humanitarian crisis.
The twin-track policy of the imperialists, of squeezing the Palestinian people through the continuation of the economic blockade and the daily terror of the occupation, while at the same time building up the military capabilities of pro-imperialist forces continues apace.
From the date of the formation of the National Unity Government on 17 March until the end of April, Israeli forces had killed at least 27 Palestinians including nine over the weekend of 21/22 April. This attack provoked the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, to announce the end of their ceasefire and launch a series of rocket attacks on Israel. Their spokesman declared: ‘The Israeli occupation forces have killed the truce that we gave as a gesture of goodwill although we never trusted our enemy. The world must blame the Israeli occupation government for breaching and undermining the calm’.
In mid-April details emerged of the so-called Dayton Plan, designed by General Keith Dayton, the US Security Coordinator attached to the PA. It allocates $59m for the training and arming of Abbas’s Presidential Guard and was discussed and agreed with Israel. As the Israeli Deputy Defence Minister brazenly says: ‘Bolstering PA security forces loyal to Abbas and supplying them with weapons and ammunition will pose no security threat at all to Israel as the purpose of arming those forces is to develop their capabilities in facing the growing military power of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip’.
In mid-May under the guise of combating growing levels of crime and unrest, Fatah-dominated Palestinian National Security forces were deployed in Gaza. However, they were first deployed in the north of the Strip, where the resistance forces are engaged in attacks on Israel, and their first actions were against members of Hamas’s military wing. Within two days nine Palestinians were dead in the ensuing clashes and on 13 May the Interior Minister, Hani Al Qawasmeh, resigned saying he had no control over the security forces. His plans to coordinate and bring together Hamas and Fatah forces were undermined by the Gaza Preventative Security Chief Rashid Abu Shabak, an ally of US favourite Mahmoud Dahlan. It was Shabak who ordered Fatah forces out on the streets of northern Gaza without the agreement of either Qawasmeh or Hamas. Hamas has accused Shabak and other Fatah heads of the security forces of being Israeli collaborators. As it became rapidly clear that Fatah could not match the military expertise of Hamas, Israel openly intervened on its side, launching an air strike on 16 May on a building in Rafah which was a base for the Hamas-run Executive Force, killing four and injuring over 20. On 17 May, Israel allowed up to 500 members of Abbas’s security forces to cross into Gaza from Egypt where they had been receiving military training. The same day Israeli F-16 jets launched an air strike against the Gaza City headquarters of Hamas’s Executive Force.
On 20 May a ceasefire was agreed between Hamas and Fatah after over 50 Palestinians had been killed in the fighting between the two sides. The same day the Israeli cabinet agreed to ratify a decision to liquidate Hamas and Islamic Jihad military and political leaders who they accuse of involvement in ‘terrorist attacks’. Following this decision an Israeli air strike on the home of a leader of Hamas in Gaza City killed at least nine members of his family. On 24 May, Israeli forces stormed into Nablus on the West Bank arresting 33 Hamas politicians, including the Education Minister and two members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Israeli jets pounded other targets in Gaza so that in the week 17-23 May their forces had killed 32 Palestinians including 17 civilians and seven children. Zionist terror is set to continue.
Zionist forces killed 660 Palestinians in 2006, including 141 children. This was three times as many as in 2005. In 2005, 50 Israelis were killed in Palestinian actions. In 2006 this fell to 23.
FRFI 197 June / July 2007
