With dozens dead and hundreds injured, recent clashes between Fateh and Hamas have threatened to escalate into civil war. Security forces loyal to Fateh have fought with Hamas militias and special operation units that patrol much of the Gaza Strip against a backdrop of appalling social conditions. The quality of life in Gaza has dropped dramatically since the West imposed sanctions after the election of Hamas.
The US and EU claims this is in response to Hamas refusing to disarm its militia and not recognising right of the Israeli state to exist. In reality it exposes the hypocrisy of the imperialists, who claim to want to spread democracy in the Middle East, but in reality only if the people elect leaders the US and EU approve of.
Fateh leaders’ betrayal of the Palestinians
Fateh’s leaders have sold out the Palestinian struggle. Instead of aiming to lead a militant mass movement against the Israeli occupation, they have opted to share power with it. They plot against Hamas in order to remove them as an obstacle to continuing the so-called peace process. Playing the old game of divide and rule, the US and Israel are using Fateh as a proxy to defeat Hamas.
Israel’s plan to dismantle the Intifada, the Palestinian uprising, becomes clearer as the months go by. It will allow a Palestinian statelet in Gaza and what is left of the West Bank. It will be surrounded by Israeli forces, which will maintain complete military control of the region. Within this statelet there will be a Fateh-dominated government, with security forces armed and trained by the US, Israel and the conservative Arab states.
The talks between Fateh and Hamas to form a unity government in 2006 failed, mainly due US State Secretary Condoleezza Rice’s pressure on Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to terminate the discussions. The internecine conflict in the Gaza Strip began shortly afterwards. Masked gunmen started to attack first Fateh, then Hamas members and leaders. Neither side claimed responsibility, but quickly blamed each other, resulting in armed clashes and demonstrations by each faction.
US military advisors have been nurturing a Palestinian praetorian guard named Force 17, training it in street fighting and counter-terrorism. It is ready to be deployed, not against the Israeli army, which currently exercises its right to kill Palestinian children at will, but against fellow Palestinians. Last week the US agreed to give $80 million to the Fateh-led security forces, a move clearly designed to buy their services and to use them in this “war on terror”.
Not all Fateh leaders and members support this course of action. However, Israel will use every trick in the book to divide the Palestinian resistance fighters. The question is; who benefits from these anonymous killings?
Hamas is trying to move towards respectable constitutional politics. Its position is precarious enough without an assassination programme against its rivals. Fateh also has much to lose. Hamas’ star is rising; people supported it against Fateh in the elections because they saw the old administration and government as corrupt and self-serving. Even if Fateh defeated Hamas militarily, it would be left with little support amongst the wider population.
The Israelis of course have everything to gain. It is not unheard of for Mossad and Shin Bet agents to carry out political assassinations. But the more immediate question is: what support do the Zionists have within the Palestinian government and state apparatus itself?
Thug-in-chief
For the Palestinians the rot starts at the top. Mohammed Dahlan, currently head of Gaza’s security forces, is an enforcer for the imperialists. He was leader of Fateh’s youth movement in the 1980s, and came to the attention of the West as one of the strongest advocates of the Oslo accords. After they were signed, Arafat sent him to Gaza to head up a new security force to enforce the sell-out, by targeting and attacking organisations like Hamas. He now enjoys all the trappings of any corrupt bureaucrat in power: expensive cars, bodyguards, plush hotel rooms and shady business interests.
Dahlan’s security services are implicated in human rights abuses, and he was once regarded as the man that Israel could rely on to take over, if Arafat could not be contained. Arafat’s death in 2004 and the subsequent election of Abbas have increased his importance.
Hamas believe Dahlan was behind the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Haniya in December, and is planning a bid for power. If he were to succeed and persecute Palestinian militants in the aftermath, then it would signal a further demobilisation of the Palestinians’ national liberation struggle.
Freedom for Palestine!
The in-fighting plays straight into the hands of the Zionists, dividing the Palestinians and distracting world attention from their suffering.
Equally forgotten are the six million Palestinian refugees, many living and dying in refugee camps in the surrounding Arab states. They justly claim the right to return home to the land that was stolen from them by the Zionists, but any two state solution leaves them with nowhere to go. What is clear is that Fateh cannot lead the Palestinians in a struggle for their liberation. The current situation is the logical conclusion of their refusal to fight for what is necessary, not just what US imperialism will allow.
The Palestinian struggle is suffering from an acute crisis of leadership. The corruption of Fateh’s leading faction has led it to offer its services to Israel and her imperialist backers. Hamas’ Islamism has also led it down the cul de sac of reformism, desperate for an illusory, peaceful stage of development in a Palestinian statelet. The Palestinians need to create a new leadership, a mass revolutionary workers’ party, in order to fight its way out of this impasse.