Exposing the bitter truth of Gaza carnage
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Exposing the bitter truth of Gaza carnage
Ed O'Loughlin
June 23, 2007
ABU Mahmoud is a 38-year-old Palestinian Authority soldier and a proud
member of the Fatah party. But if you ask him what he did during the
war with Hamas in Gaza last week, he smiles apologetically and waves a
hand.
"It wasn't my shift, so I stayed at home," he explains, sprawling on
his neighbour's sofa. "If I had been on duty, I would have taken part
... but it was not possible to go there once the fighting started."
It hardly seems surprising, then, that Hamas' militants, though fewer
in number and less heavily armed, were able to rout Fatah's 30,000-odd
armed men when open fighting broke out. A high percentage of the Fatah
security forces were off that day. Hamas, on the other hand, works
flexitime.
Yet when their long-simmering feud flared into life last week, few
predicted total victory for the Islamic militants.
For months, the US had been recruiting, funding and arming a new
Palestinian security force under trusted Fatah strongman Mohammed
Dahlan, a force referred to in media reports as "the elite
Presidential Guard".
The fighting qualities of Fatah-aligned Palestinian Authority
organisations, such as Mr Dahlan's Preventive Security and the
National Security Force, were also talked up by the US "security co-
ordinator" for the Middle East, General Keith Dayton.
Hamas gunmen could proudly show reporters the homemade hand grenades,
mortars and rocket propelled grenades produced in their secret
workshops.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Guards were tooling up with armoured
personnel carriers, heavy machine-guns, thousands of rifles, millions
of rounds of ammunition and factory-made ordnance.
On paper - and on television - Mr Dahlan's forces were more than a
match for Hamas. It was only in the real world, in Gaza, that they
weren't worth a damn.
As the politicians bluster, Gaza is the only place in the Middle East
where you can check the script against reality.
Take the televised speech delivered in the Fatah-controlled West Bank
on Wednesday night by Mahmoud Abbas, who became Fatah leader and
Palestinian President after Yasser Arafat died in 2004.
In a fiery performance, the normally lacklustre Mr Abbas (also known
as Abu Mazen) slammed Hamas as "coup plotters" and "murderous
terrorists" with whom there could be no return to dialogue.
The appearance of this new angry and presidential-looking Mr Abbas
was, on the face of it, a big plus for the Bush Administration, which
has long sought to enlist his "moderate" and "secular" Fatah party as
a defender of democracy and freedom against Hamas, whose charter calls
for the destruction of Israel.
Better yet, the European Union, United Nations and several Arab
countries (not to mention Australia) have accepted the legitimacy of
his move to sack his elected Hamas ministers. They endorse Fatah's
claim that it was the victim of an unprovoked and brutal coup attempt.
In Gaza, meanwhile, Hamas says it was Mr Abbas who caused the conflict
by refusing to give up control of the security forces after Hamas won
parliamentary elections last year.
Mr Abbas then appointed Gaza's Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan - who
allegedly tortured many Hamas leaders in the 1990s - to command the US-
backed Fatah security forces being built up for a showdown.
According to this version, Mr Dahlan attempted a coup against the
elected Parliament, as an agent of the US and Israel.
"From the very beginning we said to Abu Mazen there is a danger in
Gaza if this coup team is left in charge of the area," said Hamas
spokesman Fawzy Barhoom. "But he didn't listen to us."
As Mr Barhoom was talking, the computer on his desk played a video
found last week in the house of slain Fatah militant leader Samir al-
Madhoun.
The disturbing film shows Mr Madhoun and his armed supporters beating
a blindfolded Hamas militant, who is sobbing and pleading. The young
man was found shot dead along with several other blindfolded Hamas
supporters filmed in the room.
Hamas TV has aired a macabre clip of the wounded Mr Madhoun being
publicly lynched after he was caught trying to flee Fatah's last
stronghold last week.
Each side has committed atrocities, but only one side stands accused
of them. Both Hamas and Fatah have sponsored vicious terror attacks
inside Israel, but in Fatah's case it seems this can be overlooked.
Hamas' account of the political roots of the feud finds support in the
end-of-mission report of the former UN envoy to the Middle East,
Alvaro de Soto, leaked to The Guardian in London last week.
The Peruvian diplomat says the US worked hard behind the scenes last
year to prevent Fatah joining Hamas in a unity government and agreeing
to control of the security forces.
Such an arrangement would have weakened US and Israeli attempts to
isolate Hamas after its election victory - notably, the crippling
boycott imposed on the Palestinians.
Mr de Soto quoted one unnamed US envoy as having twice said of the
resulting bloody feud in Gaza, "I like this violence - it means other
Palestinians are fighting Hamas". At least 750 Palestinians have died,
including many children.
The mainstream Israeli media is also beginning to question the status
of Mr Abbas as an independent leader. Sever Plocker, an editor at the
daily Yedioth Ahronot, wrote that the US, Europe and Israel encouraged
Fatah to cling to power last year despite losing its mandate.
"It is not very pleasant to admit it, but in the battle for control of
the Gaza Strip, Hamas was in the right. Hamas is cruel, disgusting and
filled with hatred for Israel, but it was victorious in democratic
elections, and all it wanted was to reap the fruits of its victory.
"Hamas did not 'seize control' of Gaza. It took the action needed to
enforce its authority, disarming and destroying a militia that refused
to bow to its authority."
Despite international endorsements Mr Abbas and Fatah are now weaker
thanever. The Israeli forces occupying the West Bank can prevent Hamas
from taking over, as it did in the fenced-off Gaza Strip, but they
cannot restore Fatah's lost prestige as a fighting force.
Without this even a civilian leader like Mr Abbas will enjoy little
respect in Arab capitals, or Tel Aviv. And Mr Abbas and his coterie of
old-guard Fatah leaders also risk being deposed by younger men who are
asking why the people who lost Gaza are still holding power.
It is particularly remarkable that Mr Dahlan continues to serve as Mr
Abbas' right-hand man and security chief despite having been ousted
from his Gaza home last week.
Not only does he have no personal support base in the West Bank -
where he is detested by some Fatah strongmen - but he is widely blamed
for the rout in Gaza. The 45-year-old arch-foe of Hamas left the strip
two months ago when feuding intensified, saying he needed treatment
for a knee injury, and failed to return.
His reappearance at Mr Abbas' side is seen by many as a sign that the
Bush Administration is still calling the shots in Ramallah: according
to this school of thought, only the staunch backers of Donald Rumsfeld
and Ahmed Chalabi could still find a Dahlan useful.
"Fatah sacrificed its people, so they gave up fighting against Hamas,"
said Hamed al-Yazji, 28, a Gaza City supermarket owner who says he
used to support Fatah before it sank into corruption.
"They said, am I going to die for Dahlan? He's a millionaire with his
big house but the ordinary Fatah guys are poor. They don't get
anything. The Fatah people in the street are saying that Dahlan and
Abu Mazen are nothing but shit."
It seems, though, that Mahmoud Abbas - or whoever makes the decisions
- may calculate that it no longer matters what people in Gaza think.
Following this week's summit between George Bush and Ehud Olmert,
moves are under way to end the international boycott that has starved
the Palestinians of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and aid
since March last year.
But the money will go to Mr Abbas' Palestinian Authority in the West
Bank, not to the Hamas administration in Gaza.
Not only does Israel want to maintain the blockade of Gaza but it is
talking of cutting off the small remittances from foreign relatives,
which most Gaza families now depend on.
The blockade is again being marketed by the US and Israel - and
accepted by Western states - as a measure to prevent money getting to
terrorists, or to weaken Hamas, or to increase pressure on it to
change, or to make Palestinians rise up against the militants.
Back in Gaza, Hamas is stronger than ever. But John Ging, Gaza
director of the UN's Palestine relief agency, says that shutting down
private money transfers would be devastating.
"We ask decision makers to look at who will pay the human price for
their decisions," he said.
"Families here need these remittances from abroad to get by. They are
already very vulnerable - 1.1 million of the population of 1.4 million
are totally dependent on hand-outs of food from us. The economy has
been completely ruined by 1½ years of economic blockade and the
closure regime has been very restrictive.
"Eighty per cent of people are now living on less than $2 a day.
People are more and more despairing about the future."