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Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's openly
pledged financial and military support to the Gaza Hamas
leader elected prime minster Ismail Haniyeh on his latest
visit to Tehran. This could mean no less than the establishment
of a strategic Shiite forward base in Gaza, right on
the doorstep of Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, already under
growing pressure from alQaeda backed insurgents in Sinai.
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Only hours later, tensions
skyrocketed in the Gaza Strip with Hamas accusing Abbas
of launching a coup after he announced a plan for early
elections in an attempt to break a political deadlock
and have crippling international sanctions lifted. Whereas,
Hamas violence in Gaza was directed mostly against Fatah,
the opposite happened in the West Bank, where Fatah loyalists
rioted against Hamas.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh vowed Sunday
that his Hamas |
party will not participate in fresh elections,
and branded Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' remarks
on the matter "inflammatory." The tensions between
the two camps are immense, and the militants in each camp are
anxious for combat and arming themselves with whatever is available.
Analysts are determined that Hamas will not, under any circumstances,
allow Fatah and Abbas to nullify their great achievement of
legally taking control of the parliament and cabinet. As far
as Hamas is concerned, this is not just a Palestinian development,
but a pan-Arab one, a precedent for a political Islamic takeover
of an Arab nation. The first skirmishes after Abbas's speech
in Ramallah erupted in the southern Gazan towns of Khan Younes
and Rafah Saturday night. Hamas used heavy RPGs for the second
time in two days. At least a dozen people were injured. Rumors
that both factions had rigged bomb cars for detonating against
each other emptied Palestinian streets. On the West Bank, where
Hamas is at a disadvantage, the bulk of al Aqsa Brigades units
stand ready opposite Hamas. Last week, they received a supply
of automatic weapons from the US and Israel. Incidents sparked
off religious tones when Hamas leaders refer to their war with
Fatah as a "struggle between the "Movement of God
and the Party of Satan."
Palestinian factional warfare in Gaza and the West Bank and
its radical religious overtones are being watched with increasing
anxiety in neighboring Egypt, Jordan and other Arab nations
in the region. PM Ehud Olmert cautioned his ministers to keep
a low profile on neighboring events until a clear outcome will
be in sight. What worried most Arab leaders in the region, was
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's openly pledged financial
and military support to the Gaza Hamas leader elected prime
minster Ismail Haniyeh on his latest visit to Tehran. This could
mean no less than the establishment of a strategic Shiite forward
base in Gaza, right on the doorstep of Hosni Mubarak's Egypt,
already under growing pressure from alQaeda backed insurgents
in Sinai.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has been disintegrating for
months and virtually ceased functioning as a central control
element. This has increased substantially following the election
of Ismail Haniyeh's Hamas government, last January.
The glue that held the West Bank and Gaza strip together, as
long as President Yassir Arafat's iron rule, is long gone but
aftershocks of his demise are still rocking the occupied territories,
as local clans are battling for their power base. The Israeli-freed
Gaza Strip failing to become an aspired Mid-Eastern 'Singapore'
model, has turned instead into a lawless terror base on the
verge of civil war.
With no single charismatic leader or clear chain of command
available, it proves very hard for anyone to take decisive action
ending the vicious circle of violence, nor creating a situation
for engaging in serious negotiations with the Israelis to solve
the peoples hardship.
The Palestinian movement is split along several political issues:
between Palestinians inside ( local leadership, West Bank and
Gaza ) and outside leaders in exile: like Khaled Mishal of Hamas
in Damascus and Farouk Qadoumi of PLO in Tunis. Even during
Arafat's rule, the rift between the locals ( led by the emprisoned,
Marwan Bargouti) and Arafat's "old guardsmen" from
Tunis providing the cause for last January's landslide victory
of the Islamist groups- a clear protest vote against the corrupt
Tunis clan.
A critical development in the post-Arafat era is the revival
of traditional rivalries between factions in the West Bank and
Gaza, which have created local power bases in different areas,
especially in Gaza and some of the West Bank townships, in which
the central rule has no virtual control.
Into such chaotic circumstances, dangerous elements like Hezbollah,
backed by Iran, or even Al Qaeda, have been expanding their
influence, which could, if not curbed in time, reach strategic
proportions for the entire region.
As result of this central power disintegration, the breakup
of the hard-won Palestinian Autonomy of 1993 could split Gaza
and the West Bank into two geographically distinct entities.
Palestinian analysts even fear, that the northern part ( Samaria)
could split from the southern part ( Judea), if a viable solution
not be found to achieve the long anticipated territorial land-link
between the two, solving the crucial Jerusalem question. Under
the present circumstances, in which Israel's politics are shifting
more and more to the right, such a solution seems unrealistic.
But there is much more to be considered. Palestinian society
has been traditionally characterized by local tribalism, influenced
by strong regional differences which set hill dwellers apart
from plainsmen, nomads from a ground-settled population, townfolk
from villagers and peasants, not to mention Christians and other
religious Arab minorities.
While the southern area of the West Bank is less than fifty
kilometers distant from Gaza, there is much more separating
the two territories than an expanse of Israel's Negev. A major
element in Palestinian domestic problems are the refugees, the
majority of which are living under inhuman conditions for decades
and remain the breeding cradle for inner-strife unrest and Islamic
fundamentalist extremism. While less than 25 percent of West
bankers still live in refugee camps, in Gaza these become nearly
two thirds of the total population!
Moreover, in the West Bank, patriarchal families have traditionally
dominated local politics. Under the British Mandate, which ruled
Palestine for nearly thirty years after WW1, the local leadership
in Jerusalem, the seat of the mandatory administration, was
firmly in the hands of the Nashashibi, Husseini, Ja'abari and
Masri clans. British administrators had encouraged strong Arab
family ties and awarded these substantial grants, creating not
only a political elite, but strong allies during turbulent times,
in which Jews fought Arabs, Arabs fought British and finally,
Jews fought British in the last phase of colonial rule.
In contrast, the traditional Gaza population was, until 1948
lesser concerned with local politics. This was mainly due to
the sheer distance from the West Bank power base during the
Mandate. Later, with the influx of the 1948 refugees, the local
clans, including the Shawwa, Shafei and Middein families remained,
and still are, a clear minority among the Gazeans, which renders
them little political influence and many members have already
emigrated abroad.
There is also a significant psychological barrier between West
bankers and Gazeans, which must be considered. Khalil Shiqaqi,
a prominent Palestinian sociologist, has noted in his study
on Palestinian demographic affairs that a psychological barrier
between the inhabitants of the two territories with mutual suspicion
exists, which cannot be disregarded or ignored.
Shiqaqi's study, entitled The West Bank and Gaza Strip: Future
Political and Administrative Relations, indicates the existence
of a predominant West Bank conception, that the Gaza Strip is
"nothing but a big refugee camp." Regarding the Gaza
Strip society as backward, plagued by crime, extremist fanatism
and causing constant instability, the more moderate West Bankers,
especially the city dwellers, distance themselves to a greater
extent, from Gazean influence. Another notion of Palestinian
demographics, little known, are the varied Arabic dialects spoken
throughout the territories. West Bank dialects are related to
the Jordanian, while influences of Egyptian dialect are traditionally
recognized throughout Gaza.
Palestinian Territories Might Become Two Separate States. Geopolitics
have long aggravated Palestinian tribalism, abating the already
limited ties between the West Bank and Gaza. After the first
Arab-Israeli war in 1948, Egypt occupied Gaza and Jordan annexed
the West Bank. A pro-Egypt, pan-Arabist movement developed in
Gaza influenced by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which formed
the ideological background of Hamas. The West Bank came under
the control of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, developing near
full allegiance to the Kingdom, which not only ruled it by iron
fist from its military, but also reinstated the traditional
mandatory era family clans by restoring their political influence.
During Israeli occupation of the territory, since 1967, the
Jordanian administration maintained its ties with the West Bank
until August 1988, when the late King Hussein officially declared
breaking off all legal and administrative links with the Palestinian
territories.
Recent insider reports, related to Israel internal intelligence,
have indicated that behind the scene, young King Abdullah II
of Jordan has taken new interest in the West Bank and a possible
revival of the shelved "Jordan Option" of the late
eighties. According to Ehud Ya'ari, a leading Middle East expert,
central figures from the Palestinian leadership have lately
started talking in closed forums, about the need for Jordan
to resume an active, substantive role in the West Bank. Eighteen
years after the late King Hussein was forced to declare his
kingdom's disengagement from its former possessions across the
river, amid the wrath of the first Intifada, there are again
whispers over the need to find a new formula, re-establishing
some kind of linkage between efforts to create an independent
Palestinian state and its Arab neighbor to the east.
However, even if the "Jordanian Option" should materialize,
its efforts to re-establish some stability in the prevailing
West Bank anarchy seems highly dubious. Factually, the Palestine
National Authority (PNA) can exercise control only over the
'greater Ramallah' region and even there it is not complete,
as the dramatic scenes of Arafat's funeral and later total chaos
between Fatah and Hamas activists in the city have demonstrated.
| In a latest
move, media reports circulated in Jerusalem last Sunday
mentioned that President Mahmoud Abbas has negotiated
with Jordanian authorities to a possible deployment to
the West Bank of part of his loyalist forces belonging
to the Palestinian Badr Brigade, which is under control
of the Royal Jordanian Army. Such action, to which
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While the Gaza Strip is controlled
to a large extent by Hamas, supported by Iran and Syria
- the West Bank is still stronger in supporting the secular
Fatah- which receives backing from its eastern neighbor,
Jordan...
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Israel has objected in the past, could beef up the weakened
PNA security forces to counter efforts by Hamas and other rival
Palestinian factions currently bolstering their ranks with Iranian
and Hezbollah aid.
Experienced Mid-East analysts estimate that there is little
chance that any liberal democracy will succeed in the Palestinian
Authority. Not now. Not for a long time. In the best-case scenario,
a temporary and future leadership will be mired-in, powerlessness
against growing internal unrest. Even if Chairman Mahmoud Abbas
( aka "Abu Mazen")will manage to achieve an agreement
forming a so-called unity-government- this will only be of short-lived
duration, until the bloody power struggles resume. Hamas, under
the growing influence of Islamic fundamentalist ideologies,
backed by Iranian strategic interests in Gaza, will refuse to
give up its hard-won power grip on the Gaza Strip. Fatah is
rapidly losing its last power base in the Gaza Strip, as the
new Hamas army is gathering strength through massive arms smuggling
activities over the uncontrolled Egyptian border at Rafah.
Even throughout most of the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas and his
loyal followers, are lacking any power among the grassroots
activists or "Tanzim" (organization). The leadership
of the "interim generation" who led the 1987-1993
intifada and have served as the backbone of Fatah ever since
are gaining political power. Under Arafat, these Tanzim activists
were relegated to secondary positions in the PA institutions,
while the front ranks were reserved for the "Tunisians."
This has little changed under Abu Mazen and most Palestinians
are growing disgruntled by lack of a political horizon to improve
their livelihood.
But no matter who will take the reigns, the chance of a West
Bank-Gaza Strip split seems very real. Despite a recent flood
of books and articles indicating long-standing patriotism, the
Palestinian Arab community has a longer tradition of factionalism
and disunity and it is doubtful that the growing rift can be
mended in time to form a single national entity.
Read David Eshel's past commentary here |
