Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2006, pages 18, 33

Special Report

American Intervention Fueling Infighting, Some Palestinians Believe

By Samah Jabr

ONE CANNOT DESCRIBE the sense of pain and shame over the latest Palestinian infighting between Fatah and Hamas militants. Clearly, the shutting down of any political dialogue—against the background of an international economic embargo, no salaries for government workers, and resulting strikes—has aggravated public tensions and paved the way for incitement and fighting in the streets. That understanding, however, does not lessen the hurt.

In three days of fighting in early October, gunmen killed 11 of their fellow Palestinians, and Fatah-affiliated groups threatened to assassinate important Hamas leaders.

Typically, during a period of internal tension, President Mahmoud Abbas embarks on diplomatic visits abroad—not to lessen the embargo or raise salaries for government workers, but to continue bad-mouthing the elected Hamas government.

Thus the president’s September visit to the U.S. only served to undermine the Palestinian public’s optimism over national approval of the prisoners’ document and advancement in talks for a national unity government based on that document. Nor did Abbas make good on his promise to pay back wages to government employees at the beginning of the month of Ramadan.

Just before leaving for New York to attend the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, during which time he met with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, President Abbas froze measures to form a unity government, despite Europe’s positive preliminary support for such a move. Abbas also postponed his planned trip to Gaza for negotiations with Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, and has set no new date.

The president’s hostility to the elected Hamas government is not covert. Even unsophisticated observers can see from news photos how uncomfortable and unsympathetic Abbas looks when he is with members of the Palestinian government, and how unexplicably cheerful and dutiful he appears with American and Israeli politicians and diplomats.

Since his return from that U.S. trip, the language of Abbas’ spokesmen and consultants, many of whom were losing candidates in the elections, has changed. They no longer speak of realism and pragmatism in urging the government to accept the Quartet’s peace plan; now they call for the recognition of Israel and the liberation of a single Israeli soldier as being in “the higher interests of the Palestinian people”!

Who could have guessed that official Palestinian policy would deteriorate to such a level? How can ordinary Palestinians bear the irony that their media-star politicians are more concerned with the right of our exploiters to exist than with their people’s mere existence, not to mention well being?

Foulest of all is that Israel and the United States side with one party in Palestine’s internal conflict—the party, or the few men, who have already dominated Palestinian politics for four decades.

Since Sept. 11, rather than regarding the resolution of Palestine’s occupation a key issue in calming the region, Washington has succumbed to Israeli persuasion and included Hamas among the enemies of its war on terrorism—hence leaving the victims of Israeli occupation totally exposed to the arbitrary exercise of its military power. Interfering in an internal Palestinian conflict, of course, fits this strategy very well. The suicide of the Palestinian political cause would represent the ultimate solution for Israel and the U.S. administration, while providing them the opportunity to reduce the Palestinian issue to a humanitarian one requiring their care and attention.

According to recent news reports, the U.S. State Department has set aside $42 million to “protect and promote moderation and democratic alternatives to Hamas.” In a flagrant interference in internal Palestinian politics, Washington provides money to NGOs and other groups with ties to Palestinian political parties “not branded as terrorist groups” and to train politicians and secular parties opposed to Hamas, “to create democratic alternatives to authoritarian or radical Islamist political options,” according to the reports.

The U.S. is playing favorites, moreover, at the very time President Abbas is considering dismissing the government and calling for a new parliamentary vote. American money also will be used by journalists to snipe at the government and manipulate public opinion. Private Palestinian schools will receive $5 million to offer an alternative to the government-funded public education system. And all this in addition to $20 million for financing and training the presidential guards—most probably to engage in fighting their Palestinian brothers, rather than the forces of occupation.

Given the increasingly desperate straits under which Palestinians are living, this U.S. strategy and distribution of funds may well succeed in influencing internal Palestinian politics. Even if it results in the demise of the current government, however, the old tired faces of Fatah may find that they still are unelectable. Of course, they can always steal the elections, as happens in other countries. The result, however, would be the return of non-representative officials monopolizing political decision making—and opening the door to unprecedented troubles in the region.

In his 1978 book, A Palestinian Without an Identity, the important Fatah leader Salah Khalaf wrote, “I fear a day in which treason will be no more than a point of view.”

While such fears remain real today, this is not the time for accusations and rebuke. Rather, our task is to heal our wounds and rise above differences and hurts.

There is no question that, in addition to being destructive to Palestinian morale, the recent internal conflict risks eroding international solidarity with our cause. Those among us who are careless are very few—but it can take only a few highly destructive people to damage the hopes and achievements of a caring majority.

It is imperative that the current Palestinian government recognize the existential dangers of an internal power struggle. If pushed to the wall, its best alternative would be to dissolve the Palestinian Authority—which is, after all, but a chimera of the late, unlamented Oslo accords—and return to the original lines of resistance. Once again the United Nations and Israel would be responsible—and properly so—for the well-being of an occupied people, as well as for the cost of confrontations with a solid national resistance movement.

Samah Jabr is a Jerusalem-born physician currently studying in France.

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