Socialist Action newspaper

The agreement on the formation of a Palestinian national unity government reached in Mecca on Feb. 8 between Hamas and al-Fatah defused the incipient Palestinian civil war for the time being.

But an armed clash between the two rival organizations on March 5 in Gaza City, which arose over a dispute about who controlled a training facility, underscored the fragility of the settlement.

The basic question mark is whether the imperialist governments will agree to lift the siege of the Palestinian Authority. Their denial of international aid is driving the conflict. The pretext is that Hamas, which won the last elections for the Palestinian Authority parliament, refuses to recognize Israel, renounce violence, or respect past peace agreements.

Because of the imperialist boycott, Palestinian Authority employees, most of whom are members or supporters of Fatah, have remained mostly unpaid since March. At the same time, the financial squeeze has resulted in a continuing deterioration of the basic social infrastructure in the territories nominally under the Palestinian Authority.

An article posted on al-Jazeera’s website March 2 noted: "The Gaza Strip is the most densely populated piece of land in the world but it has had little or no investment in infrastructure for years, and the situation has worsened since sanctions were imposed last year.

"With no sewage plant, Gaza's waste is dumped into the sea, making it unsafe for fishing or swimming according to a recent report. It is estimated that 20 million cubic meters of raw sewage are pumped into the sea every year through 14 discharge outlets spanning the 42 km-long shore.”

Al-Jazeera reported that one of the sewage-discharge outlets is next to the al-Shate refugee camp, and that children there frequently develop skin rashes as a consequence.

On Feb. 26, al-Jazeera posted an article referring to a report of the World Food Program and Food Aid that said that almost half of the population of Gaza was "food insecure," meaning that they could not be sure of getting enough to eat. The same article pointed out that hospitals were finding more and more signs of malnutrition among the people they examined, especially children.

The conditions are worst in the Gaza Strip, where the desperation of the population provides the strongest support for the verbally more intransigent Hamas. But there are similar problems on the West Bank.

An Associated Press dispatch reported March 4: "One slip, and Issa Abu Shakr's five-year-old nephew plunged into the fetid stream of sewage that flows outside the family's West Bank home. The contact with the filthy water required multiple blood transfusions and a 10-day hospital stay, Abu Shakr says.

"A few miles away, Maisoun Seidat picked up a blue bucket for one of her three daily trips to a communal cistern. People shouldn't have to fret about something as elemental as water, Seidat says, but in the parched West Bank, it's a constant worry.

"These are the human face of the toll exacted by U.S. sanctions following the rise to power of the militant Islamic Hamas group. U.S. projects were to have dried up the toxic flow that threatens the Abu Shakrs and bring more water to the Seidats. But the money has disappeared into the morass of Mideast politics."

The article noted that the Palestinians had hoped that the formation of the national unity government would lead to the end of the siege. "But U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice indicated in a recent visit to the region that this won't happen unless Hamas moderates its refusal to recognize Israel’s existence."

In fact, Hamas spokespersons have repeated that their organization does recognize that Israel exists. What it will not recognize is Israel’s right to exist as long as it does not offer justice for the Palestinians. The difference between Hamas and Fatah is essentially verbal.

The object of the siege is force Hamas to make a formal obeisance to Zionism. That is what it will not do.

The agreement between Hamas and al-Fatah has created political problems for the imperialists that will probably increase if it holds. So far, there is an apparent division between the European Union and the U.S., with the former allegedly more willing to compromise. That is giving some hope to the Palestinian leaders.

But it remains to be seen whether the European imperialists will be willing to defy pressure from the U.S. and the Zionist regime. Of course, they are more subject to pressure from their own peoples, who are horrified by the costs of the siege on the Palestinian people.

Hopefully, similar pressures will develop in the United States as the suffering inflicted on the Palestinian people becomes better known.