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Hamas took foreign reporters on a tour of Gaza on July
30. It was designed to show that the Islamist organization could maintain
order in the ruined and turbulent enclave. The signal for this operation
was given by its forcing a Gaza clan to release a British reporter that
it had long held hostage.
Hamas’ best chance to consolidate its control of Gaza
and to survive as a Palestinian leadership is precisely to demonstrate
that it can impose order where Fatah cannot. On this basis, despite
Hamas’ more radical rhetoric, it could offer to negotiate with the
Israeli authorities as an effective interlocutor and hope to gain the
toleration of Israel’s imperialist big brothers. Otherwise, the Islamist
organization risks trapping itself in a hopelessly impoverished isolated
enclave long used by the Zionists as a shooting gallery.
At the same time as Hamas has been trying to show that
it can establish order in Gaza, the Israeli government has been
multiplying concessions to the Fatah government on the West Bank intended
to demonstrate that reconciliation with the Zionist rulers offers more concrete
gains than armed resistance.
The Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas, has violated
the Palestinian Authority constitution to extend indefinitely the life of
a purely Fatah government in the area he controls, and reportedly is
collaborating with Israeli intelligence to prevent Palestinian resistance
attacks on Israel. In accepting the meager benefits of Israeli and
imperialist approval, Abbas risks taking a poisoned chalice. The
remaining support of Fatah could be decisively undermined if it is seen as
capitulating to Zionist and imperialist pressure.
Thus, in the July 6 Los Angeles Times, Ken Ellingwood
wrote from the Palestinian capital of Ramallah on the West Bank:
"Routed in the Gaza Strip, the Fatah party of Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas is fractured and adrift at a moment when it is
viewed by the outside world as the best hope for blunting the militant
Hamas movement in the West Bank.
"Once dominant in Palestinian affairs, the
organization long led by the late Yasser Arafat is beset by a weak and
aging leadership, internal schisms and a widespread reputation among
Palestinians as corrupt, ineffectual and out of touch. Those troubles
have some Palestinians wondering whether Fatah is more likely to lose the
West Bank than to recapture the Gaza Strip from Hamas."
As it happened, the Hamas militants who defeated Fatah
in the Gaza Strip were inspired by the conviction that their rivals were
the agents of the Zionists and the imperialists. Since the Hamas takeover
of the Gaza Strip, leaders of the organization have been referring to the
Fatah leaders as "traitors." At the same time, they have been
trying, with some success in Gaza, to split off sections of the rival
organization by asserting their respect for the tradition of the Palestinian
Liberation Organization, of which Fatah is the central component.
So, the Fatah leadership is clearly in jeopardy if it
becomes seen as collaborators with Israel, as long as the majority of the
Palestinian people are united by hatred of the Zionist robbers and see no
attractive gains from trying to conciliate them. Thus far, the polls
indicate that most Palestinians favor continued armed resistance to
Israel, with 70 percent even supporting suicide attacks on Israeli
civilians.
At the moment, neither Fatah nor Hamas has any
effective strategy for achieving the aspirations of the Palestinian
people. What is needed is a political program for achieving a united
democratic Palestine in which the Jewish settlers and the Arab natives
can live together in equality and peace, in accordance with their
long-term economic and social interests. In the present crisis, the best
hope is that a political debate will develop among Palestinians that can
lead to the elaboration of such a political program.
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