There’s something a little misleading in the media reports that routinely describe the fighting in Gaza as pitting Hamas against Fatah forces or security personnel “loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas.” That characterization suggests somehow that this catastrophic civil war that has killed more than 25 Palestinians since Sunday is a showdown between Abbas and the Hamas leadership — which simply isn’t true, although such a showdown would certainly conform to the desires of those running the White House Middle East policy.
The Fatah gunmen who are reported to have initiated the breakdown of the Palestinian unity government and provoked the latest fighting may profess fealty to President Abbas, but it’s not from him that they get their orders. The leader to whom they answer is Mohammed Dahlan, the Gaza warlord who has long been Washington’s anointed favorite to play the role of a Palestinian Pinochet. And while Dahlan is formally subordinate to Abbas, whom he supposedly serves as National Security Adviser, nobody believes that Dahlan answers to Abbas — in fact, it was suggested at the time that Abbas appointed Dahlan only under pressure from Washington, which was irked by the Palestinian Authority president’s decision to join a unity government with Hamas.
If Dahlan takes orders from anyone at all, it’s certainly not from Abbas. Abbas has long recognized the democratic legitimacy and popularity of Hamas, and embraced the reality that no peace process is possible unless the Islamists are given the place in the Palestinian power structure that their popular support necessitates. He has always favored negotiation and cooperation with Hamas — much to the exasperation of the Bush Administration, and also of the Fatah warlords whose power of patronage was threatened by the Hamas election victory — and could see the logic of the unity government proposed by the Saudis even when Washington couldn’t. Indeed, as the indispensable Robert Malley and Hussein Agha note, nothing has hurt Abbas’s political standing as much as the misguided efforts of Washington to boost his standing in the hope of undermining the elected Hamas government.
Needless to say, only an Administration as deluded about its ability to reorder Arab political realities in line with its own fantasies — and also, frankly, as utterly contemptuous of Arab life and of Arab democracy, empty sloganizing notwithstanding — as the current one has proved to be could imagine that
the Palestinians could be starved, battered and manipulated into choosing a Washington-approved political leadership. Yet, that’s exactly what the U.S. has attempted to do ever since Hamas won the last Palestinian election, imposing a financial and economic chokehold on an already distressed population, pouring money and arms into the forces under Dahlan’s control, and eventually adapting itself to funnel monies only through Abbas, as if casting in him in the role of a kind of Quisling-provider would somehow burnish his appeal among Palestinian voters. (As I said, their contempt for Arab intelligence knows no bounds. )
But while the hapless Abbas is little more than a reluctant passenger in Washington’s strategy — and will, I still believe, repair to his former exile lodgings in Qatar in the not too distant future — Mohammed Dahlan is its point man, the warlord who commands the troops and who has been spoiling for a fight with Hamas since they had the temerity to trounce his organization at the polls on home turf.
Dahlan’s ambitions clearly coincided with plans drawn up by White House Middle East policy chief, Elliot Abrams — a veteran of the Reagan Administration’s Central American dirty wars — to arm and train Fatah loyalists to prepare them to topple the Hamas government. If Mahmoud Abbas has been reluctant to embrace the confrontational policy promoted by the White House, Dahlan has no such qualms. And given that Abbas has no political base of his own, he is dependent entirely on Washington and Dahlan.
Seeing the disastrous implications of the U.S. policy, the Saudis appeared to have put the kibosh on Abrams’ coup plan by drawing Abbas into a unity government with Hamas. And as Mark Perry at Conflict Forum detailed in an excellent analysis Dahlan was just about the only thing that the U.S. had going for it in terms of resisting the move towards a unity government. Although his fretting and sulking in Mecca couldn’t prevent the deal, the U.S. appears to have helped him fight back afterwards by ensuring that he was appointed national security adviser, a move calculated to provoke Hamas, whose leaders tend to view Dahlan as little more than a torturer and a de facto enforcer for Israel.
But Dahlan appears to have made his move when it came to integrating the Palestinian Authority security forces (currently dominated by Fatah) by drawing in Hamas fighters and subjecting the forces to the control of a politically neutral interior minister. Dahlan simply refused, and set off the current confrontations by ordering his men out onto the street last weekend without any authorization from the government of which he is supposedly a part.
The new provocation appears consistent with a revised U.S. plan, reported on by Mark Perry and Paul Woodward, that emphasized the urgency of toppling the unity government. They suggest the plan emanates from Abrams, who they say is operating at cross purposes with Condi Rice’s efforts to appease the Arab moderate regimes by reviving some form of peace process. They note, for example, that Jewish American sources have told the Forward and Haaretz that Abrams recently briefed Jewish Republicans and made clear to them that Rice’s efforts were merely a symbolic exercise aimed at showing Arab allies that the U.S. was “doing something,” but that President Bush would ensure that nothing would come of them, in the sense that Israel would not be required to make any concessions.
Whatever the precise breakdown within the Bush Administration, it’s plain that Dahlan, like Pinochet a quarter century, would not move onto a path of confrontation with an elected government unless he believed he had the sanction of powerful forces abroad to do so. If does move to turn the current street battle into a frontal assault on the unity government, chances are it will be because he got a green light from somewhere — and certainly not from Mahmoud Abbas.
But the confrontation under way has assumed a momentum of its own, and it may now be beyond the capability of the Palestinian leadership as a whole to contain it. If that proves true, the petulance that has substituted for policy in the Bush Administration’s response to the 2006 Palestinian election will have succeeded in turning Gaza into Mogadishu. But it may be too much to expect the Administration capable of anything different — after all, they’re still busy turning Mogadishu into Mogadishu all over again.
By the way, Danny Rubinstein of Haaretz has an interesting article giving the context of the breakdown of security in Gaza:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/859556.html
By the way, Danny Rubinstein of Haaretz has an interesting article describing the root causes of Gaza’s breakdown:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/859556.html
Peter! This tells me that you don’t click on my links, because that story was the first one linked to in my piece! Your Danny is one of my best sources on this stuff!
Tony! This tells me that your links are too obtuse, because I didn’t click on it either.
Salvador Allende had no weapons. Hamas does. According to this Haaretz article by Avi Issacharrof (hope you didn’t link to it already (-: ), Fatah seems to be no match for Hamas. This was also the case during the last round of fighting. If Dhahlan has no political base, no legitimacy, no popularity and now no muscle either, what exactly is he to do other than cause the deaths of Palestinians for no gain? (Though this may be an end in and of itself.)
Also, note Hosni Mubarak’s anti Hamas comments. He criticized them as never intending to sign a peace deal with Israel. That may be true, but I doubt Israel’s welfare is Mubarak’s concern. But Mubarak’s welfare and the (il)legitimacy of his government, particularly in the face of the Muslim Brotherhoods rising popularity and ties with Hamas, is his concern.
Put simply, If Hamas survives this attempt to destroy it, If the U.S. leaves Iraq in disgrace and if Iran pursues its nuclear program despite U.S./E.U. best efforts, Mubarak and his ilk are in trouble.
If Dahlan indeed has as little popular support as believed than how long is he going to survive a confrontation with Hamas? I suspect, not long. He’ll be assasinated, not necessarily directly by Hamas, but simply by one of the many enemies he’s made in Palestine.
Regardless, it’s a pipe dream for Israel and the U.S. to imagine that somehow they’ll install Dahlan as a Palestinian Pinochet. Like it or not, Pinochet had two major things going for him internally: the backing of the armed forces, and a significant portion of the Chilean population. I frankly don’t know what Dahlan’s support is – maybe someone can expand on that.
@ Alex,
I think Dhahlan’s “support” is imposed starvation. The plan would be that after extreme poverty, the Palestinians would agree to be led by anyone who could end it. If there is some fighting between those who wish to submit and those who wish to resist then so much the better.
The plan is ruthless but it may work as human beings can only endure so much.
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Interestingly, Hamas leadership in Gaza seems to benefit the Israeli Right, while the more moderate Abbas/Fatah/Dahlan leadership will benefit the Israeli Left.
With Hamas in power, and Abbas gone, there would be little or no pressure on Israel to compromise. And little internal support for compromise either. A military or siege approach will be favored.
If Hamas crumbles, and Abbas or Dahlen take over, the problems for the Israelis are very large: Do we sign a deal? Can we trust them? What happens if we sign a deal with Abbas but later on Hamas makes a comeback? How do we keep the Euros on our side? The headaches are enormous.
Perhaps the best plan for Israel is to assassinate Dahlen and Abbas but make it look like Hamas did it. Or even al-Queda.
Sure fred,
Murder a few more people. That oughta help.
Fred brings an interesting point about large issues for Israel when a more moderate Palestinian party is in power..It seems flagrant to see that it bears more pressure on an Isreali government, who hasn’t shown signs of wanting peace for many years now. No matter how long some Israeli officials defend their argument of what pre-conditions must be present before signing peace, there always seems to be something preventing it from happening in the first place. Knowing and having read the short history of Israel, many intellectuals are certain that Israel is still not ready to correct its colonial policies into Palestinian Occupied territory.
It is now flagrant and a tremendous reason for such organizations as Hamas to flourish. Israel has simply not done enough to prevent young muslims from believing that Israel is the enemy. Au contraire, its giving daily examples through violence which is witnessed by this Palestinian youth. It becomes very easy for Hamas or other muslim extremist to grow, the proof for them is present everyday. Hamas feeds and recruits more of this youth at alarming numbers. Hamas relies on Israel’s belligerent actions to stir and foment uprisings and revolts. And in this, Israel and Hamas share an invisible relationship, where both feed from their own belligerency. With Hamas seeking increasingly more political power, it serves as a reason for the Israelis not to be pressured in signing peace, since Hamas does not carry a very good rapport from the West.
Somehow, in some corners of the Israeli government, it does not serve a great purpose to be faced with moderates in Palestinian power. Having an extremist Palestinian foe justifies any sort of violence and seems to be encouraged due to the enemy’s extremist nature.
We have reached many times when Palestinian leaders have complied as much as politically possible; times when calmer and more moderate Palestinian parties negociated, but never beared any fruits. We can remember times when Arafat, who represented the symbol of the Palestinian population, exerted more political will than any other Palestinian government official to date. As corrupt, as his organization was, it nevetheless exerted more effective and precise power over Palestinian affairs with its downsides, of course. It had more abilities on the negociating table, However, it was never given a proposition fair to the Palestinian standards for peace.
If i have to remind the obvious, in an agreement, both sides agree on what is fair to them. It seems however, that on the Palestinian side, it was never proposed a fair chance in order to agree. For obvious reasons, Israel carries an upperhand when it comes to Washington in its long-standing relationship with the U.S, which is positive, however, detrimental when this relationship overbears the decision for Peace with the Palestinians. It shelves neutrality in deciding the fate of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace initiatives. No matter how great the initiatives may have been, it seems the Palestinian side has not had their fair chance at peace, and maybe another reason why these same Palestinians look away from current paralyzed government officials. There has always been a stronger party between the two and it has always been Israel. For that, since the creation of Israel, the aim was to create a country as a Jewish home. However, as President Clinton once said, “the territories of Palestine were not all that vacant before the Israelis came”. That said, Israelis must prepare and should understand, all ideologies of “Greater Israel” set aside, that there are other inhabitants who share these lands, who have the same desires that the Israelis once had. Being nationless and spread throughout the world does not constitute the basis for a people’s pride and dignity. Palestinians desire the same, and as difficult for some Israelis to undestand, it is the truth.
If no changes are made and again, no power intervenes to settle, I do not see a positive future for Palestinians, or for Israel. They are incapable of seperating eachother and let alone living with eachother. I fear one day, it might be the reason for a greater conflict; a conflcit in which we are unprepared for; a conflict in which will test humankind in all its forms.
I just hope i won’t be on this earth to live those days…
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All this talk about how Israel’s “left” gains power when moderates are in control in the occupied territories, or how militants such as Hamas are bad for the Palestinians because when they’re around it’s easy for Israel to just denounce them and thus avoid any compromise, ignores some basic realiites.
One. When there are moderates in power, Israel talks about peace but accelerates the pace of building settlements, Israeli-only roads, walls and so forth, bulldozing Palestinian orchards and homes etc. Look at the aftermath of Oslo: there was lots of nicey-nicey *talk* about peace, but the immiseration of the Palestinian people actually accelerated. The hypothetical compromises are mythical. The presence of moderates to “negotiate” with does nothing real, it just gives Israel a fig leaf.
Two. All this assumes that militant Palestinian organizations cannot have enough impact to force Israel to serious talks. That has been true thus far, to be sure. But things are changing. The Israeli economy is not in great shape. The United States is doing its best to lose influence in the Middle East. And various factors may undermine the US economy seriously in the fairly near future, potentially cutting the flow of aid and arms to Israel and emboldening Arab forces sympathetic to the Palestinians. And Hezbollah has demonstrated the ability of relatively lightly armed fighters to stand off the Israeli army as long as they are well organized and have shoulder-launched antitank rockets. If Hamas were to consolidate power in the occupied territories and got their hands on some of those antitank rockets (which would become more likely if US power in the area wanes), the situation could change drastically. Assumption of perpetual Palestinian powerlessness is as fragile as was the assumption of perpetual Lebanese powerlessness.
This is the best thing I’ve seen about the Hamas-Fatah confrontation of the past week. There’s an article in yesterday’s Washington Post that clarifies Dahlan’s de facto alliance with the Israeli government: on Tuesday, Israel allowed 500 of Dahlan’s fighters to cross through the Rafah checkpoint and enter the fray in Gaza. Very cynical, violent opportunism. The article is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/17/AR2007051700419_pf.html
Purple Library Guy’s argument about Lebanese powerlessness not quite correct for the simple fact that it was Hizbollah’s power which was underestimated rather than Lebanon. Much of the Lebanese in the northern parts, whether some shia, Sunni, Druze Maronite, Amal were not unequivocally fighting “with” Hezbollah; It acted on its own without the accordance of the Lebanese government. Later in the conflict, as the lebanese and the international community realized what criminals the Israels always were, it then became once again a “Lebanese” problem. That difference is very important, mainly for the fact that Lebanese society is not completely safe from another civil war. Another reason to look at is how hezbollah tried to lay siege to the actual government and prevent it from working properly. It has even gone at great lengths to ally itself with a Maronite general that recently came back from exile. Hezbollah is unfortunately part of the fabric of Lebanon…
Lebanon is a boiling pot ready to explode once again, unfortunately. It is much too weak and divided to be characterized as a whole.
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The Hamas policy of not being bound by previous agreements between the PA and Israel seems designed to prevent a comprehensive peace treaty. Israel won’t be trading land to Palestinians that are likely to simply renounce the Peace Treaty at a time of their choosing.
There is nothing else that I can see that Hamas gets from announcing this policy. And there is much that Hamas and the Palestinians lose from this policy.
And the monkeywrench they’ve thrown is pretty good. If Hamas declines over time, Israel might be willing to sign a comprehensive peace with Abbas/Fatah/Dahlen but then Israel has to worry that Hamas will take over later on. This changes what Israel will agree to and could completely prevent a peace.
Fred,
What is laughably pathetic about your postings is that you assume that Israel is this benevolent hippie peaceful government that wants nothing but peace.
If that is the case, they can have it in five minutes. Stop building settlements, evacuate all the West Bank and all of Gaza and allow a Palestinian sovereign state to take place without destroying it’s chances of success.
But they will continue to pander to the fanatic fundamentalists who want the settlements, the water, greater and greater and greater Israel and want to make sure that they will never be threatened economically or politically by anyone and so will work to the starvation of Palestinians.
I can’t understand why Jewrish people and Arab people can not live peacefully in middle-east! Throughout the history, from Rome time to the near before. you both under aggression,persecution,purgation by the Europeans. So I wish you can remember what the redeemer had said:”I forgive you, you forgive me!” Peace in the Middle east forever!
If and this a BIG IF, Israelis really desire to live in peace with their neighbors, within recognised borders they have to officially announce what Israel’s borders are, that is, how far its perimeters stretch out to, beyond what was gifted to them by the Victors of WW II in 1948 OR accept the 1948 Partition of Palestine. Israel has never done so, nor is it expected to do so. Neither the Palestinians nor the Arabs nor the billion plus Islamic World can be expected to accept a ‘cancerous entity’ in the body of the Arab World without knowing how far this cancer will progress before killing itself along with its host body.
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Israel is just is not ready to pursue peace under any circumstance..They are pursuing their ideology and plan to extend their “Greater Isreal”. The israeli elite has for many years and until now has never seen palestinians as equals. I can only quote Gold Meir as saying: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian”… I hope i am wrong but i doubt the sentiment has changed and the racism between Palestininians and israel has all but increased thanks to settlement policies from Israel. My fellow commentators, we must understand the obvious nature of this issue and elaborate on it. Then and only then, we can arrive to understandable conclusions…But for now, it’s all about petty little details..
It seems rather odd to do as Menachim Begin once pointed out, “arab kils arab and it’s the jews fault. ” Or in this case GWB. The fact is in a post 9/11 world Palestine must denounce terrorism and stop using it. It’s been a total disaster. The fact Palestinians are killing each other is the fault of the Palestinians. No one else. Just them.
Look at the results. The Security Fence is up and the populations fully separated. Suicide bombings and infatada’s are a thing of the past. Jews are mostly safe. Their economy is booming. And thanks to the relentless march of advanced technology, becoming more powerful every day. The Paletinians by contrast are the workds most worthless welfare state unable to manage a civilized society in Gaza, the West Bank or in Lebanon. They live in rubble and thir own sewage.
The fact is your enabling support of these disasterous pathologies will only guarrantee their society will dig deeper depths of misery, Meanwhile the Israeli economy will continue to boom behind the fence.
RDW,
I agree and the Israelis will stay behind the fence and live in a society completely oblivious to how much misery they have caused in putting it…Once again, I’m sorry to make your arguments weak, but setting a fence or a wall, has never changed anything for humanity, it just slows down the ability for someone to cross, the Palestinians will find ways to counter the wall and take on whatever diabolical acts they have done in the past.
What Israel needs to realize is that, in its continued search for land, it angers people on the other side. I notice that Israelis does not like to speak of reasons concerning land occupation. Its seems a taboo for them to even mention it, because they are in direct violation of International Law. It’s not benficial for a people to ignore the facts that plagues an entire region. The Israeli ACTIONS bring misery and foment violence in the Middle-East. And for that, i cannot side with Israel. It seems little care is taken to minimize the provocation and suffering of the Palestinian people. I don’t see the Israelis learning lessons from violence. It should be apparent with their experience that violence is not the direction to take in order to secure their own country.
I’m sure that if the Israelis brokered peace out of good faith, I’m quite positively sure that with an Israel that ensures it will not commit crimes against Palestinians, deliniate its permanent 1948 borders, without finding ways to take more, will find true peace and a relaxation of the entire region. No more will extremists muslims find that excuse of the Palestinian plight, or for that matter, against the U.S. As these extremists act upon what they see in the middle-east, they notice how Israel is defended by the U.S blindly, without hesitation. Thus creating animosity once again. As you take away a resistance movement’s reason to fight, they no longer seem to find fuel to stay alive. They slowly dwindle down into history as a mere apostrophe.
Now what is left to be done is Israel’s choosing and doesn’t seem to be Peace, rather continuing to live in complete oblivion and anti-semitism towards the Palestinians with some beautiful fences and an economy backed by the U.S. I’m sorry, but it’s hard to side with someone who has tremendous capabilities for humanity and doesn’t use it.
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This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything – and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”
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Dahlan could now become the greatest hope for peace as surely there must be nothing more likely to unite ALL Palestinians than the thought of a Zionist listening Palestinian leader?
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