Today's Situation

Two different types of chaos

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

While Israeli officials, like Defense Ministry political strategist Amos Gilad, are saying they are worried by a possible Hamas takeover in Gaza after an Israeli withdrawal, the violence in Gaza so far has not been between Hamas and secular groups. Instead, it appears to be between various internal Fateh-affiliated factions and gangs, obviously because of the collapse of the central authority. While Arafat has apparently absolute control of the political institutions of the Fateh, as seen in last week’s meeting of the Fateh Revolutionary Council, the disputes at the grass roots level are overflowing into violence as factions fight for turf and power and over much more personal disputes. The chaos and anarchy resulting from Israel’s deliberate destruction of the Palestinian security forces on the grounds they were participating in terror attacks against Israelis, has long made it possible for any neighborhood gang to organize a terror attack and then claim it was done by one or the other of the known armed political factions, the more recent violence has been aimed inward.

In recent weeks, masked men – believed affiliated with Mohammed Dahlan’s Preventive security forces – have attacked the Palestinian Police commander in Gaza, Ghazi Jibali, while other masked men have attacked the PA’s radio station in Khan Yunis, and a bomb has gone off outside a mosque in Dir Balach. The mayor of Nablus resigned last week to protest the PA’s failure to provide law, order and services, he said, not even needing to mention that his brother was assassinated a few months ago.

Menachem Klein, an Israeli Middle East affairs expert points out, to the extent that the Palestinian Authority has been smashed, so has Fateh. Klein told Israel Radio that Fateh’s strength now is its weakness – the threat to Israel that Hamas could take over. But Klein, a Bar-Ilan University professor, is pessimistic because even while he believes it is possible for the Fateh and PA to reassert control, to do so requires ‘much less occupation and that is a price that Israel does not appear ready to pay.’

Part of the problem is a constant and growing tension between the political old-timers, who came from the Palestinian Diaspora with Arafat in 1994 after the signing of the Oslo accords, and a new generation of Palestinians who grew up under Israeli rule, learned something of democracy and Israeli customs, and after two intifadas over nearly a full generation, feels it has earned a place in the leadership, which Arafat continues to prevent it from taking.

Palestinian Prime Minster Ahmed Qurei’ reportedly said bluntly this morning that attempts to blame Israel for all the anarchy in the Palestinian street and Arafat called the assassination a dirty attack.’ But Palestinian Police commander Col. Moussa Abu Nabi, insisted on Israel Radio, that ‘Israel destroyed the Palestinian forces for law and order,’ and while he admitted ‘there are many factors responsible for what has happened,’ Israel should ‘leave Gaza, let the Palestinian people decide what they want to do. The Fateh can help the PA maintain law and order. Israel doesn’t help the PA and the Palestinians. You don’t let the PA do what it is supposed to do. You have to help. It is the interest of both sides. There must be dialogue; there must be a new chapter.’

halil al-Zaben, 59, a well-known magazine publisher and editor in Gaza and a close associate of Yasser Arafat, was assassinated this morning by masked men who riddled his body with bullets, as the Palestinian Authority appears helpless to stop a rising tide of internecine violence. srael’s plan – actually Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan – to quit Gaza meanwhile toddles along, as Dov Weisglass, Sharon’s bureau chief and lawyer (and accompanied by Sharon’s National Security Advisor Giora Eiland), met again with U.S. officials including Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, to discuss the plan. Despite reports in the Israeli press, clearly based on leaks from Weisglass, saying that the Americans are ‘very positive’ about the Sharon plan to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza, the Americans, when quoted directly, sound much less enthusiastic. They sound opposed to the deal Sharon is seeking – U.S. political ‘air cover’ for settlement consolidation in so-called settlement blocs in the West Bank and no less important for Sharon, no negotiations with the Palestinians, in exchange for withdrawal from Gaza and moving the separation fence ‘closer’ to the Green Line.

The Americans are trying to persuade the Israelis to ‘coordinate’ the unilateral withdrawal with the Palestinians, so far to little avail. The most Israel so far is ready to do, as Weisglass and Eiland apparently did yesterday in Washington, is to discuss possible security scenarios for Gaza after a withdrawal – and all those scenarios are based on Israel having a free hand to raid Gaza at will to fight terror.

There is reportedly opposition to the Sharon plan emanating from Vice President Cheney’s office, where there is worry that any attempt at a dramatic change in the Israeli-Palestinian equation, especially through ‘unilateral’ moves, is going to create trouble on the other Middle East issues – Iraq and Arab democratic reform -- now confounding American policy makers ahead of the U.S. presidential elections. But most of the heaviest opposition to the still vague Sharon plan is coming from his Right, so much so that Sharon relied on his old friend Shimon Peres to speak positively of the plan during trips last week to the U.S. and London, trips that appeared suspiciously to look like an advance trip by a foreign minister ahead of his prime minister’s trip. It is becoming evident to all that if Sharon is serious about his plan, he’ll need a new coalition and Peres would be happy to serve as his foreign minister. Meanwhile, Sharon is under pressure from all the coalition-held major committee chairmen in the Knesset to stop changing the route of the separation fence, which has been creeping westward – though not all the way to the Green Line – in recent weeks of construction and planning.

Furthermore, the past intimacy between Sharon and President Bush appears to have largely dissipated. The Americans are angry with the Palestinians for their failure to apprehend the killers of three American security guards last October, and disgusted with Yasser Arafat’s grip on the Palestinian central government. But they are also very disappointed that Sharon has not followed through on more than a year of promises to remove illegal outposts, which along with a Palestinian crackdown on terror was the first thing that was supposed to be done according to the American roadmap. Sharon can’t even claim that his hands are tied by legal proceedings. The High Court of Justice has ruled that a government decision to remove an outpost is sufficient for removing any of the outposts. The only thing holding up evacuations of the outposts is political will, and meanwhile, the settlers are getting help from sympathetic officials in various government ministries and turning the outposts into full-fledged settlements. Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz are doing nothing to stop that.

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