Tensions escalated on April 22, 2006, when hundreds of students representing the Hamas and Fatah factions at Gaza’s al-Azhar University and the Islamic University threw stones and homemade grenades at one another. Fifteen people were wounded, two seriously.8 Two weeks later, at least nine Palestinians were wounded in two days of fighting between the two rival factions in the Gaza Strip. At least four children were wounded.9 In another incident, Hamas fighters launched a shoulder-fired missile at a Fatah vehicle, killing two.10
The violence grew worse after the creation of the “Executive Force” (EF), a Hamas military unit under the leadership of Hamas interior minister Said Sayyam. For weeks, Sayyam had complained that forces loyal to Fatah and the PA were not following Hamas directives, despite the fact that Hamas was now the faction that had been tapped by the Palestinians to govern the PA. Abbas, it was reported, had ordered Gaza’s police officers to stay home in exchange for receiving their salaries as a means to deny Hamas the power that it had earned at the ballot box.11 Replacing the PA forces, the EF became an authoritarian tool that Hamas used to extend its influence beyond that of its trained terrorist fighting squad, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. As one new recruit noted, “I’m not Qassam, but I’m in the police force. It’s considered jihad.”12
When Hamas deployed the EF, Fatah viewed the move as a direct challenge to Abbas’s PA forces. This again raised the specter of an all-out civil war. Fierce clashes erupted for nearly an hour between the two sides on May 22, including a firefight in front of the Palestinian Legislative Council building in Gaza.13
The following month, more brutal fighting was reported between Hamas fighters (including the Al-Qassam Brigades) and Fatah fighters (including the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades). Assaults launched by the two opposing factions against each other continued throughout the month, with reports of abductions, grenade explosions, and rocket fire.14
To be sure, Fatah scored some victories in these street battles, but the impact was fleeting. There was no denying the fact that Fatah had lost the election, and now it was being openly challenged in the streets by Hamas.
Armed clashes continued between Hamas and Fatah throughout the summer and fall of 2006. By October, the violence had spread throughout the West Bank towns of Ramallah, Nablus, Jericho, and Hebron.15
In December 2006, Hamas accused Fatah of attempting to assassinate Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh in an attack at the Rafah crossing in Gaza that killed one of his bodyguards. In the war of words that followed, Hamas claimed that Mohammed Dahlan, a senior Fatah strongman in Gaza, was behind the attack. Violence again erupted between the two factions, leading to 20 injuries.16
Seeking to regain control, Abbas called for an early election to bring down the Hamas government. Fatah activists in Gaza and the West Bank celebrated this political maneuver, taking to the streets and firing celebratory machine-gun bursts into the air. In response, Hamas accused Abbas of launching a coup against its democratically elected government.17
Throughout this period, Hamas complained that the Fatah-backed PA had refused to engage with it on issues of governance.18 There had also been reports of tensions between the Hamas appointees and Fatah functionaries in various ministries, as well as fragmentation within the security services. Indeed, each faction had developed its own militias.19 In retrospect, Abbas’s call for a new government was probably justifiable. The political tensions that characterized the Hamas–Fatah power struggle had paralyzed the Palestinian legislature.
Meanwhile, violence worsened between the two groups in January and February 2007, leading to the perception that the West Bank and Gaza had become more lawless than ever. Specifically, Hamas carried out a string of abductions of Fatah and PA figures. Those who were kidnapped were often beaten. In some cases, “limbs were fired at to cause permanent physical disabilities.” According to the PCHR, the Hamas EF stormed private homes and executed their Fatah enemies by shooting them, point blank, in the head. Reportedly, Hamas also hijacked a convoy of PA trucks, marking a turning point in the conflict. The EF was not simply trying to kill Fatah members; it was attempting to cut off their supply lines as well.20
In an effort to halt the fighting, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia intervened and invited the leaders of Fatah and Hamas to Mecca to engage in a dialogue designed to end the conflict.21 The top leaders of Hamas and Fatah represented their factions at the Saudi talks. Fatah’s representatives included Abbas and Dahlan, while Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Meshal represented Hamas. After three days, the two high-level delegations reportedly reached an understanding, leading to the February 8, 2007, Mecca Agreement.22
A little more than one month later, on March 17, 2007, the two sides agreed to form a national unity government. But the brokered calm did not last long. There was virtually no way to sweep aside the pain and animosity that lingered; the bloodshed between Fatah and Hamas had resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries in 2006 and 2007.
Journalists covering the Palestinian–Israeli conflict had been slow to cover the intra-Palestinian conflict. It was a story that many simply did not understand. After all, the conflict was supposed to be one between Israel and the Palestinians. This internecine conflict did not add up. But for those who did seek to write about the factional violence, both Hamas and Fatah made it difficult. The story was an embarrassing moment in the history of Palestinian nationalism, and one that both factions wished to obscure. As a result, relative to the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, which often receives exaggerated coverage, the Hamas–Fatah conflict received very little.
Moreover, with all eyes on the global war on terror, with Iraq and Afghanistan grabbing headlines daily, much of this conflict took place out of the view of the public eye. But the violence was bloody. Multiple kidnappings took place, as well as machine-gun clashes, peppered with explosions caused by homemade bombs and other projectiles. Both sides suffered many casualties. Hamas was particularly devastated by the killing of Ibrahim Suleiman Maniya, the 45-year-old leader of the al-Qassam Brigades, who was shot in the chest during a fierce clash between Hamas and Fatah on May 15, 2007. Fighting that week between Hamas and Fatah resulted in the deaths of 47 Palestinians and many more wounded.23
Sensing that the violence could get even worse and perhaps threaten regional security, the government of Egypt stepped in to attempt to broker a cease-fire on May 19. As was the case with previous Hamas–Fatah cease-fires, this calm lasted only for a few weeks. Another round of fighting soon erupted, which quickly came to be known as the Palestinian civil war.
On June 7, 2007, after more than a year of political stalemate and sporadic internecine conflict, Hamas launched a military offensive to wrest the Gaza Strip from the PA. The battle did not take long. By June 13, Hamas forces controlled the streets and government buildings, including Abbas’s presidential compound and security compound. By the following day, all of Gaza was under Hamas’s control.
The defeat was crushing for Abbas. The forces trained by the West that were purportedly loyal to him had performed poorly. Some even switched sides and joined Hamas. Many of Abbas’s top lieutenants fled for Cairo or other locales, where they maintained second homes.
With no recourse, Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led unity government that the Saudis had helped create in March. He soon appointed outgoing finance minister Salam Fayyad to serve as prime minister in an emergency government based only in the West Bank.
Hamas, by contrast, had dominated the battlefield. For one, Hamas had the benefit of surprise; the PA’s forces had no idea what hit them. The PA fighters were overwhelmed by a brutal and zealous enemy. According to the PCHR, much of the Hamas violence was indiscriminate, demonstrating a willful disregard for the conventions of war.
The mid-June violence in Gaza, according to the PCHR, was characterized by “extra-judicial and willful killing,” including incidents where Hamas fighters pushed Fatah faction members from the roofs of tall buildings.
Hamas also abducted and executed some political enemies. Reportedly, Hamas even killed PA supporters who were already injured24 or shot Fatah fighters at point-blank range to ensure permanent wounds.25 The PCHR further reported attacks against private homes and apartment buildings, hospitals, ambulances, and medical crews associated with the PA. All told, the June civil war claimed the lives of at least 161 Palestinians, including 7 children and 11 women. At least 700 Palestinians were wounded.26
Although history will almost certainly cast Hamas as the aggressor in the battle for Gaza, reports issued by two human rights groups (Amnesty International and the PCHR) blamed both Fatah and Hamas. The two reports issued pleas to both sides to end the violence, protect the civilian population, and return to negotiations.27
When the guns fell silent, Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas spokesman who appeared regularly on Arab television networks, gloated that the war had been a defensive one. Zuhri added insult to the injuries of the Fatah faction when he claimed that Hamas had gone to war to defend Palestine from a Fatah cadre that was collaborating with Washington and Israel. “There is no political goal behind this but to defend our movement and force these security groups to behave,” Zuhri said. He also stated that his organization sought to unify the various armed Palestinian factions under its command, insisting that it still sat atop a unity government.28
According to the Wall Street Journal, US intelligence agencies were concerned over the loss of the Fatah security complex, which housed the PA’s intelligence and military infrastructure that Washington had helped to create. Hamas claimed to have “thousands of paper files, computer records, videos, photographs, and audio recordings containing valuable and potentially embarrassing intelligence information gathered by Fatah.”29
The message was a powerful one that was not lost on the Palestinian people. The ossified, old-guard Palestinian leadership may have had the backing of the world’s only superpower, but had been trounced by a relatively small Islamist faction—first electorally in the West Bank and Gaza, now militarily in Gaza.
10
Backslide
In the aftermath of the Palestinian elections, and then a year and a half later after Hamas’s violent takeover of Gaza, the Palestinians were split in two. The West Bank and Gaza were effectively two separate states. As former peace negotiator Aaron David Miller cynically observed, it was a “Palestinian Noah’s Ark, where there is two of everything.”1
With the Palestinian Authority (PA) in disarray, there were expectations that the leadership would engage in soul-searching. The elections were a clear indication that the Palestinian people were tired of the autocratic style of governance that had for too long characterized the PA—first under Arafat and then under Abbas. The Hamas military victory in Gaza was an indication that the PA was more brittle than most observers had previously imagined. The resulting status quo—the emergence of two disparate Palestinian governments in the Gaza Strip and West Bank—was a constant reminder of the failure of the old guard in nearly every way.
However, rather than prompting change and reform, the West Bank government reverted to its old form. The reports of financial mismanagement and poor governance continued to pile up. Indeed, after several years of promise stemming from Fayyadism, it appeared that the Palestinian leadership was backsliding into Arafatism.
In 2006, the PA under Abbas was little different than the PA under Arafat. In January, for example, a former Palestinian oil executive was detained in connection with corruption and embezzlement charges.2 He was subsequently found guilty. In February 2006, PA attorney general Ahmed al-Mughani noted, “There are underground files of corruption and also corruption cases well known to the public. . . . The Palestinian law and courts would run after anyone who is involved in these cases of corruption.”3 Al-Mughani alleged that “at least $700 million in Palestinian public funds had been stolen in recent years, though the actual total may be much higher.” Indeed, al-Mughani went so far as to say that the total “might [actually] be billions of dollars.”4
In April 2006, PA officials revealed, according to the Jerusalem Post, that “many of [their] embassies had gone bankrupt because of mismanagement and corruption and the refusal of Arab and EU governments to provide the PA with financial aid. . . . Most of the Palestinian diplomats and ambassadors are affiliated with Fatah and some have been serving in their jobs for over three decades.”5 Three months later, Ma’an News Agency reported that the Palestinian ambassador to Romania was under investigation by Fatah for alleging that donor money given to the PA had disappeared.6 It was unclear whether this case was resolved.
The Palestinian leadership was keenly aware of its reputation and took efforts to silence its critics. In May 2006, Abbas reportedly lodged a libel suit against Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor in chief of the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi. Atwan had suggested that Abbas was a mafia leader and had engaged in financial corruption.7 The status of this case is unknown.
The perception that Fatah was slipping backward was not lost on the party’s leadership. In June 2006, Fatah announced that it was planning to reform “their corruption-riddled party especially by getting rid of many representatives of the old guard who were responsible for the defeat.”8 However, in August, when Fatah’s Central Committee held discussions on how to reform the party, members of the young guard were not invited. A Fatah member from Ramallah publicly lamented the decision; he told the Jerusalem Post that “[i]nstead of learning from the mistakes of the past and searching for ways to reform Fatah after its defeat in the election, they are working to advance their private interests.”9 Former Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan was even blunter about it. The toppled Gaza security chief proclaimed that it was “time for the committee members to retire because they are all old. Fatah needs young leaders to fill the vacuum.”10 When the Fatah Central Committee failed to come to a decision on when to hold a general conference to elect new leaders, some members threatened rebellion. Senior Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmed admitted that the Central Committee’s failure was an “indication that we are moving backward not forward.”11
Squabbling within Fatah continued into the following year. In April 2007, 33 Fatah members called on the group’s leadership to investigate all cases of corruption within Fatah.12 A member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said that Fatah “military groups” need “to stand firm together and support each other in the face of corruption in order for reform to prevail.”13 Another Fatah military leader, Abu al-Walid al-Jabari, further proclaimed that “we don’t want to be fragmented and we don’t want to secede from the movement, but we will not accept the corruption and we tell the Fatah leadership that they have to keep their differences out of the movement.”14
After the Hamas offensive that conquered Gaza in the summer of 2007, Fatah was reeling. The faction had lost control of the Gaza Strip completely, and fears lingered that a similar fate could befall the West Bank. The West, led by the United States, rushed to support Abbas, supplying him with arms, cash, and intelligence. The message to the Palestinian leader was a simple one: Do not lose power in the West Bank.
It was at this point that Abbas apparently realized that there was little that would prompt the West to challenge his rule in the West Bank. Hamas, thanks to its record of suicide bombings and rocket attacks, was the bogeyman. Next to that, whatever problems associated with Abbas’s Fatah faction didn’t seem like much of a problem in the grand scheme of things. As Michael Singh, a Bush administration official, recalled, there was a sense that “focusing on Palestinian politics is actually harmful . . . maybe you shouldn’t rock the boat.”15
The international community did not seem terribly alarmed when the deputy chairman of the Palestinian power authority, in August 2007, revealed “[d]etails of financial and administrative corruption in the Palestinian power company in Gaza.”16 Nor was there an outcry when it became clear that the West Bank Palestinian leadership was employing autocratic t
actics not seen since the Arafat days. For example, in November 2007, PA security forces arrested the owner of the private Al-Amal TV station in Hebron after the station broadcasted a press conference of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. In the same month, two other journalists were arrested for simply reporting “positively on Hamas.”17
The allegations of corruption also continued to mount. In March 2008, the Jerusalem Post reported that a Palestinian official deposited $3 million of PLO funds into one of his private bank accounts. The official, in his defense, insisted that the money ended up in a PLO bank account.18
Frustrated, some Fatah stakeholders openly hammered the party for the seemingly endless stream of scandals. In September 2008, Husam Khader, a young-guard Fatah leader who had been imprisoned by Israel, called for substantial reforms within the faction. According to Khader, longtime Fatah faction loyalists were leaving the party “because of the corruption and the traditional mentality of the Fatah leaders and because they ignore democratic aspects and democratic needs to heal Fatah as we wish.” In addition, he lamented, “Our traditional leaders still don’t accept the young generation. . . . They have blocked all the ways in front of us and they have even broken the ladders to prevent us from rising.”19
This did not stop the West Bank government’s abuse of power. In October 2008, employees in the PA Endowments Ministry admitted to taking bribes from Palestinians participating in the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca known as hajj.20 Two months later, the Ramattan News Agency was reportedly forced to cease operations after “relentless and heightened persecution” by the PA in response to the agency’s coverage of Hamas events.21
State of Failure Page 13