Divide And Rule

24Jun07

“The Fatah men we fought are not my enemy…They are just soldiers like any of us here in this room. The decisions they had to follow came from outside of Gaza: from Ramallah, from the Israelis, from America. I do not hate the men of Fatah; they are our brothers.”

- Abu Obieda, the head of Hamas’ Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, speaking in an interview with The Observer.

“We are working to eradicate Hamas from the West Bank…We must totally wipe out these Hamas militants.”

- Mr Tirawi, the leader of Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in Nablus.

“We did not have any intention to win or lose the battle…We were only going against a small group that was behind all the trouble and tensions in the Gaza Strip…

“Hamas is not trying to establish its own rule or state in the Gaza Strip…We have no plans to establish an Islamic emirate in the Gaza Strip, as some claim…Hamas considers this whole crisis to be a legal one. That’s why we are saying, ‘Let’s refer to the law.’ The president has dissolved the government, something which he is entitled to do in accordance with the constitution. But according to the same constitution, the deposed government must remain as a transitional government.”

- Hamas representative Ayman Taha.

“No one in the West Bank dares to say they are from Hamas now,” said Abu Ayyash, the deputy culture minister. “They have all disappeared.”

Abu Ayyash said that Abbas was ready to use “all means” to suppress Hamas in the West Bank, “whether democratic or not.”

- The International Herald Tribune, reporting on the Fatah crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank.

“The way out of the current situation is launching a Palestinian dialogue without pre-conditions…[Talks should be held] on the basis of no loser and no winner, and on the basis of no harm to anyone, and on the basis of a national unity government.”

- Deposed Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh

“There is no dialogue with those murderous terrorists”.

- President Mahmoud Abbas

“No. Gaza belongs to all the Palestinian people and not just Hamas…Separation is not on the agenda and never will be.”

- Ismail Haniyeh

“It’s a fight between the national project and this small kingdom they want to establish in Gaza, the kingdom of Gaza, between those who are using assassination and killing to achieve their goals, and those who are using the rules of law”.

- President Abbas

“[The division of the OPT between a Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and a Fatah-controlled West Bank] serves exactly the Israeli interests of imposing their own reality on the ground which we see through the building of the [separation] wall, the expansion of settlements and transforming the Palestinian entity into clusters of prison-like ghettos.

“If the Israelis want to empower Mr Abbas really, they will declare they are ready to end occupation, stop building the wall, stop settlements building, announce they are ready to allow East Jerusalem to be the capital of Palestinian state and then Mr Abbas will be the hero of all Palestinians.

“[This will not happen because the Israeli plan for the PA] is only a limited self-governing government that has control on people but not on land, not on water, not with sovereignty… [Tel Aviv wants a PA regime that will] suppress its own people on behalf of the Israelis, some kind of a security sub-agent for the Israeli side. That was the dream of Israelis when they signed Oslo…

“The problem remains the same. The cause of all what we see today is this Israeli military occupation, which has been here for 40 years, longer than any other occupation in modern history.”

- Former National Unity Government Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti, one of the few people still talking sense.

I mention all this in order to emphasise how ridiculous Condoleeza Rice’s recent assertion that,

“Through its actions, Hamas sought to divide the Palestinan nation, we reject that…It is the position of the United States that there is one Palestinian people and there should be one Palestinian state”

really is.

In fact, as we have seen above, Hamas has explicitly rejected the idea of two separate Palestinian states and is desperately trying to engage Fatah in dialogue to resume a government of national unity. It is Abbas who is spurning reconciliation in favour of conflict, and he is only doing so because the U.S. and Israel have made it clear that a resumption of direct aid and the release of stolen Palestinian tax money is conditional upon a Hamas-free government.

It is thus Israel and the U.S., with the collaboration of Abbas, who are intent on splitting the Palestinians still further (because, of course, Gaza has been separated from the West Bank by Israel for years, despite a 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access that Israel never implemented), not Hamas.

Meanwhile Abbas will get his money (some of it, anyway) and a couple of checkpoints will likely be dismantled in the West Bank. However, his ridiculous demand that the Jordan-Israel-Egypt-Fatah summit in Sharm el Sheikh on Monday involve discussions on “final status” issues has been rejected by Israel, as expected, making his whimpering about how he “received promises from American and Israeli sides” all the more pathetic.

The so-called “three-state solution” in practice means no solution, and hence continued occupation. It also means a divided and weak Palestinian resistance movement. It therefore makes sense that it has been and is being actively pursued by Israel, and not by Hamas.

To end on a lighter note: the new (and illegitimate) Palestinian Minister for Transport has failed his driving test. Haw, haw!


Filed under: Israeli / Palestinian, News and politics, US   |  3 Comments
Tags: ,

3 Responses to “Divide And Rule”  

Feed for this Entry Trackback Address
  1. 1 JamieSW on June 24, 2007 said:

    See Chomsky on ‘divide and conquer’:

    “Naturally, any conqueror is going to play one group against another. For example, I think about 90% of the forces that the British used to control India were Indians…

    That’s the traditional pattern. Invaders quite typically use collaborators to run things for them. They very naturally play upon any existing rivalries and hostilities to get one group to work for them against others.”

    See also this from Jimmy Carter:

    “Carter said the American-Israeli-European consensus to reopen direct aid to the new government in the West Bank, but to deny the same to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, represented an “effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples”…

    “The United States and Israel decided to punish all the people in Palestine and did everything they could to deter a compromise between Hamas and Fatah,” he said…

    “This effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples now is a step in the wrong direction,” he said. “All efforts of the international community should be to reconcile the two, but there’s no effort from the outside to bring the two together.”

    Carter was pessimistic this would happen soon.
    “I don’t see at this point any possibility that public officials in the United States, or in Israel, or the European Union are going to take action to bring about reconciliation,” he said.”

    Finally, Tony Karon is indispensable as always, with his ‘The 8 Fallacies of Bush’s Abbastan Plan‘.

  2. 2 JamieSW on June 24, 2007 said:

    Journalist Nir Rosen on CNN:

    “NIR ROSEN, JOURNALIST: Well, it already did. We created a civil war. This is actually outrageous. Outgoing U.N. envoy to the Middle East peace process, Alvaro De Soto, himself accused the U.S. of fomenting a civil war by training, funding and arming Fatah thugs and inserting them into Gaza to destabilize the Hamas government. We never gave them a chance. They were democratically elected in an election that was widely recognized as free and fair, even by former President Jimmy Carter. And then the U.S., along with Israel, Jordan and Egypt trained these gangs and actually put them in Gaza to overthrow the Hamas government. And, of course, it’s actually backfired and Fatah was overthrown. But all you’re going to do is isolate and further radicalize Hamas. And so when you say that the U.S. is seeking to ease tensions in the Middle East, I disagree with you. These are tensions that the U.S. actually created in the Middle East.

    ROBERTS: Nir, I mean what are you talking about, we have Fatah thugs being sent into the country to wage war with Hamas?

    ROSEN: Well, they were trained by the U.S. General Dayton (ph), our envoy to the peace process, was responsible for a program, along with Elliot Abrams (ph), the deputy national security adviser for the Middle East, and they actually trained Fatah in the West Banks. The Jordanian special forces created the Fatah Badr brigade. The Egyptians, as well, trained Fatah in Egypt. The United Arab Emirates actually sent money and arms. And then they were allowed to enter Gaza and then began to attack Hamas. I mean this was an existential threat to a democratically elected government. What we’ve done is overthrow a government that was elected. The U.S….

    Via.

  3. 3 JamieSW on June 25, 2007 said:

    From Ha’aretz:

    ‘Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday played down expectations ahead of a summit with the Palestinian, Egyptian and Jordanian leaders, but expressed hope the meeting would provide a launching point for renewed peace talks.

    Olmert said in remarks quoted by The Associated Press people should not expect a major breakthrough at Monday’s gathering. “Don’t wait impatiently tonight for the outcome as if at the end of the day you are going to see us sitting and signing a peace treaty. It will take time,” he said…

    Olmert is expected to offer Abbas a series of goodwill gestures, including the release of some of the hundreds of millions of dollars in Palestinian tax money that Israel has held since Hamas won Palestinian elections in January 2006.’

    This comes, as I say, after Abbas had ridiculously demanded that the summit discuss “final status” issues or nothing.

    Note also Olmert’s rather presumptuous claim to be a “representative of all the Jewish people who share with us the hope that something will change”. Funny, I never had the chance to vote for him.


Leave a Reply