Hamas student groups do well in West Bank university election

Hebron - The results of student council elections at West Bank universities showed that Hamas has gained popularity at the expense of the Palestine Authority.

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In an April 21 election at the Palestine Polytechnic University in Hebron, the Islamic Bloc, the student arm of Hamas, tied with the Fatah Youth Movement, with each group winning 15 seats. This was a surprise but even more surprising were the results announced on April 22 from Birzeit University, showing that the Islamic Bloc won over Fatah by 26 seats to 19. Turnout at Birzeit was 77 percent, with the Hamas-aligned group receiving 3,400 votes and the Fatah-aligned group 2,545. In last year’s vote, the Fatah bloc won 23 seats while the Islamic bloc received 20, according to a school press release. The university president, Khalil Hindi, claimed the elections took place in a democratic and peaceful atmosphere. Birzeit, long a center of student activism, is considered the best university in the West Bank.

Abdul Rahman Hamdan, head of the Islamic Bloc said: “This victory is proof that Palestinians support the resistance, as it is the only way to obtain our rights and refuse the PA’s project, which is based on negotiations. Although the bloc was fiercely attacked by the Israeli occupation and the PA, we won. I expect the campaign to escalate in the coming phase.”Khaled Meshaal, who heads Hamas' political bureau said that his group was ready for legislative and presidential elections. Youssef Rizqa, a former information minister in the Hamas government said:“The reasons behind the victory of Hamas and the defeat of Fatah lie beyond university and stem from [President Mahmoud] Abbas’ stance vis-a-vis the resistance and the recent war on Gaza, the paralysis of the consensus government and the denial of the reconciliation.”

The university elections are taken as a barometer of trends in Palestinian politics. Birzeit University is liberal and Fatah was not expected to lose. Fatah was quite upset at a defeat on its own territory even if just in a student election. A Palestinian official told Al Monitor that Abbas "held a meeting with Fatah cadres in Birzeit in the past few days and scolded them for their huge loss facing Hamas supporters, knowing that they were offered financial allocations and security facilities allowing them to win."

The reconciliation projects between Hamas and Fatah apparently are not progressing. Negotiations with Israel are halted. There are internal disputes within the Palestinian Authority as well. The Palestinian Authority further alienates many Palestinians by cracking down on Hamas. A few days after the Hamas' student election victory, the Palestinian security apparatus arrested Islamic Bloc cadres. Fathi Qarawi, a member of Hamas' Legislative Council claimed:“Arresting and pursuing students reveals the true face of the PA. If it had known the bloc would win the elections, it would have used weapons to impede this victory. The PA won’t blink before oppressing any other attempt for Hamas to win, given its repeated losses.”

Back in September the two rival Palestinian groups agreed to a unity government for Gaza that would be headed by PA president Mahmoud Abbas. However, the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that the humanitarian conditions in the strip are very poor and funding very limited: That funding is conditioned on the auspices of the Palestinian Authority, which is not really functioning in the Gaza Strip. The last visit of a number of PA ministers to Gaza two weeks ago ended after about 24 hours, showing that the option of PA rule in the Strip in the near future is not realistic.

Hamas and Fatah leaders hold reconciliation talks with President Mursi in Cairo

Leader of Fatah and president of the Palestinian authority Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas head, Khaled Meshal, met separately with Egyptian President Morsi in Cairo. They then held reconciliation talks with president Morsi mediating.

The two Palestinian factions signed a reconciliation pact in Cairo in May of 2011 but the main points in that agreement are not yet implemented. Officials from Hamas and Fatah said that the talks will focus on a unity government. This would make it possible to hold parliamentary and presidential elections that are long overdue.

Hamas won a majority of seats in elections in 2006 and took over the Gaza strip in 2007. Hamas recently allowed Fatah to hold rallies in the Gaza Strip controlled by Hamas. Fatah has reciprocated by allowing Hamas rallies in the West Bank. The Hamas delegation is also slated to meet with Egyptian intelligence representatives to talk about the ceasefire with Israel in the Gaza Strip. Hamas was formed in 1987 as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and hence has historical ties with the group associated with Egyptian president Mursi.

Egypt was instrumental in negotiating the truce that ended an 8-day military offensive launched by Israel last November. More than 150 Palestinians and 6 Israelis were killed in the conflict. Hamas has refused to renounce violence and also does not recognize Israel's right to exist. However, the present leader Khaled Meshal has said that he would agree to a settlement with Israel based upon the 1967 borders but with the right of return of all displaced Palestinians. Israel, US, and the EU all designate Hamas as a terrorist group, although Iran, Russia,Turkey, and Arab nations do not. A unified Palestinian movement would give more power to the Palestinians in negotiating with Israel. However, both Israel and the US are opposed to a unified government with Hamas given the stance of Hamas on Israel and the use of violence.

Avneri: Good Morning Hamas

This is from antiwar.com. Avneri is an Israeli peace activist. Note that he takes it for granted that Arafat was murdered rather than died from an illness as is the accepted version in the west. Many Palestinians and a few others believe he was poisoned. As Avneri shows Israel was happy to see Hamas develop at first and thought it would weaken the PLO. Now the tables are turned. Hamas is the danger and the PLO under Abbas are seen as the faction with which peace can be negotiated. However, Avneri thinks that talking with Hamas is crucial to any peace. If Israelis refuse to talk with terrorists they couldn't even talk to themselves!

Good Morning, Hamas

by Uri Avnery
We Israelis live in a world of ghosts and monsters. We do not conduct a war against living persons and real organizations, but against devils and demons which are out to destroy us. It is a war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, between absolute good and absolute evil. That's how it looks to us, and that's how it looks to the other side, too.

Let's try to bring this war down from virtual spheres to the solid ground of reality. There can be no reasonable policy, nor even rational discussion, if we do not escape from the realm of horrors and nightmares.

After the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections, Gush Shalom said that we must speak with them. Here are some of the questions that were showered on me from all sides:

Do you like Hamas?

Not at all. I have very strong secular convictions. I oppose any ideology that mixes politics with religion – whether Jewish, Muslim, or Christian, in Israel, the Arab world, or America.

That does not prevent me from speaking with Hamas people, as I have spoken with other people with whom I don't agree. It has not prevented me from being a guest at their homes, to exchange views with them and to try to understand them. Some of them I liked, some I did not.

It is said that Hamas was created by Israel. Is that true?

Israel did not "create" Hamas, but it certainly helped it along in its initial stages.

During the first 20 years of the occupation, the Israeli leadership saw the PLO as its chief enemy. That's why it favored Palestinian organizations that, it was thought, could undermine the PLO. One example of this was Ariel Sharon's ludicrous attempt to set up Arab "village leagues" that would act as agents of the occupation.

The Israeli intelligence community, which in the last 60 years has failed almost every time in forecasting events in the Arab world, also failed this time. They believed that the emergence of an Islamic organization would weaken the secular PLO. While the military administration of the occupied territories was throwing into prison any Palestinian who engaged in political activity – even for peace – it did not touch the religious activists. The mosque was the only place where Palestinians could get together and plan political action.

This policy was, of course, based on a complete misunderstanding of Islam and Palestinian reality.

Hamas was officially founded immediately after the outbreak of the first Intifada at the end of 1987. The Israeli Security Service (known as Shabak or Shin Bet) handled it with kid gloves. Only a year later did it arrest the founder, Sheik Ahmad Yassin.

It is ironic that the Israeli leadership is now supporting the PLO in the hope of undermining Hamas. There is no better evidence for the stupidity of our "experts" as far as Arab matters are concerned, stemming from both arrogance and contempt. Hamas is far more dangerous to Israel than the PLO ever was.

Did the Hamas election victory show that Islam was on the rise among the Palestinian people?

Not necessarily. The Palestinian people did not become more religious overnight.

True, there is a slow process of Islamization throughout the region, from Turkey to Yemen and from Morocco to Iraq. It is the reaction of the young Arab generation to the failure of secular nationalism to solve their national and social problems. But this did not cause the earthquake in Palestinian society.

Then why did Hamas win?

There were several reasons. The main one was the growing conviction of the Palestinians that they would never get anything from the Israelis by nonviolent means. After the murder of Yasser Arafat, many Palestinians believed that if they elected Mahmoud Abbas as the new president, he would get from Israel and the U.S. the things they would not give Arafat. They found out that the opposite was happening: No real negotiations, while the settlements were getting larger every day.

They told themselves: if peaceful means don't work, there is no alternative to violent means. And if there be war, there are no braver warriors than Hamas.

Also: the corruption in the higher Fatah echelons had reached such dimensions, that the majority of Palestinians were disgusted. As long as Arafat was alive, the corruption was somehow tolerated, because everybody knew that Arafat himself was honest, and his towering importance for the national struggle overrode the shortcomings of his administration. After Arafat, tolerating the corruption became impossible. Hamas, on the other hand, was considered clean and its leaders incorrupt. The social and educational Hamas institutions, mainly financed by Saudi Arabia, were widely respected.

The splits within Fatah also helped the Hamas candidates.

Hamas, of course, had not taken part in previous elections, but it was generally assumed – even by Hamas people themselves – that they represented only about 15-25 percent of the electorate.

Can one reasonably expect the Palestinians to overthrow Hamas themselves?

As long as the occupation goes on, there is no chance of that. An Israeli general said this week that if the Israeli army stopped operating in the West Bank, Hamas would replace Abbas there too.

The administration of Mahmoud Abbas stands on feet of clay – American and Israeli feet. If the Palestinians finally lose what confidence they still have in Abbas, his power would crumble.

But how can one reach a settlement with an organization that declares that it will never recognize Israel and whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state?

All this matter of "recognition" is nonsense, a pretext for avoiding a dialogue. We do not need "recognition" from anybody. When the United States started a dialogue with Vietnam, it did not demand to be recognized as an Anglo-Saxon, Christian, and capitalist state.

If A signs an agreement with B, it means that A recognizes B. All the rest is hogwash.

And in the same matter: The fuss over the Hamas charter is reminiscent of the ruckus about the PLO charter, in its time. That was a quite unimportant document, which was used by our representatives for years as an excuse to refuse to talk with the PLO. Heaven and earth were moved to compel the PLO to annul it. Who remembers that today? The acts of today and tomorrow are important, the papers of yesterday are not.

What should we speak with Hamas about?

First of all, about a cease-fire. When a wound is bleeding, the blood loss must be stemmed before the wound itself can be treated.

Hamas has many times proposed a cease-fire, tahidiyeh ("quiet") in Arabic. This would mean a stop to all hostilities: Qassams and Grad rockets and mortar shells from Hamas and the other organizations;"targeted liquidations," military incursions, and starvation from Israel.

The negotiations should be conducted by the Egyptians, particularly since they would have to open the border between the Gaza Strip and Sinai. Gaza must get back its freedom of communication with the world by land, sea, and air.

If Hamas demands the extension of the cease-fire to the West Bank, too, this should also be discussed. That would necessitate a Hamas-Fatah-Israel trialogue.

Won't Hamas exploit the cease-fire to arm itself?

Certainly. And so will Israel. Perhaps we shall succeed, at long last, in finding a defense against short-range rockets.

If the cease-fire holds, what will be the next step?

An armistice, or hudnah in Arabic.

Hamas would have a problem in signing a formal agreement with Israel, because Palestine is a waqf – a religious endowment. (That arose, at the time, for political reasons. When Caliph Omar conquered Palestine, he was afraid that his generals would divide the country among themselves, as they had already done in Syria. So he declared it to be the property of Allah. This resembles the attitude of our own religious people, who maintain that it is a sin to give away any part of the country, because God has expressly promised it to us.)

Hudnah is an alternative to peace. It is a concept deeply embedded in the Islamic tradition. The prophet Muhammad himself agreed to a hudnah with the rulers of Mecca, with whom he was at war after his flight from Mecca to Medina. (By the way, before the hudnah expired, the inhabitants of Mecca adopted Islam and the prophet entered the town peacefully.) Since it has a religious sanction, its violation by Muslim believers is impossible.

A hudnah can last for dozens of years and be extended without limit. A long hudnah is in practice peace, if the relations between the two parties create a reality of peace.

So a formal peace is impossible?

There is a solution for this, too. Hamas has declared in the past that it does not object to Abbas conducting peace negotiations, on condition that the agreement reached is put to a plebiscite. If the Palestinian people confirm it, Hamas declared that it will accept the people's decision.

Why would Hamas accept it?

Like every Palestinian political force, Hamas aspires to power in the Palestinian state that will be set up along the 1967 borders. For that it needs to enjoy the confidence of the majority. There is no doubt whatsoever that the vast majority of the Palestinian people want a state of their own and peace. Hamas knows this well. It will do nothing that would push the majority of the people away.

And what is the place of Abbas in all this?

He should be pressured to come to an agreement with Hamas, along the lines of the earlier agreement concluded in Mecca. We believe that Israel has a clear interest in negotiating with a Palestinian government that includes the two big movements, so that the agreement reached would be accepted by almost all sections of the Palestinian people.

Is time working for us?

For many years, Gush Shalom was telling the Israeli public: let's make peace with the secular leadership of Yasser Arafat, because otherwise the national conflict will turn into a religious conflict. Unfortunately, this prophecy, too, has come true.

Those who did not want the PLO, got Hamas. If we don't come to terms with Hamas, we shall be faced with more extreme Islamic organizations, like the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Divide and Rule Israeli-Style: Jonathan Cook

I found this to be one of the better analytical articles on the situation in Palestine. Cook lives in the area. His articles are usually quite perceptive IMHO.
Cook has his own website. He is a freelance journalist.

Divide and Rule, Israeli-Style
Can the Arab world be turned into
Gaza's jailers?
by Jonathan Cook
The boycott by Israel and the international community of the Palestinian Authority finally blew up in their faces with Hamas' recent bloody takeover of Gaza. Or so argues Gideon Levy, one of the saner voices still to be found in Israel. "Starving, drying up, and blocking aid do not sear the consciousness and do not weaken political movements. On the contrary… Reality has refuted the chorus of experts and commentators who preached [on] behalf of the boycott policy. This daft notion that it is possible to topple an elected government by applying pressure on a helpless population suffered a complete failure."

But has Levy got it wrong? The faces of Israeli and American politicians, including Ehud Olmert and George Bush, appear soot-free. On the contrary. Over the past fortnight they have been looking and sounding even more smug than usual.

The problem with Levy's analysis is that it assumes that Israel and the U.S. wanted sanctions to bring about the fall of Hamas, either by giving Fatah the upper hand so that it could deal a knockout blow to the Palestinian government, or by inciting ordinary Palestinians to rise up and demand that their earlier electoral decision be reversed and Fatah reinstalled. In short, Levy, like most observers, assumes that the policy was designed to enforce regime change.

But what if that was not the point of the sanctions? And if so, what goals were Israel and the U.S. pursuing?

The parallels between Iraq and Gaza may be instructive. After all, Iraq is the West's only other recent experiment in imposing sanctions to starve a nation. And we all know where it led: to an even deeper entrenchment of Saddam Hussein's rule.

True, the circumstances in Iraq and Gaza are different: most Iraqis wanted Saddam out but had no way to effect change, while most Gazans wanted Hamas in and made it happen by voting for them in last year's elections. Nevertheless, it may be that the U.S. and Israel drew a different lesson from the sanctions experience in Iraq.

Whether intended or not, sanctions proved a very effective tool for destroying the internal bonds that held Iraqi society together. Destitution and hunger are powerful incentives to turn on one's neighbor as well as one's enemy. A society where resources – food, medicines, water, and electricity – are in short supply is also a society where everyone looks out for himself. It is a society that, with a little prompting, can easily be made to tear itself apart.

And that is precisely what the Americans began to engineer after their "shock and awe" invasion of 2003. Contrary to previous U.S. interventions abroad, Saddam was not toppled and replaced with another strongman – one more to the West's liking. Instead of regime change, we were given regime overthrow. Or as Daniel Pipes, one of the neoconservative ideologues of the attack on Iraq, expressed it, the goal was "limited to destroying tyranny, not sponsoring its replacement. … Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility nor its burden."

In place of Saddam, the Americans created a safe haven known as the Green Zone from which its occupation regime could loosely police the country and oversee the theft of Iraq's oil, while also sitting back and watching a sectarian civil war between the Sunni and Shia populations spiral out of control and decimate the Iraqi population.

What did Washington hope to achieve? Pipes offers a clue: "When Sunni terrorists target Shi'ites and vice-versa, non-Muslims [that is, U.S. occupation forces and their allies] are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one." In other words, enabling a civil war in Iraq was far preferable to allowing Iraqis to unite and mount an effective resistance to the U.S. occupation. After all, Iraqi deaths – at least 650,000 of them, according to the last realistic count – are as good as worthless, while U.S. soldiers' lives cost votes back home.

For the neocon cabal behind the Iraq invasion, civil war was seen to have two beneficial outcomes.

First, it eroded the solidarity of ordinary Iraqis, depleting their energies and making them less likely to join or support the resistance to the occupation. The insurgency has remained a terrible irritation to U.S. forces but not the fatal blow it might have been were the Sunni and Shia to fight side by side. As a result, the theft of Iraq's resources has been made easier.

And second, in the longer term, civil war is making inevitable a slow process of communal partition and ethnic cleansing. Four million Iraqis are reported to have been forced either to leave the country or flee their homes. Iraq is being broken up into small ethnic and religious fiefdoms that will be easier to manage and manipulate.

Is this the model for Gaza now and the West Bank later?

It is worth recalling that neither Israel nor the U.S. pushed for an easing of the sanctions on the Palestinian Authority after the national unity government of Hamas and Fatah was formed earlier this year. In fact, the U.S. and Israel could barely conceal their panic at the development. The moment the Mecca agreement was signed, reports of U.S. efforts to train and arm Fatah forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas became a newspaper staple.

The cumulative effect of U.S. support for Fatah, as well as Israel's continuing arrests of Hamas legislators in the West Bank, was to strain already tense relations between Hamas and Fatah to breaking point. When Hamas learned that Abbas' security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, with U.S. encouragement, was preparing to carry out a coup against them in Gaza, they got the first shot in.

Did Fatah really believe it could pull off a coup in Gaza, given the evident weakness of its forces there, or was the rumor little more than American and Israeli spin, designed to undermine Hamas' faith in Fatah and doom the unity government? Were Abbas and Dahlan really hoping to topple Hamas, or were they the useful idiots needed by the U.S. and Israel? These are questions that may have to be settled by the historians.

But with the fingerprints of Elliott Abrams, one of the more durable neocons in the Bush administration, to be found all over this episode, we can surmise that what Washington and Israel are intending for the Palestinians will have strong echoes of what has unfolded in Iraq.

By engineering the destruction of the unity government, Israel and the U.S. have ensured that there is no danger of a new Palestinian consensus emerging, one that might have cornered Israel into peace talks. A unity government might have found a formula offering Israel:

Limited recognition inside the pre-1967 borders in return for recognition of a Palestinian state and the territorial integrity of the West Bank and Gaza.
A long-term cease-fire in return for Israel ending its campaign of constant violence and violations of Palestinian sovereignty.
A commitment to honor past agreements in return for Israel's abiding by UN resolutions and accepting a just solution for the Palestinian refugees.
After decades of Israeli bad faith and the growing rancor between Fatah and Hamas, the chances of them finding common ground on which to make such an offer, it must be admitted, would have been slight. But now they are nonexistent.

That is exactly how Israel wants it, because it has no interest in meaningful peace talks with the Palestinians or in a final agreement. It wants only to impose solutions that suit Israel's interests, which are securing the maximum amount of land for an exclusively Jewish state and leaving the Palestinians so weak and divided that they will never be able to mount a serious challenge to Israel's dictates.

Instead, Hamas' dismal authority over the prison camp called Gaza and Fatah's bastard governance of the ghettoes called the West Bank offer a model more satisfying for Israel and the U.S. – and one not unlike Iraq. A sort of sheriff's divide and rule in the Wild West.

Just as in Iraq, Israel and the U.S. have made sure that no Palestinian strongman arises to replace Yasser Arafat. Just as in Iraq, they are encouraging civil war as an alternative to resistance to occupation, as Palestine's resources – land, not oil – are stolen. Just as in Iraq, they are causing a permanent and irreversible partition, in this case between the West Bank and Gaza, to create more easily managed territorial ghettoes. And just as in Iraq, the likely reaction is an even greater extremism from the Palestinians that will undermine their cause in the eyes of the international community.

Where will this lead the Palestinians next?

Israel is already pulling the strings of Fatah with a new adeptness since the latter's humiliation in Gaza. Abbas is currently basking in Israeli munificence for his rogue West Bank regime, including the decision to release a substantial chunk of the $700 million in taxes owed to the Palestinians (including those of Gaza, of course) and withheld for years by Israel. The price, according to the Israeli media, was a commitment from Abbas not to contemplate reentering a unity government with Hamas.

The goal will be to increase the strains between Hamas and Fatah to breaking point in the West Bank, but ensure that Fatah wins the confrontation there. Fatah is already militarily stronger and with generous patronage from Israel and the U.S. – including arms and training, and possibly the return of the Badr Brigade currently holed up in Jordan – it should be able to rout Hamas. The difference in status between Gaza and the West Bank that has been long desired by Israel will be complete.

The Palestinian people have already been carved up into a multitude of constituencies. There are the Palestinians under occupation, those living as second-class citizens of Israel, those allowed to remain "residents" of Jerusalem, and those dispersed to camps across the Middle East. Even within these groups, there are a host of sub-identities: refugees and non-refugees; refugees included as citizens in their host state and those excluded; occupied Palestinians living under the control of the Palestinian Authority and those under Israel's military government; and so on.

Now, Israel has entrenched maybe the most significant division of all: the absolute and irreversible separation of Gaza and the West Bank. What applies to one will no longer be true for the other. Each will be a separate case; their fates will no longer be tied. One will be, as Israelis like to call it, Hamastan, the other Fatahland, with separate governments and different treatment from Israel and the international community.

The reasons why Israel prefers this arrangement are manifold.

First, Gaza can now be written off by the international community as a basket case. The Israeli media is currently awash with patronizing commentary from the political and security establishments about how to help avoid a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including the possibility of air drops of aid over the Gaza "security fence" – as though Gaza were Pakistan after an earthquake. From past experience, and the current menacing sounds from Israel's new defense minister, Ehud Barak, those food packages will quickly turn into bombs if Gaza does not keep quiet.

As Israeli and U.S. officials have been phrasing it, there is a new "clarity" in the situation. In a Hamastan, Gaza's militants and civilians can be targeted by Israel with little discrimination and no outcry from the international community. Israel will hope that message from Gaza will not be lost on West Bank Palestinians as they decide who to give their support to, Fatah or Hamas.

Second, at their meeting last week Olmert and Bush revived talk of Palestinian statehood. According to Olmert, Bush "wants to realize, while he is in office, the dream of creating a Palestinian state." Both are keen to make quick progress, a sure sign of mischief in the making. Certainly, they know they are now under no pressure to create the single viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza once promised by President Bush. An embattled Abbas will not be calling for the inclusion of Gaza in his ghetto-fiefdom.

Third, the separation of Gaza from the West Bank may be used to inject new life into Olmert's shopworn convergence plan – if he can dress it up new clothes. Convergence, which required a very limited withdrawal from those areas of the West Bank heavily populated with Palestinians while Israel annexed most of its illegal colonies and kept the Jordan Valley, was officially ditched last summer after Israel's humiliation by Hezbollah.

Why seek to revive convergence? Because it is the key to Israel securing the expanded fortress state that is its only sure protection from the rapid demographic growth of the Palestinians, soon to outnumber Jews in the Holy Land, and Israel's fears that it may then be compared to apartheid South Africa.

If the occupation continues unchanged, Israel's security establishment has long been warning, the Palestinians will eventually wake up to the only practical response: to dissolve the Palestinian Authority, Israel's clever ruse to make the Palestinian leadership responsible for suppressing Palestinian resistance to the occupation, thereby forcing Israel to pick up the bill for the occupation rather than Europe. The next stage would be an anti-apartheid struggle for one state in historic Palestine.

For this reason, demographic separation from the Palestinians has been the logic of every major Israeli policy initiative since – and including – Oslo. Convergence requires no loss of Israel's control over Palestinian lives, ensured through the all but finished grid of walls, settlements, bypass roads, and checkpoints, only a repackaging of their occupation as statehood.

The biggest objection in Israel to Olmert's plan – as well as to the related Gaza disengagement – was the concern that, once the army had unilaterally withdrawn from the Palestinian ghettoes, the Palestinians would be free to launch terror attacks, including sending rockets out of their prisons into Israel. Most Israelis, of course, never consider the role of the occupation in prompting such attacks.

But Olmert may believe he has found a way to silence his domestic critics. For the first time he seems genuinely keen to get his Arab neighbors involved in the establishment of a Palestinian "state." As he headed off to the Sharm el-Sheikh summit with Egypt, Jordan, and Abbas this week, Olmert said he wanted to "jointly work to create the platform that may lead to a new beginning between us and the Palestinians."

Did he mean partnership? A source in the prime minister's office explained to the Jerusalem Post why the three nations and Abbas were meeting. "These are the four parties directly impacted by what is happening right now, and what is needed is a different level of cooperation between them." Another spokesman bewailed the failure so far to get the Saudis on board.

This appears to mark a sea change in Israeli thinking. Until now Tel Aviv has regarded the Palestinians as a domestic problem – after all, they are sitting on land that rightfully, at least if the Bible is to be believed, belongs to the Jews. Any attempt at internationalizing the conflict has therefore been strenuously resisted.

But now the Israeli prime minister's office is talking openly about getting the Arab world more directly involved, not only in its usual role as a mediator with the Palestinians, nor even in simply securing the borders against smuggling, but also in policing the territories. Israel hopes that Egypt, in particular, is as concerned as Tel Aviv by the emergence of a Hamastan on its borders, and may be enticed to use the same repressive policies against Gaza's Islamists as it does against its own.

Similarly, Olmert's chief political rival, Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud, has mentioned not only Egyptian involvement in Gaza but even a Jordanian military presence in the West Bank. The "moderate" Arab regimes, as Washington likes to call them, are being seen as the key to developing new ideas about Palestinian "autonomy" and regional "confederation." As long as Israel has a quisling in the West Bank and a beyond-the-pale government in Gaza, it may believe it can corner the Arab world into backing such a "peace plan."

What will it mean in practice? Possibly, as Zvi Barel of Ha'aretz speculates, we will see the emergence of half a dozen Palestinian governments in charge of the ghettoes of Gaza, Ramallah, Jenin, Jericho, and Hebron. Each may be encouraged to compete for patronage and aid from the "moderate" Arab regimes but on condition that Israel and the U.S. are satisfied with these Palestinian governments' performance.

In other words, Israel looks as if it is dusting off yet another blueprint for how to manage the Palestinians and their irritating obsession with sovereignty. Last time, under Oslo, the Palestinians were put in charge of policing the occupation on Israel's behalf. This time, as the Palestinians are sealed into their separate prisons masquerading as a state, Israel may believe that it can find a new jailer for the Palestinians – the Arab world.

Hamas holds the high cards?

I find Scheer almost always interesting and perspective but I really find it difficult to think that Hamas holds the high cards. The present drift towards civil war between Hamas and Fatah is absolutely disastrous for the Palestinians. It may have the virtue of showing that Fatah is willing to be a puppet of Israel and the US in order to gain a few crumbs for the Palestinians but for Scheer to think that Israel or the US would ever allow empowerment of the Palestinians is sheer fantasy.
Fatah is already moving to wipe out Hamas in the West Bank and it would not be surprising if Israel takes military action against Hamas in Gaza. The prospect is for more Palestinian losses. No doubt Hamas will try to strike Israel as well. There was a truce and no suicide bombings within Israel but that may be history as well if Hamas is attacked.


Hamas Holds the High Cards

Posted on Jun 19, 2007

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By Robert Scheer

Forty years ago, I entered the Gaza Strip—soon after Israel had conquered that teeming caldron of humanity after defeating Egypt in the Six-Day War—to report on the Israelis’ bubbling optimism about their young nation’s future. “Come back in 10 years and you won’t recognize the place,” an Israeli general told me, spelling out visions of economic development and a grateful Arab population. Similar predictions were made for the West Bank, which had been administered by Jordan in a somewhat more humane yet still quite oppressive manner.

The optimism of the Israeli occupiers did not seem so far-fetched then, given the hardships the Palestinians had endured under their fellow Arab protectors and throughout the diaspora. The experience of the Palestinians was not unlike that of the Jews: They were needed but scorned for their talents. Both refugee groups were scarred by grinding oppression and each nurtured a thirst for nationhood fortified by a tribally based religiosity that secular leaders often found useful.

That is the story of Hamas, a creation of the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood, a religious and political organization that flourished after Israel humbled Gamal Abdel Nasser, the last great Arab nationalist leader, with its devastating victory over Egypt. The Palestinian movement was then led by puppets of Nasser and was secular in focus. It remained so, after being invigorated by the late Yasser Arafat, who gave the Palestinians their first serious and independent political identification. But as Arafat wasted his credibility in futile jockeying with Israel (mostly while in exile), corruption came to dominate his movement.

By contrast, the religious zealots who later formed the Hamas organization were more focused on spiritual probity and tended far more closely to the needs of their impoverished brethren in Gaza and the West Bank. As with Hezbollah in Lebanon—and that other Iranian-backed Islamist movement, the Shiites who now control Iraq—the religious movements, both Shiite- and Sunni-based, cornered the market on purity of purpose as opposed to rank opportunism. That is precisely why these fiercely anti-Western movements have been able to turn the favorite fig leaf of U.S. neocolonialism, the slogans of democracy and elections, against the United States by winning popular elections.

While the American mass media tend to join the Bush administration in ignoring this unpleasant contradiction, the fact is that the people we brand as the enemy can make a strong claim to having won the election that our President Bush champions. What irony that the United States and the European Union, both of which cut off aid to the Palestinian government in 2006 when Hamas won the election, have now resumed aid to the PLO-dominated government that lost power through the vote.

This contradiction applies even more uncomfortably to Israel, which consistently demeaned the Palestinian movement when it was run by secularists. Israel only very reluctantly, and in the most limited of ways, was willing to risk the false security of occupied land for the possibility of peace. Israeli leaders of all parties drew the line at granting the Palestinians a real state with contiguous land and a significant presence in Jerusalem as it existed before the Six-Day War. Rarely mentioned is that some elements in the Israeli government initially supported the rise of Hamas as a desired alternative to the PLO and came too late to the recognition that Arafat, for all of his very serious failings, was their best alternative.

Now it is also too late for the remnants of the PLO to once again unilaterally assert a claim to lead the Palestinians. Sure, the United States, Israel and the EU can throw aid and tax dollars their way, but if the price is that the PLO assist in crushing Hamas, or even sit idly by while Israeli troops reoccupy Gaza, there will be chaos. The only hope is for the funders, including Israel (which has withheld the tax monies paid by the Palestinians from them), to recognize that the Palestinian people need to make their own history. At this point, that must include Hamas, which it is hoped will be moved, as was the PLO, to accept Israel’s right to exist within borders that permit a viable Palestinian state.

That lesson of empowerment must also be applied throughout the region, from Lebanon to Iraq and Iran, where election results subvert the ambitions of the foreigners. Elections are great if they give the conquerors the results they want, but it is in the nature of things that people will not use the ballot to legitimize their oppression for long. The democracy project, ballyhooed by President Bush, founders on its failure to allow the will of the voters to be heard when they dare vote against U.S. policy.

Engage with Hamas

It is a bit surprising that Yousef a Hamas spokesperson should have an article in the Washington Post. He also has an article in the New York Times. Perhaps some in the US want to work out a deal with Hamas. However the Bush administration and Abbas are leaping ahead with a government that excludes Hamas even though Hamas controls Gaza. Hamas offers to talk with Fatah but Fatah obviously hopes to be able to forge ahead with the arms aid and encouragement of the US, Israel and no doubt most other countries as well. Yousef's plea for unity seems to be a pipe dream at the moment.

Engage With Hamas
We Earned Our Support
By Ahmed Yousef
Washington Post
Wednesday, June 20, 2007; A19

GAZA CITY, Palestine -- The Palestinian National Authority apparently
joins
the list of elected governments targeted or toppled over the past
century by
interventionism: nations that had the courage to take American rhetoric
at
face value and elect whomever they would. No doubt some in Washington
persist in the fiction that the United States is following a "road map"
to
democracy for Palestinians, just as others believe the Iraq war has
been a
sincere exercise in nation-building. Neoconservative strategists have
miscalculated, however, and Hamas is stronger than ever.

For the first time in months, Gaza is secure. This may be a momentary
peace
as Israel prepares an attempt to retake parts of Gaza. Yet neither
blunt
force nor U.S. subterfuge will extinguish Palestinian aspirations for
self-governance, free from outside interference.

Hamas's actions to secure Gaza from the horrific recent violence of the
Palestinian contras have been out of self-defense. The assassinations
of
Hamas officials and supporters, attempts on the life of the elected
prime
minister, and kidnappings and bombings by some in President Mahmoud
Abbas's
paramilitary groups had to stop. The PA has a clear legal right, indeed
an
obligation, to prevent this violence, by force if necessary, and to
protect
the Palestinian people.

It is not Hamas that has "outlawed" the government. (When has an
elected
party with a voting majority ever resorted to banning the government to
get
its way?) The success of the Reform and Change Party is neither a
chimera
nor a momentary lapse in reason on the part of the electorate. Rather,
it is
the result of four decades of hard work in Palestinian society. It
reflects
the trust of the people. Those who collaborate with the occupiers to
void
the electoral process will not succeed. Abbas's "state of emergency"
and his
U.S. and Israeli arms will not prevail in Gaza or quench the thirst for
political freedom in the West Bank.

Some critics raise the red flag of "al-Qaeda" and say that Hamas and
parliament are a stalking horse for Salafi jihadists. I defy them to
demonstrate one instance in which Hamas's military structure has struck
against any force outside the theater of the occupation. The struggle
has
always been against the Israeli agenda of ethnic cleansing and
conquest.
Hamas is a movement of Palestinian liberation and nationalism --
Islamist,
yes, but in the sea of contending faiths that is the homeland, where is
the
sin in loving one's creed?

Likewise, those who demean resistance to the occupation as little more
than
a proxy for Iran, Syria or Hezbollah are ignorant of history. The
long-suffering Palestinians have gratefully accepted assistance from
neighbors both near and far, Arab and Western, Muslim or otherwise.
Slighting the generosity of those who sympathize with the Palestinians
is
hypocritical given America's billions of annual aid dollars for Israel,
money that has only purchased tragedy.

Palestinians want, on their terms, the same thing Western societies
want:
self-determination, modernity, access to markets and their own economic
power, and freedom for civil society to evolve. Those who warn of
"failed
states" and "Hamastan" as a breeding ground for terrorism forget where
blame
for failure belongs -- at the feet of the American administration,
which has
chosen to isolate, rather than deal with, the elected government.

The Bush administration never intended to honor the outcome of fair and
transparent elections in the occupied territories. The embargo,
designed to
punish the electorate for its choice, was the first step toward
crushing new
democratic institutions. The second has been to find collaborators for
the
American agenda and to supply them with advisers, funds and weapons for
their campaign of destabilization. The final step will be to truncate
Gaza
from any proposed Palestinian state and make it a de facto prison for
all
"undesirable" aspects of Palestinian nationalism. This will culminate
in
provocations designed to trigger a military response from Israel, which
will
"justify" a war on Gazans. This would be tragic for all concerned, and
the
international community, especially the Arab League, must not allow
such an
outcome.

What can be salvaged from the wreckage of the multiparty system? Those
who
have dissolved the government and joined with the occupiers are
embraced by
the Bush and Olmert administrations, which have released Palestinian
tax
revenue and taken other steps to shore up the Abbas government's
legitimacy
and proclaim it the future of a Palestine shorn of troublesome Gaza.

Yet it remains that Hamas has a world in common with Fatah and other
parties, and they all share the same goals -- the end of occupation;
the
release of political prisoners; the right of return for all
Palestinians;
and freedom to be a nation equal among nations, secure in its own
borders
and at peace. For more than 60 years, Palestinians have resisted walls
and
checkpoints intended to divide them. Now they must resist the poisonous
inducements to fight one another and resume a unified front against the
occupation.

We urge the Bush administration not to repeat the mistakes that have
become
hallmarks of its actions in the Middle East. Allow the Palestinian
people to
chart their own course, free from the influence of those who seek
little
more than to perpetuate the status quo. The alternative is
unacceptable.

Ahmed Yousef is a senior political adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, who is
contesting his dismissal as prime minister by Mahmoud Abbas.

* * *

Fatah gunmen storm Hamas-controlled bldgs.

The US and Israel are no doubt quite happy with the civil strife. It weakens the Palestinians. Given that Hamas was the elected government of Palestine it is ironic that the promoters of democracy immediately offer support for Abbas' coup. Of course from the beginning the US and Israel has done everything possible to destroy the Hamas government. It seems that the Palestinians are unable to unify. They will end up with a puppet govt. that can push through Israeli interests.


Fatah gunmen storm Hamas-controlled buildings
Last Updated: Saturday, June 16, 2007 | 9:32 AM ET
CBC News
Fatah gunmen moved against politicians and other officials from the rival faction Hamas in the West Bank on Saturday, storming the parliament building in Ramallah.

Some climbed on the roof and erected Fatah and Palestinian flags, while those inside the building grabbed the legislative council's deputy speaker, who is aligned with Hamas.

Militants from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades walk past a picture showing the late Yasser Arafat as they take over the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah on Saturday.
(Muhammed Muheisen/AP) Hassan Kreisheh was taken outside, but escaped unharmed after staff members intervened, witnesses said.

Government employees were told that those with ties to Hamas will not be allowed to return.

The Hamas-controlled city council in the West Bank city of Nablus was also overrun and the Fatah flag raised atop the building.

In Hebron, gunmen stormed Education Ministry offices, fired in the air and demanded that Hamas supporters stop working there.



The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of Fatah, said it plans to take control of all Hamas institutions, in response to the bloody takeover by Hamas of Gaza earlier this week.

On Friday, President Mahmoud Abbas, who is in the West Bank, named former finance minister Salam Fayyad to replace Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas as prime minister, a day after dissolving the three-month-old Hamas-led national unity government.

The move followed five days of intense fighting between the two factions, which gave Hamas control of the entire Gaza Strip.

Hamas, which won parliamentary elections under Haniyeh in January 2006, took control of the presidential compound in Gaza City.

Aides to Abbas said he planned to swear in a new emergency government on Saturday in a move that Hamas said would amount to a coup.


U.S. offers to support new government

The United States strengthened its offer of support for Abbas on Saturday, reportedly telling him that an international aid embargo against the Palestinians would end as soon as he forms a new government without Hamas.

The news comes from unidentified aides to Abbas quoted by the Associated Press. That report said the offer to help lift the embargo was made by Jacob Walles, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, a crowd looted the home of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Saturday, destroying one of the strongest symbols of the Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip, witnesses and Fatah officials said.

The villa in Gaza City had been empty since Arafat left for the West Bank in
2001 shortly after the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising.

Israel confined Arafat to the West Bank until permitting him to fly to France for medical care in late 2004. He died in France several weeks later.

Arafat, Fatah's founder, led the Palestinians for four decades before his death.

With files from the Associated Press Related

Olmert calls for continuing boycott of Palestine govt.

US and others talk about democracy is revealed as hypocritical. The US, Israel, and others have tried their best to destroy the Hamas elected govt. and when Hamas and Fatah patch up their feud the reward is continued choking off of funds. Democratic govts. are OK but they must be starved into submission before they are fit to negotiate with.

Israeli PM calls for Palestinian boycott

Jerusalem, March 18: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today called for the international community to maintain a year-long boycott of the Palestinian government following the formation of the new Unity cabinet.

"We expect the international community not to fall for the new Palestinian Unity government and to continue with the same line it has taken all along, the way of isolating the government which does not accept the quartet principles," Olmert said at the weekly cabinet meeting.

The quartet of Middle East peace mediators -- the US, EU, United Nations and Russia -- froze aid to the Palestinian authority after Hamas, which came to power last year over the Islamists' refusal to renounce violence, recognise Israel, or abide by past peace accords.

The new Palestinian government unites Hamas and the Fatah faction of moderate President Mahmud Abbas.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya presented the new government programme to Parliament yesterday, but Israel says it fails to meet any of the quartet conditions.

"The government platform includes some extremely problematic elements which can't be accepted by Israel or the international community including the right to resist and the use of terror," Olmert said.

Olmert has vowed to maintain contacts with Abbas, but today said that relationship would be further strained by the latter's agreement to share power with Hamas, a group responsible for scores of suicide attacks against Israel.

"The new government and its platform limits our ability to have dialogue with the head of the Palestinian Authority and also limits the spectrum of topics we could discuss in the near future," Olmert added.

Bureau Report

Hamas-Fatah government seeks end to boycott

Given that Israelis used terrorist tactics to gain their own independent state I find it hypocritical that the Israelis refuse to negotiate with Hamas. Surely Hamas and Fatah cannot be expected to renounce violence until a peace settlement is reached not before. The US as usual is not a neutral party but pro-Israel.

March 17, 2007, 1:39PM
Hamas-Fatah gov't seeks end to boycott


By DIAA HADID Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press


GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Palestinians installed a new, more moderate coalition government on Saturday, in hopes of persuading the international community to end its isolation of the Palestinian Authority and lift a year of bruising sanctions.

Israel promptly announced it would not deal with the coalition, because governing partners Hamas and Fatah stopped short of explicitly recognizing the Jewish state or renouncing violence, as the international community has demanded.

But the new alliance, which replaced the militantly anti-Israel government led by the Islamic Hamas, appeared to implicitly recognize Israel by calling for a Palestinian state on lands the Israelis captured in 1967. Norway immediately recognized the new coalition, while other countries and the U.N. signaled flexibility — suggesting money could start flowing again if the coalition keeps anti-Israel activities in check.

The U.S., traditionally a major donor, remained cool to the coalition plan.

"It remains our view that any Palestinian government must renounce violence, recognize Israel and respect previous agreements and obligations between the parties," said Nancy Beck, a State Department spokeswoman. "These are foundation principles upon which any Palestinian state must be based. A Palestinian state will not be born from terror."

The Hamas-Fatah merger, however, is in danger of crumbling quickly over ideological differences and long-standing enmities between the two factions and their legions of gunmen.

Palestinian lawmakers voted overwhelmingly — 83 to 3 — to approve the government, then leapt to their feet in a standing ovation after the result was announced. Forty-one of the legislature's 132 members, most of them members of Hamas, are held in Israeli jails and were unable to vote. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah swore in the new 25-member Cabinet shortly after the parliament vote.

The rise to power of Hamas, a group that has killed dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings, provoked Israel, the West and Russia to impose severe funding restrictions last year in a bid to pressure the militants to recognize the Jewish state, disarm and accept past peace accords.

Mixed messages emerged on Saturday from the political platform that was announced, and from the speeches leaders of the governing factions made to parliament. But, in sum, they reflected a softening of Hamas' stance toward Israel.

Presenting the government's program to parliament, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said the governing alliance would work "first and foremost to establish an independent Palestinian state," with disputed Jerusalem as its capital, on lands Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast War.

He said the Palestinians maintained the right to resist occupation, but would also seek to widen a truce with Israel, now limited to the Gaza Strip.

Abbas, a moderate, focused on conciliatory language, asserting that the Palestinian people "reject violence in all its forms" and seek a comprehensive "peace of freedom and equality" that would be based on negotiations.

Abbas' words underscored the ideological gaps that remain between him and Hamas.

While the alliance did not meet international conditions for acceptance, it pledged to "respect" previous peace deals between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

It also called for peace talks to be conducted by Abbas, and for any future deal to be submitted to a national referendum, suggestion Hamas would not have veto power.

Egypt, a leading regional mediator, urged the international community to stop isolating the Palestinian government. Its foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, called the new coalition a "precious opportunity to resume the peace process."

Israel saw things differently. Government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said Israel would deal with Abbas, but not with the new government unless it recognizes the Jewish state.

"With all the desire we all have to assist the Palestinian people, this new government does not stand for any of the international principles that the international community itself defined," Eisin said.

In several quarters, the reaction was more positive.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere announced that his country would re-establish political and economic relations with the new Palestinian government, saying the coalition was "taking important steps towards complying with international demands."

The U.N.'s Mideast envoy, Alvaro de Soto, and the British Foreign Office both called the alliance a "step in the right direction" and said they would watch to see how the new government would implement its political program.

Even before the coalition was approved, Russia praised it for taking international demands "into account."

The governing alliance was formed after months of stop-and-go negotiations broken up by bursts of deadly factional fighting that claimed more than 140 lives.

Brushing aside international misgivings about Fatah joining forces with Hamas, Abbas has said it was the only way to avert a civil war in the West Bank and Gaza.

Incoming Finance Minister Salam Fayyad warned on Saturday that the new government would not be able to function for long unless the international community lifted its boycott and increased assistance.

"We do face a very serious and crippling financial crisis," he said. "Without the help of the international community, it is not going to be possible for us to sustain our operations."

_____

Associated Press writers Ibrahim Barzak, Sarah El Deeb, Mohammed Daraghmeh and Dalia Nammari contributed to this report from Gaza City and from Ramallah.

Hamas, Fatah, agree on cabinet

Israel and the quartet seem to put the cart before the horse. Rather than negotiating issues they want settled, they put them as preconditions. Israel still has not even returned all the taxes collected for Palestine and aid is still being held back until the govt. recognises Israel and renounces violence. So will Israel renounce violence? I forgot that is just self defence.


Palestinian president accepts unity cabinet list
Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:48 AM EDT



By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday accepted a ministerial list proposed by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, paving the way for a unity government that could end bloody factional violence.

Haniyeh told reporters the government list would be submitted to parliament for a confidence vote on Saturday.

He did not give details of the government's program but said a priority would be to "end the security anarchy" that has claimed more than 90 Palestinian lives since December.

Israel said it would boycott the government, just as it had shunned its Hamas-run predecessor, until it recognizes the Jewish state, renounces violence and accepts past peace deals, as demanded by the Quartet of Middle East mediators.

"We hope that the international community will stand steadfast behind its own principles and refuse to give legitimacy or recognition to this extreme government," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.

An Israeli political source said Israel would maintain direct contact with Abbas to "ensure humanitarian coordination and strengthen moderate elements in the Palestinian Authority."

Palestinians hope the deal will end fighting between Abbas's secular Fatah group and Islamist Hamas, and ease a crippling Western aid embargo of the Palestinian Authority.

Washington has told the Palestinians that the embargo will remain until the Quartet's conditions are met, but there were signs that some European countries want to ease it.

QUEST FOR INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

Haniyeh said the new government enjoyed Arab support, while the European Union had showed "understanding."

"No doubt that the American administration and Israel have a different position but as Palestinians we will do what is required to reinforce national unity, end tensions and lift the siege," he said.

France said the new government heralded a "new page" in relations with the international community, but linked future cooperation to Palestinian efforts to halt violence against Israel and secure the release of a captured Israeli soldier.

In a letter to his new counterpart Ziad Abu Amr, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said that if Corporal Gilad Shalit were freed, it would "create more favorable conditions for reestablishing cooperative relations with the international community and relaunching a dynamic for peace."

Diplomats in Brussels said the EU might funnel funds through the designated finance minister, Salam Fayyad, a Western-backed reformer, as a first step toward restoring direct assistance.

Another possibility being studied is broadening an existing mechanism for delivering purely humanitarian relief to include direct payments to the Palestinian government, they said.

Fayyad, who was finance minister from 2002-2005 when Fatah controlled the government, initiated financial reforms and fought corruption.

Many ordinary Palestinians are looking to the unity cabinet to provide a respite from factional bloodshed.

"We hope that the new government will put an end to this shameful fighting and start paying attention to our bigger goal, the liberation of our land," said Mohammad Salah, 36, a farmer in the town of Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

Ali al-Ayyan, a taxi driver, said: "It's great. But the question is how long such a pact can hold," he said.

Abbas and Haniyeh clinched the cabinet deal on Wednesday when they picked an academic with no security experience for the hotly-contested post of interior minister.

Hani al-Qawasmi, 49, told Reuters on Thursday his priority was to end factional fighting.

The interior minister is supposed to oversee major security services, but in practice they answer either to Fatah or Hamas and have frequently clashed on the streets of Gaza.

(Additional reporting by Mohammed Assadi

US supports up to 10,000 extra troops for Abbas

Is this the same United States that accuses Iran of meddling in Iraq?


U.S. to support up to 10,000 extra Abbas troops By Adam Entous
Sat Feb 3, 5:36 AM ET



JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States will expand assistance to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to include about 8,500 members of his national security forces and possibly 1,000 Fatah fighters based in Jordan, U.S. documents show.


Providing non-lethal equipment and training to units of Abbas's National Security Forces, and possibly the Jordan-based Badr Brigade could increase Washington's role in the power struggle between Abbas's Fatah faction and the governing Hamas movement.

U.S. assistance has largely been limited until now to around 4,000 members of Abbas's presidential guard.

But documents obtained by Reuters on Saturday showed that the U.S. government's $86.4 million security assistance program could cover at least 13,500 troops loyal to Abbas.

The National Security Forces (NSF) is the largest security force under Abbas's control and is viewed by many Palestinians to be the equivalent of an army, though it is poorly trained and equipped compared to the smaller presidential guard.

Under the U.S. security program, $76.4 million will fund "projects to transform and strengthen elements of the Palestinian Authority's security structure, specifically the National Security Forces and Presidential Guard in an effort to improve public order and fight terror in the West Bank and Gaza," the documents said.

"These projects have been developed in coordination with the office of the PA president (Abbas), and the overall plan enjoys the support of the government of Israel," said the documents, marked "sensitive but unclassified."

Another $10 million would fund security improvements at the Karni commercial crossing between Israel and Gaza.

Western officials involved in the program said security service members who participate in the U.S.-funded program will undergo a vetting process to ensure they are qualified and have no ties to militant groups.

Hamas has denounced U.S. security assistance as part of a coup against its government. Hamas gunmen on Thursday attached a truck convey in Gaza that it said was meant to resupply Abbas's presidential guard, triggering a wave of fighting.

U.S. officials say they will only provide training and non-lethal equipment to forces loyal to Abbas. Guns and ammunition are being supplied by key U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt, with Israeli approval, Israeli officials say.

Under the $86.4 million U.S. program, $35.5 million will be used to provide non-lethal equipment, including riot gear and communications equipment, to about 8,500 members of Abbas's National Security Forces.

Another $15 million in U.S. funds would provide at least one NSF unit, estimated to have 668 members, with an initial six months of training to counter "civil disorder," most likely at a facility in Jordan, the documents say.

The funds will be used "in support of NSF deployment throughout the West Bank and Gaza so that the NSF may establish a visible public presence, improve public order and help improve border security," the documents said.

The United States expected other donors to provide extra training, the documents said, but gave no further details.

Palestinian officials estimate that the National Security Forces have as many as 40,000 members. Western diplomats say the number of active members is closer to 20,000.

BADR BRIGADE

The $86.4 million also includes $25.9 million to provide non-lethal equipment to Abbas's elite presidential guard, which is expected to grow to 4,700 members with U.S. help near-term. Palestinian officials say the force could eventually top 10,000.

The documents said up to $8 million of these funds may be used to provide equipment to the Badr Brigade, a Fatah-dominated force, "in the event of a deployment in Gaza." Badr would fall under the presidential guard's operational command.

The United States and Israel have backed a proposal by Abbas to let about 1,000 members of the Badr Brigade, into the Palestinian territories, though no date has been set.

Diplomats say Abbas's military build-up was meant to counter strides by Hamas in smuggling more powerful weapons into Gaza for its fast-growing "Executive Force" and armed wing.

Some analysts have warned that fighting between Hamas and Fatah could turn into a proxy war, with the United States supporting Abbas and Iran backing Hamas.