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Within the context of a U.S.-Israeli
determined campaign to remove the elected Islamic Resistance
Movement from power, the best of the Palestinian mainstream anti-occupation
activists of Fatah and Hamas are being polarized into a deadlocked
divide that is already threatening an historic national unity
with a looming civil war as a result of either risky brinkmanship
tactics or what Hamas says a coup d'etat.
Either way the external campaign has succeeded in mobilizing
an array of a minority of local would-be losers of any change
to the pre-Hamas status quo to exacerbate inter-Palestinian disputes
into a crisis by launching their own campaign to bring about
the downfall of Hamas, using brinkmanship tactics that could
hardly be distinguished from a coup d'etat.
Aside from the external influences but by necessity linked to
them, this factor is the most fraught with the ingredients of
a civil war among other internal ideological, historical and
strategic factors that have contributed to the evolving crisis.
So far President Mahmoud Abbas could not distinctly dissociate
from this minority and its risky brinkmanship tactics.
He however on Wednesday, during a joint press conference in the
West Bank with the visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, declared a very important point of departure with the adventurer
minority that was gearing the political divide up towards a civil
war by ruling out from the start the only credible breakthrough
of a national unity government with Hamas.
A national unity government is his "preferable best choice,"
declared Abbas.
However he again blurred the distinction between his agenda and
theirs when he announced that "all the options are open
except only the civil war," leaving a wide space of manoeuvring
for the reckless minority to continue fishing in the Palestinian
troubled water.
This minority represents marginal cross-faction down to earth
interests that had mushroomed to the verge of corruption; it
identifies with the goals of the external anti-Hamas campaign
and rules out any dialogue with Hamas even if that leads to infighting
until the ruling Islamic group strictly, publicly and unconditionally
commit to the U.S.-adopted Israeli conditions; it postures as
a self-proclaimed "peaceniks" using the slogan of peace
as a per se justification for its dangerous agenda.
Its role is oversized by preying on the Hamas-Fatah divide and
the presidency-premiership conflicting agendas to conceal both
its own agenda and underlying interests. This role is public
knowledge to the rank and file of both Fatah and Hamas as well
as for Palestinian public in general. It is also public knowledge
to foreign "donors" and backers who nonetheless make
use of this minority until they settle things with the key players
in the tragic Palestinian drama.
However a lot of its image depends on its posturing as the power
base and the mouthpiece of President Abbas; that's why his point
of departure with it on Wednesday was very important although
it was shortcoming.
Those self-proclaimed "peaceniks" rule out any middle
ground agreement with Hamas, but advocate consistent contacts
with the occupying power even without agreement; they are big
mouths in urging Hamas to commit to PLO's signed accords with
Israel, but keep mum on Israel's non-commitment to the same accords.
Citing an Israeli argument, they are inciting the PLO to take
on the Islamic movement, allegedly to eliminate a major obstacle
to kicking off the peace process.
All the alternative proposals for a breakthrough out of the crisis
emanated from this minority and all of them serve the same goal:
Removing Hamas from power.
First a referendum was proposed on the "prisoners' document,"
which was drafted by well-meaning leading detainees in the Israeli
jails. Then proposals for holding legislative and not presidential
elections were floated, to be followed by proposing a government
of either technocrats or independents.
Worse still, this minority has been recently calling publicly
and irresponsibly on President Abbas to declare a state of emergency,
dissolve the Hamas-led government and form an emergency cabinet;
the proposal boils down to a call for an outright presidential
coup d'etat.
While practically this is possible in the West Bank where the
Palestinian security forces could easily gain control in the
Israeli-reoccupied territory, under the watching eyes of the
reoccupying army, it is impossible without a civil war in the
Gaza Strip, the major power base of Hamas where the Hamas-led
government has fielded its own security executive forces.
All the foregoing proposed alternatives are doomed and would
only exacerbate the crisis.
All of them go against the national consensus on national unity
as well as the "prisoners' document," which promotes
national unity, calls for a national unity government and incorporating
Hamas and Islamic Jihad into PLO, and reforming the security
forces and banning security officers from political activity.
While giving it a lip service, the minority of the civil war
provocateurs are undermining the only credible alternative of
the unity government by their brinkmanship tactics.
The choice they are incessantly and insistently throwing into
Abbas' face is not a breakthrough but only a recipe for what
he has dreaded all throughout his leading career and did his
best especially recently to avoid: Sack the Hamas-led government,
dismantle its infrastructure and risk civil war or do nothing
and watch the current crisis snowballing to the abyss.
In a thinly-concealed threat that questioned Abbas' qualifications,
a Fatah leader said: "All the doors have been shut in his
(Abbas') faceI believe he has one last chance to prove he is
qualified to lead the Palestinian people or it will be his political
end."
Skilfully and opportunistically exploiting the plight of about
16 hundred thousand unpaid public employees, they exploited a
general strike and escalated it into an almost armed civil disobedience,
inviting the ruling Hamas to respond in kind and ignite what
could be the first salvos in the dreaded civil war, which claimed
more than 12 lives last week.
The smell of the taboo bloodletting did not deter the provocateurs
to desist from incitement against Hamas and used the let blood
as a new war cry against it.
The general strike is legitimate and has legitimate goals were
it not open-ended, exploited for political ends, enforced on
the populace and embroiled the security personnel in provocative
and threatening armed protests, some of which torched the headquarters
of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and the premises
of the premiership, in a symbolic gesture indicating a determination
to burn Hamas out of power by force if needed.
Abbas in a televised appeal for calm ordered the security personnel
protesters out of the streets and back to their barracks, indicating
publicly that he who had campaigned against the militarization
of the uprising against the Israeli occupation could not tolerate
any militarization of protests against en elected Palestinian
government that is besieged by Israel.
However Abbas has contributed to the crisis by not firmly distancing
himself from the civil war provocateurs and by encouraging them
to float their coup d'etat proposals, first by adopting their
referendum idea, then by not ruling out publicly their proposed
state of emergency measures. Bypassing Hamas in his international
relations also sent the wrong message that he indirectly subscribed
to the anti-Hamas campaign and allied himself with the provocateurs'
agenda, which he has yet to confirm.
True Abbas wants Hamas either out of power or incorporated in
the PLO strategy, but even Hamas has publicly acknowledged that
he never resorted to force to do so. Even before Hamas assumed
power Abbas for two years has fended off Israeli-U.S. pressures
to forcefully disarm Hamas and successfully opted for dialogue
and diplomatic pressure to clinch from Hamas a truce and a pledge
to join the Palestinian Authority political process.
With the self-proclaimed friends like his Abbas needs no enemies;
and for sure the Israeli occupying power is watching joyfully
on the sidelines while preoccupied undisturbed with its colonial
expansionist policies, leaving to Palestinian mouthpieces to
promote its message without even paying for the translation from
Hebrew into Arabic.
The so-called friends are making Abbas' mission more critical
and uncomfortable and weakening his chances both to defuse the
inter-Palestinian divide and to arrange his domestic cards in
a way conducive to meeting international conditions to jump-start
a moribund peace process.
If Hamas opts not to be dragged into military confrontation,
removing it from power would entail two alternatives, pushing
it back to resistance and bringing back an internally corrupt
and politically deadlocked status quo, the main two factors that
brought Hamas to power in the first place in a popular yearning
for changing the status quo. But nothing so far indicates Hamas
will resort to this option and everything indicates it will honor
its public pledge that it will defend the people's democratic
choice which carried it to power, and this is exactly the prescription
to civil war.
One could not but wonder whether the real Israeli-U.S.-backed
provocateurs' aim is to bring about the downfall of both Abbas
and Hamas in order to maintain and sustain a pre-Hamas comfortable
status quo, where their interests and privileges are preserved
and the interests of their backers are ideally served.
Abbas -- a founding father of the PLO alongside late Yasser Arafat
has been a veteran man of dialogue, peaceful negotiations with
the Israelis even at the high days of armed struggle, historically
opposed the militarisation of the national struggle, always believed
that diplomacy would in the end prevail to translate the UN legitimacy
into national dividends on the ground, and accordingly has always
defended the Palestinian international assets to offset the overpowering
Israeli military superiority.
For how long can Abbas afford to coexist with the current status
quo, hold on to a middle ground between Palestinians and Israelis,
war and peace, moribund peace process and truce-bound armed struggle,
and internally between dialogue and infighting, factional polarization
and national unity, restive population under occupation and non-delivering
political elite, pro and anti-dialogue wings inside his own former
ruling movement, Fatah,?
It won't take too long to know the answer!
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait,
Jordan, UAE and Palestine. He is based in Ramallah, West Bank
of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
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