Blowback in Gaza
Kurt Bassuener March 6th, 2008
Vanity Fair’s April 2008 issue includes a devastating story by investigative journalist David Rose, “The Gaza Bombshell,” which details the efforts of the Bush Administration to overturn the results of the January 2006 Palestinian election. International observers from the European Union judged that election, won by Hamas, to have been “open and well run,” and the process was widely judged the freest in the Arab Middle East. When violence between Fatah and Hamas looked like it could spin out of control roughly a year ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accepted Saudi mediation and formed a unity government with Hamas, which was not the result the US Administration desired. The Vanity Fair article reports that the Bush Administration then pressed Fatah’s main Gaza enforcer, Mohammed Dahlan, to remove Hamas from power by force. The article cites documents apparently from the State Department’s senior officer in Jerusalem, pressing Abbas to sideline Hamas and overturn the election result. The result was the bloodbath in June, in which Hamas apparently pre-empted a coup against their control in Gaza by all but wiping-out Fatah’s institutional presence in Gaza.
The report was in heavy rotation on Al Jazeera’s English service on Tuesday, leading the news updates throughout the day. It was timed perfectly for Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s visit to Egypt in the Bush Administration’s feeble attempt to restart the peace process. In her press conference, Rice did not deny the article’s contention that the US armed Fatah forces for their attempted seizure of power in Gaza. Nor did she openly confirm it. Rather, she said that Iran was arming Hamas, and that the Palestinian Authority should not be outgunned.
This effort to spark a Palestinian civil conflict in Gaza has only worsened the situation on the ground. A report released today by a coalition of humanitarian NGOs, titled “The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion,” documents the human toll in Gaza as a result of an effective blockade by Israel, encouraged by the US, in what the report calls “a collective punishment against ordinary men, women, and children.” This harsh isolation has not brought to a halt the rocket attacks on southern Israel by a variety of militant groups in Hamas-controlled Gaza. And the terror attack committed just this evening in Jerusalem in a yeshiva cafeteria, in which at least 7 students were massacred and 35 wounded according to initial reports, will hardly calm the situation. Celebratory gunfire was heard from the Palestinian territories.
The Bush Administration’s belated peace effort, re-launched in Annapolis a few months ago, is going nowhere fast. Public revelation of the pressure and close coordination with Fatah will do nothing to bolster Mahmoud Abbas’s legitimacy among Palestinians, as he seeks to restart serious negotiations with Israel. The latest terror attack will hardly spur an already less-than-enthusiastic Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to negotiate seriously on settlements, Jerusalem, and the other stumbling blocks to Palestinian statehood.
A whole spectrum of factors were behind Hamas’s victory in the election that the Bush administration pressed on a reluctant Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority. But most important of these was the perception of an unaccountable, ossified, and fundamentally corrupt Palestinian administration. Dissatisfaction with Arafat’s Fatah government was among the main drivers for the second intifada that began eight years ago and brought the peace process to an effective halt. Hamas was perfectly positioned to be the prime beneficiary of the febrile stew of dashed expectations, continued – even accelerated – Israeli settlement activity, and massive graft and abuse of power by Arafat and his Tunis crowd, who were not in the occupied territories for the first intifada in the late 1980s and early 1990s. How the Bush Administration didn’t see this coming beggars belief, but it has proven repeatedly that it sees what it wants to see.
The revelation of the Gaza effort and the overall push to overturn the results of a democratic election – albeit won by an organization accurately deemed terrorist by the US and EU for its support of suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians – further reduces the credibility of the “freedom agenda” in the Middle East, and the Arab world in particular. If one is promoting democracy, one has to accept the results – and develop creative ways to deal with unpleasant realities. Repugnant as it is, Hamas is now a democratically legitimized political force in Palestinian society – ironically thanks to US pressure. And due to subsequent efforts, it is now stronger than ever – and more implacable. But there is no solution to the conflict without engaging them. Crafting a constructive approach would involve some mix of treating Hamas as a duly elected government, easing the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and responding to very real Hamas terrorism by targeting only combatants.
Eric Witte and I concluded in an article we wrote for the European Voice after the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon in the summer of 2006 – a similar American-backed effort to try and break Iranian-backed Hezbollah – that the EU would have to pick up the slack for democracy support in the Mideast, since “any US assistance to beleaguered secular democrats in the Arab world has become politically radioactive. With American credibility in shreds, more responsibility now rests with other democracies.” It’s hard to believe that American credibility could have waned even further since then, but it has.
One hopes that the next occupant of the White House will undertake a stronger effort to achieve a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which continues to poison the discourse throughout the region, and gives authoritarian regimes an easy and emotional diversion for their own unaccountable governance.
