Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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civil war in gaza?
ok so first off this is long.
for some reason the ongoing debacle involving israel and its occupation of palestine (i know, i know: polemic in the first clause) has been shoved off the media screen of late. over the past few days, it seems that street fighting has broken out and intensified between supporters of hamas and fateh in gaza.
here is a new york times article concerning what is going on in real time:
Quote:
Palestinian Fight for Power Escalates
By STEVEN ERLANGER and ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: June 13, 2007
JERUSALEM, June 12 ? Gunmen of rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah sharply escalated their fight for supremacy on Tuesday, with Hamas taking over much of the northern Gaza Strip in what is beginning to look increasingly like a civil war.
Hamas fighters in Nusairat, in the Gaza Strip, defended a national security headquarters they had seized from Fatah Tuesday.
Five days of revenge attacks on individuals ? including executions, kneecappings and even tossing handcuffed prisoners off tall apartment towers ? on Tuesday turned into something larger and more organized: attacks on symbols of power and the deployment of military units. About 25 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 wounded, Palestinian medics said.
In one Hamas attack on a Fatah security headquarters in northern Gaza near Jabaliya Camp, at least 21 Palestinians were reported killed and another 60 wounded, said Moaweya Hassanein of the Palestinian Health Ministry.
After a senior Fatah leader in northern Gaza, Jamal Abu al-Jediyan, was killed Monday, Fatah?s elite Presidential Guards, who are being trained by the United States and its allies, fired rocket-propelled grenades at the house of Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, of Hamas, in the Shati refugee camp near Gaza City.
An hour later, Hamas?s military wing fired four mortar shells at the presidential office compound of Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, who is in the West Bank, a Fatah spokesman, Tawfiq Abu Khoussa, said in a telephone interview.
?Hamas is seeking a military coup against the Palestinian Authority,? he said.
Hamas made a similar accusation against Fatah. Hamas, which has an Islamist ideology, demanded that security forces loyal to Fatah, the more nationalist and secular movement, abandon their positions in northern and central Gaza.
Fatah?s leaders said Tuesday night that they would suspend participation in the unity government with Hamas, which began in March, until the fighting ends.
That agreement to govern jointly, negotiated under Saudi auspices, put Fatah ministers into a Hamas-led government in an effort to secure renewed international aid and recognition and to stop what was already serious fighting between the two factions.
But the new government has failed to achieve either goal, and it appeared to many in Gaza that the gunmen were not listening to their political leaders. Mr. Abbas is under increasing pressure to abandon the unity government he championed and to try once again to order new elections, which Hamas has said it will oppose by any means.
The head of the Egyptian mediation team, Lt. Col. Burhan Hamad, said neither side responded to his call on Tuesday to hold truce talks. "It seems they don't want to come," said Colonel Hamad, who has brokered several brief cease-fires between the two. "We must make them ashamed of themselves. They have killed all hope. They have killed the future."
He said neither side had the weaponry required to produce "a decisive victory."
Talal Okal, a Gazan political scientist, described what could be coming. "Tonight, we may find ourselves at the beginning of a civil war," he said. "If Abbas decides to move his security forces onto the attack, and not to only defend, we'll find ourselves in a much wider cycle."
Fatah forces were ordered Tuesday evening to defend their positions and counter "a coup against the president and against the Palestinian Authority and national unity government."
The streets of Gazan cities were once again empty of pedestrians and cars. People ventured out to buy food, but only to the next building, and parents kept children out of school.
At Shifa Hospital in Gaza, which Hamas gunmen patrolled, bodies of four Hamas fighters lay on the floor of the emergency room, including Muhammad al-Mqeir, 25. His closest friend called him a martyr, even though he was killed by another Palestinian, from Fatah. "They are not Palestinians, they are lost people," the friend said of Fatah. Doctors said that the emergency room was overloaded and that the hospital was running short of blood.
After warning Fatah, Hamas attacked a Fatah-affiliated security headquarters in Gaza City, and declared northern Gaza "a closed military zone."
An estimated 200 Hamas fighters surrounded Fatah security headquarters there, firing mortar shells and grenades at the compound, where some 500 security officers were positioned. The headquarters fell to Hamas. Hamas gunmen also exchanged fire with Fatah forces at the southern security headquarters in the town of Khan Yunis. There, the two sides fought a gun battle near a hospital. Fifteen children attending a kindergarten in the line of fire were rushed into the hospital, which is financed largely by European donations.
Angering Hamas, Fatah militants abducted and killed the nephew of Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the Hamas leader assassinated by Israel in April 2004.
Hamas gunmen attacked the home of a Fatah security official with mortars and grenades, killing his 14-year-old son and three women inside, security officials said. Other Fatah gunmen stormed the house of a Hamas lawmaker and burned it down.
Fatah forces also attacked the headquarters, in Gaza, of Hamas?s television station, Al Aksa TV, and began to broadcast Fatah songs, but Hamas said later that it had repelled the attack.
In the West Bank, where Fatah is stronger and the Israeli occupation forces keep Hamas fighters underground, the Fatah Presidential Guards took over the Ramallah offices of Al Aksa TV and confiscated equipment.
Also in the West Bank, Fatah men kidnapped a deputy minister from Hamas, one of the few Hamas cabinet members and legislators not already in Israeli military jails, part of Israel's effort to keep pressure on Hamas.
Since Monday morning, at least 43 Palestinians have died in the renewed fighting. More than 50 had died in the previous outburst last month that ended in a brief cease-fire mediated by the Egyptians.
A Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, accused Fatah, in alliance with Israel and the United States, of trying to destroy Hamas and overturn the results of elections held in January 2006, in which Hamas won a legislative majority.
"They crossed all the red lines," he said of Fatah after the second straight day that Prime Minister Haniya's house was fired upon.
Sami Abu Zuhri, another Hamas spokesman, said: "Those we sit with from Fatah have no control on the ground. These groups have relations with the U.S. administration and Israel." Hamas says it believes that Mr. Abbas's aide, Muhammad Dahlan, is controlling the Fatah forces, and Mr. Zuhri said, "It's an international and regional plan aiming to eliminate Hamas."
Israeli officials are debating whether Fatah can stand up to Hamas in Gaza. They say they have been asked by Washington recently to approve another shipment of armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition to the Presidential Guards. But a senior Israeli official said Israel was worried that the weaponry would just be seized by Hamas, as much of the last shipment was.
"Hamas now has two million bullets intended for Fatah," he said.
Israeli officials are explicit privately about their intention to damage Hamas and its military infrastructure in Gaza and try to give Fatah a boost at the same time. Israel, in retaliation for rocket fire into Israel from Gaza, has been bombing the buildings and facilities of Hamas?s Executive Force, a parallel police force in Gaza, that has not been firing rockets. Israeli officials argue, however, that the Executive Force and the Hamas military wing "share a command headquarters."
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which deals with the 70 percent of Gaza's 1.5 million people who are refugees or their descendants, said its ability to provide needed aid had been severely hampered by the fighting. Three of its 5 food distribution centers and 7 of its 18 health clinics were forced to close Tuesday, said its Gaza director, John Ging.
"The violence is compounding an already dreadful humanitarian situation," he said, with 80 percent of the refugee population already dependent on aid.
Mr. Okal, who is now on the board of trustees of the Fatah-affiliated Azhar University in Gaza, said he would oppose Fatah?s pulling out of elected institutions, but added that he was not optimistic about Gaza. ?We are heading toward a collapse ? of both the political system and society,? he said.
Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza City.
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source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/wo...east/13mideast.
html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
uh oh, you might say.
how did THIS happen?
well, in yesterday's guardian a very interesting article turned up concerning a leaked report written by alvaro de soto, who was until quite recently the un secretary general's representative for the region. the article provides a summary (very cursory) of the report and includes of course the usual "well this wasn't supposed to be leaked" remonstrations....
here's the article:
Quote:
Secret UN report condemns US for Middle East failures
Envoy's damning verdict revealed as violence takes Gaza closer to civil war
Read Alvaro de Soto's end of mission report
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem and Ian Williams in New York
Wednesday June 13, 2007
The Guardian
The highest ranking UN official in Israel has warned that American pressure has "pummelled into submission" the UN's role as an impartial Middle East negotiator in a damning confidential report.
The 53-page "End of Mission Report" by Alvaro de Soto, the UN's Middle East envoy, obtained by the Guardian, presents a devastating account of failed diplomacy and condemns the sweeping boycott of the Palestinian government. It is dated May 5 this year, just before Mr de Soto stepped down.
The revelations from inside the UN come after another day of escalating violence in Gaza, when at least 26 Palestinians were killed after Hamas fighters launched a major assault. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the rival Fatah group, warned he was facing an attempted coup.
Mr de Soto condemns Israel for setting unachievable preconditions for talks and the Palestinians for their violence. Western-led peace negotiations have become largely irrelevant, he says.
Mr de Soto is a Peruvian diplomat who worked for the UN for 25 years in El Salvador, Cyprus and Western Sahara. He says:
· The international boycott of the Palestinians, introduced after Hamas won elections last year, was "at best extremely short-sighted" and had "devastating consequences" for the Palestinian people
· Israel has adopted an "essentially rejectionist" stance towards the Palestinians
· The Quartet of Middle East negotiators - the US, the EU, Russia and the UN - has become a "side-show"
·The Palestinian record of stopping violence against Israel is "patchy at best, reprehensible at worst"
Mr de Soto acknowledges in the report that he is its sole author. It was meant only for senior UN officials, and its wording is far more critical than the public pronouncements of UN diplomats. Last night, Mr de Soto, who is in New York, told the Guardian: "It is a confidential document and not intended for publication."
In January last year, the Quartet called on the newly elected Hamas government to commit to non-violence, recognise Israel and accept previous agreements. When Hamas refused to sign up to the principles, the international community halted direct funding to the Palestinian government and Israel started to freeze the monthly tax revenues that it had agreed to pass to the Palestinians. Several hundred million dollars remain frozen.
Mr de Soto, who had opposed the boycott, said this position "effectively transformed the Quartet from a negotiation-promoting foursome guided by a common document [the road map for peace] into a body that was all-but imposing sanctions on a freely elected government of a people under occupation as well as setting unattainable preconditions for dialogue".
The EU said yesterday that there was an imminent risk of civil war if fighting went on, and UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon urged support for Mr Abbas's efforts "to restore law and order".
In the heaviest day of fighting in Gaza for months, Hamas appeared to make its first concerted effort to seize power in Gaza. There was a wave of co-ordinated attacks, which appeared to overwhelm the larger but less effective Fatah force. "Decisiveness will be in the field," said Islam Shahwan, a spokesman for the Hamas military wing.
Fatah's central committee called an emergency meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank, and said it would suspend the activities of its ministers in the government. Fatah would pull out of the government if the fighting failed to stop, it said.
For the first time in several weeks, fighting spread to the West Bank when Fatah gunmen attacked a Hamas television studio in Ramallah and kidnapped a Hamas deputy cabinet minister from the city.
The day began with a rocket attack on the private house in Gaza of Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister and a Hamas leader. He was in the building but was not hurt. Fighting spread across Gaza City and within hours Hamas fighters issued warnings over loudspeakers calling on all Fatah security forces to pull out of their bases and return home. At about 2pm Hamas gunmen seized control of several small Fatah bases and one large base in northern Gaza, where there were heavy casualties when Hamas fighters fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at the compound.
Several Fatah officers complained that they had received no orders during the day. Mr Abbas tried calling for a truce, and later Fatah ordered its officers to fight back.
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here's a link for de soto's whole report. it is 52 pages long, is written in a quite elegant diplomatic history type manner, and it outlines a really fundamental critique of the way in which the israelis and the bush people bear primary responsibility for the unravelling of the pa in gaza.
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-file...SotoReport.pdf
if i could control things, i would require that folk read the report before participating in the dust-up that it will no doubt provoke..but i cant control such matters. it'd be better if you read it. the central points are noted (but nothing more) in the guardian summary/article.
the central action that seems to have engendered the breakdown of the pa follows directly from the bush administration's idiotic policy toward hamas, the israeli decision to freeze revenues that would otherwise have flowed into the pa in order to allow it to actually function. de soto's central position is that there was along the way every reason to believe that had hamas been accepted as the legitimate, elected governing party and had it been allowed to actually operate a viable apparatus that could fulfill the basic functions of a state in gaza, that hamas would have continued to moderate its positions.
but this did not happen.
the ongoing israeli occupation, the continued expansion of israeli settlements, the brutality of the seige of gaza, the idiotic policies of the bush administration (which are characterized in the report as "cowering" before the israelis whom they do not want to "offend" or even fucking challenge, the "pandering" to pro-israeli audiences in the united states, on and on and on...), the choking off of resources that should be available to to pa in order to address not only the question of political coherence, but more pressing the HUGE humanitarian crisis that the israeli seige of gaza has brought about...all this simply adds to the self-confirming cycle of violence and response...all of this simply adds to the inability of any palestinian authority to do anything about violence directed against israel--which is in turn used as an excuse to continue the seige of gaza, the expansion of settlements on and on.
on page 21 of de soto's report there is a quote from an american envoy, repeated twice at a meeting in march 2006, which i think sums up the bush administration's attitude: "i like this violence," he said, because "it means that other palestinians are resisting hamas."
but of course the american had decided up front, via their amazingly stupid "axis of evil" way of thinking, that hamas was in fact "the bad guy" and that "logic" should dictate intrasigence relative to hamas--and so when the opportunity arose to encourage a moderation of hamas via actions that would enable it to functionally govern, the americans and israelis put the kaibosh on all that....and so the present conflict--the present civil war (in potentia) has to be blamed these actions.
but read the report.
what do you think?
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
Last edited by roachboy; 06-13-2007 at 06:18 AM..
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