Saner, cooler heads must come to the fore if the Palestinian unrest is not to become something much worse. The situation in Palestine could easily escalate in the wake of Mahmoud Abbas’ call for early elections. Last week he only suggested elections; what followed was the killing of the three young children of a Fatah security official, the subsequent assassination of a Hamas-affiliated judge and an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Haniyeh. Following Abbas’ official announcement on Saturday that there would be a presidential and parliamentary poll, one of his guards was killed, deadly Palestinian street battles between Fatah and Hamas loyalists erupted and tensions reached their highest point in years.
Despite the convulsions of the recent violence, the situation cannot be called a civil war, a term some officials avoid using for Iraq. Is the world willing to sit and wait for Palestine to become Iraq II? Are the Palestinians willing to go that far? Fortunately, both Hamas and Fatah leaders stress that it is in neither faction’s interest — nor in the interests of the Palestinian people — for more interfactional violence which will only divide them and make them even weaker than they already are.
Based on such agreement, the Palestinians should be capable of weathering this current crisis. To do so, however, they must understand where the real problems lie. It is easy to forget that though conditions have dramatically deteriorated of late, their problems did not begin with the election of Hamas. Israel’s occupation is four decades old and no Palestinian leader or faction has ever been able to extract from Israel a promise of real statehood in all the occupied territories. Israel, the US and the EU can criticize Hamas all they want, and claim Hamas is the impediment to a peace settlement, but the truth is that Hamas is not the roadblock. Not Yasser Arafat, not Mahmoud Abbas, not Hamas and not one leader in the world has been able to extract from the Israelis the right to create an independent state within recognized borders.
Similarly, few Palestinians doubt that Israel will continue to entrench itself in the occupation — just as it did during the supposed peacemaking years of Oslo, when the number of Jewish settlers doubled in the occupied territories — even if Hamas is ousted. In other words, when there is talk of Palestinian problems, the finger pointing should be at Israel before anyone else.
Certainly the Palestinian people have been viciously punished for making their democratic choice early this year and elected a Hamas government that Israel and the Western powers disapprove of. An economic blockade has starved the Palestinians of income. Israeli military strikes have damaged Gaza’s vital infrastructure, including the supply of electricity and water, as well as randomly killing its inhabitants and tearing apart thousands of families. This is the very punishment that the Palestinian leadership wants stopped. Hamas surely wants the same. The goals are one; the means are not, but that should never justify violence as a method of attaining what is desired.
