RAMALLAH, 16 June 2007 — A day after sacking Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s unity government, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday named technocrat Salam Fayyad to head a new government. Hamas rejected Abbas’ order as a Fatah coup and said Haniyeh stays Palestinian prime minister. The standoff risked formalizing a division of Palestine: the West Bank ruled by Fatah and the Gaza Strip by Hamas.
The moderate government Abbas plans to appoint will have no say in Gaza, but stands a stronger chance than the Hamas-Fatah coalition it replaces of restoring foreign aid to the West Bank.
Hamas announced an amnesty to its Fatah rivals, on its first full day of ruling Gaza, but did not stop crowds from looting Fatah strongholds, and two Fatah supporters were killed in revenge attacks. One of the slain men was thrown off a rooftop, in what Hamas said was family revenge, and looters stripped bare the home of Hamas’ nemesis, former Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan, down to the flower pots.
At Abbas’ captured seaside office in Gaza City, a gunman sat down at the Fatah leader’s desk, picked up the phone and pretended to be calling US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “Hello, Rice?” the gunman said. “Here we are in Abu Mazen’s office. Say hello to Abu Mazen for me.”
The Muntada, Abbas’ presidential compound, was the final bastion to fall on Thursday. Inside, the walls were charred by smoke and pockmarked by bullet holes, the floors littered with papers and spent rounds.
Witnesses reported seeing Hamas fighters remove computers, documents and guns. They also helped themselves to Fatah vehicles. Those they could not get started were towed away, draped in the green standard of Hamas.
The small seafront center of bungalows where Palestinian Authority officials used to come to relax was also cleaned out. Windows, doors, toilets, furniture, faucets, even the light bulbs were gone.
Ninety-seven Palestinians, most of them Fatah fighters fleeing the advance of their Hamas rivals, sailed into the Egyptian port of El Arish aboard a fishing boat, Egyptian police said.
The boat contained members of the Preventive Security Force, the civilian police force, the border guard, the Fatah-run intelligence service and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.
They arrived in El Arish, about 50 km southwest of the Gaza border, around dawn, bringing 57 automatic rifles and 20 RPG launchers. Egyptian police handed the men to the armed forces, who took them to a military base. On Thursday night about 20 Palestinian civilians also managed to enter Egypt through the main Rafah crossing point. On Thursday evening 99 Palestinian border guards entered Egypt at the same point, abandoning their positions in Gaza.
Saudi Arabia, which brokered a unity government deal between Fatah and Hamas in February, reproached both sides for breaking their commitments and pressed them to return to the agreement. In a speech to an Arab League meeting in Cairo, Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said the latest fighting had served the interests of Israel. “Today the Palestinians have come close to putting the last nail in the coffin of the Palestinian cause themselves,” he told other Arab foreign ministers in closed session in Cairo. “The Palestinian leaderships must now issue an order, not just to stop the fighting immediately but also to outlaw fighting, and to return to dialogue,” he added.
Prince Saud added: “It would be best for our Palestinian brothers to return to their commitment to the Makkah agreement and work to carry it out.”
The Makkah agreement set the framework for the national unity government that Abbas dismissed Thursday.
Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal blamed the international community for the current crisis. Speaking to Al-Jazeera television, Meshaal said: “We attribute to the international community, which has kept silent about the crimes of Israel, the primary responsibility for our internal crisis, although we acknowledge that we ourselves also have part of the responsibility.”
Washington, Europe and Israel prepared to throw open the taps on financial aid to Abbas that was cut off a year ago when Hamas used its popularity in impoverished Gaza to defeat Abbas’ Fatah in a parliamentary election.
US Secretary of State Rice, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and EU officials held an hour-long teleconference. “There was a clear message of support to President Abbas especially in this difficult time of forming an emergency government,” an EU spokeswoman said in Brussels.
The White House said the United States will not turn its back on Palestinians. “No one wants to abandon the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people in the Gaza Strip to the mercies of a terrorist organization,” spokesman Scott Stanzel said.
— Additional input from agencies
