Inside the Hamas revolution

By Ed O’Loughlin
EYEWITNESS: Last week Gaza’s streets became a frontline in the Fatah-Hamas feud. But what did trigger the fighting … and will it spread to the West Bank?

HE WASN'T the most senior Fatah gunman in the Gaza Strip, but by the time the end came Samir el Madhoun was certainly the most notorious. The 32 year-old Al Aqsa Brigades commander had played a leading role in months of bloody feuding with the rival Hamas movement - he even boasted on the radio of having murdered several Hamas leaders. Then a week ago the feud flared into open warfare. By Wednesday of last week el Madhoun was, with what remained of Fatah's crumbling forces, holed up around the presidential compound in Gaza City, trapped between the sea and surrounding Hamas fighters.

"What are we, chickens?" he shouted, when informed by an aide that Hamas had given Fatah until 4pm to surrender. "We'll give Hamas until three o'clock to surrender!" Outside on the surrounding streets the dwindling band of Fatah defenders, masked and out of uniform, found cover behind street corners and sandbagged positions, darting out to fire ragged unaimed bursts towards distant Hamas positions in the Islamic University.

Biding their time until the ultimatum expired, the Hamas forces held fire with their mortars and rocket propelled grenades. But the occasional snap of single shots betrayed the presence of Hamas snipers on surrounding tall buildings.

El Madhoun seemed tense and angry, cradling a Kalashnikov and an M16 in either hand. The commandeered apartment was crowded with heavily armed but nervous followers, who ran to the door when gunfire erupted in the street outside. Still, el Madhoun said his men would fight to the finish if Hamas dared to try and storm the compound.

"They have been attacking us for a while, not only this time, with RPG7s and mortars, but they are only testing us," he said dismissively.

"There's been no attempt to invade."

A day later, while a handful of Fatah fighters were still holding out in the presidential compound, al Madhoun was stopped at a Hamas roadblock while trying to escape to Egypt. His captors shot him six times in the chest and dragged his naked corpse through the streets, the most visible trophy of a long-sought vengeance. Last week's short but brutal civil war in Gaza had many causes, but not least among them was the bitter personal feud between local Hamas leaders and Fatah's Gaza strongman, Mohammed Dahlan.

This dates back to the mid-1990s when the late Yasser Arafat, then chairman of the newly created Palestinian Authority, responded to a wave of Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel by ordering his security forces to round up hundreds of leaders of the Islamic fundamentalist movement.

In Gaza the task fell to the Preventive Security Force led by Mohammed Dahlan, who went about his job with what Hamas felt was excessive zeal.

To humiliate his devout Muslim captives Dahlan forcibly shaved their beards and many - including several who later became ministers - say they were tortured in Dahlan's cells. Tensions rose again last year after Hamas won a large parliamentary majority in free and fair PA elections and with it - on paper at least- the right to control the PA's Fatah-dominated security forces.

But Fatah leader and PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas sought, under pressure from his own followers and from the US and Israel, to cling to control of the security forces, a move denounced by Hamas as a deliberate attempt to reverse the election result.

Hundreds of people died in escalating clashes, among them large numbers of innocent civilians, while a steady trickle of Hamas's most hated foes were singled out by "mysterious" gunmen. Then in March this year Abbas appointed Mohammed Dahlan as security coordinator of all PA forces, apparently reneging on a Saudi-sponsored agreement to give Hamas a say in their running.

Dahlan has long been regarded by many Palestinians - not only in Hamas - as close to the US and Israel. In recent months the US with Israeli support began training, funding and equipping a new "presidential guard" force under Dahlan's command with the stated aim of using it to combat Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Yahiya Mousa, a Hamas MP from Dahlan's own hometown of Khan Yunis, said that the American build-up left Hamas with no option but to fight Dahlan or wait to be destroyed itself.

"Even Abu Mazen Mahmoud Abbas himself is under their control," he said. "Dahlan works for the Israeli occupation and with America against Hamas."

But Dahlan, like many other senior Fatah leaders, had become unpopular with ordinary Palestinians by enriching himself during the party's 12 year rule of the PA. Most of these leaders, including Dahlan, quietly left Gaza when feuding intensified weeks ago. Those with no means to escape - like Samir al-Madhoun - were left to face Hamas alone.

As defeat for Fatah turned into rout the Israeli government closed all border crossings - even the Egyptian border post at Rafah cannot in practice function without Israel's agreement. To venture towards the Israeli border, defended by a fence and a lethal free-fire zone, would be tantamount to suicide, so one group of around 100 PA security men fled into Egypt by blasting a hall in a southern border wall.

Another group of Fatah commanders escaped to Egypt from the besieged presidential compound in a fishing boat, despite a blockade enforced by Israeli patrol boats. When Hamas fighters stormed Abbas's beachside compound that night they found it undefended and almost completely deserted.

After only six days of fighting Hamas had secured total victory over its rival in Gaza, redrawn the political map of the region and further mortified US attempts to control the Middle East through "moderate" Arab regimes.

But as with another six day war fought in the Middle East, 40 years ago this month, military triumph has created a host of problems for the victors. Having effectively wiped out Fatah in Gaza, Hamas must now rule alone what amounts to the world's largest prison, a 365 square kilometre enclave crammed with 1.3 million brutalised and desperate inmates.

Not only are the poor and desperate people of Gaza still blockaded by Israel and shunned by the West, but now they are also politically divorced from their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank.

Ensconced safely in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Mahmoud Abbas had prevaricated for days while his fighters in Gaza were mopped up by Hamas. Only on Thursday night, as the last Fatah strongholds were already falling in Gaza City, did Abbas finally order his supposedly elite US-sponsored presidential guard to go into action.

By then most Fatah fighters in Gaza - including the presidential guard - had long since deserted. Many others surrendered after brief resistance. A few fought and died, or were captured and murdered by Hamas militants - around 100 people died in the six days of clashes, including a number of innocent civilians.

Military victory came for Hamas even as its political leader, prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, was offering Fatah a ceasefire - provided Abbas would recognise the elected government's right to control the security forces. But any lingering hope of preserving a semblance of Gaza-West Bank unity crumbled that same night when Abbas - with new and unwonted resolution - announced instead that he was invoking emergency powers to sack Haniyeh and his Hamas ministers and install an unelected government.

Almost simultaneously, the Bush administration and the Israeli government recognised Abbas's new government. They are now proposing to end the crippling financial blockade imposed on the Palestinian Authority - with full British and EU backing - when Hamas refused to recognise Israel's right to exist or to renounce armed struggle.

But the restored funds will only go to the Fatah-controlled West Bank while the people of Gaza, still under siege and abandoned to Hamas, will - if anything - suffer worse than before.

A number of "moderate" Arab states with close ties to the US, including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, have also rallied to Abbas. Germany, currently president of the European Union, committed Europe to "complete support for President Abbas".

Foreign secretary Margaret Beckett accused Hamas of mounting a "coup d'etat" against Abbas - the same charge leveled by Hamas against Abbas and Dahlan.

Once united under direct Israeli military occupation, the 3.6 million residents of that illusory political entity known as the Palestinian Authority are now divided from each other politically as well as militarily, their struggle for freedom from Israeli military occupation gravely weakened.

The already moribund proposed "two state solution" to the conflict - an Israeli state living side by side with an independent Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza - is rapidly devolving into a three state solution, with even less chance of success.

While Hamas gunmen were hunting down and in a few cases killing Fatah commanders in Gaza on Thursday night, Fatah forces in the West Bank had already begun rounding up Hamas sympathizers, burning and looting Hamas offices and killing at least one Hamas leader.

Fatah is still believed to be stronger than Hamas in the West Bank, not least because Israeli forces active there have arrested almost all of Hamas's elected parliamentarians and driven its fighters underground.

Hamas cannot hope to repeat its armed uprising against Fatah in West Bank cities where the IDF operates on a nightly basis. And with Hamas's West Bank MPs in Israeli prisons (and the others all confined to Gaza) the Palestinian parliament cannot convene to overturn Abbas's bid to rule by decree.

The dramatically-changed situation in Gaza is in many respects a major gain for the Israeli security establishment. Israel's policy - if not its official rhetoric - has long sought to divide the West Bank from Gaza and to avoid being forced into a final peace settlement with the Palestinians.

For four years Israel has been able to shrug off international pressure for it to offer Abbas - supposedly accepted as a partner for negotiations under the 2003 road map agreement - meaningful concessions or signs of political progress. Having abandoned Fatah's loyalists in Gaza to their fate he and his now unelected cabinet are now weaker and less credible than ever before.

Set against this, however, is the overnight appearance of a hostile Islamic territory within rocket range of the Israeli city of Ashkelon - a major set-back for beleaguered prime minister Ehud Olmert and a direct challenge to the Israeli Defence Force.

The birth of "Hamastan" also presents Israel with immediate practical difficulties - even if the recent barrage of rockets across the border from Gaza, currently suspended, fails to resume.

Israel's powerful political right is pressing Olmert not only to maintain the current closure of all Gaza's border crossings but also to cut off supplies of food, goods, medicine, electricity and water, all of which come to Gaza through Israeli territory. But this would be interpreted by much of the outside world as an act of genocide or ethnic cleansing, with potentially adverse consequences for Israel.

On the other hand, to maintain even the current level of trade and supplies requires constant daily contact between a host of Israeli and Palestinian entities - meaning that henceforth Israeli officials would have to talk to Hamas appointees, anathema to Israel.

In the day and weeks ahead a new status quo will emerge on the ground as these questions are resolved, but it is likely to prove even more unstable than the one that went before it. Above all, last week's events have finished off the convenient myth that the Palestinian Authority rules in the occupied territories. Now the international community will have to find something else there to pretend to believe in.

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