All local and regional parties — Palestinian, Arab and Israeli — as well as the international community, primarily the European Union and the United States, share responsibility for the calamitous situation in Gaza where the bloodletting seems to know no end.
What adds to the agony of this small strip of land on the Eastern Mediterranean, only 500 square kilometres in size and inhabited by over 1.4 million Palestinians, most of whom came from what is now Israel, is the fact that it is one of the most overpopulated regions in the world. More than 60 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line. Unemployment is unbelievably high (about 70 per cent), much-needed financial assistance is denied by the international boycott imposed by Europe and the US, and, to boot, Israel is withholding desperately needed Palestinian tax-revenues now totalling some $800 million — all because the Palestinians chose in an internationally supervised election an Islamist group, Hamas, which out of desperation has lately joined Fateh in a coalition government, to no avail.
(Ironically, in the early 1980s, Israel supported Hamas in its infancy because it was seen as a potential rival to Yasser Arafat.)
In brief, the strip has been described as an “open-air prison” because its only exit is on the Egyptian-Palestinian border where Israel holds the key, much like with the other, northern, exit to Israel, deciding who can pass through.
Israel has reneged on earlier commitments to have a direct, elevated link between Gaza and the West Bank, or open the Gaza airport and seaport.
The ongoing power struggle between Hamas and Fateh, the traditional party that led the Palestinians since the mid-1960s, has underlined the weakness of the leaders of the two main factions — President Mahmoud Abbas of Fateh and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. Neither apparently could control his supporters or the fringe armed militias to enable the Palestine Authority to maintain law and order, especially in the Gaza Strip where Hamas seems to have the upper hand.
The members of the Quartet — United Nations, United States, European Union and Russia — have erred in shunning the Palestinian unity government or its Hamas members, especially the United States which took the ill-considered step of financing Palestinian troops loyal to Abbas at training camps in Egypt. This shortsighted American plan only added oil to the fire raging between Hamas and Fateh and marred Abbas’ image for his close relationship with the despised Bush administration.
There is no doubt that this step has further divided the Palestinians, many uneasy with the refusal of Hamas to be more accommodating. The Hamas-Fateh rivalry that followed the January elections has to date cost the lives of nearly 50 Palestinians and this may, in part, explain the surprising silence in the West Bank where the two factions were awaiting the outcome of the bloody conflict.
Had all outside parties agreed to deal with the Palestinian unity government, as urged by the Arab League, the situation in the region would have been vastly different and certainly quieter than at present.
The conflict in northern Lebanon is only symptomatic of how some fringe Islamist groups that are not linked to the Palestinian factions can take advantage of the turmoil in the region to serve their hidden agendas.
Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian legislator and onetime Palestinian Cabinet minister, aptly described at the Palestine Centre here earlier this month the situation in the Palestinian areas as nowadays passing through what she called “the terrible Ds or the dreadful Ds”. She explained: “We see in Palestine a process of de-development, deconstruction. We see devastation, deprivation and, of course, leading to the attitudes or the moods of despondency and despair.”
Meanwhile, Israel once again is acting like a bull in a china shop. Rather than march forthwith towards the Arab Peace Initiative, which granted Israel a peace agreement in return for its withdrawal to the 1967 armistice lines, the Jewish state chose to take sides in the Hamas-Fateh conflict, as when it allowed the pro-Abbas recruits trained in Egypt to enter the Gaza Strip — a step that inflamed many there and cast aspersion on the Fateh leadership.
But Israel’s more serious action has been its threats to target Hamas leader Khalid Mishaal, who lives in Damascus, and Haniyeh. It also raised the possibility of a ground offensive in retaliation for the firing of rockets on Israel where one woman was killed. On the other hand, Israeli air strikes this week have so far killed at least 34 Palestinians, an action that received little international condemnation.
This Israeli escalation serves another Israeli objective, namely, avoiding any commitment to pursue the Arab peace effort. In turn, the Arab governments have yet to launch an effective media campaign to expose these Israeli wrongdoings.
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