Ben White, The Electronic Intifada, Jun 19, 2007
Major news stories from Palestine/Israel are often accompanied by what
becomes a self-reinforcing "vocabulary," typically generated by Israeli
government ministries or other propaganda outlets, and then picked up
by the Western media. A classic example was the redeployment of Israeli
settlers and military from the Gaza Strip in 2005, which was
successfully packaged as a "disengagement" that pitted "Israeli against
Israeli," in a "painful compromise." This kind of marketing exercise
often works even when there are widely available contradictory reports,
such as how "disengagement" was openly trumpeted by Sharon and his
advisors as a strategy for destroying the peace process.
This phenomenon went into overdrive recently, as dramatic events across
the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but especially in Gaza, presented
the evening news with a problem of how to reduce the conflict in the
internal Palestinian political arena into an easily digestible sound
bite. The solution was, as usual, lazy journalism and an almost total
blackout on Israeli/US collusion in the dark events unfolding. Here
then, is a guide to decoding the Palestinian "civil war," presented as
a series of oft-repeated, yet entirely misleading, clichés.
The Palestinian Authority actually has any authority
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is regularly presented in the mainstream
media as having the authority, independence, and jurisdiction of a
state, equivalent to Israel. Yet despite the misleading name, the PA's
writ does not extend beyond the civic affairs of several dozen isolated
cantons in the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Its law and order
officials cannot travel from one canton to the other without the
permission of the Israeli occupation forces. Look a bit deeper, and in
fact, one discovers that the PA was designed specifically to thwart
genuine Palestinian "authority," to keep Palestinian sovereignty solely
rhetorical, while Israel continues its colonization. The Angry Arab
website quoted Palestinian writer Rashad Abu Shawir as saying of Hamas
and Fatah that they are "fighting over an illusory authority." Read
between the lines even in the mainstream media, and this picture
emerges. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert greeted Abbas' formation of
a new cabinet by saying that "a Palestinian government which is not a
Hamas government is a partner and we will co-operate with it." It is
Israel that decides who represents the Palestinian people, and even
what authority these representatives will enjoy.
The Hamas victory in Gaza risks creating a "two state Palestine"
Quickly after Hamas had completed their victory in Gaza, talk became of
a "two state Palestine." This rhetorical device, apart from simplifying
a more complicated political reality, also conceals the fact that
Israel has already
severed the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, not to mention East
Jerusalem. It even eludes the still bigger picture, that the Gaza Strip
is not even two percent of historic Palestine, and that the Palestinian
people have been fragmented into the refugees (themselves split
geographically, socially, etc.), those living in Israel, and those
under occupation in the post-'67 territories. The West Bank itself has
been fragmented by incessant Israeli colonization into a thousand
territorial shards. Never mind the alleged Hamas/Fatah "two states" --
Israel has been busy implementing its plan for a 100 "state" solution.
The conflict is a fight between the secular moderates of Fatah, and the extremist Islamists of Hamas
This is sometimes trimmed even further to simply become, in the words
of BBC correspondent Paul Reynolds, "the wider struggle between
moderation and extremism in the Arab and Muslim world." Suddenly, the
fact that groups within Fatah have been prominent in the resistance of
the intifada (the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades for example), is forgotten.
Moreover, what is also ignored is the fact that Hamas have openly
stated that their fight is not against Fatah per se,
but against element within Fatah, notably Dahlan and his associates,
who continue to work with the US and Israel. Numerous examples have
born this out, including: an amnesty for Fatah commanders in the Gaza
Strip, calls for dialogue by the Hamas leadership, apparent
pre-operation coordination between Hamas and sympathetic Fatah
officials, and the fact that several high-profile Fatah officials have
remained untouched in Gaza. The struggle, then, is between a
Palestinian leadership eager for approval from Israel and the US, and
those who prioritize resistance.
Hamas' actions in Gaza was a coup
Q. When an elected government is boycotted, its ministers kidnapped,
and its defeated rival armed by hostile powers, what do you call it
when this same government defends itself? A. A coup.
What sounds like a bad joke is in fact exactly how some -- from
newspaper editorials to the UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett --
have chosen to describe what happened in Gaza. By contrast, this report
from Reuters clarifies matters somewhat:
The US government began to lay the ground for President Mahmoud Abbas to dismiss the Hamas-led Palestinian government at least a year before the Islamist group's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip last week.Virginia Tilley, on The Electronic Intifada, described how Abbas' response to the Hamas show of strength was a series of entirely illegal and dubious moves, all of which were greeted with praise and congratulations by Israel, the EU and the US. It seems that in Palestine, as elsewhere in the Middle East, it is not democracy that is required, but subservience.
Western, Israeli and Palestinian official sources said over the weekend that, far from being an ad hoc response to Hamas's offensive, Abbas's declaration of a state of emergency and his replacement of a Hamas prime minister with Western favorite Salam Fayyad marked the culmination of months of backroom deliberations, planning and US prodding ...
... Many Western officials and analysts see the offensive as a pre-emptive strike by Hamas before Washington could build up Fatah. Hamas says it made its move against a US-backed coup.