Hamas & Fatah Tragic Soap: As the World Turns

Posted by johnhouk on Jun 16, 2007
Here are a couple of perspectives on the chaos that is Hamas and Fatah; two Palestinian brothers that have only one thing in common: the hatred of Israel.

JRH
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The Soprano-fication of Gaza

By Michael Rosen
June 15, 2007
TCS Daily

As of this writing, Hamas forces have overtaken the majority of the Gaza Strip, including several strongholds once controlled by Fatah, Hamas's bitter rival. Internecine Palestinian fighting has claimed hundreds of lives and displaced thousands of civilians. The government has been dissolved. The UN is considering sending peacekeeping troops to stanch the bloodletting.


Some observers have presented the struggle as an ideological war between Hamas's Islamism and Fatah's secular nationalism. But a more appropriate analogy is to the gangland mob drama The Sopranos, which concluded its eight-year run earlier this week.


This comparison isn't meant to be fatuous or to make light of a serious and tragic situation. But the similarities are too apt to ignore.


Consider:


(1) A fight for power—and money:


The Hamas-Fatah battle centers on controlling people, guns, and resources. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Fatah—the political arm of the once-fiercely secular Palestine Liberation Organization—has gradually morphed into an twin of Hamas, as dedicated to Islamist ideology, if perhaps less explicitly so. Its military/terrorist wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, carries out suicide bombings in the name of Allah, not dialectical materialism.


So the fight between the groups relates less to ideological fervor than to pure power. To the victor go the spoils: in this case, the treasure trove of weapons supplied by the western powers (including Israel), the government ministries and their powers-of-the-purse, and the Gazan treasury and tax receipts. It's a clannish fight to the finish for limited resources among extended families.


This, too, formed the essence of the end-of-the-series struggle between Tony Soprano's New Jersey crew and New York's Phil Leotardo and company. Neither "family" espoused any particular theory of organized crime; instead, they were simply locked in a campaign for control over stolen power tools, illegal asbestos dumping sites, and the right to shake down local businesses.


(2) Personality clashes at the top, and limited control by the leaders once the war is set in motion:


Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas (technically the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority) and Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh (the PA's Prime Minister) and Khaled Meshaal (the Damascus-based leader of the entire Hamas organization) are, to say the least, not friends. They made nice for the cameras in Mecca a few months ago when the two factions signed a power-sharing agreement. But bad blood and mistrust have infected the relationship (or lack thereof) between Abbas and the Hamas chiefs.

But while personality conflicts fed the fire, the leaders could not suppress the blaze even as it began to consume Palestinian society. Earlier this week, both Abbas and Haniyeh pleaded for calm, but neither's call was heeded. Part of the problem is that Abbas is tucked away in the West Bank, terrified to enter Gaza. Meanwhile, Haniyeh is cloistered in a safe-house somewhere in the Strip, having survived several assassination attempts, while Meshaal hides out under Syrian protection.

So, too, did the spat between Tony and Phil turn personal. What began as a business dispute escalated when Tony's daughter was disrespected, followed by Phil's spurning his counterpart's peace offering. Then, when both bosses went to the mattresses, the violence began to spin out of control, despite their best wishes, in part because communication became impossible.


(3) Unrelenting brutality and collateral damage:


The fighting between the Palestinian factions has been marked by the kind of bestial cruelty the jihadists used to reserve for innocent Israelis. Several government and military officials have been tossed off twenty-story buildings to their deaths. Fox News's Mike Tobin reported that "a relative of a Hamas leader had his hands and legs bound and was shot at point blank range in the head." Upon conquering a security installation, Hamas fighters reportedly executed their Fatah counterparts in the street, in front of their families. A Hamas militant even killed two civilians marching in a peace demonstration.

This brutality had its cinematic parallel in the killing fields of greater New York. Tony's number two was gunned down in a toy train store in front of two screaming children—after the boss himself curb-stomped one of Phil's henchmen. Then, instead of offing Phil, Tony's mercenaries accidentally slaughtered his goomar and her Ukrainian father. And to top it all off, Phil met his violent demise in front of his wife and two infant grandchildren, who witnessed his head get crushed under his SUV.

(4) Collaboration with law enforcement:

Fatah and Abbas—the so-called "moderate" forces in the power struggle—have received rhetorical support and funding from Israel, the United States, Jordan, and Egypt. There have been unconfirmed reports that Fatah fighters have gotten secret military training from either the IDF or American special forces. After overrunning a Fatah security post, Hamas claimed to have found documents substantiating a link between elite Fatah units and the CIA.

Meanwhile, in North Jersey, Tony began slowly drifting toward collaboration with the FBI agents who used to torment him. The boss tried to "bank some good will" by furnishing intel on a few Arabs who used to drop by The Bing. While Tony's tips didn't seem to lead anywhere, he did manage to ingratiate himself with one of the agents, who later disclosed Phil Leotardo's whereabouts and exclaimed, upon learning of Phil's slaying, "we're gonna win this thing!"

(5) An ambiguous and unsatisfying ending:


The blogosphere has been atwitter with talk of how the finale of The Sopranos was wildly and painfully open-ended: was Tony killed? If not, would he survive fallout from the war? If so, would he escape indictment on gun charges and interstate fraud? If not, would he win his trial? Regardless, we were left feeling distinctly uneasy about the future of the Soprano family, writ small and large.

In Gaza, the denouement of the conflict is even more ambiguous and far more disturbing. The Palestinian proto-state will be politically split in half with Hamas in total control of Gaza and Fatah more or less commanding the West Bank. Hamas's ascendancy only seems to vindicate Iran's troubling efforts to augment its influence in the area. The prospects of peace are nearing their lowest ebb.


For Israel, bad news lies ahead. While the intramural Palestinian fighting has temporarily diminished attacks on the Jewish state, more missiles and suicide bombs are a near-certain outcome of Hamas's consolidation of power in the Strip. Politically, the rise of Islamism in Gaza will incinerate whatever shreds of moderation lingered in the area.


So as we Sopranos fans mourn the loss of our beloved show, we should also take the time to lament the much more serious loss of innocent life—and the dark future that the Palestinian civil war portends.


Michael M. Rosen, TCS Daily's Intellectual Property Columnist, is an attorney in San Diego.
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The Middle East: Now a Three-State Solution?

Frida Ghitis
15 Jun 2007
World Politics Review

Now what? Is this anyone's idea of how things would turn out in the yet-to-be-born Palestinian state? After three days of a vicious civil war in the Gaza strip, the Islamic militants of Hamas routed their rivals of the more secular Fatah. In the process, they killed scores of Palestinians. They terrorized their own people, and they made a questionable future even more uncertain. When Hamas gunmen took over the Gaza headquarters of Fatah and emptied file cabinets into the street, what came flying out the window were the best laid plans of politicians and pundits for a future Palestinian state.

The much-touted two-state solution -- one Israel and one Palestine, living side by side in peace -- now looks like a relic of simpler times. Now we seem to have a two-state dissolution: two Palestinian entities, Gaza and the West Bank, each ruled by different governments with sharply different ideologies. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he has dissolved the Hamas-led government. Hamas rejects the decision, but the two sides' differences will not easily disappear. So now what? A three-state solution?

If elections came today, Hamas would probably not fare as well as it did in January 2006, when it emerged as the leading party in the Palestinian Parliament. By killing peaceful demonstrators, throwing enemies from rooftops, shooting off kneecaps, firing inside hospitals, the supposedly devout Muslims of Hamas showed a side that will surely lose them some votes. On the other hand, Fatah, hardly clean, again looked incompetent and ineffectual. After all, it lost Gaza.

The carnage between the two sides should not have come as a surprise. The ingredients for the recipe only needed a little stirring. Hamas wants an Islamic state, and it has steadfastly rejected Israel's right to exist. Fatah, on the other hand, always adhered to a more secular vision and its leadership gradually and reluctantly agreed to recognize Israel and negotiate peace. The competing ideologies left little room for compromise. Pour in Gaza's explosive birth rate, a radical theology that justifies resolving disagreements at the point of a gun or with a suicide belt, then add massive smuggling of weapons across the border with Egypt. The pot had to explode.

In some ways -- not all -- the breakup between Fatah and Hamas simplifies matters. Now the West Bank is in the hands of Fatah and its quiet leader, Mahmoud Abbas. If he can hold on to power, the West, including Israel, will rush to strengthen him. Look for funding to come pouring in now that his government has no Hamas ties. Look for a return to talks and an effort to produce quick results.

On the other hand, the Gaza situation creates enormous suffering and awful dilemmas. Palestinians have fired rockets from Gaza into Israel -- particularly the despairing town of Sderot -- for seven long years. Israel cannot keep Gaza completely blocked. The talk of an international force will not materialize because Hamas doesn't want it and foreign soldiers would go there to their deaths. Israel has no desire to reoccupy the smoldering strip. Life for the people of Gaza will not get any easier now. Hamas may impose rules taking Gaza closer to Islamic rule. Already Internet cafes have gone up in flames. Hamas likely will target Israel again. Israel will respond without fear of weakening Fatah. The prospect of peace with Islamic extremists will look as distant as ever. And yet, Hamas and Israel will have to talk about day-to-day matters, such as border crossings.

The road to peace has come to a three-pronged fork. Like one of those journeys in distant lands where one doesn't quite know where the road goes or how long it will take to get anywhere, the future for the so-called peace process now looks at once uncertain and open to intriguing possibilities. It looked like two roads going to two destinations. Now, it turns out, the path has divided again and three roads diverge in the Middle East: one goes to Israel, the other to the West Bank, the third to Gaza. We'll soon find out what lies around the next bend.

Frida Ghitis is an independent world affairs columnist and a WPR contributing editor.
____________________________________ The Soprano-fication of Gaza
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The Middle East: Now a Three-State Solution?
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