Fatah Gunmen Assert Authority in West Bank

Territory Becomes Mirror Opposite of Gaza

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 8, 2007; A12

NABLUS, West Bank -- The anonymous call on Hafez Shaheen's mobile phone came as an impolite reminder.

"You were at city hall today," the voice warned. "You are not to go back again."

Shaheen is the acting mayor of this West Bank city, elected two years ago on a ticket sponsored by Hamas. The armed Islamic movement trounced forces from the rival secular Fatah party on June 14 to take control of the Gaza Strip, and the reverberations were felt instantly here by Shaheen and his 12 Hamas colleagues on the 15-seat city council.

The next day, scores of Fatah gunmen arrived at city hall with a simple order: Hamas officials should leave and not return. But Shaheen, a bespectacled engineering professor, was back at his office within days and continues to ignore subsequent telephoned threats by Fatah's armed wing.

"I didn't take it very seriously," he said Thursday between signing papers, taking calls from a German development bank and entertaining a visiting U.N. delegation. "But I can't tell the others to come back. I can't take that responsibility because I don't control the street."

The Hamas military conquest of Gaza politically severed the two territories, which are envisioned as cornerstones of a future Palestinian state. Since then, the West Bank has emerged as a mirror opposite of Gaza. Here Fatah militiamen have asserted themselves in the streets, and Hamas has moved into the shadows.

Yet increasingly in Nablus and across the West Bank there are signs, at least at the local level, that the initial fears of broad factional violence are fading. Political life is slowly returning to something like normal. From Bethlehem to Qalqilyah to this most populous West Bank city, Hamas-affiliated local council members such as Shaheen are returning cautiously to the city halls they had abandoned, in some cases defying death threats to do so.

The Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Local Government Affairs sent out a letter in late June ordering all elected council members to return to work, and many Hamas officials are treating the written demand as tacit protection from the Fatah-dominated ministry.

The threat of factional strife remains, however. Many Palestinians believe new elections are the only way to resolve the dispute. But elections have not yet been called. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a Fatah leader, first suggested new elections in December as a way to end the political crisis with Hamas.

Fatah's electoral prospects are highly uncertain, in part because of enduring divisions within the party between Abbas's founding generation and a disaffected younger one clamoring for power. Hamas has slipped in most opinion polls since winning January 2006 parliamentary elections, which gave it day-to-day control of the Palestinian Authority, but its support has been consistently underestimated in past surveys.

"A vote may make things worse, and it may make things better," said Victor Batarseh, 72, the Christian mayor of Bethlehem who is not aligned with Hamas or Fatah. "But we should always go to the ballot instead of bullets."

The day after Hamas seized total control of Gaza in June, some Fatah gunmen came for Khaled Saada. Saada, a Bethlehem councilman elected from the Hamas-sponsored candidate list known as Change and Reform, was not at home. The men searched his house and detained two of his brothers, one of whom belongs to Fatah. The brothers were released unharmed a few days later.

"I'm against importing or exporting tribal disputes from one place to another," said Saada, 50, a widower with a sweeping comb-over. "If my brother is beaten in one area and I take revenge in another, it is not civilized."

Saada returned to Bethlehem's city hall on Manger Square eight days later. Today four of the council's five Hamas members are back at work; the fifth is in an Israeli jail.

A family mediator by profession, Saada said the Palestinians' most pressing problem is the lack of fresh leadership. He said "new blood" would help curtail corruption and dispel old partisan animosities, such as those that flared in Gaza last month.

For a model, he draws on the years he spent in Israeli and Palestinian jails for belonging to an illegal group. Every four months, he said, there were elections for prison leadership. Consecutive terms were prohibited.

"Leadership in our country is like a mattress -- you get one and sleep on it forever," Saada said. "We need change."

Founded in Gaza two decades ago with a charter calling for Israel's destruction, Hamas has always operated more cautiously in the West Bank, where a more religiously diverse and prosperous population has proved less supportive of its message than the strip's poorer, predominantly refugee population. In addition to a military wing, Hamas operates a network of Islamic schools, charities and sports clubs, which have won over many in Gaza and recently became targets of Fatah militias in the West Bank.

Israel ended its permanent presence in Gaza in August 2005. But the Israeli army still pursues Hamas members aggressively in the West Bank, forcing them to keep a low profile or lie about their party affiliation.

Thirty-nine Hamas members of the 132-seat Palestinian parliament are now in Israeli jails, all of them from the West Bank. So are numerous local elected officials, including the mayor and two council members from Nablus.

But the Fatah threat to Shaheen and his council colleagues is new. In their view, it amounts to something like a local coup.

In addition to ordering Hamas council members to go home, Fatah gunmen torched Islamic charities and schools, kidnapped local imams, and raised party banners over government buildings, just as Hamas had done with its green flags in Gaza. Shaheen and other Hamas-affiliated council members agreed to appoint Yahya Arafat, one of two Fatah council members, to manage the city's day-to-day affairs.

"Everyone knew there would be a reaction here after what happened in Gaza," said Arafat, 48, a portly civil engineer. "Sometimes we all meet here, and sometimes we meet someplace private. But I tell them to come back, that by the law, they must come back."

Shaheen, harried and rumpled, is now defying the Fatah militia, known as the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, for several reasons. He is a well-known professor at an-Najah National University who is also from a well-known family. And he is not an official member of Hamas, although he also was elected on its Change and Reform list.

But there are still dangers. On Wednesday, Ghassan Johari, a Hamas council member, returned to his city hall office for the first time. Fearing trouble, Shaheen left immediately. Within an hour, Fatah gunmen arrived for Johari, who had left ahead of them.

The emergency government Abbas appointed last month has pledged to disarm all party militias, including the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. There is no sign that is happening.

"The government has ordered us all back to work, but the street rejects this letter," Shaheen said. "I'm not frightened or worried, but I must take care. It's still not easy here."

After Abbas fired the Hamas-led government, international donors and Israel freed up hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and frozen tax revenue to help him politically. On Wednesday, drawing on those funds, Abbas paid about 160,000 civil servants and security-service officers, some of whom had not received full salaries in 17 months. The Palestinian Authority is not paying the salaries of an additional 31,000 employees who were hired on contracts over the past 20 months, most of them from Hamas. Fatah officials say these workers were hired illegally, although the decision is threatening to exacerbate the parties' divisions.

"Hamas will try to make use of it," said Bassem Barhoum, a spokesman for the Palestinian parliament. "But when most of them see how this works, and some get their salaries, it will probably be okay."

The markets of Nablus buzzed the day after government employees received their pay. Music filled the streets. Several shoppers and store owners said much of the pay would flow into banks, which have been lending money over the past year and a half to keep families afloat.

"We have not seen the results of the salaries yet," said Abdelrahman al-Nouri, 41, whose corner grocery store was empty despite heavy foot-traffic outside. "Some of them owe us a lot of money, and I hope they come in soon."

Mohammed Ishtayeh, 36, held a handful of shopping bags containing shoes, slacks and a dress shirt.

The middle school Arabic teacher received only half his monthly salary the previous day, despite government promises of the full amount. To buy clothes for his sister's wedding, he added to the $1,500 debt he has accumulated over the past year.

"The government owes me more than $3,000 in back pay," Ishtayeh said. "But this money was better than nothing."