Palestinian Forces' Training Marred by Delays, Politics

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 15, 2008; A01

MUWAQQAR, Jordan -- A U.S.-funded program to train and equip Palestinian security forces is mired in delays, a shortage of resources, and differences between Israelis and the Americans over what military capabilities those forces should have once deployed in the territories.

Weeks into the course, which began in late January, U.S. and Jordanian instructors had yet to receive essential training equipment, including vehicles, two-way radios, dummy pistols, rifles and batons, and a U.S.-designed curriculum, Americans with close knowledge of the program said. Because of Israeli concerns, the group of more than 1,000 Palestinian trainees has not been outfitted with pledged body armor or light-armored personnel carriers. The shortages and delays have forced U.S. and Jordanian trainers to improvise their way through the program, including purchasing pistol-shaped cigarette lighters for use in arrest drills and using their own cars for driver training. One of the Americans said, "In short, we are faking it."

In unveiling his 2003 blueprint for Middle East peace, President Bush said building an effective Palestinian security force was essential to achieving a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.

Touring the region last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the goal is to create "a professional and capable Palestinian security force" in part to counter Hamas, the armed Palestinian faction that controls the Gaza Strip and does not recognize Israel.

The forces being trained here in a desert camp one hour from Jordan's capital, Amman, are under the Palestinian Authority, run by Hamas's relatively moderate rival, Fatah, which favors negotiations with Israel. Although Israel insists that the Palestinians must have effective security in the occupied West Bank and Gaza before its forces withdraw further, the Israeli government has placed significant restrictions on the U.S.-coordinated training effort.

"No one can deny that at the beginning there were some growing pains," said Dov Schwartz, a U.S. Defense Department official who is spokesman for the training program. "We had never done this before."

Testifying before a House panel earlier this week, Assistant Secretary of State C. David Welch said the United States is making "substantial progress" in training Palestinian security forces. But information from two Americans with close knowledge of the program -- both of whom have extensive experience training security forces -- and an internal memo from a U.S. contractor indicate deficiencies in the training program. U.S. contract workers and Jordanian security forces are training about 600 members of the Fatah-dominated National Security Forces, or NSF, in a 16-week course. About 425 members of the elite presidential guard, which answers to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, are undergoing eight weeks of training.

During an escorted tour of the camp last week, black-clad members of the presidential guard banged clubs on riot shields on the asphalt training grounds and blasted paper targets in live-fire practice.

Squads mustered in mismatched sweat suits for physical training or sat in green uniforms in classrooms lit by overhead projectors, eagerly answering the questions of their Jordanian instructors.

The courses here are the first extended training of Palestinian recruits since June, when hundreds of Fatah graduates of a U.S.-backed, 45-day crash course conducted in Egypt were deployed against Hamas fighters in Gaza.

Hamas routed the Fatah forces in the strip in five days, leaving Hamas in charge of Gaza and Abbas, a Fatah leader, governing the West Bank.

But doubts in Israel and in the U.S. Congress about the loyalties of Abbas's forces have slowed the arrival of the program's funding. Last summer, Congress approved $28 million for an initial round of training as part of an $86 million appropriation for Palestinian security. No further money has yet been approved, though another $50 million has been proposed for the years ahead.

"Underfunded, underequipped, under-everything," said one of the two Americans with close knowledge of the program. "It is grossly negligent in what it needs."

Seven weeks into the training, "it is getting better," the American said. "The NSF -- they're tons better. We're making a difference. Just not the difference we should." The Americans spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media. They said they were doing so because they believed U.S. officials were not adequately addressing the resource problems.

The first eight training vehicles arrived weeks into the course, the Americans said. The shortage left instructors to conduct checkpoint training solely by having the recruits approach a mock roadblock on foot, they said. One of the Americans showed a course schedule on which all driver training had been crossed out.

"Vehicle training did not happen," the second American confirmed. "It has not happened."

The U.S. government failed to ensure that the curriculum and equipment for nonlethal defense training arrived before the course began, the Americans said. A shortage of practice batons forced 20 to 30 recruits at a time to take turns swinging a single baton, they said. Weeks into the training, Jordanian instructors made up for the shortage by wrapping PVC pipes in electrical tape.

Also about a month into the course, the Americans said, the Jordanian instructors bought cigarette lighters resembling pistols at local markets for $6 each. Until then, the Palestinians had nothing tangible with which to practice arrests and other maneuvers, leaving them to point their fingers in the form of a gun, the Americans said.

One American said he saw only two working radios for the entire class of trainees, compelling instructors to teach communication skills only as classroom theory.

"If they exist, I haven't seen them," the second American said of the radios.

Course manuals, provided by the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, or INL, arrived after the courses began, the Americans said. The course work is in English, program administrators acknowledged, even though most of the trainees speak only Arabic.

An e-mail sent by DynCorp International of Falls Church, Va., the contractor that provided the American training supervisors, said the American contract trainers had to improvise instruction on the spot.

"INL was supposed to have all lesson plans completed and prepared for these battalion sized classes from the Palestinian Authority," said the e-mail, sent Feb. 28 by a DynCorp administrator and given to The Washington Post. "Unfortunately, INL was WAY behind when our guys hit the ground."

Asked about the e-mail, a DynCorp spokesman said it should be looked at in "the context of showing what had been achieved."

"Certainly there had been some challenges in the beginning," said the spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity. When it did arrive, much of the State Department course material consisted of excerpts from army manuals, U.S. officials confirmed. One American said trainers had to edit out sections on how to use tanks and grenade launchers to breach buildings, among others involving offensive military tactics.

"Is that normal for training? No," said William J. Durch, a senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington research group, and an expert in training international security forces. "Is that normal for a program that someone simply wanted to get going for political purposes? Yeah."

Thomas Moselle, a State Department police adviser who is one of the program's administrators, acknowledged early problems in the program. But he denied that any curriculum or equipment shortages were hindering training.

The Israeli government has insisted that the Palestinian security forces be trained and equipped as a police force rather than an army that could threaten the Jewish state. Those demands have complicated the training, the Americans said. A U.S. mission statement, dated mid-January, said Palestinian forces would receive body armor and Saudi-made light-armored personnel carriers, designed for use in riots. Israeli objections have blocked delivery of that equipment.

Israeli officials have blocked delivery of body armor to Palestinian forces of a grade capable of stopping rounds from the M-16 assault rifles used by Israeli troops, American officials said. That level of armor, however, is needed to protect against AK-47 fire from Palestinian fighters.

"You never know when these things are going to be used against you," Shlomo Dror, spokesman for the Israeli Defense Ministry, said of armor and weapons.

In any case, Dror said, Palestinian forces do not need the sort of armor requested. "From our point of view, we are the ones fighting the terror," he said. "Dealing with Hamas is what we do."

Three Palestinians, interviewed briefly amid a circle of American and Jordanian trainers, spoke enthusiastically about the course.

One said there were no problems with the training. Another, Maher Sadik, said there was no communications practice with radios. "We are in need of everything -- political support, equipment," said the third, Said Najar, a National Security Forces colonel. "We are training, but give us the opportunity to do our jobs."

Kessler reported from Washington, the Middle East and Europe. Correspondent Griff Witte in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

In Search for Peace, a Shrinking White House Role

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 2, 2008; A16

When Palestinians broke through the barrier dividing the Gaza Strip and Egypt in January and streamed across the border by the tens of thousands, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak faced a moment of crisis. His phone soon rang, but the world leader offering help on the other end was not President Bush -- it was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mubarak took the call, resulting in the first such contact between leaders of the two nations since relations were severed nearly three decades ago.

The conversation signaled a growing rapprochement between Egypt, which receives nearly $2 billion in annual aid from Washington, and Iran, a country that the Bush administration has tried to isolate as a possible threat to U.S. interests in the region.

As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads back to the Middle East this week, three months after Bush hosted a peace conference bringing together Israelis and Arabs in Annapolis, prospects for peace have shifted dramatically. There has been little clear movement in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, while the Iranian-backed militant group Hamas has shown increasingly that it can set the region's agenda.

Hamas rockets have continued to rain down on Israeli towns, prompting deadly counterattacks by Israel amid increasing speculation that Israel will invade the narrow coastal strip housing 1.5 million Palestinians that it abandoned just two years ago.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, said that key players in the region are moving beyond the Bush administration. "The feeling is that if you keep the flash points on a lower or somewhat higher flame, it will give you more cards when a new administration comes in," he said, speaking in a phone interview from Israel. "Everyone is sucking up to the Iranians," he added.

The signs of American irrelevance are apparent throughout the region. Even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, hailed as a potential peacemaker by the Bush administration, mused last week to the Jordanian newspaper al-Dustour that in the future it might be necessary to return to armed struggle against Israel. And Syria, which received an unexpected invitation to Annapolis, believes that the peace summit was "an exercise in public relations" and that Bush has no interest in peace, as Syria's ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha put it last week.

Rice's first stop, on Tuesday, will be Cairo, where she will consult with Mubarak and other Egyptian officials on Gaza. She then will shuttle between Israeli and Palestinian officials on Tuesday and Wednesday, seeking to head off a deadly confrontation between Israel and Hamas while pushing for progress in the nascent peace talks.

The architecture of Annapolis established by Rice includes four key tracks, all of which are supposed to operate simultaneously: high-level talks on "final status" issues such as the division of Jerusalem; incremental changes in security, Jewish settlements on the West Bank and roadblocks hindering Palestinian movement; jump-starting the Palestinian economy; and greater Arab involvement. The final-status talks have been shrouded in secrecy, while little has happened on the other tracks, participants said. The number of roadblocks has increased, according to U.N. estimates.

"Politically, I have not heard anything that is good," a senior Arab diplomat said.

Organizers of a Palestinian investment conference scheduled for late May, designed to bring Arab businessmen to Bethlehem, have expressed concern that senior Arab executives will be forced to wait for hours in humiliating checks at roadblocks, potentially spoiling the mood for investment.

The lack of movement has added to the skepticism, even in Israel. A poll published in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth last week showed that 69 percent of Israelis surveyed believed the talks would not bring peace, while 78 percent believed the talks were being held only for political reasons.

During a recent visit to Washington, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad charged that Israel has "not done a thing materially on the ground to help my government." Israeli officials counter that Israel has taken steps to bolster the Abbas government, but that some efforts -- such as new restrictions on settlement growth -- cannot be publicized because of the tenuous political situation in Israel.

Ghaith al-Omari, a former adviser to Abbas and now advocacy director for the American Task Force on Palestine, faulted the Bush administration for not nurturing a process that it started. He noted that the administration has appointed three generals to assess various aspects of the issue, but that few people in the region understand their roles. Rice's two-day visit this week is her first substantive trip since the conference in November.

"There is no push from the Americans," he said. "We are still waiting to see what they will do. It is surprising how little has happened. If you guys are going to run out of steam, why create all these expectations?"

"It is a big question mark," said Martin Indyk, director of the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. "The impression one gets is that this administration is out of juice."

Most observers give the administration six months, until the Democratic and Republican conventions, to show that progress on the peace talks is possible. But the Annapolis conference has been increasingly overshadowed by the conflict over Gaza.

The Annapolis talks were designed to bolster Abbas so he could overcome the challenge from Hamas. In 2006, the militant group unexpectedly won Palestinian elections that the Bush administration had supported, beating Abbas's Fatah party, and a unity government between the two sides went sour when Hamas seized control of Gaza last June. The administration had hoped that if Abbas could seal a peace deal, it would give him the popular support to oust Hamas, which has called for Israel's destruction.

Neither Hamas nor Iran was invited to Annapolis but, as Ahmadinejad's courting of Mubarak suggests, the administration's effort to divide the region into "moderate" and "extremist" camps has not succeeded. After the phone call between the two men, Iran's foreign minister declared that diplomatic ties with Cairo would soon be restored.

Meanwhile, Hamas has gained popularity as Israel has attempted an economic blockade of Gaza. Hamas bulldozers burst through the Gaza-Egyptian border in January, while Hamas rockets last week reached Ashkelon, an Israeli city of 120,000 that generally had been safe from Hamas attacks.

Egypt would like to arrange a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas while giving the Palestinian Authority control over border crossings, Arab diplomats said. But those would be difficult negotiations as public pressure increases in Israel for a ground invasion of Gaza. In the best-case scenario for Israel, that would wipe out Hamas's leadership, but it could also prove as vexing as Israel's war against Hezbollah in 2006.

Some argue that Hamas's strength can no longer be ignored. Before the Annapolis conference, a group of U.S. foreign policy specialists -- including former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton -- wrote Bush to argue that "a genuine dialogue with the organization is far preferable to its isolation." But State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Friday, "It's pretty hard to say that Hamas has a legitimate role to play in this process if their main policy is to promote terror."

Palestinians Halt Talks, Killings Mount

By IBRAHIM BARZAK
The Associated Press
Sunday, March 2, 2008; 11:00 AM

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Israel sent missiles slamming into the office of Gaza's Hamas prime minister Sunday, pressing on with an offensive that has killed nearly 70 Palestinians in two days. The moderate Palestinian president suspended peace talks with Israel.

At least 54 Palestinians, roughly half of them civilians, were killed in Gaza fighting Saturday, the deadliest day in more than seven years of violence, Palestinian medical officials said. Another 14 Palestinians, one of them a 21-month-old girl, were killed or found dead Sunday. Two Israeli soldiers were killed on Saturday.

Since the latest bout of fighting erupted on Wednesday, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed, according to an AP tally based on Palestinian medical officials and militant groups.

"We are following the aggression against our people in Gaza," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters. "I've conducted contacts with various leaders, with the Security Council, with the EU and with Arab leaders to work to stop this aggression," he said.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said peace talks with Israel had been halted.

"For the time being, the negotiations are suspended because we have so many funerals," he said. It was unclear when the talks, relaunched last November at a U.S.-hosted summit, would resume.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to visit this week to try to spur progress in peace talks. Instead, she will likely spend her visit trying to put out the latest fire.

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's office was empty at the time of Sunday's pre-dawn airstrike. But the raid was seen as a tough message to the Hamas leadership, which Israel holds responsible for repeated rocket barrages launched from Gaza.

Haniyeh spoke to leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, asking them "to stop this aggression," said government spokesman Taher Nunu. He also called for reconciliation talks with Fatah, the rival Palestinian faction headed by Abbas and ousted from Gaza by Hamas last June.

Israel's response to incessant Palestinian rocket fire at southern Israeli communities drew hard international condemnation. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon accused Israel of "disproportionate and excessive use of force."

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected the criticism and vowed to press on with the Gaza offensive.

"With all due respect, nothing will prevent us from continuing operations to protect our citizens," he told his Cabinet.

Olmert's defense minister, Ehud Barak, said an even broader Gaza operation was in the cards, aimed at crushing militant rocket squads but also to "weaken the Hamas rule, in the right circumstances, even to bring it down."

Israel regularly clashes with Gaza rocket squads, but intensified its operations after militants fired salvos last week into Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 closer to Israel's heartland than previous targets. By striking Ashkelon, some 11 miles north of Gaza, Hamas added pressure on Israeli leaders to exact a high price for the increasing sense of insecurity felt in southern Israel.

The onslaught failed however to stop rockets from battering southern Israel. Nine were fired at southern Israel by midday Sunday, including one that struck a house in the rocket-scarred town of Sderot less than a mile from Gaza, the military said. One rocket lightly wounded four Sderot residents, Israeli rescue services said.

About 50 rockets and mortars were fired Saturday, injuring six Israelis.

Haniyeh's office was one of about a dozen targets Israeli aircraft and ground troops struck before dawn.

Overnight, a 14-year-old Palestinian girl and five militants died of their wounds, and six Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids, including the baby girl who died from shrapnel wounds, Palestinian medical officials said.

The bodies of two women also were unearthed from the rubble of an earlier Israeli airstrike.

Since the latest round of fighting erupted Wednesday, at least half of those killed were militants, according to Hamas and medical officials. Gaza health officials said about 200 people have been wounded, 14 of them critically.

The normally bustling streets of Gaza City were eerily empty Sunday. Schools and universities were closed. The sound of verses from the Muslim holy book, the Quran, pouring forth from mosque loudspeakers mingled with the roar of Israeli warplanes and unmanned drones in the sky.

Hamas blocked off roads to government buildings and security installations to protect civilians from possible Israeli strikes.

Hundreds gathered outside Gaza hospitals waiting for bodies to be brought out of morgues for burial. Many, like schoolteacher Tawfek Shaban, a 44-year-old father of five, were holding small radios, listening to the news.

"Shame on the Arabs, shame on the Muslims, shame on humanity ... When they will act to stop Israel?" Shaban asked. "There is no safe place in Gaza."

The Saturday toll was by far the highest since the second Palestinian uprising erupted in late 2000.

Abbas, who leads a rival government in the West Bank, suspended peace talks with Israel, his office said. On Saturday, Palestinian leaders from both Hamas and Fatah called Israel's assault a "holocaust" and "genocide."

In a symbolic move, Abbas donated blood to Gaza residents at his West Bank office.

Hamas remained defiant and threatened to retaliate.

"The Zionists will not enjoy security in ... all the colonies around Gaza as long as their crimes continue," said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas' military wing.

Olmert said "attacking Hamas strengthens the chance for peace."

"I'm sure that beyond certain statements, the Palestinian leadership, the one with whom we want to achieve peace, also understands that," he said.

Olmert and Abbas have set a year-end target for reaching an accord.

Abbas has ruled from the West Bank since his Hamas rivals violently seized control of Gaza last June. But the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza has threatened to unleash a backlash against him in the West Bank.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, Israeli troops shot and killed a 14-year-old Palestinian boy after several hundred youths threw stones and bottles at an Israeli checkpoint in the city center to protest the killings in Gaza, according to Palestinian medical officials.

In Ramallah, home to Abbas' government, thousands of schoolchildren demonstrated against Israel. Some accused Abbas of being an Israeli agent, and protesters threw stones and cars, burned tires and forced shopkeepers to close their stores.

Israel Takes Gaza Fight to Next Level in a Day of Strikes

By STEVEN ERLANGER and TAGHREED EL-KHODARY

GAZA — Israeli aircraft and troops attacked Palestinian positions in northern Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 54 people and wounding more than 100 in the deadliest day of fighting in more than a year. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven wounded, the military said.

The Israeli attacks, mostly from the air on a clear, bright day, were aimed at stopping rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, the Israelis said, especially after Ashkelon, a large city 10 miles from Gaza, came under fire from more advanced, Katyusha-style rockets of Iranian design.

Half the dead were reported to be Hamas gunmen or those belonging to affiliated groups like Islamic Jihad. But at least 19 Palestinian civilians also died in the heavily populated area, including four children, according to Dr. Moawiya Hassanain of the Gazan Health Ministry.

More than 80 Palestinians have died since fighting surged on Wednesday; in addition to the soldiers, an Israeli died in Sderot from a rocket, and six Israelis were wounded Saturday from rocket strikes in Ashkelon.

The fighting brought harsh criticism from the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who reportedly threatened to call off negotiations with Israel over a peace treaty. “We tell the world: watch and judge what’s happening, and judge who is committing international terrorism,” Mr. Abbas said in Ramallah, on the West Bank.

Mr. Abbas, who has referred to the rocket firing as useless provocation, said last week that armed conflict remained an option if negotiations failed.

An Israeli spokesman, David Baker, said that Israel was conducting “defensive measures” to protect its civilians from rocket fire against cities, which Mr. Baker called terrorism. “We have over 200,000 Israelis in range of Palestinian rockets. We cannot allow this to go on.”

The Israeli deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai, said the military was engaged in “an enlarged operation and not a major ground operation” of the type Israeli politicians have been pressing for. Mr. Vilnai told Israel Radio that “we are using mostly air units” and that Israeli forces “are permanently engaged in Gaza, and what we are doing now is within the scope of such activities.”

Early Sunday, the United Nations Security Council issued a statement condemning the escalation of the fighting and urging Israelis and Palestinians “to immediately cease all acts of violence,” The Associated Press reported.

The statement, though not a formal resolution, also stressed that the violence “must not be allowed to deter the political process” aimed at “establishing two states — Israel and Palestine — living side by side in peace and security.”

About two dozen rockets landed in Israel on Saturday, including seven Katyusha-style rockets in or near Ashkelon, lightly wounding a woman and two children just after midnight. Saturday afternoon, another rocket hit the Ashkelon marina shopping center, wounding three others, the Israeli military said.

Israeli troops began their operation just after midnight, concentrating on a hilly area near crowded Jabaliya, within two miles of the Gazan border, where many of the rockets have been launched from among the civilian population. Late Saturday, the Israeli military confirmed that two soldiers had been killed and that seven others, including an officer, had been wounded.

In Gaza on Friday, Hussein Dardouna, 50, was burying his son, Omar, 14, killed while playing with his friends by an Israeli strike aimed at a rocket-launching team. “I couldn’t identify the body of my son,” he said. “It was very hard until I found the head of my son. I’m against these rockets, but I am afraid. What can I do? If I protest they will hit me, they will kill me.”

A woman at the funeral said: “Everyone is afraid now. Where is Abu Mazen, where is Haniya?” she asked, referring to Mr. Abbas and the Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniya. “Come and protect us.”

The Israeli operation killed at least 10 fighters from Hamas, which has run Gaza since it drove out Fatah forces in fierce internal fighting last June.

Most residents hid in their homes. The Palestinian dead on Saturday included at least four children.

Hamas said that one girl, Malak Karfaneh, 6, died Friday night from an Israeli strike on Beit Hanun in northern Gaza, but residents said that a Palestinian rocket had fallen short and landed near the house, killing her and wounding three siblings.

Israeli officials say that up to half of Palestinian rockets — mostly crude, inaccurate Qassams — fall inside Gaza. But when Hamas broke open the border with Egypt, Israeli officials say, the militants were able to bring in more of the manufactured Katyusha-style rockets as well as antitank missiles and concrete, for building fortifications.

The United Nations agency that deals with Palestinian refugees closed down the 37 schools it runs in northern Gaza.

“We are living in the middle of the battle zone,” Rami Muhammad Ali, 21, told Reuters by phone from Jabaliya. “We wanted to flee the house, but we’ve been trapped since last night.”

He described the scene, saying, “Rockets and missiles are whistling by all the time, and the building has been shaken by mines the Palestinians are setting off against the Israeli soldiers.”

A Hamas military spokesman who calls himself Abu Obeida said, “The Zionist forces have failed in Gaza before.” Hamas, under some political pressure from the effective isolation of Gaza and deteriorating conditions there, seems to be trying to lure Israel into a major ground operation.

The Israelis have been cautious, with little desire to reoccupy Gaza and take full responsibility for its 1.5 million inhabitants, nearly 70 percent of them refugees or their descendants. The Israeli security cabinet will meet during the week to discuss Gaza, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arriving as well.

She has defended Israel’s right to defend itself but has urged restraint. A major Israeli operation would most likely put a crimp in American-sponsored peace talks between Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel.

A White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said late Saturday: “We call for an end to violence and all acts of terrorism directed against innocent civilians. There is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and action in self-defense.”

Steven Erlanger reported from Jerusalem, and Taghreed El-Khodary from Gaza.

Rice to Press Mideast Peace Discussions

The Associated Press
Friday, September 28, 2007; 2:19 PM

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit the Middle East next week to press Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts amid doubts from some Arab states about the usefulness of an international meeting she plans to host in the fall, the State Department said Wednesday.

Rice will make stops in Israel and the Palestinian territories on Sept. 19 and 20 to urge Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas to build on recent positive steps and lay the groundwork for the upcoming meeting that President Bush announced in July, spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Her visit will follow an agreement reached between the two sides this week to set up senior negotiating teams with an eye toward reaching a general outline of a peace deal in time for the conference, which has yet to be scheduled but is expected in November.

"She's going to talk to each side ... about how we can help move that process forward," McCormack said. He would not rule out the possibility that Rice would bring Olmert and Abbas together for a three-way meeting.

The brief trip comes as the United States is trying to build support for the international meeting but has met resistance from traditional Arab allies concerned that it might not produce much.

Egypt and Jordan, which both have peace deals with Israel, along with Saudi Arabia have said they are not interested in attending the session unless it has a chance of achieving concrete results.

McCormack said Rice would be consulting with those three countries, along with other potential participants following her trip next week and that Washington agreed the meeting should not be just a show.

"Nobody wants to see just a photo op, we couldn't agree more," he said.

Militants Are Driven From Lebanon Refugee Camp

By NADA BAKRI

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 2 — The Lebanese Army wrested a Palestinian refugee camp from the control of Islamic militants on Sunday, ending three months of fierce fighting that took more than 300 lives and transfixed Lebanon.

The surprise end to the camp standoff came when about 70 militants tried to escape at dawn Sunday. As they neared army positions, soldiers fired on them, killing at least 31, including the group’s leader, Shakir al-Abssi, and capturing 32, the army said. Five soldiers were killed in the gunfire.

The camp, Nahr al Bared, had been home to 30,000 people, most of whom fled when the conflict started at the end of May. On Sunday, the state-run National News Agency reported that soldiers patrolled the empty camp, much of which had been leveled by army bombs, as helicopters searched for any remaining militants.

It was unclear why the group, Fatah al Islam, made up of radical Sunnis inspired by Al Qaeda, chose Sunday to attempt its breakout. But the army had tightened its grip on the camp recently and ratcheted up its bombings over the past week, after family members of the fighters were permitted to leave. The remaining fighters were thought to be running out of ammunition and food.

The militants’ failed last stand has burnished the image of the army, which is viewed by Lebanese across the political spectrum as the only institution in the country that represents the state, not individual factions.

Despite the prolonged fighting and deaths on both sides, the army has won widespread praise and support for its restraint in a nation that has seen its share of violent clashes.

The army’s commander in chief, Gen. Michel Suleiman, has emerged as a national hero and potential force ahead of presidential elections in three weeks. The country remains deeply divided between a pro-Western government and the Hezbollah-led opposition, supported by Iran and Syria, and analysts said General Suleiman could emerge as a compromise presidential candidate.

“This victory reflects positively on the army and its commander in chief,” said Talal Atrissi, a political sociology professor at the Lebanese University. “His chances to become a compromise candidate have now increased.”

Banners and posters saluting the army have decorated Lebanese streets for the past several months. On Facebook, the online social network, Lebanese have created groups of army supporters. Banks have designed new credit cards with camouflage colors.

As news from the camp spread Sunday, Lebanese from different political backgrounds, including those allied to Hezbollah, took to the streets across the country in celebration. Television programs showed residents in northern cities near the camp waving Lebanese flags and throwing rice at soldiers who were flashing victory signs as their convoys arrived.

“The army is emerging as the guardian of the state of Lebanon,” said Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut. “Politicians have failed, therefore the army is the only institution capable of shoring the country toward peace.”

The camp siege began on May 20, when Fatah al Islam fighters who had taken control of the camp attacked nearby army checkpoints, killing 22 soldiers. At least 120 militants and 42 civilians have been killed in the conflict, as well as 157 soldiers, including the five on Sunday.

Before the clashes began, military officials had said up to 70 militants remained in the camp, down from an estimated 360 when the conflict began.

“The army took full control of the camp,” an army official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. “We are now clearing the area and searching for militants who managed to escape.”

The army said it would not allow anyone to enter the camp or refugees to return before de-mining operations were completed and the rubble was removed.

Politicians were quick to congratulate the army.

“It is the greatest national victory for Lebanon over the terrorists in Nahr al Bared,” Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said in a televised speech. “It is a great success that the Lebanese army has achieved over the terrorists, those who sought chaos, destruction and tragedies for Lebanon.”

Mr. Siniora pledged to rebuild the camp and secure the return of the Palestinian refugees. He also indicated that the authorities would not permit militants to base themselves in the camp again. Palestinian refugee camps are considered off limits for Lebanese security troops.

President Émile Lahoud said the army “has achieved what superpowers could not in confronting terrorism.”

Hamas Forces Shoot Own Supporters at Rally; Youth Killed

By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM, Sept. 1 — Shots from Hamas security forces hit the group’s own supporters in Gaza on Saturday when a rally near the Egyptian border threatened to spiral out of control, witnesses said. One teenager was killed and several other demonstrators were wounded, Palestinian medics said.

Hamas had called for the demonstration, which thousands attended, to protest the closing of the Rafah border crossing. It has been closed since Hamas seized control of Gaza in June.

Members of the Hamas paramilitary police force fired into the air to disperse protesters who were trying to dash into Egypt, the witnesses said. The teenager, identified as Muhammad Qdaih, 17, was hit and died a short while later. A spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza, Ehab al-Ghsein, said officials were trying “to determine where the shot came from.”

The border incident came as tensions mounted in Gaza between Hamas and its rival, Fatah. Early Saturday, a bomb destroyed the car of a Palestinian affiliated with Hamas. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, called a meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee in Ramallah for Saturday evening. He said the committee, which represents most Palestinian factions but not Hamas, would discuss developments in the Gaza Strip and “ways of protecting our people from the madness and repression.”

On Friday, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza defied Hamas to join a Fatah-inspired protest, clashing with Hamas forces. Several protesters were injured and dozens detained, reports from Gaza said. A Fatah spokesman, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, called the protest the start of “a new era in the Palestinian national struggle to cleanse the homeland of Hamas gangs.”

No one was hurt in the car blast on Saturday. Mr. Ghsein, the Interior Ministry spokesman in Gaza, said Fatah leaders were behind the attack. “We have strong confirmation of a new network involving the powerful leaders in Ramallah and their misled supporters in Gaza,” he said.

Mr. Ghsein said that five other explosions went off in Gaza City in recent weeks, mainly near Hamas-run security compounds. He added that some arrests had been made, and that Hamas security officials had been “tracking phone calls” between the suspects in the blasts and their handlers in Ramallah.

A Fatah official in Ramallah, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with reporters, dismissed Mr. Ghsein’s statements as “not true at all.”

Safwat al-Kahlout contributed reporting from Gaza City.

Lebanon: Tiny Country, Big Threats

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 1:22 p.m. ET

EIN EL-HILWEH REFUGEE CAMP, Lebanon (AP) -- Three months after battle erupted between Lebanese soldiers and an unknown group of radicals in a Palestinian refugee camp, army commander Gen. Michel Suleiman says he now knows whom he is fighting.

Fatah Islam, he says, ''is a branch of the al-Qaida organization that was planning to make Lebanon and Palestinian camps a safe haven,'' he told a gathering of his officers recently. Al-Qaida wants to launch operations in Lebanon and outside through Fatah Islam, he asserted.

But his opinion is only one of many.

Police officials and some experts say the group that fought in the Nahr el-Bared camp has no direct tie to Osama bin Laden's movement.

The U.S. State Department says it's an offshoot of a Syrian-backed militia, Fatah al-Intifada. Some Lebanese officials also say Syria backs the group to try to destabilize Lebanon's Western-backed government.

But pro-Syrian opposition groups say the Lebanese government's own allies initially funded the fundamentalist Sunni Muslim group to counter the influence of the Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah. There have also been reports of Saudi money financing Fatah Islam and other Sunni jihad groups.

Whichever theory is true, they all converge on one central point: Fatah Islam and others operate here because, despite having a Western-leaning government, Lebanon remains a marketplace for extremism. It is a trading post for radical ideas, guerrilla fighters and armaments that has fostered chaos elsewhere in the Middle East.

The Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh on the edge of the southern city of Sidon is where most of the Palestinian radical groups are based and where plots against Israel and Western influence in Lebanon -- and against Lebanese foes -- are believed to be hatched. It's the largest of the 12 camps in Lebanon, housing about 45,000 of the 400,000 Palestinians whose exile dates from Israel's creation in 1948.

Bearded men in battle fatigues and carrying Kalashnikovs or pistols freely roam around the densely populated camp or guard the offices of the various groups.

Radical Islamic militias in the camp include Asbat al-Ansar (''Band of Partisans''), Jund al-Sham (''Soldiers of the Levant'') and the Islamic Struggle Movement. Washington has accused Asbat al-Ansar of being linked to al-Qaida, and it and the Jund al-Sham are said to have close ties to Fatah Islam in the Nahr el-Bared camp.

Membership in each group probably numbers dozens.

While the relationship between the Sunni fundamentalist groups and al-Qaida is unclear, at the very least they are inspired by the movement's global appeal and share its philosophy of ''jihad'' against what it regards as American and Western attempts to dominate the Muslim world.

Timur Goksel, who has observed Lebanon for decades as a U.N. peacekeeping officer and later as a professor, believes the radical groups are wooing al-Qaida, rather than the other way around.

''I don't think there is this big drive by al-Qaida to establish as a base (for) themselves in Lebanon, but there are so many willing parties trying to do their bidding here and trying to get into the good grace of al-Qaida,'' Goksel said.

Retired Lebanese army Gen. Elias Hanna also said the aim of Fatah Islam leader Shaker al-Absi was to be ''adopted'' by al-Qaida leaders. Hanna said the disparate radical groups in the refugee camps amount to a ''new breed of al-Qaida ... maybe third generation al-Qaida.''

These groups publicly deny any ties or allegiance to al-Qaida, but voice support for its main cause -- fighting America. Washington has long been criticized by Arabs for supporting Israel, and its actions in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen by many Muslims as a war against their faith.

''We converge with al-Qaida and approve its role in Iraq and Afghanistan,'' said Sheik Walid Sharif, spokesman for Asbat al-Ansar. ''Sheik Osama is our sheik, may God protect him.''

Sharif says he has sent more than 300 Palestinian and Lebanese recruits to fight in Iraq alongside Ansar al-Sunnah, an Iraqi group with close links to al-Qaida, and that he has been in contact with al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, which is believed affiliated with bin Laden.

About 25 of his men have died in operations in Iraq, including suicide bombings, Sharif said.

Another Palestinian radical leader, Sheik Jamal Khattab of the Islamic Struggle Group, pointed out that not every Muslim fighting American occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan is with al-Qaida. He also sought to distance his group from the loss of innocent lives in Iraq.

''We support anyone who fights America or Israel, but we are against ... killing of innocent civilians,'' he said.

In Lebanon, intelligence officials blame radical Palestinians in Ein el-Hilweh for at least two recent attacks, a rocket fired into Israel in mid-June that caused damage but no casualties and a car bombing a week later that killed six Spanish members of UNIFIL, the peacekeeping unit monitoring the shaky truce between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.

The attack on the peacekeepers came nine months after al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, called in a videotape for attacks on the ''crusader forces'' in Lebanon, an apparent reference to the 13,000 U.N. peacekeepers.

More recently, a Web site used by al-Qaida urged militants in Lebanon to defend Fatah Islam, the group facing the army in Nahr el-Bared. ''Islamists, rise up and aid your brothers in Nahr al-Bared. This is your religious duty,'' the statement said.

Authorities say members of Fatah Islam have confessed to bombing two buses near Beirut in February in which three people died and 20 were wounded, and the government has accused the group of planning other attacks. But the Lebanese army did not move against the group until after its fighters ambushed more than 30 army soldiers.

The group's strength had grown to hundreds of fighters -- Palestinians, Lebanese and other Arabs -- and the battle with the army was the worst violence Lebanon has suffered since its 1975-90 civil war, killing some 150 soldiers, an unknown number of militants and more than 20 civilians.

In Nahr el-Bared and the other refugee camps, the rise of the radical Islamic groups has further cut the influence of the secular Palestine Liberation Organization, which once controlled the camps but saw its power wane after its fighters were driven out by Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Goksel, the former UNIFIL officer, fears the real danger is that the radical Islamic movements will keep recruiting fighters in the poor, overcrowded camps and carry out more attacks until they finally get the backing of their would-be patron, al-Qaida, while authorities miss a chance to squelch the jihadists.

He said the government is not taking the danger seriously because rival political camps and the country's diverse security agencies can't work together to make a realistic judgment of the radical groups.

''Information comes in bits and pieces from different agencies which don't share their intelligence,'' he said. ''That's why they're not getting a coherent picture, the real picture of the danger.''

Another Tour Ends Without Solid Plans On Mideast Peace

Rice 'Encouraged' by Interest in Meeting

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 3, 2007; A10

SHANNON, Ireland, Aug. 2 -- After years of setbacks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice set out this week to make one more push toward Middle East peace on behalf of an administration that has less than 18 months left in office. She got some polite nibbles, but not yet the big bite needed to ensure that President Bush's call last month for an international meeting of the region's major players will yield substance.

Many Arab governments want a full-blown conference that produces a broad and specific agreement, while the administration has talked instead of a meeting to explore options and ideas. The basic problem is one that has plagued the peace process for years: the wide gap on issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the future of Jewish settlements -- and the tough negotiations required to resolve them.

After her talks Thursday with the Palestinian leadership on the last leg of her four-day trip, Rice addressed growing concerns among Israelis, Palestinians and the wider Arab world that yet another U.S. effort will not get off the ground or will fizzle once the parties get together. She tried to assure all sides that any meeting would be "substantive and meaningful" and advance a two-state solution resulting in a Palestinian state. Bush "has no desire to call people together for a photo op," Rice said at a news conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah in the West Bank.

En route back to Washington, America's top diplomat conceded that "we haven't given much thought to how" the meeting will look and said preliminary diplomacy will require at least two more trips to the region. The tentative plan is to hold the meeting in November, U.S. officials say.

"I didn't issue invitations, but I was really pretty encouraged by the interest in it, by the willingness to discuss it, by the open-mindedness about the states that might attend," she told reporters traveling with her. The presence of countries that have not made peace with Israel -- notably Saudi Arabia, author of an Arab League regional peace proposal -- is vital to the credibility of any conference.

"We're going to try. All you can do is take advantage of an opening, and I think there is an opening," Rice said. People in Israel and elsewhere in the region see Abbas's government as one "which is serious, which is professional, which is focused on delivering security for people on the ground," she said.

Rice said the U.S. goal is to weave together several elements in the peace effort. These include new bilateral talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas, who are scheduled to meet Monday in the West Bank city of Jericho; special envoy Tony Blair's work to build up the Palestinian capacity to govern; and the wider regional diplomacy with eight U.S. allies in the Arab world -- Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.

The latest U.S. effort, often referred to as the "West Bank first" strategy, seeks to exploit the political split between the two main Palestinian factions. The armed Islamic movement Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in January 2006, seized full control of the Gaza Strip this June, ending a power-sharing arrangement with the rival Fatah faction. Abbas, a Fatah leader, then formed his own government in the West Bank. The United States is seeking to aid Abbas, strengthen his security forces and foster peace talks with Israel that will eventually win popular support and isolate Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel.

But in its current regional approach to peace, the Bush administration is effectively sidelining a policy shift Rice heralded in 2005: "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region . . . and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."

This week, the administration announced its largest arms sale package, worth at least $20 billion, to Saudi Arabia and five Persian Gulf sheikdoms, offering some of the Middle East's most undemocratic governments more muscle and a greater sense of security, to win support for U.S. goals.

On her last stops in Israel and the West Bank, Rice's mission met with skepticism. Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said in an interview that Bush's July 16 initiative could backfire if the U.S.-orchestrated meeting is "only a verbal, feel-good exercise."

"There's a real sense that it may be too little, too late," she said. "As usual, American presidents leave it to the end of their term to deal with the Palestinian crisis for the legacy of an outgoing president."

The Israeli press cast doubt on whether the traditional Arab players even represent the real powers anymore.

"Iran has all but completed a hostile takeover of the anti-Israel camp, which now consists mainly of Tehran's proxies and allies -- Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda," the Jerusalem Post editorialized Thursday.

Rice Backs Appointed Palestinian Premier and Mideast Democracy

By HELENE COOPER and STEVEN ERLANGER

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Aug. 2 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, embracing an appointed Palestinian prime minister here in the West Bank, said Thursday that the United States still supported democracy in the Middle East. But she defended the American refusal to recognize the earlier, elected, Hamas-led government.

Standing next to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, during a news conference here, Ms. Rice said, “We believe strongly in the right of people to express themselves and their desires, in elections.” But, she added, once elected, “ you have the obligation to govern responsibly.”

She said that the United States and other Western nations had been right to boycott Hamas and the elected Palestinian government. “You can’t have one foot in the path of terror and one foot in the path of politics,” she added.

Ms. Rice met with Salam Fayyad, the prime minister selected by Mr. Abbas after he ousted the Hamas-led government.

Mr. Abbas of Fatah has been seeking to consolidate his power since a June coup left the rival Hamas movement in power in the Gaza Strip. He has held out the prospect of new elections soon. He appointed Mr. Fayyad after firing the Hamas-led government of Ismail Haniya.

Hamas won a legislative majority in January 2006, but Fatah never agreed to accept it, and the United States and Israel refused to deal with Hamas, which they classify as a terrorist organization, unless it accepted Israel’s right to exist and agreed to give up violence.

Ms. Rice said it was up to the Palestinians to decide when to hold a new vote, but the Americans, like the Israelis, have told Mr. Abbas they will not accept a renewal of a unity government with Hamas.

Mr. Abbas said Thursday that he would not try to reconcile with Hamas unless they “reverse everything they did” and “apologize to the Palestinian people — then we might reconsider.”

It would be nearly impossible for Mr. Abbas to hold an early vote unless Hamas agreed to one. Mr. Abbas told Ms. Rice that he was ready to work with Israel on a “declaration of principles” as an interim step toward a full peace agreement, an idea floated last week by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. Such a declaration, as envisioned by Israel, would outline the contours of a future Palestinian state, without immediately tackling the most explosive issues, like final borders and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

Mr. Abbas said Thursday that once such a declaration had been negotiated, “what is important is that we arrive at a result and that we know what that result is, what is the roof that we need to reach, but the stages of implementation can be agreed on later.”

Separately on Wednesday and Thursday, Ms. Rice met with Mr. Olmert and other senior Israeli officials to discuss plans for Mr. Bush’s fall conference on Palestinian-Israeli peace.

Her meetings in the West Bank ended a three-day swing through the region that included stops in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where she pressed for Arab support for the conference.

Ms. Rice’s trip was the first high-level American visit to Israel and the West Bank since the Gaza takeover.

Since then, Mr. Abbas — and the world — have largely left Gaza to itself to be governed by Hamas, focusing aid and diplomatic efforts on the West Bank, where Mr. Abbas’s Fatah forces remain in control. The United States, Israel and the European Union have all welcomed the dissolution of the Palestinian government.

Mr. Bush quickly unfroze $86 million in aid, which was put into the deep freeze after Hamas won the 2006 elections. On Thursday, Ms. Rice signed a so-called framework agreement with Mr. Fayyad, which ostensibly released the first $10 million in aid. The money is intended to strengthen Mr. Abbas’s security forces.

A spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, criticized the Rice visit and the release of the aid.

“She came to incite one Palestinian side against another,” he said. “She came to provide $80 million to stamp out resistance forces. Rice did not come to the region to establish a Palestinian state, as she and her master Bush claimed, but instead she came to support one Palestinian party against another, and to support the Zionist occupation.”

In a statement, Mr. Olmert praised the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, who said Wednesday that his country was leaning toward attending the Middle East meeting, but wanted it to be substantive. Mr. Olmert “shares the same approach, that the international meeting will be serious and meaningful, and he welcomes the participation of leaders of Arab countries in the meeting,” his office said.

But Israeli officials also emphasized that, unlike the Saudis, the Israelis believe that the core issues of the conflict should be discussed in a bilateral format with the Palestinians, rather than in an international framework that might make them more difficult to solve.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said the most delicate issues should not be addressed immediately.

In Gaza City on Wednesday night, at least one Palestinian was killed when Hamas tried to arrest a member of Islamic Jihad after he fired into the air at a wedding.

Medical officials said that in subsequent clashes between Islamic Jihad and Hamas’s Executive Force, acting as the police, one Executive Force member was killed.

Helene Cooper reported from Ramallah, and Steven Erlanger from Jerusalem.

After Gaza

Middle East Report N°68
2 August 2007

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Hamas’s takeover of Gaza and President Abbas’s dismissal of the national unity government and appointment of one led by Salam Fayyad amount to a watershed in the Palestinian national movement’s history. Some paint a positive picture, seeing the new government as one with which Israel can make peace. They hope that, with progress in the West Bank, stagnation in Gaza and growing pressure from ordinary Palestinians, a discredited Hamas will be forced out or forced to surrender. They are mistaken. The Ramallah-based government is adopting overdue decisions to reorganise security forces and control armed militants; Israel has reciprocated in some ways; and Hamas is struggling with its victory. But as long as the Palestinian schism endures, progress is on shaky ground. Security and a credible peace process depend on minimal intra-Palestinian consensus. Isolating Hamas strengthens its more radical wing and more radical Palestinian forces. The appointment of Tony Blair as new Quartet Special Envoy, the scheduled international meeting and reported Israeli-Palestinian talks on political issues are reasons for limited optimism. But a new Fatah-Hamas power-sharing arrangement is a prerequisite for a sustainable peace. If and when it happens the rest of the world must do what it should have before: accept it.

The events in Gaza have given rise to wholly conflicting accounts. For Fatah and those close to Abbas, they were a murderous, illegitimate coup that exposed the Islamists’ true face. The plan, they say, was premeditated and carried out with Iranian backing. They claim to have video proof of a Hamas-led plot to assassinate Abbas. Hamas, too, denounces an attempted coup, though one planned by Fatah elements determined to rob the Islamists of their electoral victory and overturn the Mecca Agreement between the two rival organisations. They say those elements were fostering lawlessness in the Gaza Strip and that the U.S., Israel and several Arab countries conspired to isolate Hamas as well as arm and train forces loyal to Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan in anticipation of a showdown. Hamas’s actions, they insist, were preemptive.

There is truth to both accounts. Evidence and eye-witness stories collected by Crisis Group suggest Hamas’s armed forces – the Executive Security Force and the Qassam Brigades – were strengthening their arsenal and taking steps in preparation for a fight. Their brutality and disregard for human life at the height of the confrontation also is beyond doubt. But Fatah cannot escape blame. From the moment the Mecca Agreement was signed, several of its officials and presidential advisers undercut it. They urged European governments to neither end their boycott of Hamas nor too closely embrace the unity government. Security plans in Gaza understandably could be read by the Islamists as attempts to bolster a force intended to confront them.

The Mecca Agreement’s collapse reflected conflicting domestic agendas: Fatah’s inability to come to terms with the loss of hegemony over the political system coupled with Hamas’s inability to come to terms with the limitations of its own power. But it would be disingenuous in the extreme to minimise the role of outside players, the U.S. and the European Union in particular.

By refusing to deal with the national unity government and only selectively engaging some of its non-Hamas members, by maintaining economic sanctions and providing security assistance to one of the parties in order to outmanoeuvre the other, they contributed mightily to the outcome they now publicly lament. Through their words and deeds, they helped persuade important Fatah elements that the unity government was a transient phenomenon and that their former control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) could be restored. And they helped convince important Hamas elements that the unity government was a trap, that time was not on their side and they should act before their adversaries became too strong. The crisis was not produced by the Mecca Agreement but rather by deliberate and systematic attempts to undermine it.

Recent events present a mixed picture. In Gaza, Hamas has made undeniable strides in restoring order. Alan Johnston, the kidnapped British journalist, was released, and Gazans testify to feeling more secure than in a long time. But the Islamists’ takeover of virtually all PA institutions, the curtailment of basic freedoms and harassment of Fatah members bode ill. Nor has Hamas found a way to cope with the closing of vital crossing points, the sharp drop in trade and the accelerating humanitarian crisis. In the West Bank, too, there are signs of progress, including steps to reorganise the security sector, the infusion of international funds, renewed Israeli-Palestinian cooperation and talk of political negotiations. There is also a darker side, however, including the suspension of basic laws, separation between Gaza and the West Bank and revival of obsolete Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) institutions at the expense of elected PA bodies such as the parliament.

The basic question, to which neither Palestinians nor the international community has responded, is whether it is possible to ensure security and move toward a two-state settlement with a politically and geographically divided Palestinian polity. Paradoxically, the more successful the strategy of strengthening Abbas, the greater Hamas’s motivation to sabotage it. Progress thus would create its own threats. If past is prologue, putting Hamas under pressure without giving it a reasonable alternative would lead it to escalate violence against Israel in the expectation that renewed confrontation would embarrass Abbas, torpedo diplomatic progress and alter intra-Palestinian dynamics. How can Abbas deliver a ceasefire without the Islamists and their allies? How can he legitimise a political agreement with Israel – which must entail difficult and unpopular concessions – if Hamas’s significant constituency feels excluded? How can he move toward building a state if Gaza is left out?

A more promising course would be for Fatah and Hamas to immediately cease hostile action against each other and begin to reverse steps that are entrenching separation between Gaza and the West Bank and undermining democratic institutions. In the longer run, they should seek a new power-sharing arrangement, including:

*
a clearer political platform, explicitly endorsing the Arab Peace Initiative;
*
a commitment to a reciprocal and comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire;
*
reform of the security services, to include de-factionalisation and integration of Hamas’s Executive Security Force;
*
reform of the PLO, expanding it to include Hamas and Islamic Jihad;
*
formation of a new unified government approved by the parliament; and
*
consideration of early presidential and legislative elections, although not before one year before the establishment of new government.

To facilitate this, Arab states and other third parties should offer their mediation and monitoring of any agreement. If an agreement is reached, the Quartet should be prepared to engage with a new government politically and economically.

Under current circumstances and given outside interference from various parties, reconciliation is hard to contemplate. Fatah must accept a truly pluralistic system. Hamas owes the Palestinian people answers as to its ultimate political goals and how it wants the national movement to achieve them. Israel must internalise the need to bring the occupation to an end. The international community must accept the right of Palestinians to select their own leaders. Ultimately, a stable Palestinian consensus and the Islamists’ inclusion in the political system are vital to any peace process. That was Abbas’s original intuition. It led to the January 2006 elections and then to Mecca. The parties’ understandable current anger notwithstanding, it remains the right one.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) and the PA Presidency:

1. Cease all mutual incitement and hostile actions and take appropriate disciplinary actions.

2. Refrain from measures in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank that affect the normal functioning, character and personnel of public institutions except where absolutely necessary to ensure law and order, and emphasise the temporary nature of any such measures.

3. Seek the reopening of Gaza crossings under a mechanism that could involve the Presidential Guard, a third party or the Palestinian private sector.

4. Seek return to status quo ante by:

(a) in the case of Hamas, agreeing to relinquish control over all PA and Fatah installations seized since 1 June 2007, immediately restituting private property to lawful owners; and

(b) in the case of Fatah and the PA presidency, agreeing to revoke the 19 June 2007 PLO Central Council resolution mandating early PA presidential and legislative elections as well as other presidential decrees and PLO Central Council resolutions issued since 14 June 2007.

5. Negotiate a new power-sharing agreement, including:

(a) formation of a new, unified government subject to Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) approval;

(b) a mandate for the PLO Chairman to negotiate with Israel on a political settlement of the conflict;

(c) commitment to present such a negotiated political agreement to a referendum or to national institutions for ratification and a pledge to respect the outcome of such a ratification process;

(d) commitment to a comprehensive and reciprocal Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, including halt to all military operations, action against armed groups and effective measures to end weapons smuggling;

(e) endorsement of the Arab Peace Initiative;

(f) integration of Hamas and Islamic Jihad into a reformed PLO;

(g) reform of the security services, including de-factionalising the PA security forces, integrating the Executive Security Force (ESF) into these forces and transforming them into a unified, coherent and disciplined force; and

(h) agreement to consider early presidential and parliamentary elections which, if held, would be no sooner than one year after establishment of the new unity government.

To Arab States, the League of Arab States and Third Parties in Contact with Both Sides (e.g., Turkey, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland):

6. Mediate between Fatah and Hamas, including by engaging with Hamas leaders.

7. Upon reaching an agreement, create a reporting, monitoring and dispute resolution mechanism to support implementation.

To the Quartet (U.S., EU, Russian Federation, UN):

8. Allow and encourage both Tony Blair and the future UN Middle East Envoy to engage in contacts with all relevant parties to the conflict, including the Hamas leadership and de facto authorities in Gaza.

9. Agree to engage politically and economically with any future Palestinian unity government formed on the basis of the Mecca Agreement.

To the Government of Israel:

10. Allow supplies and merchandise to move freely into and out of Gaza, including via the Karni crossing, under one of the arrangements mentioned above.

11. Facilitate the movement of goods and people within the West Bank and remove barriers that do not have a clear security function.

12. Pursue a comprehensive and reciprocal Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire and a speedy prisoner exchange.

13. Agree to begin negotiations with the PLO Chairman toward a two-state solution.

To the European Union and its Member States:

14. In all statements and contacts with the PA government in Ramallah, encourage reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.

15. Provide assistance to both people and institutions in Gaza, as well as to those in the West Bank, and design assistance programs so as to avoid exacerbating the split between the West Bank and Gaza.

Amman/Jerusalem/Gaza/Brussels, 2 August 2007

Fatah Militants Lay Down Arms to Bolster Abbas

By ISABEL KERSHNER

NABLUS, West Bank, July 19 — Scores of West Bank Palestinian militants taken off Israel’s wanted list as a gesture to President Mahmoud Abbas are handing in weapons and signing pledges to cease violence against Israel, saying they want to give Mr. Abbas a chance to consolidate his rule here.

Interviews and encounters with more than a dozen members of the gun-toting, notoriously unruly Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, associated with Mr. Abbas’s Fatah faction, indicate that at least in the West Bank they are taking an open-ended timeout.

“Everything must come to an end,” said Mahdi Maraka, an Aksa Brigades leader from Al Ein refugee camp here in Nablus, a traditional hotbed of Fatah militancy in the northern West Bank. “There are two tracks, the political and the military. Now is the time for the political stage.”

Nasr Kharaz, 31, an armed militant and spokesman for the Brigades in the West Bank, said, “The military wing of Fatah has stopped armed resistance at this stage.”

The Aksa Brigades, which first appeared in 2000, was one of the driving forces of the second Palestinian intifada. It was built by Fatah’s grass-roots leadership with the backing of Yasir Arafat as a nationalist force to rival the Islamic militants of Hamas in the armed struggle against Israel.

At the height of the intifada, the brigades — thought to number in the hundreds — carried out scores of shooting attacks on Israeli civilian vehicles and moved on to suicide bombings inside Israel.

But in the occupied West Bank in recent years, they have mostly confined themselves to engaging Israeli soldiers who have come looking for them on their turf. Associates of one of the Brigades’ chief architects, the jailed but influential Marwan Barghouti, say even they support the amnesty. In Gaza, by contrast, a more aggressive spirit of armed resistance lives on. There, men affiliated with the Aksa Brigades are still firing rockets at Israel.

In the West Bank, Hamas has been adhering to a unilateral ceasefire for its own reasons, its militants underground. All the recent suicide bombings in Israel have been carried out by the extremist group Islamic Jihad.

For both Israel and the Aksa Brigades in the West Bank, the emerging cease-fire is an experiment. The disarmed gunmen say they know exactly where their weapons are and who is safeguarding them. And Israel could always draw up a new wanted list.

But some of the Aksa militants say that the seven years of this intifada have achieved nothing, and all of those interviewed said they want to give Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and leader of the embattled Fatah faction, a chance to negotiate an independent Palestinian state.

“We didn’t want to be obstacles in the way of the national project,” said Ibrahim Sahli, a senior Aksa commander for the northern West Bank better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Jabal, or father of the mountain.

The fatigue of war colors some of the men’s conversations. Inside Preventive Security headquarters in Bethlehem, an Aksa member named Khalil Abayat, 45, grinned widely, his face deeply tanned. He said he was five years on the run, “moving from one mountain to another, one cave to another,” sheltering in abandoned houses, with only fleeting visits home to his wife and 12 children.

His brother and cousin were killed by Israeli forces and two of his sons are in Israeli jails. Asked if he is retiring from the resistance, he said: “Enough. I’m exhausted. I just want to rest.”

In another room in the Preventive Security compound in Bethlehem, Amjad Khalawi, 35, told how he had let his hair grow to his waist since, as he put it, he “disappeared” in 2002. “I didn’t see anybody and nobody saw me,” he said. He looks forward to marrying the fiancée he has seen only once in those five years.

But for others, the politics are dominant. They want to aid Fatah, which is closing ranks, in its fight against Hamas, which violently conquered Gaza in mid-June.

After the takeover, Mr. Maraka, Abu Jabal and their foot soldiers took revenge in Nablus, burning and looting dozens of offices and institutions affiliated with Hamas. A month ago, when Mr. Maraka, 30, was interviewed in downtown Nablus, where he appeared with an M-16 machine gun and some armed cohorts in ski masks, he said that the moment Mr. Abbas “provides us with security from the Israelis, we won’t need these weapons.”

Last Sunday, with Israel seeking ways to bolster Mr. Abbas as a brake on Hamas, Israeli and Palestinian security officials announced that they had agreed on a list of 178 Aksa Brigades members to be offered immunity for past deeds; Mr. Maraka, Abu Jabal and most of their cell members were on it. Security officials would not say what any of the individuals on the list were wanted for, beyond saying that they had all been involved in “security-related activity against Israel.”

The gunmen signed a pledge to give up all anti-Israeli activity, handed in their weapons and agreed to remain inside local Palestinian Authority Intelligence or Preventive Security compounds for a week and in their home cities for the next three months. They say they are now relying on Mr. Abbas and the authority for protection from Hamas.

If Israel is satisfied that the former fighters are committed to their pledge, they will be able to leave their fugitive lives behind and become salaried employees of the official security services from which most of them originally sprung.

The deal has proved so popular that there is already talk of another list, and Aksa militants seem ready to line up for it. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to be on it,” Mr. Maraka said, speaking in a second interview on Thursday in his temporary billet: a former prison cell now equipped with a TV set, a fridge and a whirring fan, at the authority’s intelligence headquarters in Nablus. Abu Jabal, a portly figure, speaking under a vine outside his home in Al Ein, said he was on a brief “vacation” from the Preventive Security headquarters in the city, where he was spending the week.

Both men were relaxed and joking, the weapons that had so long defined them conspicuously absent.

Ahmed Balboul, reputedly one of the most wanted men in Bethlehem, was not on the first list, but hopes to be on the next. Meeting openly in Manger Square, he came unarmed. “I could hand over five rifles for the cameras and buy another 10,” he said. “Our intentions are more important than the rifles, and our intentions are turned toward negotiation.”

Naturally, there is deep skepticism about how long any lull in the violence can last.

“In Palestinian history there are no beginnings and no ends,” said Mahdi Abdul Hadi, director of Passia, a Palestinian research institute. “There are unfolding chapters, like waves in the sea.” The Aksa men are swimming with the tide, he said, “but they don’t know where it will take them.”

Like the some other groups in the first intifada — the Black Panthers and the Fatah Hawks — and Fatah’s military wing, Al Asifa (The Storm) before them, Al Aksa Brigades may yet reappear, or be reincarnated under different name.

Much will now depend on Israel’s willingness to adhere to the cease-fire with Fatah and engage in a serious peace effort toward the establishment of a Palestinian state, many Palestinians say.

“Deactivating terrorists is a step,” said Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. “Let’s see if it works, and if it does, we can move forward.”

Whatever happens, said Qadura Fares, a Fatah politician in Ramallah and an associate of the jailed Mr. Barghouti, “there will never be a vacuum.”

“It will be filled,” he said, “with either dialogue and peace, or another round of confrontation.”

Mr. Maraka, for one, is making sure that the next generation is prepared to continue the struggle if need be. At the intelligence headquarters in Nablus, he proudly showed video clips on his cellphone of his sons, ages 10 and 8, firing an Israeli Galil assault rifle and an M-16 on a barren mountainside.

Israel Releases 255 Palestinian Prisoners

Move Is Intended to Boost Popularity of Fatah's Abbas

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 21, 2007; A08

BEITUNIYA, West Bank, July 20 -- Israeli police arrested Faten Daraghmeh four years ago in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ariel. The mother of seven children wore a vest packed with explosives, and she later informed her family that she had planned to blow herself up inside a crowded shopping mall. Instead she went to jail.

Now she is home. Daraghmeh and 254 other Palestinian prisoners walked out of their cells Friday and crossed into the West Bank here just before noon in an ecstatic eight-bus convoy -- Palestinian flags, Fatah party banners, and smiling faces poking out from open windows.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to release the prisoners, less than 3 percent of an estimated 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, to boost the popularity of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party at a pivotal moment in its political standoff with the rival Hamas movement.

But the first mass prisoner release in more than two years could harden the partisan divide between the armed Islamic movement and Fatah, a secular party that has the backing of the Bush administration.

None of those freed Friday were from Hamas, Israeli and Hamas officials confirmed, although a few were members of Palestinian factions other than Fatah. The vast majority belonged to Abbas's party, including Daraghmeh, who frantically waved a poster with the president's picture as her women-only bus passed through this crossing north of Jerusalem.

Three of her daughters waited with the chanting throngs for their mother, who had served just over half her sentence. As she appeared in the window, the crowd lifted up Noura, a 4-year-old in an embroidered tunic, and Shuruq, a 5-year-old in a frilly white party dress, to ride with their mother before the bus zipped toward Abbas's presidential compound for a partisan celebration.

"I'm thanking Abu Mazen very much," Daraghmeh, in her 30s, called from the window, referring to Abbas by his nickname.

Prisoners are venerated for their sacrifice in Palestinian society, and the issue is among the most emotionally resonant in the long conflict with Israel. This prisoner release, highly unpopular among Olmert's hawkish coalition partners, comes as pressure mounts on Israel from the Bush administration, Egypt and Jordan to do more to improve Fatah's standing in the West Bank.

Last month, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, sealing the political division of the two territories envisioned as the main components of a future Palestinian state.

Abbas immediately fired the Hamas-led unity government and appointed an emergency cabinet that now holds sway in the West Bank. But its political legitimacy has been challenged by Hamas and others because it continues operating without approval from the Hamas-dominated parliament. The Islamic movement won 2006 elections that were championed by the Bush administration.

After the emergency government's 30-day mandate expired last week, Abbas reappointed independent lawmaker Salam Fayyad as prime minister and made minor changes to the cabinet before installing it again. He has pledged to call early presidential and parliamentary elections, which his Fatah movement, struggling to rehabilitate its political image after years of corrupt, hapless rule, is by no means assured of winning.

Hamas, meanwhile, is running a parallel government in Gaza, where an already impoverished economy is nearing collapse because Israel has closed cargo crossings to all but emergency aid.

Fatah's support is hardly universal, even in the West Bank. "We hope that what happened in Gaza happens here in the West Bank," said Mahmoud Daraghmeh, Faten's older brother, who sells vegetables in their village near Nablus. "We want Fatah gone altogether. With Fatah, it's all lies."

Israel freed 898 Palestinian prisoners in two phases during the first six months of 2005. At the time, Abbas, newly elected as president, had successfully brokered a cease-fire with Israel among most of the armed Palestinian factions, including Hamas.

Israeli officials said that release was designed to strengthen Abbas, but in elections eight months later Hamas prevailed. Now, Olmert is pursuing a similar strategy, which includes transferring some frozen Palestinian tax revenue and granting a three-month trial amnesty to nearly 200 wanted Fatah gunmen in the West Bank.

In recent days, scores of Fatah activists and gunmen from its armed wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, have emerged from hiding. Many are sleeping at night for the first time in years, adjusting to a life outside of self-imposed confinement to avoid Israeli capture.

"I didn't see the sunshine, I didn't know if it was raining," said Amjad Kharawi, a 35-year-old Fatah activist, who turned himself in to the Palestinian Preventive Security headquarters in Bethlehem this week after five years in hiding. "I missed meat, all kinds of food, and coffee."

A scraggly beard reaching to his chest and his hair falling past his shoulders, Kharawi became a fugitive in April 2002 when Israeli forces arrived at his home in the Deheishe refugee camp near Bethlehem looking for him. He said he is not a member of Fatah's armed wing and intends now to join the Palestinian security services and marry his fiancee, whom he has not seen since he went into hiding.

"Israel has always been responsible for weakening Abu Mazen," Kharawi said. "What I know is that he is my president, though, and I will abide by the decisions he makes."

Among those released Friday was Abdel Rahim Malouh, the second-ranking official of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Abbas often works with the party, a Marxist movement with a small presence in parliament. Red banners bobbed above the crowd, and a number of the party's young activists danced and chanted while waiting for the buses to arrive.

Most of those gathered wore the black-and-white checked scarves of Fatah, including 25-year-old Suha Mousa, who awaited her brother. Murad Mousa, who was a student at al-Quds Open University at the time of his arrest for participating in stone-throwing demonstrations, served more than half of his nine year sentence.

"We couldn't sleep we were so excited after we heard he would be released," she said. "But it is a time of mixed feelings. We are happy about my brother, but there are many others still in there."

Gaza's economy barely alive

Since Hamas took over the strip, Israel has closed the border. Even as jobs are lost, one merchant gambles on a reopening.
By Louise Roug
Times Staff Writer

July 20, 2007

GAZA CITY — Defying southern Gaza's dusty soil, sturdy little sprouts stand in neat rows before Zakary Hejazi.

The buds are a gamble: $162,000 worth of carnations. In the coming months, Hejazi hopes to export them to Europe.

But politics could make this harvest, and his business, wither.

"All the farmers are having nightmares," he said on a recent afternoon. "If the border closure continues, it'll be the death of the people — not just the flowers."

Since the Islamic militant organization Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in mid-June, Israel has in effect sealed off the territory, closing border crossings to the import and export of most produce and other goods.

As a result, the already weak and aid-dependent Gaza economy is on the verge of collapse. Hundreds of factories have closed and tens of thousands of people are out of work.

On Monday, President Bush said the U.S. was giving $190 million in aid to the Palestinians. But the money is intended for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' government in the West Bank.

Israel, the United States and some European countries are trying to undermine Hamas, which they consider a terrorist group, by dividing the Palestinians and isolating Gaza.

But residents, business leaders and officials in Gaza said in interviews that they think Israel, not Hamas, is to blame for the economic crisis.

"People don't have anything against Hamas," said Mohammed Talabani, owner of a Gaza cookie factory. "It's Israel that is creating the crisis."

Talabani normally exports $750,000 worth of biscuits, wafers and ice cream to the West Bank every month. But there are no more exports, and the Al Awda factory is running out of imported cocoa, sugar and ice cream sticks.

Talabani has cut production by two-thirds, sending home hundreds of workers.

In the industrial sector alone, as many as 35,000 workers have been laid off, with losses amounting to $20 million, said Ali Hayak, the director of the Palestinian Federation of Industry. The problems add to Gaza's already considerable economic woes.

Official figures put unemployment at about 50%, but unemployment in effect is closer to 85% because many workers receive salaries that are so meager as to be meaningless, said Omar Shaban, a leading economist who blames both Israeli and Palestinian politicians.

Almost two-thirds of Gaza's budget comes from outside aid, he said.

"We cannot work without coordinating with the occupation," Shaban said. "We have to be logical. We have a responsibility for 1.5 million people in Gaza."

As many as 1.1 million of them are dependent on international aid, said John Ging, director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza. With the border all but closed, the last functioning part of the economy is collapsing, and the impending humanitarian crisis could overwhelm U.N. resources in Gaza, he said.

"If people are hungry, they will go to Hamas for help and aid," Hayak said. "But if the borders are open, people will be busy in their business, taking care of themselves."

Hejazi, for one, has been unable to get fertilizer to his hillside nursery. He is hoping his carnations might still make it through the sweltering summer and that, come fall harvest, the border will be open again.

Other farmers have already been forced to sell their produce for a pittance. Vegetables destined for Israeli markets instead have flooded the 140-square-mile Gaza Strip. One dollar now buys 26 pounds of tomatoes.

Palestinian textile producers, whose summer clothes may not make it to Israeli shops before the season is over, stand to lose as much as $5 million, according to observers and trade groups in Israel and Gaza.

Meanwhile, prices of imported materials have soared. Supplies of concrete are running out, and the construction sector has ground to a halt, delaying $93 million worth of United Nations projects — among them schools, refugee camp repairs and sanitation networks, Ging said.

Like Talabani, many Palestinian importers are forced to pay thousands of dollars in storage fees for goods stuck at the Israeli port of Ashdod, just north of Gaza City, and elsewhere. During the first two weeks of closure alone, Palestinian importers racked up $1.5 million in such charges, according to a report by Gisha, an Israeli-based advocacy group that promotes freedom of movement for Palestinians.

Hundreds of Palestinian traders and merchants who normally commute to Israel daily for business are also trapped in Gaza because of the border closures. And thousands of other Palestinians remain trapped on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing.

When Hamas took control of Gaza last month, Palestinian border guards affiliated with the rival Fatah party fled their posts, leaving the crossings staffed only on the Israeli side.

Through intermediaries, Hamas officials have sought to resolve the situation with the Israelis, said Alaa Araj, an economics advisor to Ismail Haniyeh, the dismissed Palestinian Authority prime minister.

Abbas, who is based in the West Bank, fired Haniyeh and his government after the fighting in Gaza last month. But Haniyeh rejected the termination of his administration and has continued to govern.

Araj said border guards affiliated with Fatah were welcome to come back to work as long as they were not corrupt.

But Israeli officials say they will not negotiate with groups they consider terrorists or that do not recognize the state of Israel.

"As long as Hamas doesn't rethink its position, things will stay the way they are," said Shlomo Dror, an Israeli government spokesman, highlighting that the Israelis have allowed the passage of tons of food, medicine and other aid.

"The Palestinians in Gaza can survive without the opening of the crossings," he said. "True, there are difficulties and the situation isn't good, but they're not collapsing tomorrow morning. There will not be starvation in Gaza."

But Ging of the United Nations said that, while important, food handouts are not a solution.

"It's not just about keeping people alive. But alive to do what?"

Israel pulled out of Gaza two years ago and has since intermittently shut down the border crossings, sometimes for weeks on end. However, the current stranglehold on commercial goods and material is unprecedented.

"Every time there is a closure, we say, 'This is the worst,' " Shaban said. "But this is the worst of the worst."

For their part, Israeli fruit growers cannot sell their produce in Gaza and are losing millions of dollars in revenue.

Israeli officials recently said Hamas had banned Israeli fruit from entering Gaza, but Hamas officials denied this, and it is unclear how fruit would be able to pass the closed border crossings.

Shaban said opening the border was the most pressing short-term concern but added that Palestinian politicians needed to develop the economy, paying special attention to successful sectors, such as flower growing.

In Hejazi's business, trade trumps politics.

He imports the seeds from Israel. He grows the flowers in Rafah, not far from demolished Jewish settlements. And he monitors prices online before selling his crop through the Dutch flower bourse in Europe. Carnations yearly bring $20 million to Gaza, create jobs and, with that, hope for the future.

"We need food, yes," Shaban said. "But we also need flowers."

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roug@latimes.com

Special correspondent Hamada Abu Qamar contributed to this report.

In Gaza, Hamas walks an ideological tightrope

Tensions grow between the party's pragmatists and hardliners as groups with more radical visions gain adherents.
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Times Staff Writer

July 13, 2007

GAZA CITY — Rifles popping and flags waving, the funeral cortege for the militant, his shrouded body hoisted on a stretcher, wound through breezeless streets, passing beneath the window of Jamil Mezher, who moments earlier had mentioned that such extremists were an incessant danger to the Gaza Strip.

The dead man, Hasam Harb, was at once a martyr and an omen. A member of Islamic Jihad, he was killed by an Israeli rocket, a fighter revered by the boys scurrying after his procession. But he was also part of an ideology seeking to capitalize on the unrest between Palestinian political parties and turn Gaza into a radical Islamic state.

"Many young people are now willing to participate in these jihad groups," said Mezher, a member of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a left-leaning faction within the Palestinian Authority. "There has been a large number of attacks against Internet cafes and entertainment places in recent years. In our history, we have never had violence like this before. They want us to be more Islamic. They bombed our cultural center the other day because we offered traditional Palestinian dancing."

The tug of religious extremism has intensified in recent years. Beneficiaries of smuggled weapons and the region's poverty and frustration, these organizations have found cover under the militant group Hamas, which last month seized control of Gaza during clashes with the more secular Fatah party.

Hamas says it disavows Islamic radicalism but faces tension between its religious hard-liners and pragmatists who want to convince the West that it is not a political mask for jihad.

The wider challenge for Hamas is whether it can, or even wishes to, rein in independent Islamist groups seeking to impose Sharia law that would limit other religions and force women to wear hijabs or head scarves. These organizations have made Hamas, which has overwhelming support here and is viewed by the West as a dangerous political movement, appear less threatening in the spectrum of Islamic voices.

Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas blamed Hamas on Tuesday for what he claimed were increasing numbers of terrorists inside Gaza. "Thanks to the support of Hamas, Al Qaeda is entering Gaza," said Abbas.

Hamas spokesman Sami abu Zuhri said, "Hamas has no link to Al Qaeda." He accused Abbas of "trying to mislead international opinion to win support for his demand to deploy international forces in Gaza."

Deciphering the strands of Islamic militant cells, their influence, clan allegiances and how they are woven into Gaza's larger factional picture is complicated.

A June 14 attack on the Rosary Sisters School, for example, suggested both a criminal element and an underlying Islamist fervor against Christians. During fighting between Fatah and Hamas, Fatah forces used the school roof as strategic high ground. Hamas' main military wing, the Izzidin al-Qassam Brigade, fired crudely manufactured rocket-propelled grenades and stormed the campus.

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Extensive damage

Hamas routed Fatah, and much of the $100,000 worth of damage to the school — which has 520 students, the overwhelming majority of whom are Muslims — was caused by combat. But amid scorched walls and broken glass, the chapel for the school's three nuns was ransacked, altar crosses were broken or bent, a statue of Jesus was smashed. Upstairs, the nuns' rooms were burned and vandalized.

"This was an attack against the school itself," said Hanidi Maswak, the deputy director, who crunched over glass in the blackened hallways the other day. "It wasn't just a crime or looting. In the beginning, Hamas battled Fatah security men, but then some of them realized this was a Christian place and intentionally did this damage. Hamas will not undermine [religious] extremists like this. If Hamas can't control them, we'll go back to blood feuds and revenge."

Across town at the Holy Family Catholic Church and School, a first-grade teacher, who gave her name only as Madlan, watched her son run with a paper kite through the courtyard. The school's principal didn't want to talk, except to say that "things were critical."

Madlan was also unsure of what to say and how to gauge the new dynamics for Gaza's 3,000 Christians, who for generations have enjoyed relative calm amid a Palestinian leadership that had not been religiously radical.

"The first day after the fighting I was stopped by Hamas and they said now this is an Islamist country," she said. "But I don't think Christians are being targeted yet. There was a speech a few days later [by a Hamas leader] and he spoke of Palestinian unity between religions and that calmed things. But if we had to leave, where would we go? I am a Palestinian."

Mezher said the economic embargo imposed on Gaza after Hamas' electoral victory in 2006, has emboldened extremists and deepened the ideological divide within Hamas. The U.S. and other Western powers view Hamas as a militant Islamic party that, much like Hezbollah in Lebanon, could further destabilize the Middle East. But Mezher said other breakaway organizations are more dangerous.

"Since Hamas came to power in parliamentary elections. some people in its military wing have started to believe that Hamas has made too many political concessions," said Mezher. "These people are not happy. They've left Hamas to establish groups like Al-Islam and others. Some Hamas officials are unofficially supporting these groups."

Ghazi Hamad, an aide to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, said some groups had sought to exploit Gaza's situation and that Hamas' power was limited.

One of them is the Army of Islam, which last week released BBC reporter Alan Johnston after holding him hostage for 114 days. The ordeal revealed Hamas' limitations in controlling small radical groups. Desperate for weeks to gain Johnston's release in hope of convincing the world it is not a terrorist organization, Hamas was stymied by the Army of Islam, which is connected to a rival clan and has links to Al Qaeda. The reporter was freed only after Hamas kidnapped a key figure in the group and surrounded the clan's compound with its fighters.

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Business drops

Hani A. Abushahla's livelihood is slipping away amid the plotting of Islamists and the sound of gunfire. Co-owner of an import company, Abushahla said business has dropped 75% since a Western embargo was imposed on Gaza last year to weaken Hamas. His contracts, including one for $250,000 from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, have gone unpaid.

He said that he has not noticed a significant increase in religious fanaticism, but that even Hamas' mix of politics and religion, which is tamer than that of groups such as the Army of Islam, is too volatile, and destined to fail.

"Whether they be moderate or extreme, Hamas will not be allowed to succeed in Gaza," said Abushahla. "They won't last. Having an Islamic government succeed here will not be a good model for Egypt and Jordan, who have their own Islamic organizations."

On the day Harb's body was carried through the streets, Basil Shawwa sat in the shade while men around him sipped espressos, ate cake and smoked water pipes.

Shawwa runs a cafe frequented by expats, Palestinian liberals and anyone else who might be offensive to an Islamic militant. His children are on summer break from the Rosary Sisters School; he is sending them to Jordan because things are too dangerous here.

"I know what these extremists are looking for. Do we rent rooms for prostitution? How do people dress? Do we serve alcohol?" Shawwa said, adding that the embargo is making ketchup, sugar and mayonnaise scarce. "Perhaps in the future, the extremists groups will become stronger, but I feel that eventually Hamas and the radicals will end up fighting one another."

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jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com