No chance of a compromise

By Danny Rubinstein

"The most peculiar thing about the bloody events in Gaza is the speed with which the Hamas militias have succeeded in overcoming all the official Palestinian Authority security mechanisms, which were subordinated to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). The official mechanisms numbered tens of thousands of soldiers. They had at their disposal weapons, equipment and installations, but all this did not help them. The resistance by the forces and the commanders of the Fatah movement to the attacks by the operational units of the Hamas Iz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades lasted for barely 48 hours. How did this happen?

The usual answer is that the Fatah people and commanders in those mechanisms did not want to fight at all. They surrendered because they did not see this war as their war. As far as most of the Fatah activists in the Gaza Strip are concerned, and certainly as far as the Hamas activists there are concerned, the war was a Hamas war on Mohammed Dahlan. And why should they endanger their lives to protect Dahlan and another few dozen of his people, who are thought to constitute a corrupt and criminal gang?.......

The Hamas people have even released Fatah commanders who are not suspected of corruption or of connections to Dahlan. Ahmed Hilas, one of the most prominent Fatah leaders in Gaza, has remained in the city and is talking with the Hamas leadership. Other senior Fatah people who served in key positions under Yasser Arafat, such as former government ministers Farih Abu Madin or Nahad al-Rais, have remained in Gaza and no one is hassling them. Hamas, then, is sending out a clear message that it has no quarrel with the Fatah movement......

But things cannot continue this way for very long. The problem was not the cruelty and the corruption of Dahlan and his people. Corruption and cruelty on the part of political leaders are indeed well known among the Palestinians, but they are also known among the leaderships of peoples worldwide. The Palestinians, like people in many other places, are prepared to forgive corruption, as long as the leaders do well by the people and bring them prosperity and well-being. The problem that Abu Mazen, Dahlan and Fatah have is that they have dragged their people down to a terrible low point, to a life of poverty, distress and siege. The political track that they have followed for decades, especially since the recognition of Israel in the summer of 1988, has led to a dead end. The blame for this dead end certainly falls on Israel, but what interests the battered Palestinian public is the fact that their leaders, who had pinned their hopes on Israel, have led them into this situation......."