The video reveals a bare room with white walls and a black-and-white tiled floor, where abu Dan’s father is forced to sit and listen to his son’s shrieks of pain. Afterward, abu Dan says, he and two of the others were driven to a market square. “They told us they were going to kill us. They made us sit on the ground.” He rolls up the legs of his trousers to display the circular scars that are evidence of what happened next: “They shot our knees and feet—five bullets each. I spent four months in a wheelchair.”
...
Wurmser [Dick Cheney’s resigned chief Middle East adviser] accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says.
...
“We need to reform the Palestinian security apparatus,” Dayton said, according to the notes. “But we also need to build up your forces in order to take on Hamas.”
...
On June 7, there was another damaging leak, when the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Abbas and Dayton had asked Israel to authorize the biggest Egyptian arms shipment yet—to include dozens of armored cars, hundreds of armor-piercing rockets, thousands of hand grenades, and millions of rounds of ammunition. A few days later, just before the next batch of Fatah recruits was due to leave for training in Egypt, the coup began in earnest.
a leaked memo
Read On At Vanity Fair
Technically what took place in Gaza last week cannot be considered a coup, and yet practically it very much took the shape of a bloody coup d’etat.
Why is it that an elected government is required to carry out a coup?
After some days of reflection and hearing many, many accounts of what took place last week, I stick to my early conclusion that the Hamas routing of Fatah security forces in Gaza was politically warranted. But I don’t believe that the means justified the ends.
Sadly, the blood that was shed was the only option the opposition and the international community that backed it, left the democratically elected Hamas leadership to take on the role the people had chosen for it. Hamas’ takeover of Gaza’s rival security forces took on the form of a coup because they were not given rightful control of government institutions after winning the elections. This coup may have been the only option left for Hamas to attempt to earn some form of legitimacy and end the endless inter-factional fighting.
The vast majority of Gazans are living a much safer reality today than they were when two parties vied for authority over Gaza’s security forces. Yet, a minority still suffers, Fatah members fear Hamas searches of their homes, mother’s fear that their sons, who were employed by the former security forces, will be rounded up and punished. The same certainly filled the hearts of Hamas members and their families in the past; now the tables have turned. The reality is that in this society checks and balances are few and far between, largely relying on a familial network of who knows who.
While visiting Ireland yesterday, Jimmy Carter had this to say,
“This effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples now is a step in the wrong direction, all efforts of the international community should be to reconcile the two, but there's no effort from the outside to bring the two together."
"The United States and Israel decided to punish all the people in Palestine and did everything they could to deter a compromise between Hamas and Fatah."
Hamas was given few options and now has played into this strategy of division. Despite positive reports of last week’s events by a human rights group, Hamas ought to be held responsible for some of the brutal actions perpetrated. The bluff of the international community ought to be called; they fabricated this division and now seek to perpetuate it. Today, Abu Mazen accused Mishal of his attempted assassination, by airing a video recording that he claims proves his statements. Hamas for its part accused Dahlan, Abu Mazen’s National Security Advisor, of poisoning former president Yaser Arafat and attempting to assassinate Prime Minister Haniyeh.
In the course of this political power struggle, it is the common people that suffer.
Many rival media outlets were closed during the four days of fighting, the Fatah sponsored Palestine TV has been moved to Ramallah in the West Bank after Hamas closed their office in Gaza, the director fleeing for his life. As one of their anchors pointed out, their callers from Gaza are now their eyes on the street in Gaza.
The following words were spoken through streams of tears in a call to Palestine TV during last weeks fighting by an elderly woman from Beit Hanoun, Gaza,
Where are you Abu Mazen, where are you Ismail Haniyeh?
Curse political titles
Why do we Arabs fight each other?
We want to live, we want peace
This will be recorded in history
Where are you Muslims, shame on you
We don’t want political titles
What is this that is happening?
Ibrahim my son, this is my son, shame on you
Oh world, come and see what Beit Hanoun looks like
During the days of incursions we used to be able to fill out water Gerry cans, now we can’t even leave out homes
Shame on you, you that killed Abu Lou’ai and Ibrahim..
In Gaza people awake today to a new reality. Last night, my host Isa told me military coups were the sort of thing he heard and read about, he never thought he would experience one. Yesterday Gazans did.
Although the final Fatah stronghold was still standing by the evening Hamas fighters were already making the rounds in the streets, three and four jeeps at a time, loaded with armed men wearing all black, their faces covered with masks, holding their guns in the air, a few, rather uncomfortably, waving to the people. On Alaqsa, the only remaining radio station being aired from Gaza belonging to Hamas, these areas are being called “freed” from the traitors.
A former Fatah spokesman, now speaking on behalf of Hamas, was heard on the air denouncing his former leaders, calling them US spies and traitors.
A further shock came around 8pm when Abu Mazen announced Gaza a renegade entity and declared his presidency over the West Bank. Gazans reacted with disgust. During the fighting of the past few days Abu Mazan was largely silent, ordering his forces to stay in their bases. Many consider Abu Mazen to have sold out his own leadership in the Gaza Strip by not coming to their rescue, now he was throwing his people (Fatah supporters) away, like garbage, they said.
With the electricity cut and cell phones working only rarely people clung to the radio to hear as the latest news unfolded. With only one local station in Gaza and only one perspective to be heard rumors abounded. Supposedly fishermen had called in to the Hamas station reporting that some of the Fatah leadership taking final refuge in the president’s compound had escaped by sea some heading South to Egypt, others north towards Israel. One report gave the name of a drug dealer and a Fatah spokesman supposedly escaping together on one boat.
Sitting on the street one could hear the news spread, often the same names of people who had been killed or thought to have escaped were mentioned among the people walking by. The coup d'état was the only thought on their minds of young and old.
A friend, who works with a Fatah security apparatus, told me that the Hamas men that came to his door checking IDs had treated him well. As long as one did not have his weapons on him and stayed home Hamas considered these Fatah members “honorable” in contrast to the “traitors” who resisted what Hamas considers their justified military coup. “Traitors” were at times either shot in the legs or depending on their status brutally executed.
One of the Fatah military compounds freed on Friday was the location of prisons and torture halls where many Hamas members had been tortured over the years for their opposition to the Fatah government. The Hamas celebration at taking it over was only logical.
On Wednesday Palestine TV, a Fatah station aired callers crying about the horrible scenes they had witnessed. An Islamic Jihad sheikh was interviewed condemning the events on the streets of Gaza. By Thursday all radio and TV stations belonging to Fatah in the Gaza Strip were closed down.
Generally people are very concerned about what the near future holds. The streets seem rather secure, but anyone that was at all in opposition to Hamas is scared, most are staying home or are in hiding somewhere. Cars are moving about, people are walking the streets, I am back at the Marna House, people are smoking shisha and laughing. Along the road outside old men are sitting in the shade playing backgammon. The combination of normalcy of life and fear of the unknown of the future makes for a strange atmosphere.
a leaked memo
