Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 19 - 25 October 2000 Issue No. 504
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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National unity under stress

By Graham Usher

For the last three weeks virtually every capital in the Arab world has been rocked by demonstrations. What pulled the masses out onto the streets has been solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada and opposition to a brutal military occupation, which has so far left more than 100 Palestinians dead, 28 of them children. But a secondary cause has been to protest Arab governments' inaction in the face of the carnage, a stance only partially redeemed by the decision to hold the first Arab summit in four years in Cairo on 21 and 22 October.

The same dynamic between protest and blame is starting to be seen in the occupied territories.

On 13 October, a demonstration was called in Gaza by all Palestinian national and Islamist factions to denounce Israel's air and sea attacks the day before on Palestinian Authority (PA) installations in Gaza City, Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron and Jericho. Mindful that Israeli tanks, attack helicopters and gunboats were still primed for action within and on Gaza's borders, Palestinian Authority police tried to prevent the demonstration from reaching known flashpoints with the army.

As the crisis intensified without let-up, Cairo thrust ahead with preparations for the 21-22 October extraordinary Arab summit which it will host. Mubarak said that "there is no more pressing a time than this to hold an Arab summit." Pinning much hope on the outcome of the summit, the president was able within a few days to whip up consensus among Arab leaders, who have not met since 1996. But he was unyielding to calls in Arab ranks for tough decisions of economic boycott or even war against Israel. "It won't be a matter of muscle-flexing," he said in response to Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi's suggestion to declare war on Israel at the summit. "No one should pre-impose decisions on the summit," noted Mubarak. "We have to take decisions based on what the foreign ministers will discuss ahead of the summit." And for the first time in 14 days of revolt some of the crowd violently refused, venting their anger instead on the symbols of the leadership that had brought them to this pass. The rage was fuelled by talk that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was again being squeezed to have another summit with the man responsible for laying siege to their cities and killing their children -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

In what appeared to be a wholly cathartic outburst similar to those that killed the two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah and destroyed Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, hundreds of Palestinians torched a hotel in Gaza City, a liquor store in Gaza's Shati refugee camp and attacked private homes where alcohol is sold. There was also an attempt to blow up with gas canisters Gaza's premier Windmill hotel, where PA officials wine and dine with foreign diplomats, including, on occasion, CIA operatives.

As the crisis intensified without let-up, Cairo thrust ahead with preparations for the 21-22 October extraordinary Arab summit which it will host. Mubarak said that "there is no more pressing a time than this to hold an Arab summit." Pinning much hope on the outcome of the summit, the president was able within a few days to whip up consensus among Arab leaders, who have not met since 1996. But he was unyielding to calls in Arab ranks for tough decisions of economic boycott or even war against Israel. "It won't be a matter of muscle-flexing," he said in response to Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi's suggestion to declare war on Israel at the summit. "No one should pre-impose decisions on the summit," noted Mubarak. "We have to take decisions based on what the foreign ministers will discuss ahead of the summit." The immediate explanation was that Gaza is a conservative society that has long been disturbed by such places and lifestyles, both of which have flourished since the return of the PLO leadership from exile. But there are other reasons. "It's true the distance between the leadership and the people has narrowed during this Intifada," observes one Palestinian analyst. "But there is still a perception that we are two societies -- those who rob from the PA and those who sacrifice their lives to defend it." And the enduring symbols of those who rob are the hotels, bars and restaurants.

There was no evidence that the Islamist movements of Hamas and Islamic Jihad were behind this vandalism, even if certain of their supporters (along with supporters of Arafat's Fatah movement) participated in it. During the incidents, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar publicly urged people to refrain from such acts, saying they were the fruit of "agents provocateurs" and served only "the enemies of the Palestinian people." After it, Hamas lent its signature to a statement by all the Palestinian factions condemning all those who "strike at national unity and the Intifada" and calling on the PA to "bring those responsible to trial."

But this did not stop certain PA officials, off the record and on, from blaming Hamas for the violence. Nor has it stopped PA police arresting some 16 Hamas supporters in recent days for "attacks on Palestinian private property."

And this marks a change. In its first bloom, this Intifada, like its precursor in 1987, was characterised by a national unity between all the factions, nationalist and Islamist alike. Hamas placed itself very much in the wake of the demonstrations called and led by Fatah and, for the first time, participated in meetings of the PA leadership. In return, around 23 Hamas and Jihad political prisoners were freed from PA prisons, all of them detained without charge or trial.

And it is difficult to see this reversal as anything other than the result of Israeli and US pressure, for whom the destruction and containment of Hamas and Jihad has long been the sine qua non of the Oslo process. On 12 October, as the Apache helicopters began swoop down on Gaza and Ramallah, some 100 Islamist prisoners, together with ordinary criminals, fled from PA jails as part of the general mayhem caused by Israel's first military assault on Palestinian cities in 33 years of occupation. In Gaza, they were either set free by their jailers or kicked down the cell doors themselves. In Junied prison in Nablus, they were initially marshalled in the exercise yard. But their distraught families and fighters belonging to the Fatah movement eventually breached the walls to release them, as much out of fear that the prison was about to be strafed as out of political design. In all, some 60 prisoners escaped to freedom in Nablus and 40 in Gaza. In other words, the mass releases were "emphatically not an official order from the PA," says editor of the Islamist Al-Risala newspaper, Ghazi Hamad, a point confirmed by Arafat at a meeting with faction leaders in Gaza on 14 October.

This of course was not how Israel's political and military establishment viewed the releases. It immediately accused Arafat of giving the "greenest of green lights" to Hamas and put the army and police on a state of alert for "terrorist bombings" inside Israel proper. Israeli politicians also told every media outlet they could find that the prisoners released included Hamas military leaders Mahmoud Abu Hanoud and Mohamed Deif, neither of whom were actually in the Gaza or Nablus prisons, but under "separate arrest" in locations near the PA's Preventive Security headquarters. And there, say Hamas sources, is where they remain.

But the charge rattled the PA, and may have had something to do with Arafat's decision to attend a summit he surely knows can only fail. It also galvanised the PA police into a new wave of "re-arrests," with 34 Islamists being picked up over the weekend in Gaza and Nablus, 14 of them turning themselves in voluntarily. Those re-arrested include Hamas' political leader in Gaza, Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantisi, who has now served over two and half years in administrative detention for "criticising" the PA leadership and -- say both Fatah and Hamas sources -- upon the express order of the CIA.

And the relationship between the PA leadership and its Islamist opposition has returned to the usual groove of mutual distrust. This cannot but undermine the unity so far shown in the uprising, says editor Hamad. Hamas has accepted a back-seat role in the revolt because "Fatah is still manifestly the leader of the Palestinian people," has access to the guns and also, he admits, because "Hamas, like every other Palestinian faction except for Fatah" lagged behind the spontaneous actions of the people.

But there was also a strategic dimension. Hamas "believes that sustained resistance to the occupation is the only banner under which a genuine national unity can operate," says Hamad. If "things return to normal" and "security cooperation" between the PA, Israel and the CIA is restored, then Hamas and Jihad may be tempted to pursue a "more independent policy," including perhaps suicide operations on Israeli cities.

And this would pit the PA, and probably Fatah, against them. This was why most Palestinians were so dismayed by the arson in Gaza and the PA's repressive response to them, and so alarmed by Arafat's decision to attend the Sharm Al-Sheikh summit. They know that the national unity of the factions was the condition for the success and longevity of the last Intifada. They instinctively know it will be a necessary condition for the next.

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Related stories:
'Resistance will always unite us'
See also Intifada in focus 12 - 18 October 2000

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