Jubilant Hamas militants cemented their domination over Gaza on Friday, but appeared to make conciliatory overtures to their Fatah opponents after a week of intense fighting that has effectively broken Palestine in two.
Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader in Gaza, called for new negotiations with the Fatah leader and Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, and urged calm from his own gunmen after they had routed Fatah rivals and embarked on a wave of looting in Fatah offices and homes in the Gaza Strip. Hamas also released 10 senior Fatah officials captured during five days of clashes that killed more than 100 people.
Haniyeh also demanded the release of Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent kidnapped in Gaza more than three months ago. On Friday night, there were reports that his captors had promised an imminent release, but these could not be independently confirmed.
Haniyeh, sacked as government chief on Thursday as the Hamas revolt in Gaza climaxed, insisted he was still the legitimate prime minister on the basis of elections last year that Hamas dominated. ”No internal formula in the Palestinian territories will hold without national agreement and without respecting the legitimacy of the election,” he said.
Defiant
Eighty kilometres away in his West Bank seat of power, Abbas presented a defiant front to the movement that has demolished his authority in Gaza, ignoring Haniyeh’s claim to office and naming a replacement Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, a moderate technocrat respected in the west.
Hamas denounced the move as a political coup. But the movement has yet to indicate how it will exercise its new power. It is not even clear how much of this week’s violence was supported by Haniyeh, or whether hard-line elements in the movement precipitated the clash. All crossings out of Gaza into Israel and Egypt remain closed and the Egyptian diplomatic mission in Gaza pulled out on Friday.
Under the state of emergency imposed by Abbas, a new government could last for 30 days. It would then need parliamentary approval to continue, or Abbas could appoint another prime minister and Cabinet for another 30 days. This process could theoretically continue for several months.
Western governments, including the United States and the European Union, pledged their support for Abbas, speaking of him as a moderate leader. Some officials hinted that Israel might unfreeze tax revenues worth hundreds of millions of dollars that it has withheld from the Palestinians.
”The fact that President Abbas has fired the Hamas government is a very positive move in our opinion, and makes it easier to deal with and help the moderates,” said Miri Eisin, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Jordan also threw its weight behind the president as Arab foreign ministers met in Cairo to discuss the Palestinian crisis.
No authority
The events in Gaza mean Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, now has no way of imposing his authority there. Images showing gunmen rifling through his offices at a ransacked compound in Gaza amply demonstrated his political emasculation.
One gunman picked up his telephone and joked that he was calling Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, The Associated Press reported. ”Hello, Rice?” the gunman said. ”Here we are in Abu Mazen’s office. Say hello to Abu Mazen for me.”
Thousands of Palestinians gathered at a rally in Gaza City in support of the Hamas takeover. Most approved of the defeat of Fatah, but many were also concerned about the future. ”I worry about the economy and freedoms under Hamas control,” said Mohammad Thaher (29), who owns a pizza restaurant. ”I’m worried they might impose Islamic restrictions on women’s dress, close coffee shops and so on.”
In Ramallah, meanwhile, Abbas’s supporters put on a show of force on Friday to demonstrate that Fatah and the Palestinian Authority still controlled the West Bank. Members of Palestinian Authority security forces stood in pickup trucks holding their rifles across their chests and drove slowly through the quiet streets. On Thursday night, all over the West Bank, Hamas members were arrested and their offices looted and set alight.
Ziad Abu Ein, a Fatah leader in Ramallah and a close ally of the jailed Fatah figure Marwan Barghouti, predicted that anti-Hamas forces in Gaza would regroup.
”What we have witnessed is a fascist, military coup. Hamas cannot control the Palestinian people with their machine guns. They may have taken a few government buildings, but Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organisation still have the people in Gaza,” he said. ”In a few days there will be a new uprising in Gaza when people discover the truth of Hamas. There will be a big fight.”
New prime minister
Salam Fayyad — an economist, MP and former finance minister — is well known in Western financial circles following an eight-year stint at the World Bank and six years as the International Monetary Fund’s representative to the Palestinian Authority.
Born near Tulkarm in the West Bank in 1952, he was educated in Lebanon and Texas, and spent 20 years in the US. He returned to Palestine in 2002 as finance minister, working hard to stamp out official corruption.
After Hamas won elections in 2006, he rejected overtures to be prime minister. He returned to the Finance Ministry this year as part of a Saudi-brokered deal to establish the ill-fated national unity government. He is married with three children. — Guardian Unlimited Â