The division of the occupied territories encapsulates US-Israeli plans for the region, writes Galal Nassar Recent events in Gaza and the West Bank give poets and writers yet another chance for one of those sad epics that seem to best describe the last century or so of our history, although what has happened in the past few days is far worse, on a moral and national level, than the continued Israeli occupation. The loss of life within less than a week exceeded that of a whole year of the first Intifada, when stone-throwing children challenged the occupiers. Now Palestinian blood is being shed in a confrontation between those who resist the occupation, among those who once respected the sanctity of struggle and resistance and who until recently embodied the memory of everything that is proud in our history. The fall has been horrific. It has transgressed everything that was sacred inside the Palestinian territories. Until a few weeks ago the use of Palestinian weapons against Palestinians was taboo. Now the taboo has been broken. The infighting opened the gates of hell, opening up a vista of sedition, of fragmentation and division. The infighting has diverted the Palestinians from their goals and aspirations and weakened the national struggle against the Israeli occupation. One consequence will be that the occupation is prolonged. The fall will have complex repercussions. Weapons have now been used on a front that should not have been opened. This was a moral lapse and a flagrant deviation from the task of resistance. More than 1,000 people have been killed since fighting broke out between Fatah and Hamas. Property has been destroyed and people murdered simply because they belonged to the wrong group. In so distorting the Palestinian struggle the gates have been opened wide for foreign intervention. And the Palestinian territories, brutally grabbed in 1967, are now divided while still under occupation. The Israeli press is having a field day, referring gloatingly to Gaza as Hamastan and to the West Bank as Fatahland. International sympathy with the Palestinian cause is ebbing and a mood of despair has gripped the Arab world. Under such circumstances it is hard to single out one Palestinian faction for blame. Anyone who took part in the fighting, indeed anyone who took sides with one group against another, is guilty. Everyone is responsible for the killings that have taken place, for a crime that could destroy all Palestinian hopes for self determination, for an independent state and for the return of refugees. I am reminded of Saad Ibn Abi Waqqas, the hero of the Battle Al-Qadisiya, who following the assassination of Caliph Othman boycotted public life and stayed at home. When he was asked to end his isolation Ibn Abi Waqqas said, "By God, I will not come out until you bring me a sword that has an eye and a tongue and that can tell the believers from the disbelievers." No analysis of what has happened can avoid linking current events in Gaza and the West Bank with the US-Israeli agenda for the region. There is an overlap between the current situation in the occupied territories and the Greater Middle East scheme. There is also a link between events in Palestine and Ehud Olmert's plan to resolve the Arab- Israeli conflict and draw Israel's final borders. I have spoken to many security and strategic experts in the region about the Greater Middle East and Olmert's plans. Most agree that the Greater Middle East scheme aims to create a region affiliated with the West running from Morocco to Pakistan and from Turkey to Uganda. The Greater Middle East project is supposed to bring radical changes to the political and economic structure of the region, forcing on states the kind of modernisation and democratisation that was Washington's avowed aim in Iraq. Like Iraq, the result will be balkanisation and fragmentation, with constitutions and governments created along sectarian and ethnic lines. The fractured region that results will then be policed by Israel. It is no coincidence that the borders of the Greater Middle East conform to what Israel regards as its sphere of influence. The Greater Middle East is in essence the space in which Israel would intervene militarily, through the use of its air force or ballistic missiles, as needed. It is remarkable how the division of the tiny Palestinian homeland into two entities, one in Gaza and one in the West Bank, mirrors developments in Iraq. It also presages divisions that may occur in Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia, and perhaps Western Sahara, with other Arab countries following the same pattern sooner or later. The "constructive chaos", which Condoleezza Rice regards as the birth pangs of a new Middle East, has arrived. The first signs of this "constructive chaos" appeared immediately after Hamas won the majority in the parliamentary elections. A strict economic blockade was imposed on the Palestinian territories. The blockade hampered the government's efforts to meet the daily needs of the Palestinians and left the government incapable of paying the salaries of its employees. The US made a point of involving the world -- Arab states included -- in its crimes against the Palestinian people, who were deprived of food, medicine and other necessities. A war was declared against Hamas on the false pretext that the latter was a terrorist group. Then everything was done to trigger infighting among the Palestinians, the aim being to separate Gaza from the West Bank. Olmert's plans also connect with other recent events. They require that Israel annex more land in the Golan Heights and in south Lebanon, up to Al-Litani River. Israel, let's not forget, has been pressuring Egypt to assume control of Gaza for decades. President Anwar El-Sadat, and then Hosni Mubarak, resisted that pressure, insisting that the fate of Gaza must be determined through negotiations between Israel and the PLO. During the first Intifada Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhaq Rabin threatened to pull out unilaterally from Gaza and let it sink into chaos, a threat that led to negotiations in Oslo between the Palestinians and Israelis, to the Gaza- Jericho First Agreement, and ultimately to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. Olmert's plans call for Israel to avoid further involvement in Gaza, turning the latter into an independent entity with strong ties with Egypt. As for the West Bank, the plan borrows heavily from the Yigal Allon scheme, which calls for a confederation between Jordan and Palestine. Jordan would then become a united kingdom containing two entities, a Jordanian one on the East Bank and a Palestinian one on the West Bank. The West Bank would have strong links with Israel through a package of security, economic and political treaties. In other words, the West Bank would become a passageway for Israel's economic infiltration of Arab countries. Olmert's designs mirror the Yigal Allon scheme while at the same time call for Israel to retain 54 per cent of the West Bank in the form of settlements, highways, and buffer zones. The scheme also calls for the abrogation of all international decisions concerning the right of return. Should the plan succeed, alternative homes will have to be found for the refugees, which casts the ongoing confrontation in Lebanon between the Lebanese army and Fatah Al-Islam in a new light. The fighting will end when the Palestinians are disarmed, the Cairo Agreement is abrogated, and the Lebanese army is in control of the camps, paving the way for the settlement of the Palestinians outside their homeland. The Olmert plan, it would seem, is progressing apace, while Palestinian and Arab aspirations are falling apart. Who is responsible for this catastrophe? History will provide the answer. And yet something must be done if we are to reverse the current state of hopelessness. Leaving things as they are is no longer an option.
