What happens now? Samir Ghattas* examines likely scenarios in Gaza and the West Bank Barely a month after the commemoration of the 59th anniversary of the Nakba -- the creation of Israel, the defeat of the Arabs and the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians -- and within a week of the commemoration of the defeat of 1967 came a new catastrophe for the Palestinians and Arabs. Its particular horror is that it was inflicted by Palestinians against Palestinians. On 14 June, following one of the bloodiest weeks in the occupied territories and one of the most nightmarish weeks in Palestinian history, Hamas and its Qassam militia celebrated their victory in the "Battle of Gaza". Some maintain that Hamas's military coup in Gaza was the inevitable result of the protracted power struggle between Fatah and Hamas, with Hamas succeeding in settling this struggle definitively in its favour by securing absolute control over power in Gaza. Others hold that what transpired in Gaza was not so much the final phase of a power struggle but rather a chapter in a protracted conflict over identity: the identity of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and, by extension, Palestinian society. Since its founding in 1965, the Palestinian nationalist movement had a predominantly secularist, democratic nationalist identity. Hamas, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, never hid its desire to Islamicise this identity. Essentially, therefore, the Hamas victory effectively crowned the growing influence of the most fundamentalist and extremist segment in Hamas, which, according to this analysis, will now see it as its mission to imprint its own radical Islamist identity on the rest of Palestinian society, even if this necessitates rivers of blood. There might be something to this point of view. Sheikh Nazar Rayan, the Hamas leader in the largest refugee camp in Gaza, proclaimed in no uncertain terms that the purpose of Hamas's battle was to uproot secularism in Gaza. As though to confirm this, in their jubilation over their victory, Hamas forces took down the Palestinian flags from all PA offices and replaced it with their green banner. Then, in the spirit of triumphant conquerors, they stormed every building associated with the PA, including the homes of Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad, and plundered their contents. Even the Statue of the Unknown Soldier that stood in front of the Legislative Assembly building was not spared. This heretic idol, and symbol of accursed democracy, was toppled and dragged through the streets of Gaza, one of many rites and rituals intended to signify the humiliation of foes and the birth of "Hamastan" -- the cornerstone laid by the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas-Gaza branch, for the revival of the Islamic caliphate. Of course there are other readings of events in Gaza, varying in the degree of their accuracy and differing in what they choose to stress or underplay. Yet, as diverse as these may be, no one disagrees that the Battle of Gaza will have extremely grave repercussions for the Palestinian cause and that these repercussions will reverberate across the Middle East. It is essential, therefore, to keep any analysis as objective and thorough as possible so that we can produce realistic forecasts of the possible developments and scenarios that lay in store for the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world. To arrive at any credible prediction we must first attempt to settle two issues. First, we must determine how Fatah and Hamas truly stand in respect to democracy, which cause may be one of the most tragic victims of the Battle of Gaza. Second, we must come up with a logical explanation for the savageness with which Hamas militias executed their campaign in Gaza and determine whether this phenomenon is unique to them or an intrinsic characteristic of the radical Islamist movement. On the first matter, I have not the slightest doubt that a faction in Fatah refused to accept the Hamas victory in the legislative elections of 25 January, 2006, and that it was determined to use all possible means to unseat Hamas's parliamentary majority. But there is also cause to doubt the sincerity of the commitment of Hamas and, perhaps, of all Islamist trends, to democracy, which until fairly recently they regarded as a heresy forced on the Islamic nation by the crusading West. While we should welcome the participation of political Islam in the political process, this participation must abide by the spirit and rules of the democratic process and not be used as a means to come to power and then to overthrow the entire system, as did Hitler in Germany. Democracy means much more than the ballot box -- a message that has yet to be understood in many Arab countries where regimes boast of winning 99 per cent of the popular vote. Nothing is more telling of a political group's attitude towards democracy than the way it handles the transition from a position of relative weakness to one of strength and then unleashes its venom. This is why the carnage in Gaza indicates much more than an excess of fundamentalist zeal and powerfully calls to mind Sheikh Ali Balhaj, a leader of the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria, who boasted that now that his movement had come to power through the ballot box it would be the last election held in Algeria. The ruthless vengefulness that characterised the military campaigns waged by the Qassam militias over the past year reached a peak in the Battle of Gaza, during which homes were attacked with Yassin missiles and adversaries slaughtered in front of their wives and children. A car carrying the children of a PA officer was blown up, patients were shot in hospital beds, bodies of victims were mutilated following ritual executions, conscript Mohamed Al-Soweirki was tied up and thrown off the roof of a 10-storey building, abused and humiliated captives were stripped of their clothes, a Christian school and convent were burned to the ground: these are just some of the atrocities broadcast by Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV and other satellite stations. There are two possible explanations for such horrors. The first is that the culture of Al-Qaeda -- in which slaughtering enemies is a religious duty and brings the perpetrators closer to God and all enemies, i.e. those with whom you disagree, are defined as heretics -- has permeated radical Islamist groups in Palestine and elsewhere. In the case of Hamas, without Sheikh Ahmed Yassin the current leadership has been unable to keep the movement's burgeoning militias in check. Most of them are commanded by young men who failed to complete their primary education and whose ways of thinking and values derive from the closed society in which they have grown up under extremely harsh social, economic and political circumstances. Such a background is common to the leaders of militias of other Palestinian factions but, apparently, with Al-Qaeda culture serving as a catalyst for deep-seated hatreds and resentments among Qassam members flowed over into an appalling bloodthirstiness justified, in advance or retroactively, by fatwas sanctioning retribution against the enemies of their version of Islam. The second possible explanation derives from the political and moral philosopher Frantz Fanon who observed that the victim, when given the chance, can be overcome by the desire to act as executioner and outdo his former tormentors in terms of cruelty and barbarity. This observation seems to be borne out by the behaviour of Hamas's militias, which replayed the ugly scene of Israeli occupation forces storming the Jericho prison and forcing the Palestinian fighters inside to strip naked. The Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, echoed this interpretation of events in a prose poem entitled "You're someone else". He was bitterly caustic. Referring to the June 1967 War, he wrote: "What a marvel the 40th commemoration of June was: if we can't find someone to defeat us again, we'll do it ourselves so we don't forget." The Battle of Gaza has created a profound structural shift in the Palestinian question. After having grudgingly lived with a two-headed leadership at odds with itself, the Palestinians now face a broader and more dangerous internal division. It seems that we have no choice but to acknowledge there are now two Palestinian peoples. They have separate identities and they are at each other's throats, as witness the seething conflict that has boiled to the surface over the identity of their society, their current government and any future state. At the same time we must recognise that the two Palestinian regions -- the West Bank and Gaza -- are no longer just geographically separated, but are separated politically as well. Each now has its own PA and government and it appears unlikely that they will come together again under the same roof. Sadly, this is the situation we will have to deal with for the foreseeable future. As surprising as it might seem to some, there are several reasons why it is inevitable. Cultural and political divides already existed long before the Battle of Gaza, even though no one dared to admit this openly. Fatah and Hamas, in particular, handled it pretty much in the same way that Khaled Meshaal dealt with recognition of Israel: they refused to acknowledge its existence. But the fact remains that Hamas's political, financial and military power is concentrated in Gaza. In the negotiations leading to the Mecca Agreement, Hamas's delegation did not include a single member from the West Bank. In addition, its leadership has wasted little effort to free West Bank Hamas ministers and parliamentarians from Israeli detention and rarely bothered to correct erroneous statements issued by Hamas officials in the West Bank. Similarly, not a single member of Fatah's central command resides on a permanent basis in Gaza. When tensions began to flare up in Gaza Fatah's second-rank leadership quickly fled to Ramallah, leaving Fatah forces in Gaza without a clear line of command. But the matter goes beyond two warring factions. Certainly, there appear to be those within the warring factions who seem happy to lend themselves to a scheme separating the West Bank from Gaza. There is little doubt that such a scheme exists: it was one of the declared objectives of Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan from Gaza and, several weeks ago, Avigdor Lieberman, head of Yisrael Beiteinu and Israel's current deputy prime minister, revealed a plan to accomplish the same objective. In addition, various regional and international parties are eager to help entrench the divide. Iran, for example, wants a regime in Gaza as a staunch ally and some in Jordan are campaigning to annex the West Bank. Israel hopes to throw the burden of an Islamic Republic of Gaza on Egypt's shoulders, with the EU helping out with humanitarian aid, while Bush wants to end his presidency with anything he can call a success, even if that is the creation of an interim Palestinian state on the West Bank. Consequently, any prognosis for the immediate future must consider the agendas of the various parties involved and the scenarios to which these might give rise. Of all the agendas, Hamas's is probably the most crucial to how the situation develops. Hamas will be forced to act, and act quickly, and it will probably opt from one of the following scenarios: Holding the fort, towards which end the Hamas leadership will try to whitewash the horrors perpetrated by its militias; try to restore security and stability in Gaza in order to prove that it could succeed where Fatah had failed; seek to maintain, temporarily, at least, calm on the Israeli front by halting further missile attacks across the border; set free the journalist, Mir Yatay, and work out a prisoner exchange deal with Israel over Private Gilad Shalit; exert its control over and contain other extremist Islamic groups, such as the Army of Islam, the Swords of Truth, the Salafiya Group and the Liberation Party; work to promote a climate of communal solidarity through voluntary social work and reform. This scenario would suit many parties because it would put a gloss on the situation and help prolong the divide long enough for it to become generally accepted. Depending on its reading of reactions in Gaza and elsewhere, Hamas could also undertake limited military operations against Israel, engage in limited security cooperation with Israel or in new diplomatic initiatives launched via third parties. Hamas's lack of authority over its military wing also leads to the spectre of the possibility of operations spiralling out of control and feeding a cross-border confrontation with Egypt or with Israel. Israel's agenda, meanwhile, could lead to the following scenarios: a consolidation of the separation between the West Bank and Gaza, with Gaza singled out for brutal collective punishment including the cutting of water, electricity and fuel supplies; a revival of the Israeli- Jordanian project to control the West Bank; pressure being placed on a segment of the Palestinian leadership to accept an interim state which would declare its sovereignty over Gaza, or else the internationalisation of the issue. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has already discussed the latter with the Secretary- General of the UN Ban Ki-Moon and President George Bush. It would entail either stationing a limited UN force along the Philadelphia line or deploying a NATO force to disarm the militias in Gaza. It is the least likely of the scenarios, though, since Israel, always loath to internationalise the Palestinian question, would fear a repeat in the West Bank. Abu Mazen and the emergency government face the following options: they can reject the separation in word but promote it in practice; they could seek to foment a wave of civil disobedience in order to topple the Hamas government and pave the way for the resumption of Fatah control; they could work towards linking the West Bank in a federation or confederation with Jordan or as part of a tripartite condominium that would also include Israel; they could declare an interim Palestinian state in accordance with the roadmap even as differences remain over the final status issues. Abu Mazen could also dissolve the PA, though this is less a scenario than a threat that would be employed in order to accomplish other objectives. Circumstances, though, might compel him to act on the threat. He could also request international guardianship, which would be consistent with a general Arab position that favours placing the Palestinians under a temporary and restricted UN mandate upon the expiry of which an independent Palestinian state would be declared. For any of the abovementioned scenarios to unfold the conditions must be amenable. For now, at least, the Battle of Gaza appears to have left not only Hamas but the radical Islamist movement in general with little room to move. If Hamas does not find a way out of its corner, then it will have no other choice but to engage in more bloodletting or commit suicide. * The writer is director of the Maqdis Centre for Political Studies in Gaza.
