War among 'ourselves'

A day after Osama Bin Laden linked attacks on Afghanistan with the reality of Palestine came a trail of Palestinian-on-Palestinian blood. Graham Usher writes from Jerusalem
On Sunday night the US and Britain pitched their first Tomahawks into Kabul.
Osama Bin Laden "swore by Almighty God" that "neither the US nor he who lives in the US will enjoy security before we can see it as a reality in Palestine."
And in Gaza a group of Palestinian students affiliated with the Islamist Hamas movement decided that the next day they would protest, in the teeth of a ban on public demonstrations issued by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, "the war against Islam."
None of this was good news for the Palestinian leadership. It has adopted a stance of studied agnosticism toward the strikes on Afghanistan, torn between the antagonism of its people to US foreign policy and the damage caused by those televised images of Palestinians "celebrating" the carnage in America on 11 September.
"I heard what Bin Laden said," commented Palestinian Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, walking the tightrope in the first official Palestinian response. "And it is true there is oppression, terrorism and killing committed in Palestine every day. But this doesn't justify or give cover for anyone to kill or terrorise civilians in Washington or New York or any other place".
But many Palestinians were inspired by Bin Laden's "linkage," among them the several thousand students assembled on the campus of Gaza's Islamic University on Monday. Some carried small portraits of Bin Laden. Many chanted in his honour.
And all marched towards the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza City. Some 300 metres from the campus they were met by a phalanx of Palestinian police, some sporting state of the art Samurai police gear, others with barely shoes on their soles.
Some protesters threw stones. The police stormed the demonstration, firing off tear gas and attacking the students with batons. The fighting worsened and spilled into the streets around the campus.
What happened next depends on who is asked.
According to the PA, "suspicious elements" and "masked men" from among the demonstrators fired on the police. According to the university administration and eyewitnesses -- including observers from Palestinian and international human rights groups -- the police opened up with live ammunition, in a "reckless and unlawful use of lethal force," said Amnesty International.
Three Palestinians were killed (among them 13-year old Abdullah Franji), 120 students were injured, including 18 from live bullets. Twenty police officers were wounded, all from stones or tear gas inhalation. And the violence spread like wildfire.
Palestinians attacked PA police stations in Gaza's Shati refugee camp, Sheikh Radwan, Deir Al-Balah, Nuseirat and Jabalia neighbourhoods. A PA civil aviation office was put to the torch and the Palestinian airlines building was sacked. Ten Palestinians were arrested.
It was the worst intra-Palestinian violence in 12 months of the Intifada. It was the most dangerous internal fracture since the Palestinian police shot dead 14 of their kin outside Gaza's Palestine mosque in November 1994, triggered by protests born of similar frustration and crushed by similar means.
And Arafat responded to the crisis with a by-now-familiar repertoire of responses. One was absence and abdication. In Cairo at the time of the clash he flew onto Bahrain.
He would not be drawn on the Bin Laden "linkage." "I don't interfere in those matters," he sniffed. "Israel's measures against Palestinians," he said, were "terrorism," referring to the four Palestinians killed by the Israeli army on Monday in Gaza. But as for the Palestinian-on- Palestinian violence in what has become his hometown -- not a word.
He left it to his movement, Fatah, to put his house together again (another of Arafat's well-honed responses). In an emergency Monday night meeting with the other Palestinian factions, including Hamas, a "unified" statement was agreed.
This declared that National and Islamic Forces were "pained" by the "sad incidents" outside the Islamic University. They called for an official investigation into who opened fire first. It stated that "what happened today in Gaza was against our Intifada" which, not for the first time, became a talisman to steer revolt back to the Israeli enemy and away from the regime.
The PA once again agreed to establish an inquiry into its abuses, amid rumours that Arafat had suspended the PA police chief in Gaza, Ghazi Jabali, who presumably gave the order for his officers' use of live ammunition.
But neither was Arafat taking any chances, aware perhaps that the factions -- one year into the Intifada -- have about as much control over the people as he does. Palestinian police closed all Gaza schools, confiscated all footage of the clash, barred foreign journalists from entering Palestinian areas in Gaza and threw a dragnet around the "closed military zone" that is now the Islamic and Al-Azhar university campuses.
The message was plain: he would prefer order to be restored by a "national consensus" if possible. But it will be imposed by force if necessary.
Will this work? Perhaps, for a time. Can it hold? No. Unlike in 1994 today Arafat can only exert his will on Palestinians in return for some tangible improvement in their lives. The alternative is to risk a bloody domestic showdown that, were it to "succeed," would destroy what remains of his nationalist legitimacy or, were it to fail, would expedite the end of his regime.
The consensus among Palestinians is that he will take neither road. Like the factions he will appeal instead to the "unity of Palestinian blood" and look for deliverance elsewhere, perhaps in the shape of greater American "engagement" with and against Ariel Sharon.
Palestinians want unity: they know civil war is the worse that can happen to them. But they also want reform, of the Intifada and of their lives. Above all, they want some form of accountability over those who rule them, whether Israeli or Palestinian. The factions so far have given them only the "unity of slogans." Arafat refuses to give them reform. And Israel under Sharon gives them nothing except the most ruthless colonial repression.
Put these together -- stir in Osama Bin Laden and the attacks on Afghanistan -- and something, some time, is going to give. And every Palestinian is aware of which is the more mortal collapse. "We can survive Sharon's war against us," said a Palestinian woman in Gaza, three weeks ago. "We cannot survive a war among ourselves".
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See Focus: War
A cease-fire deceased 4 - 10 October 2001
The Intifada-to be continued 4 - 10 October 2001
Umm Mohamed, mother of a martyr 4 - 10 October 2001
See Intifada: year one 27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001
Intifada in focus
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