Good-bye Hamas, hello Al-Qaeda, despairs Saleh Al-Naami Muhannad, eight, was obviously tense, as if he were sitting on hot coals. His father was throwing sticks into the fire that had been lit under the pot on the stove. For this child, there was reason to wait, for his father had finally agreed to boil the ears of corn he had gathered from a nearby field after scrounging enough kindling to boil them. His father, Abdul-Rahman bin Awdeh, is 44 and a trader of livestock who lives in the Birket Al-Wiz area west of the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of Gaza. He had to ration their meager gas, using it only once a day to cook lunch for his family of 11. Abdul-Rahman, like the overwhelming majority of the Gaza Strip's population, fears that Israel will carry out its threats to halt the provision of gas and fuel to Gaza following Hamas's assertion of control. He thus limits the use of gas to only necessary and pressing needs. Many Palestinian families, whether in the countryside, refugee camps, or even in large cities, have returned to using kindling for cooking, not only for fear that the gas supplies will be cut off in the future, but also because a large percentage of these families don't have the money to buy gas. This is a consequence of the persistent deterioration of the economic situation due to the continuing siege that has grown tighter since Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip and given that civil servants have not received their salaries for months. Nidal Abu Sameha, 26, is the driver of a taxi that transports passengers between Gaza city and the central Gaza Strip. He did not attempt to conceal his intense annoyance, for with the exception of myself, last Saturday morning he couldn't find any passengers to take from Deir Al-Balah city in central Gaza to Gaza City despite his route past the Al-Bureij and Al-Nuseirat refugee camps. As he tried to straighten his long, thick, wind-blown hair, he said, "this profession has become unbearable. Because of the deteriorating economic situation and the civil servants not receiving their salaries, people don't leave their areas and, in turn, we don't find passengers. What a miserable situation!" One of the manifestations of the declining economic situation in the Gaza Strip is the low purchasing power of people here. Ibrahim Al-Ashi, 52, and Jamal Abid, 49, own two shops next to each other in the Al-Zawiya market, the largest market in Gaza City. They spend much of their time debating the expected scenarios for the Gaza Strip following the Hamas takeover, and their debates are only interrupted by a rare customer or by the call to prayer from a nearby mosque. In the past, it was difficult to move in this market between sunrise and sunset due to the crowds of shoppers. The deteriorating economic circumstances have also affected health services in Gaza. Jamal Qandil, secretary of the Al-Salah Al-Tibbi medical grouping in Al-Maghazi, and which includes a number of specialised clinics, confirms that there is a decline in the number of patients. He points to the difficult economic situation that has limited the number having plastic surgery or getting braces in the group's dental clinics, procedures that are costly. Yet even the wealthy in Gaza have been affected by the continuous siege imposed and tightened by Israel. Mohamed Enshas, 43, who lives in the Al-Rimal Al-Janubi neighbourhood mainly inhabited by the city's wealthy families, was disappointed last Saturday afternoon when he went to Amu Emad's fruit store. With the exception of watermelon and cantaloupe, he couldn't find anything to purchase. The other fruit had run out the previous day, and after Israel closed the Karni commercial crossing, no fruit had made its way into Gaza. Yet the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are not only facing economic pressures. Recently Israel again invaded northern and eastern Gaza. It also resumed assassinations of activists in the Palestinian resistance movements. Ahmed Al-Masri, 59, made a fateful decision. After 30 years abroad in the Arab Gulf, he returned to Gaza to live the rest of his life with his wife. Seeking peace and quiet and a good standard of living, he bought a five- dunam plot of land in the countryside on the eastern border of Al-Qarara village in central Gaza. Amid stunning natural beauty he built a grand villa. Yet to Al-Masri's surprise, and despite the gorgeous view, there was no calm. This area has recently been subjected to continuous invasions by the occupation army. Al-Masri has not lost hope and does not grant these invasions his attention as he talks with his guests in his garden. On his living room wall is a picture of the premier of the de facto government Ismail Hanyieh in his red kaffiyeh. The Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have finally fallen victim to the power struggle between the emergency government the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered to be formed, and which is led by Salam Fayyad, and the acting government led by Haniyeh. Perhaps the manifestation of this war most shocking to Palestinians is the decision of the emergency government to not recognise the passports issued in the Gaza Strip, whether those being issued for the first time or those that are being renewed. Mohamed Al-Naimi, 24, a student in the Islamic University who resides with his family in Saudi Arabia, is very worried, not only because the Rafah border crossing is closed, but because even if it is re-opened he won't be able to travel. His passport has expired and he cannot get a new one. What makes matters even more complicated for this young man is that he must be present in Saudi Arabia within a month in order to renew his residency with the Saudi authorities. Since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli media has been intent on proving that everyone from Abu Mazen to the American administration and Israel have agreed on a work mechanism for subverting the Hamas experience in Gaza and returning control to Abu Mazen. According to the plan referred to in Israeli papers, Israel and the emergency government led by Fayyad are bent on creating two different economic and security environments in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Israel will release Palestinian taxes and transfer them to Abu Mazen, who will spend them on increasing the "comfort" of Palestinians in the West Bank only. Meanwhile, economic pressure on the Gaza Strip will continue in order to convince the Palestinian public to mobilise against the Hamas leadership and force it to accept Abu Mazen's conditions for talking with it -- apologising for taking control of the Palestinian Authority's institutions and returning them to it. Minister of Youth and Sports in the emergency government Ashraf Al-Agrami, insisted to Al-Ahram Weekly that such a plan exists. Yet General Ephraim Sneh, the Israeli deputy minister of defence, who is considered the go- between for the Israeli government and the cabinet of Abu Mazen, confirmed last Sunday morning in Hebrew on Israeli radio that there is in fact an American-Israeli agreement with Abu Mazen to create the circumstances that will drive people in Gaza to mobilise against Hamas. The Palestinian public, a large sector of which relies on Israeli media as a source of information, tends to believe the Israeli narrative. Palestinians spend a lot of time debating and commenting on what the Israeli media says, and those close to Abu Mazen don't seem capable of crushing such talk. Those who follow public opinion programmes on local Palestinian radio stations know that a large percentage of the Palestinian public has grown to consider Abu Mazen a part of the mechanism of siege. A listener commented on Abu Mazen's call for Palestinians to support him and his government by saying, "Abu Mazen wants us to support him and he is collaborating in placing this siege upon us. He's like a person who has killed his parents and then wants mercy because he's an orphan!" Israeli intellectual and military elites stress the inevitability of the failure of the use of economic and military pressures to cow the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Former head of Israeli Military Intelligence Shlomo Gazit said that experience indicated that, "the more pressure placed on the Palestinian people to disengage from Hamas, the more we will get a completely opposite result, whereby support for Hamas will increase among the Palestinian public." In an article published 25 June, in Maarif, Gazit scoffed at the bet on Abu Mazen and Fatah, saying, "history has turned its back on Abu Mazen and the Fatah movement and they no longer deserve any Israeli investment." He recommended that his government attempt to hold a dialogue with Hamas, which he argues has the support of the majority of the Palestinian public. Shlomo Ilder, the Gaza Strip correspondent for Israeli television Channel 10, authoritatively asserts that with Israel and the American administration embracing Abu Mazen, the Palestinian people will surely stand by Hamas. Ilder, author of the book Gaza is Like Death, adds that the majority of the Palestinian public views the recent events as an Israeli-American plan implemented in coordination with Mohamed Dahlan to overthrow the Hamas government that won a crushing majority in the legislative elections. Danny Rubinstein, commentator on Palestinian affairs for Haaretz, warns that economic and security pressures on the Palestinians will lead to "more terrifying nightmares" than the Israeli government and the West can imagine. Rubinstein asserts that, "if we succeed in uprooting Hamas, we will certainly gain Al-Qaeda."
