June 14, 2007
'Hamastan' A Long Time Coming
Just as Hamas' sweep of the parliamentary elections in January 2006 took the West by surprise, so, it seems, has the factional fighting in Gaza and the West Bank.
But longtime observers of the region say such spurts of instability are the norm for transitional states.
"This is not very different from many other conflicts taking place around the world," says Cato Institute Mideast expert Leon T. Hadar, noting that Sri Lanka's civil unrest, which gets far less news coverage, has a higher casualty count.
What makes the brewing civil war between Hamas and Fatah more of a story in the West, of course, is the potential for spillover in a region already splintered by the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Another gaping maw of unrest in the Middle East holds tremendous consequences for Israel's future, President Bush's bid to reverse the tide of militant Islam, and the West's deep economic and security interests in the region.
Tragically, the increasingly real possibility that militant Hamas will overtake outgunned, secularist Fatah was in many ways fated by the West's efforts to prepare the Palestinians for nationhood.
Among the ironies playing out at the moment: Israel helped bring Hamas to power in the 1970s; the halt in Western aid after the U.S.-backed elections seems to have emboldened Hamas; and Israel's pullout from Gaza led to the cage-match-like situation we're seeing today.
In interviews today, Hadar, a former Jerusalem Post reporter, and FOX News correspondent Jennifer Griffin, who covered the conflict for nearly eight years, said they had anticipated that the armed wings of Hamas and Fatah would go head-to-head eventually.
Comparing the rivalry to similar battles between moderates and extremists in nearby Lebanon and Iraq, Griffin says, "Those power struggles are being played out before our eyes. It's a fight for their livelihood.... It's very logical what's happening."
Over the past decade, militants' struggle against Israel has become more about ideological supremacy than a fight for sovereignty, with millions of impoverished civilians caught in the middle. As one of the few American TV journalists based in the region, Griffin reported on the rise of Islamic extremist tactics used by militants during the second Intifada, which began in fall 2000. Noting this century's spurt in suicide bombings against Israelis compared with the first Intifada, Griffin says, "You are seeing a cauldron boiling over, building up to this situation."
Linking the trend to the rise of political Islam elsewhere in the world, Hadar contends, "The most important turning point was when President Bush came up with the idea of democratizing the Middle East" following the start of the Iraq war.
"We knew at the time [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas was asking [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice to find any excuse to stop the elections," Griffin said. The administration was pushing the "road map" for peace with Israel, with the ultimate goal of Palestinian statehood.
But as Rice would later admit, the administration grossly underestimated the population's dissatisfaction with Fatah and Hamas' skill at benefiting from it.
"You have this situation because of a lack of democratic tradition and political culture," Hadar explains. "At the end of the day, the population is either going to support the existing political power, which tends to be more secular and more connected to the West, or the other choice is the Islamic movement." The deeply dysfunctional Fatah, which had enjoyed a stranglehold on parliamentary power, had failed to "deliver full political independence, failed to defeat Israel," and failed to properly distribute aid and goods to the population.
Griffin draws a parallel to the Sunni-Shia struggle in Iraq. Under the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, members of Hamas were often subject to imprisonment and brutality at the hands of Fatah's security forces. Ever since Hamas seized power in the elections last year, it's been "payback time," Griffin says.
And, as in Iraq, the failure to accurately gauge the situation in Gaza may have contributed to the current state of affairs. "In hindsight, they probably didn't give Hamas enough of a window of opportunity to say, we're going to lay down our weapons and just be a political organization," Griffin says, referring to Western powers who pulled aid after Hamas' win. "Former Mideast negotiators felt Hamas would never be able to change their colors" and there was "no reason to engage them. That's the advice the Bush administration took at the time."
But, Griffin hastened to add, "Certainly, Hamas must share the blame." Indeed, Hamas made no serious effort stop its fighters from firing rockets into Israel after the election, which seemed to justify the aid cutoff. And the alarming uptick in al-Qaida-like tactics is in part why Griffin and her husband, former New York Times Mideast correspondent Greg Myre, moved their family back to the U.S. this spring.
Griffin, now reporting from the Pentagon for FOX, says part of her wishes she was back covering this week's developments. But last summer's kidnapping of colleagues Steven Centanni and Olaf Wiig was "the turning point," she says. The two were released after nearly two weeks of captivity, following tense negotiations in which Griffin participated.
Palestinian militants have also been holding BBC News' Alan Johnston, a "good friend" of Griffin and Myre, for close to 100 days.
"At that point I felt I had rolled the dice too many times and it was time to step out of the conflict," Griffin says.
To describe the conflict as a "civil war" might be giving the opposing forces too much credit, Hadar says, likening it to gang warfare. Indeed, it is difficult to see a resolution without third-party intervention from a major power. "Any rational person will tell you that based on the reality of the balance of power on the ground, it will not be resolved anytime soon," he predicts. "Neither side can emerge as a winner."
New York Times, Reuters and Washington Post are following developments. The Boston Globe, Economist and London Guardian have opinion and analysis.
Posted at 4:06 PM
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Bush Administration, Condoleezza Rice, Israel, Middle East, Palestinians, President Bush
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