A Sceptical Islamist

Palestinian politics settle into familiar pattern after hints of radical change

(News/Analysis, Crescent International, January 2009.)

For a few short weeks in the fall, after Palestinian president Mahmood Abbas announced that parliamentary and presidential elections would take place this month, and that he would not be standing for re-election, Palestinian politics seemed on the point of a radical shake-up. Last month, however, the various dislodged pieces settled back into a familiar, sterile pattern, and it quickly became clear that nothing had changed at all.

The harsh reality of the limitations of the Palestinian struggle

"The Palestinians may well be forced into the streets for a third intifada sometime soon, to try and prevent the Israelis from achieving their goals; and this may well hinder the Israeli plans for a while and force them to adjust their short-term tactics yet again. But without a fundamental shift in the balance of power in the region, political as well as military, the overall progress of the US-Israeli agenda will not be reversed."

The US-Israeli thinking behind Abbas's call for elections in Palestine in January

"The Israelis and Americans have made it clear that they prefer the Palestinians to remain divided, and Hamas and Gaza isolated, in the hope that Abbas will be able to deliver a “peace settlement” on their terms on the basis of his political authority in the West Bank.

"Although most Palestinians realize that the division between Fatah and Hamas is deeply damaging to their struggle, Abbas and the Fatah leadership are so beholden to outside forces, specifically Israel and its hegemonic ally, that the interests of the Palestinians are no longer their prime concern."

The emergence of salafi-jihadi groups to challenge Hamas in Gaza

"When news emerged of fighting in the southern Gaza town of Rafah after juma prayers on August 14, many observers would have been surprised to learn that it was between Hamas authorities and militants belonging to a Salafi-Jihadi group known as Jund Ansar Allah -- “Soldiers of the Followers of Allah”...

"As in other areas of the Muslim world, it appears that the emergence of these groups has been the result of a combination of the enthusiasm and fervour of local Muslims with more anger and commitment than knowledge and political understanding, and the encouragement of outside forces determined to exploit these Muslims for their own purposes."

Abbas’s attempt to re-invent Fatah marred by the movement’s contradictions

"When Fatah was established as a Palestinian national liberation movement by Yasser Arafat and other young Palestinian radicals in the late 1950s, they could probably never have imagined that it might one day hold a crucial convention in Israeli-occupied Palestine, and with the blessing and cooperation of the zionist state. The fact that that is precisely what happened in Bethlehem early last month is a measure not only of how much has changed in terms of the Palestinian struggle, but also how much Fatah has changed since its last general convention in Tunis in 1989...”

On the Palestinian unity talks and the West's new strategy towards Hamas

Question: What does a great power do when it suffers an unexpected defeat and a major setback in its plans for achieving an acceptable solution to a problem? 

Answer: It sits back, regroups, deflects public attention to other issues, and works quietly behind the scenes to prepare the ground for a new attempt to achieve its objectives by some other strategy in future. 

New patterns in Israel-Palestinian and intra-Palestinian politics

"Ironically, after months of stalemate, there is now a sense of renewed expectation of significant and genuine movement in political terms. Far from ending anything, Israel's brutal and murderous tantrum in Gaza was in fact an expression of its recognition that its previous approach had failed and would have to be replaced by a different one; and having vented its anger and demonstrated its power, Israel is now preparing to do precisely what it had previously refused to do: accept that it has to deal with Hamas, however reluctantly."

Towards peace on Israeli terms: the political context of the Gaza war

"In hindsight, the Israelis' decision to go to launch a war of exceptional ferocity on Gaza at that particular time should not have come as a surprise. It is how they usually react whenever they are politically out-manouevered, and how they usually start any new effort to re-establish dominance over the convoluted politics of Israeli-Palestinian relations..."

Political obstacles to Palestinian unity at a crucial time

"On the Palestinian side, meanwhile, president Mahmud Abbas faces a timebomb of a different sort.  His presidential term ends on January 9, and Hamas, which won the last major elections in the country, the parliamentary polls of January 2006, has made it clear that it will oppose any unilateral attempt to extend Abbas's rule beyond that date...  Abbas's problem – and by extension, that of his backers – is that every step he has taken against Hamas appears only to have made the Islamic movement stronger." >

On Yasser Arafat and Palestinian unity

The last few days have seen attempts at healing the breach between Hamas and Fatah, the two major Palestinian political groups, apparently come to naught for a number of reasons.  November 11 was also the fourth anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat, who symbolised the Palestinian struggle for decades.

The latest issue of the Al-Ahram Weekly (a useful source of English-language news and comment on the Arab world, and Palestine in particular) includes an article by Ghada Karmi suggesting that the problem of Palestinian disunity can be traced back to Arafat's death.