Hamas, Fatah Launch Separate Governments
Victorious Hamas gunmen rounded up senior military leaders of the Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip early Friday, then announced a general amnesty in a sign the Islamic movement is seeking to reconcile with its secular rivals after five days of fierce fighting.
Hamas officials said the commanders, including the head of the Fatah-controlled Presidential Guard and the Palestinian National Forces, would not be harmed.
As Hamas’s self-proclaimed “liberation” of Gaza progressed on Thursday, Fatah leader and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the Palestinian government and declared a state of emergency.
In a presidential decree, Abbas fired Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and suggested that new national elections would occur soon. Abbas’s decision ends the three-month-old power-sharing arrangement between his Fatah movement and Hamas, the two main Palestinian political parties.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas moved to restructure the crumbling Palestinian government, naming independent lawmaker Salam Fayyad as prime minister a day after dismissing Hamas’ leader from the post.
Fayyad is a former World Bank official admired by the Bush administration. He served as finance minister in the Hamas-led unity government formed with Fatah in March, which neither Israel nor the United States recognized.
Haniyeh, in a response delivered early Friday, said Abbas had not considered the “consequences” of his decision to dissolve the government and pledged to continue to work with his Fatah “brothers.” Other Hamas officials said Abbas’s ruling had no legal effect.
Hamas’s military victory, after five days of fighting that left nearly 100 Palestinians dead, has deepened the political and cultural separation between the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip, many of whose 1.4 million residents are poor refugees, and the more populous West Bank, Fatah’s power base.
The territorial cornerstones of a future Palestinian state have been reduced to strongholds of each faction.
“Gaza is out of control, and in my mind it’s a coup that has happened there,”
said Saeb Erekat, a Fatah lawmaker from the West Bank who is the chief Palestinian negotiator with Israel.
“The decision Hamas has made in recent days has torn Gaza from the West Bank.”
The Palestinian economy has plummeted, and the government has been unable to fully pay salaries for months. The crisis has squeezed Hamas’s power base in Gaza hardest because a far larger portion of the strip’s 1.4 million residents rely on government paychecks than in the West Bank.
The Bush administration has pressed Israel to work with Abbas and might ask Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during a White House meeting next week to release hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Palestinian tax revenue so Abbas could make up back salaries.
That would help him consolidate support in the West Bank, where on Friday gunmen from Fatah kidnapped at least nine Hamas supporters and ransacked the party’s local legislative offices and social service centers in several major cities. The split between Hamas and Fatah in the government, “may open options for us to work with moderate Palestinians,” according to Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
Early Friday, Hamas gunmen rounded up senior Fatah leaders in Gaza, including the heads of the presidential guard and the Palestinian National Forces and the party’s general secretary in the strip.
A few hours after seizing at least four senior Fatah officials and six others from the party, Hamas gunmen announced a general amnesty for all Fatah forces. The spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, who is known as Abu Obeida, said in Gaza,
“The spirit of Islam imposes upon us the amnesty of all those whom we arrested successfully.”
Israel kept all crossings into Gaza closed, citing security concerns and the fact that Fatah officials who used to coordinate pedestrian and cargo crossings are no longer at their posts. Relief groups and diplomats warned of an impending humanitarian crisis in Gaza unless supplies could be brought in soon.
Israeli officials are particularly concerned about the Gaza-Egypt border, a sandy frontier and smuggling route patrolled by Israeli forces before they evacuated the strip in the fall of 2005. Hamas uses tunnels beneath the border to bring in weapons, ammunition and explosives, Israeli military officials say.
The E.U. observer mission at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt left its post Thursday, and Hamas officials said Friday they would begin patrolling the frontier. Israeli officials have called for an international force along the border, but Hamas officials have dismissed the idea.
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