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Analysis: Fighting Splinters Palestinian 'Unity'

Council on Foreign Relations

October 2, 2006
Prepared by: Eben Kaplan

Prospects for a Palestinian unity government may have been dashed by outbreaks of intense fighting (LAT) between rival Palestinian factions over the weekend. The clashes came just ahead of a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who travels to the region to try to bolster Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (NYT), the beleaguered Palestinian president.

Palestinian government employees, many loyal to the Fatah party, appeared to spark the weekend’s violence when they took to the streets to protest unpaid wages (BBC). A Hamas militia’s attempt to put down the demonstrations backfired, provoking clashes in the West Bank and Gaza that left eight people dead and the Palestinian government’s Ramallah offices ransacked. Though the violence had subsided by Monday, Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders decided to close all government offices (Haaretz).

The fighting further jeopardizes prospects for forming a unity government within the Palestinian territories, a step seen as essential to unlocking Western aid that Palestinians heavily rely on. Just weeks ago Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh raised hopes when they announced they were negotiating the details of a ruling coalition between Hamas and Fatah. As analyst Rashid Khalidi told CFR.org’s Bernard Gwertzman, such an arrangement would have helped relieve the PA’s economic crisis and could have set the stage for substantive negotiations with Israel. But negotiations floundered so quickly that, even before the weekend’s violence, prospects for a unity government were “fading fast” (Al-Ahram).

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.