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Analysis: Toward the Brink in Gaza

Council on Foreign Relations

June 12, 2007
Prepared by: Michael Moran

For two decades, at least, events within the Palestinian political world pointed to a day of reckoning some time in the future pitting the secular against the religious in Palestinian life. When the words “civil war” emerged Tuesday in headlines around the world, some suggested the dreaded day might have dawned. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, amid bloody battles in Gaza, issued an order that read, in part: “Confront the seekers of the coup. Defend your dignity and your military honour. Defend the security of your people (AlertNet).”

The target of the order from Abbas, of course, is Hamas, the senior partner of his Fatah movement in the Palestinian coalition government. Cooler heads may yet prevail. Yet, since Hamas’ election victory in January 2006, one effort after another to forestall direct conflict between Fatah and Hamas has failed, including the most recent mediation attempts by Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Dennis Ross, the longtime U.S. Mideast envoy, put his finger on the explosive nature of things in Gaza (WashPost) earlier this month. The debate, he writes, no longer focuses on a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead, “it was about the conflict between Palestinian organizations in Gaza-- Hamas vs. Fatah -- and whether Gaza was in fact already lost to the Islamists. Both Israelis and Palestinians were wondering about the consequences of Gaza’s becoming, in their word, ‘Hamastan.’”

The founding of Hamas in 1987 during the first intifada undermined the near monopoly on politics enjoyed by secularist Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, which dominated the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) during its decades in exile, and then the Palestinian Authority until Arafat’s death in 2004.

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

Copyright 2007 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.