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THE PALESTINIAN CIVIL WAR. It's official:
Hamas gunmen consolidated their hold over large swaths of the northern and central Gaza Strip Wednesday in coordinated attacks on security posts once controlled by the rival Fatah movement after days of fighting that shows no sign of abating.America is siding with Fatah, unsurprisingly:At least 13 Palestinians died Wednesday across the strip, driving up the four-day death toll to nearly 60 people in factional violence that both Palestinian parties are now calling civil war.
The Bush administration and Israel are openly backing forces loyal to Abbas, a relative moderate whose calls for an end to the fighting have been ignored by both sides. The Bush administration is sending $40 million to train and provide non-lethal equipment to forces loyal to Abbas, who told reporters Wednesday that it is "madness that is going on in Gaza."I would not be in the least surprised if Hamas won this physical battle as handily as it did the electoral one that brought the group to power more than a year ago. If that happens, the victory will be seen as one over America, because of our involvement with and investment in Fatah:
The Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing that has begun referring to Fatah as the "Jew American Army," gave the Palestinian National Forces across northern Gaza until Friday evening to "surrender" their weapons and turn over their posts.I can't imagine anyone arguing that America ought to abandon support for Fatah and let that party fall to Hamas, but it also seems like an awfully bad position to have backed the group as it was defeated (and an even worse one to back the group with sufficient weaponry so that it could win a victory that would be seen as an American military deposition of a democratically-elected Arab government). I don't know enough about the situation to know if there are any good options for America right now or ways it can help ratchet down the conflict, rather than pour fuel on the fire, so I very much look forward to reading more about whether such options exist in the days ahead. All that's clear right now is that this seems like an increasingly dangerous and complicated situation for the United States, as well as the Palestinians.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
