Gaza's State of Emergency
As Gaza falls into Hamas' hands, a reporter looks at the cause of the fighting.
June 14, 2007 — -- Hamas militants today seized three key security compounds in a move to complete the Islamist's movement's full takeover of major Gaza city security apparatuses.
The Saraya security installation, the preventive security compound and the headquarters of the Palestinian intelligence were earlier in the hands of the rival party, Fatah. With this significant development, Gaza, the embattled and impoverished city, has fallen completely into the hands of the Islamist movement Hamas.
Fierce battles have been raging between the two sides since Monday. Street executions, mutual brutal killings and deadly violent shooting attacks were the dominant scenes in the Gaza Strip. By noon today, the death toll had reached at least 100, and the numbers of dead and injured are rising rapidly. Gaza hospitals are now operating without water, electricity or blood units.
Also today, amid the anarchy, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the Palestinian government and declared a state of emergency.
The Palestinian Fatah movement, Hamas' partner in the Palestinian government, has described Hamas' latest moves in the Gaza Strip as an attempt at a coup against the Palestinian legitimacy. The Palestinian president, who is also the head of Fatah movement, has described the situation in Gaza as "madness." Egyptian mediators have been on the ground in Gaza trying to bring Hamas and Fatah to cease the mutual killings, but to no avail.
Israel has been worriedly monitoring the collapse of law and order in Gaza very closely. The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is considering the deployment of an international force along the Egyptian-Palestinian border. He is also worried about regional implications should Hamas take control of the Gaza Strip.
So why is Israel concerned about Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip? Why is Egypt intimately involved in efforts to bring the warring sides to cease the factional fighting? Who is Fatah and what does the Islamist movement Hamas want?
The Palestinian Fatah movement was established in 1958 by the late Yasser Arafat. Soon the revolutionary movement became the sole representative of the Palestinian people, including hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled or were forced to flee their homes and lands in historical Palestine on the eve of the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
In the years that followed its establishment, the movement carried out numerous guerilla attacks against Israel. Fatah or the Palestinian Liberation Movement launched its fighters from its bases in Beirut, Lebanon, until forced to leave its headquarters there in 1982. Arafat, together with hundreds of militants from the movement, went to Tunis and stayed there until the movement signed the peace accords with Israel in 1993.
According to the Declaration of Principles, the official name of the Oslo peace accords, The Israeli army was to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian territories Israel occupied in 1948, and grant the Palestinians self- rule in these lands. Arafat, the head of the PLO, together with dozens of PLO members, were able to return to Gaza and form the Palestinian authority, which since 1994 and until January 2006 was the sole ruler of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
In 2006, the Fatah movement lost power to the Islamist Hamas party, which won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. And since January 2006, the two parties have been periodically engaged in factional fighting. The struggle for power between Fatah and Hamas hasn't stopped since then. It has become more and more brutal with time.
The Islamist movement Hamas, Arabic for "Zeal," was founded by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin in 1987 in Gaza. The movement has always denounced the peace accords signed between the PLO and Israel in 1993 in which both sides exchanged mutual recognition. Hamas refuses to acknowledge the state of Israel and its political leaders have always referred to Israel as the "Zionist entity." It is only recently that the political leadership of Hamas started to show more flexibility in their attitudes toward the Jewish state. And this is through offering a long-term ceasefire. Today Hamas show more readiness to accept the notion of establishing the Palestinian state on 1967 borders.
Hamas gained popularity, especially in the Gazan street, thanks to their welfare programs. Since it won the elections, Hamas has been boycotted by most of the Western world who considers the movement a terrorist party.