Amira Hass ; Analysis Who's Behind the Attempted Assassination of a Top Palestinian Leader?
Hamas does not and could not have any interest in attacking senior Palestinian Authority officials on their way to inaugurate a sewage treatment plant that residents of the Gaza Strip have long awaited.
Hamas
also had no interest in turning a blind eye and letting someone else
attack the visitors from Ramallah. Hamas wants to portray itself as a
strong ruling power that’s willing to give up its share of power out of
concern for the people, and not because of its own failures. The fact
that it didn’t manage to thwart this attack will weaken its position in talks with both Egypt and Fatah, the ruling faction of the PA.
Given the ongoing, predictable impasse
in the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation talks, this is a convenient
arrangement for Hamas: It controls Gaza de facto, but the donor states
that boycott it continue building vital, urgently needed infrastructure
via the PA. The success of these infrastructure projects mitigates the
environmental and humanitarian disaster caused by the Israeli siege. It
will probably ease the population’s enormous suffering, even if only a
little, and thereby also neutralize one of the many reasons for social
upheaval against Hamas.
In
2007, five people drowned in sewage water that overflowed from the pool
at the old, inadequate treatment plant in Beit Lahia. For years,
untreated sewage has flowed into the sea and penetrated the aquifer,
with all the known and less known health implications this has.
The
current plant, whose $75 million price tag was covered by Sweden,
Belgium, France, the European Commission and the World Bank, is supposed
to serve some 400,000 people. The Mideast Quartet (the United States,
United Nations, European Union and Russia) and the U.S. State Department
liaised with the Israeli authorities so they would allow the necessary
building materials and experts to enter Gaza. Without their assistance,
the construction would likely have taken many more years.
According
to the World Bank’s press statement, Israel and the PA have reached a
temporary agreement on supplying the power needed to run the facility,
without which it would be a white elephant. Israel has already agreed to
run another power line. But the PA and Hamas still have to reach an
agreement about how to pay for this additional electricity.
The dispute over financing services such as electricity to Gaza residents
is depicted as the main obstacle to progress in the Fatah-Hamas
reconciliation effort. But these financial disputes – occurring at a
time when Gaza’s population is sinking into unprecedented poverty and
despair – are merely a cover for the enmity and lack of trust between
the two largest Palestinian movements.
The
PA claims it spends a significant chunk of its budget on Gaza, while
Hamas doesn’t share its revenues with the PA. But Gazans say a
significant portion of these expenditures is covered by the customs
duties the PA collects on merchandise imported to Gaza via Israel.
Hamas
is demanding that the PA pay the salaries of some 20,000 public-sector
workers whom Hamas hired during its years in power. Ramallah is
demanding that it first be given full control of all government
activities in Gaza, including tax collection and payments. Hamas
continues to collect unofficial consumer taxes in Gaza to finance its
administration of the territory (its military activities are funded
mainly by money from abroad).
Hamas
is trying to expand the quantity and variety of goods imported through
Egypt, from which it collects tax. Gaza residents say the PA has done
everything in its power to prevent goods from arriving through Egypt,
precisely because this provides revenues for Hamas. Gazans also say PA
President Mahmoud Abbas’ government has prepared additional “punitive
measures” against Gaza – such as cuts to municipal budgets and further
cuts in the salaries Abbas pays “his” public-sector workers, who have
been getting paid for not working ever since Hamas took over Gaza in
2007.
Whether
or not this is true, what’s important is that Gazans accuse Abbas and
Fatah of trying to subdue them economically so that Hamas will waive its
demands for partnership in political decision making and in PLO
institutions.
Abbas’
demand for “one government, one gun” is logical and natural, and so is
his fear that Hamas wants to waive responsibility for civilian affairs
and then reap political capital, especially among the Palestinian
diaspora, from its reputation as a “resistance movement.” But at the
same time, Abbas isn’t allowing new elections (in the West Bank and
Gaza), has paralyzed the Palestinian Legislative Council for 12 years
and controls the judiciary.
In
late April, the Palestinian National Council, which is the PLO’s
parliament, is supposed to meet in Ramallah. Its members include all the
Hamas members elected to the legislative council in 2006. But the very
fact that it’s convening in Ramallah, rather than some place like Cairo
or Amman, is clear proof that Abbas and Fatah aren’t interested in the
participation of delegates from Hamas and other opposition groups, whom
Israel won’t allow to leave Gaza or enter the West Bank.
In
this situation, even Abbas’ reasonable political demands of Hamas are
seen as steps to consolidate his authoritarian rule and perpetuate
Fatah’s control over the PLO and the PA.
Before
jumping to the conclusion that Abbas rival Mohammed Dahlan or Salafi
groups were behind Tuesday’s attack on the convoy of Palestinian Prime
Minister Rami Hamdallah, it is just as possible to imagine another
scenario in which those responsible were a few young people, devoid of
political understanding but with access to explosives, who were
influenced by the depiction of Fatah and the PA as collaborators who
have forsaken Gaza.
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