By Samir El-youssef
June 18, 2007 1:00 PM
CommentIsFree.Guardian
Hamas is the actual power in Gaza now.
The Palestinian president's response, dissolving the government of unity, declaring a state of emergency and then appointing a new government from which Hamas is totally excluded is hopeless and it would lead to nothing but destroying Palestinian democracy and farther bloodshed.
Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections of 2006 and it's about time that Abbas and the Fatah leadership admit defeat and hand over power - government as much as foreign policy, security forces and civil services - to the elected party. It was originally their failure to do so which has led to the current situation.
Instead of dragging Palestinian society into protracted civil war, Abbas must leave office and most urgently work to re-create Fatah as a national opposition party and an alternative governing body to the inexperienced and unsure Hamas.
When the National Liberation Palestinian Movement, otherwise known as Fatah, emerged in the mid 1960s, it was meant as a resistance organization against Israeli military occupation.
But it was also a young Palestinian opposition to traditional Palestinian leadership and Arab regimes' attempts to subordinate Palestinian cause and grievances to their own uses.
For nearly three decades, against all odds and in spite of frequent defeats and shortcomings, Fatah succeeded to be the leading party of the national Palestinian movement ultimately delivering universal recognition of Palestinian right for self-determination and sovereign statehood.
Fatah's staggering failure, however, came after the Oslo accord.
Instead of transforming itself into a proper party of state and government it remained a broad and chaotic movement with no clear vision or political program, united by no other than clannish and cronies' loyalties and the, now demised, charismatic leadership of Yasser Arafat.
It failed to establish independent state and government institutions thus turning the increasingly impoverished and insecure Palestinian society into a discontented dependent of a corrupt and chaotic system.
Most of all its peace negotiations and treaties with Israel failed to put an end not only to the Israeli military occupation - which what Palestinians hoped to see - but even the expansion of Jewish settlements.
Though this is largely the responsibility of Israel, it was Fatah's leadership that was seen as too weak to stand up to the Israelis.
Hamas won the last year elections not because it presented voters with a coherent and hopeful set of policies - the current confusion of its leaders attest to that.
But because after more than a decade of Fatah's rule, social and political conditions in the West Bank and Gaza have deteriorated back to what they were under military Israeli rule.Reporters of current events have been warning of the risk of Hamas establishing in Gaza a mini Islamic state or even a Taliban enclave. This is a danger which cannot be overlooked. But nor can it be confronted by further fighting and bloodshed.
Fatah and its secular siblings in the PLO must act honestly and prudently; Hamas must be given its lawful right to govern, while Fatah and the other secular Palestinian factions must reunite behind a strong, honest and, preferably, new leadership.
They must expel the corrupt and the lawless and work on a political vision and agenda that would allow them to regain the lost trust of traditional and new voters.
Fatah still has the experience, the resources and the connections to rebuild itself as a strong national opposition, an alternative party of Palestinian state and government, to the confused and immature Hamas.
Rather than wasting their time calling for international intervention or making another Mecca agreement, such as the one which has brought the doomed government of unity, regional and international supporters of peace must help Fatah to become an effective democratic opposition.
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