Abbas Loyalists Enter Internal Exile in West Bank

Jun 21, 07:40 PM

Current Headlines: RAMALLAH, West Bank _ The grim-faced men in the corner of the hotel lobby sat smoking and reading newspapers, saying little.

Members of security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that were vanquished by Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip last week, they had escaped to the West Bank through Israel, leaving their families behind.

Overnight, the officers from Abbas' Fatah faction had become refugees, running for their lives from the territory where they had once wielded authority. A few dozen are now staying in hotels in Ramallah.

"This is exile in the homeland," said Mahmoud Musa, 25, a member of Abbas' presidential guard, who had escaped with his father, a senior officer in the force. Their home was looted after family members fled.

"The dream is destroyed, it's gone," Musa said, referring to hopes for a Palestinian state. "There is no longer one people in Gaza. It's either Hamas or Fatah. That's the equation."

The brief, brutal civil war that led to the Hamas takeover of Gaza has left Palestinians contemplating a political divide that threatens their long-cherished goal of a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The two territories now resemble hostile states, with the green Hamas flags flying over captured security bases in Gaza and truck-loads of gun-wielding Fatah security men tearing through the streets of Ramallah.

Across the Gaza Strip, weapons are being seized from Fatah security officers in house searches, and in the West Bank, Hamas offices have been ransacked and the group's members arrested or warned not to show up for work at government offices.

There is a palpable sense of intimidation, measured by the increasing reluctance of people to identify themselves while expressing their views.

"It's heartbreaking right now," said Nabil, a Gaza resident who was stranded in Ramallah during the recent fighting and is waiting to go home to a changed political landscape. He asked that his last name not be used, concerned that he could be associated with a Fatah leader in Gaza with the same last name.

"The independent state seems to be a dream that will not occur on the ground," Nabil said. "Now we have to heal our injured body. It was horrible to see two separate entities. I see a black future for the whole national project."

The Palestinian demand for a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip evolved in the decades after Israel captured the two territories in the 1967 Middle East war, seizing Gaza from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan. The 1993 Oslo accords on Palestinian self-rule envisioned the two territories as "a single territorial unit."

Although they are now living under rival political leaderships in the two territories, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have in fact been separated for years, a geographic division that has reinforced cultural differences between conservative, traditional Gaza and the more secular West Bank.

Since the early 1990s, Israel has gradually reduced the number of permits to Palestinians to travel out of the Gaza Strip, citing security concerns, and it halted virtually all movement between Gaza and the West Bank after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000.

A "safe passage" arrangement for travel between the two areas through Israel was included in the Oslo accords, but it was only partially carried out for less than a year before the uprising erupted.

After the victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections last year, meetings of the Palestinian Cabinet and parliament were regularly held by videoconference linking the West Bank and Gaza, because of Israeli restrictions barring movement of Hamas officials between the two areas.

Although there is now a separate government in each territory, officials of an emergency Cabinet appointed by Abbas in the West Bank say they will serve Palestinians in both areas, working to ensure humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and making salary payments to government workers there.

The emergency government claims jurisdiction over Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as well as the West Bank, asserting that Gaza has come under the control of rebels who staged a coup.

"One homeland for one people," Abbas asserted in a speech Wednesday to the Central Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Yet Gaza, hemmed in by an Israeli security fence and dependent on border crossings with Israel for vital supplies, has a set of problems distinct from the West Bank. The most immediate concern is the danger of a humanitarian crisis.

The main conduit for supplies to the area, the Karni cargo crossing, has been closed since Hamas took over. Israeli officials say they have no one to talk to on the other side since Fatah security forces fled, and that the Palestinian side of the terminal is inoperative because it has been looted.

Israel is continuing to provide fuel, water and electric power to Gaza and has allowed aid groups to send daily shipments of food and medical supplies through a crossing at Kerem Shalom, a transfer point normally used for goods from Egypt. But international aid officials say the main crossing at Karni must be reactivated to prevent shortages .

Egypt has closed the passenger crossing at Rafah, now controlled on the Palestinian side by Hamas, halting travel across the Egypt-Gaza border. In addition, Egypt is moving its Gaza embassy to the West Bank.

There are fears in Gaza of growing isolation under a Hamas regime boycotted by Western nations, moderate Arab states and Israel.

Although Hamas militias appear to have imposed a greater degree of law and order in Gaza since taking exclusive control of the streets, several residents said in interviews that they were feared economic devastation unless the borders were opened and the boycott eased.

"Security depends on the economic situation," said Abed Abu Taha, a hospital pharmacy supervisor, in a telephone interview from Rafah. "How can you offer me security without better economic conditions? We should not be punished because of Hamas. The world should understand that not all of us are Hamas or Fatah, and many people belong to neither this nor that."

Saleh Mahmoud, a farmer from Rafah, said that since the closure of the Karni crossing, he has been unable to export his produce to Israel and the West Bank, and will be forced to sell locally at rock-bottom prices. Money was running out, he said, and he was unable to buy his children even basic items.

"How will we live?" Mahmoud said. "Food is not our only requirement. We have children. They want to go to university and we don't have the money. I don't agree that we will be given food through the UN and everything will be OK. Is that all? We are not animals."

And as for the greater goal of statehood, Mahmoud said, it will only happen if the two main Palestinian factions start talking again, perhaps with the mediation of Arab states.

"Hamas is a popular faction, Fatah is also a popular faction, and if Fatah will not sit down with Hamas, it will be the end of the dream," he said.

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