Hamas Full Control Of Gaza!

[Sinbad]

Hamas takes full control of Gaza
An uneasy calm has returned to the Gaza Strip where Hamas is in full control following a series of attacks on key strongholds of its rival, Fatah.
On its first day of rule, Hamas said it had released several top Fatah military commanders under a prisoner "amnesty".

At least 100 people have died during a week of factional fighting.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has dissolved the Hamas-led unity government and is expected to name a caretaker administration within hours.

However, Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, of Hamas, said his government would ignore Mr Abbas's "hasty decision" and would press on and impose decisive law and order.

Relative calm

On Friday, vehicles returned to the roads and shops were open in Gaza. Few armed men were visible on the streets and there were reports of only sporadic gunfire.



The relative calm followed scenes of violence on Thursday as Hamas fighters seized remaining Fatah positions including the headquarters of Fatah's Preventative Security force and the presidential compound in Gaza City.

Hamas said it had captured several top Fatah military leaders, including the commanders of the National Security force and of the Presidential Guard.

However, the Islamist group later said it would release them unharmed as part of an "amnesty".

Meanwhile, Egyptian police said that about 100 senior Fatah officials had fled from Gaza into Egypt overnight aboard a fishing boat.

The Palestinian officials are thought to belong to Fatah's Preventive Security forces. They were transferred to police camps in Egypt where the wounded received treatment.

About 200 other Fatah security workers have already sought refuge in Egypt, officials said.

Hamas said it planned to take control of the Gaza-Egypt border crossing, which was patrolled by Fatah's Presidential Guard until the outbreak of violence on Saturday.

Rule by decree

President Abbas dismissed the three-month-old unity government on Thursday and declared a state of emergency.

He is expected to name an interim administration on Friday. He has said he will rule by presidential decree until the conditions are right for early elections.



Under the Palestinian Basic Law, essentially the Palestinian constitution, the president can rule by decree for 30 days. This can be extended with the approval of the parliament.

The BBC's Matthew Price in Jerusalem says this may be an irrelevance, as Mr Abbas appears to no longer have any influence in Gaza.

Our correspondent says the West Bank and Gaza Strip will now effectively be split from one another - Gaza run by Hamas and the West Bank by Fatah.

There are also fears that violence will spread to the West Bank, where Fatah is dominant. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, affiliated to Fatah, has called for "martial law".

Hamas won a surprise victory in Palestinian elections in early 2006 but has since been engaged in an intermittently violent power struggle with Fatah.

Hamas, an Islamic organisation, rose to prominence in Gaza during two Palestinian uprisings and refuses to recognise or negotiate with Israel.

Fatah, a secular political grouping headed by Mr Abbas, ran the Palestinian Authority until 2006 and officially recognises Israel.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6756079.stm

Published: 2007/06/15 11:01:56 GMT

© BBC MMVII
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Finally something new, its actually no war in Gaza right now!

I do not understand why they fight eachother. I would be lying if I said it makes me sad, but still.
All are arabs, all are palestinians, all are muslims et c.
And they are occupied by Israel.

Why do they still fight eachother?

 

[Zulkiflim]

Salaam,

simple one is a moderate muslim and the other is a muslim.

One side is supported by the west and toe the western agenda while the other fight for their own survival.

In every family there is a black sheep a traitor.
One who places his own lust/greed and so on in SPITE of Islam.

 

[Sinbad]

Salaam,

simple one is a moderate muslim and the other is a muslim.

One side is supported by the west and toe the western agenda while the other fight for their own survival.

In every family there is a black sheep a traitor.
One who places his own lust/greed and so on in SPITE of Islam.

Is fatah the moderate ones? That the west supports?

 

[Trumble]

Is fatah the moderate ones? That the west supports?

The West prefers them rather than 'supports' them, not least because they offered some chance of actually achieving a settlement via a two-state solution.

Fatah were fighting the Palestinian cause for thirty years before anyone had ever heard of Hamas... something that should be remembered by anyone attempting to re-define what has always been primarily a political conflict as a religious one.

 

[Zulkiflim]

Is fatah the moderate ones? That the west supports?

Salaam,

Yes fatah is the moderate muslim,and moderate muslim as compared to muslim,are much loved by the west.

 

[Zulkiflim]

The West prefers them rather than 'supports' them, not least because they offered some chance of actually achieving a settlement via a two-state solution.

Fatah were fighting the Palestinian cause for thirty years before anyone had ever heard of Hamas... something that should be remembered by anyone attempting to re-define what has always been primarily a political conflict as a religious one.

Salaam,

The western world support fatah with weapons,monetary aid and training.

Fatah was set up to fight for palestinian but over time they lost the reason and became corrupt.

that is why in the election they lost,for people saw thru thema nd desired a change.

And it is not a a religious conflict rather a political one.

 

[Fishman]

Hamas Full control of Gaza!

Uh oh...
hew

 

[wilberhum]

Salaam,

The western world support fatah with weapons,monetary aid and training.

Fatah was set up to fight for palestinian but over time they lost the reason and became corrupt.

that is why in the election they lost,for people saw thru thema nd desired a change.

And it is not a a religious conflict rather a political one.

Any support from the Western World is always condemed. If we help, we are wrong, if we don't, we are wrong. I think we just need to step back and let each group kill each other. Well not really, but that is the only way it will end.

 

[Zman]

Peace To All

The Bush Doctrine Routed In Gaza

By ALI ABUMINAH
June 15, 2007
CounterPunch

The dramatic rout of the US and Israeli-backed Palestinian militias in Gaza by forces loyal to Hamas represents a major setback to the Bush doctrine in Palestine.

Ever since Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in the occupied territories in January 2006, elements of the leadership of the long-dominant Fatah movement, including Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his advisors have conspired with Israel, the United States and the intelligence services of several Arab states to overthrow and weaken Hamas.

This support has included funneling weapons and tens of millions of dollars to unaccountable militias, particularly the "Preventive Security Force" headed by Gaza warlord Mohammad Dahlan, a close ally of Israel and the United States and the Abbas-affiliated "Presidential Guard."

US Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams -- who helped divert money to the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s and who was convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal -- has spearheaded the effort to set up these Palestinian Contras.

Abrams is also notorious for helping to cover up massacres and atrocities committed against civilians in El Salvador by US-backed militias and death squads.
Two recent revelations underscore the extent of the conspiracy:

On 7 June, Ha'aretz reported that "senior Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip have asked Israel to allow them to receive large shipments of arms and ammunition from Arab countries, including Egypt."

According to the Israeli newspaper, Fatah asked Israel for "armored cars, hundreds of armor-piercing RPG rockets, thousands of hand grenades and millions of rounds of ammunition for small caliber weapons," all to be used against Hamas.

From the moment of its election victory, Hamas acted pragmatically and with the intent to integrate itself into the existing political structure. It had observed for over a year a unilateral ceasefire with Israel and had halted the suicide attacks on Israeli civilians that had made it notorious.

In a leaked confidential memo written in May and published by The Guardian this week senior UN envoy Alvaro de Soto confirmed that it was under pressure from the United States that Abbas refused Hamas' initial invitation to form a "national unity government."

De Soto details that Abbas advisers actively aided and abetted the Israeli-US-European Union aid cutoff and siege of the Palestinians under occupation, which led to massively increased poverty for millions of people.

These advisors engaged with the United States in a "plot" to "bring about the untimely demise of the [Palestinian Authority] government led by Hamas," de Soto wrote.
Despite a bloody attempted coup against Hamas by the Dahlan-led forces in December and January, Hamas still agreed to join a "National Unity Government" with Fatah brokered by Saudi Arabia at the Mecca summit.

Dahlan and Abbas' advisers were determined to sabotage this, continuing to amass weapons, and refusing to place their militias under the control of a neutral interior minister who eventually resigned in frustration.

A Setback For United States and Israel

The core of US strategy in the Southwest and Central Asia, particularly Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon is to establish puppet regimes that will fight America's enemies on its behalf.

This strategy seems to be failing everywhere. The Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan.

Despite its "surge" the US is no closer to putting down the resistance in Iraq and cannot even trust the Iraqi army it helped set up.

The Lebanese army, which the US hopes to bolster as a counterweight to Hizballah, has performed poorly against a few hundred foreign fighters holed up in Nahr al-Bared refugee camp (although it has caused death and devastation to many innocent Palestinian refugees).

Now in Gaza, the latest blow.

Israel's policy is a local version of the US strategy -- and it has also been tried and failed.

For over two decades Israel relied on a proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, to help it enforce the occupation of southern Lebanon. In 2000, as Israeli forces hastily withdrew, this militia collapsed just as quickly as Dahlan's forces and many of its members fled to Israel.

Hamas is now referring to the rout of Dahlan's forces as a "second liberation of Gaza."
A consistent element of Israeli strategy has been to attempt to circumvent Palestinian resistance by trying to create quisling leaderships.

Into the 1970s, Israel still saw the PLO as representing true resistance. So it set up the collaborationist "village leagues" in the West Bank as an alternative.

In 1976, it allowed municipal elections in the West Bank in an effort to give this alternative leadership some legitimacy.

When PLO-affiliated candidates swept the board, Israel began to assassinate the PLO mayors with car bombs or force them into exile.

Once some exiled PLO leaders, most notably Yasser Arafat, became willing subcontractors of the occupation (an arrangement formalized by the Oslo Accords), a new resistance force emerged in the form of Hamas.

Israeli efforts to back Dahlan and Abbas, Arafat's successor, as quisling alternatives have now backfired spectacularly.

In the wake of the Fatah collapse in Gaza, Ha'aretz reported that Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert will advise President Bush that Gaza must be isolated from the West Bank.

This can be seen as an attempt to shore up Abbas whose survival Israel sees as essential to maintaining the fiction that it does not directly rule millions of disenfranchised Palestinians.

A total collapse of the Palestinian Authority would expose Israel's legal obligation, as the occupying power, to provide for the welfare of the Palestinians it rules.

What Now For The Palestinian Under Occupation?

Abbas has declared a "state of emergency" and dismissed Ismail Haniyeh the Hamas prime minister as well as the "national unity government."

The "state of emergency" is merely rhetorical. Whatever control he had in Gaza is gone and Israel is in complete control of the West Bank anyway.

Haniyeh in a speech this evening carried live on Al-Jazeera rejected Abbas' "hasty" moves and alleged that they were the result of pressure from abroad.

He issued 16 points, among them that the "unity government" represented the will of 96 percent of Palestinians under occupation freely expressed at the ballot box.

He reaffirmed his movement's commitment to democracy and the existing political system and that Hamas would not impose changes on people's way of life.

Haniyeh said the government would continue to function, would restore law and order and reaffirm Hamas' commitment to national unity and the Mecca agreement.

He called on all Hamas members to observe a general amnesty assuring any captured fighters of their safety (this followed media reports of a handful of summary executions of Fatah fighters).

He also emphasized that Hamas' fight was not with Fatah as a whole, but only with those elements who had been actively collaborating -- a clear allusion to Dahlan and other Abbas advisors.

He portrayed Hamas' takeover as a last resort in the wake of escalating lawlessness and coup attempts by collaborators, listing many alleged crimes that had finally caused Hamas' patience to snap.

Haniyeh emphasized the unity of Gaza and the West Bank as "inseparable parts of the Palestinian nation," and he repeated a call for the captors of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston to free him immediately.
The contrast between Abbas' action and the Hamas response is striking.

Abbas, perhaps pushed by the same coterie of advisors, seems to be escalating the confrontation and doing so when there is no reason to believe he can prevail.

Hamas, while standing firm and from a position of strength, spoke in a language of conciliation, emphasizing time and again that Hamas has a problem with only a small group within Fatah, not its rank and file.

Abbas, Dahlan and their backers must be surveying a sobering scene -- they may be tempted to try to take on Hamas in the West Bank, but the scale of their defeat in Gaza would have to give them pause.

Both leaderships are hemmed in.

Abbas appears to be entirely dependent on foreign and Israeli support and unable to take decisions independent of a corrupt, self-serving clique.

Hamas, whatever intentions it has is likely to find itself under an even tighter siege in Gaza.

Abbas, backed by Israel and the US, has called for a multinational force in Gaza. Hamas has rejected this, saying it would be viewed as an "occupying force."

Indeed, they have reason to be suspicious:

For decades Israel and the US blocked calls for an international protection force for Palestinians.

The multinational force, Hamas fears, would not be there to protect Palestinians from their Israeli occupiers, but to perform the proxy role of protecting Israel's interests that Dahlan's forces are longer able to carry out and to counter the resistance -- just as the multinational force was supposed to do in Lebanon after the July 2006 war.

Wise leaders in Israel and the United States would recognize that Hamas is not a passing phenomenon, and that they can never create puppet leaders who will be able to compete against a popular resistance movement.

But there are no signs of wisdom: the US has now asked Israel to "loosen its grip" in the West Bank to try to give Abbas a boost.

Although the Bush doctrine has suffered a blow, the Palestinian people have not won any great victory. The sordid game at their expense continues.

Ali Abunimah is cofounder of the online publication The Electronic Intifada, where this article originally appeared.

He is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Source:
http://counterpunch.org/abuminah06152007.html

 

[Zulkiflim]

Any support from the Western World is always condemed. If we help, we are wrong, if we don't, we are wrong. I think we just need to step back and let each group kill each other. Well not really, but that is the only way it will end.

Salaam,

i would never say if you dont help you are wrong.

i would say you put yourself into this meddlesome situation and Inshallah what ever you give you will get back.

blowback.

In time Isnhallah,muslim the world over will see the US as the true enemy and at that time should the US interfere again,then we shall FIGHT THEM AS THEY FIGHT YOU.

As the Bush adminsitration say,we should kill them there before they kill us here.

And i agree,we should ----- before they leave their land to kill others.

"But exceed not in the trangression"..

 

[wilberhum]

the world over will see the US as the true enemy

Right! Thanks for verifying my thoughts. Now explain why we should help those that concider us the "True Enemy".
And you want to kill us. Quite lovely.

 

[Nσσя'υℓ Jαииαн]

Im gunna make the barf face everytime i read moderate Muslim. And I am definitely not kidding! +o(

 

[Muezzin]

Guys, can we please discuss this without saying that we want to kill each other?

 

[NobleMuslimUK]

I am glad the Hamas has taken control, but lets hope they do things the right way. Palestinians need to be strong to defeat their zionist occupying and oppressing enemy, Inshallah. I never trust any western supported or funded government as most muslims dont because we know they are backstabbing snakes. Obviously the zionist media will bombard the world with a negative view, to demonise Hamas and further curb peace process encouraging more blood shed on both side. Thanks to Allah more and more people are becoming wiser to their evil plans.

 

[MTAFFI]

I see a lot of Muslims on here are thinking this is really great, but maybe rather than being happy about this just because a militant group took over gaza you should take a look a little closer. Now Palestine is divided, the people of Gaza are fenced in, it is very likely that the maybe million people there will have a humanitarian crisis because no one is going to bring anything through to them now, with a ruthless group like hamas coming to power there. Also lets take a look at those who are now in power, they have slaughtered over 100 muslims in the area, that is not islamic is it? What is the point of them taking control like this, what will they now achieve? They executed people in front of their families, which is getting any supporters, they looted the place blind and threw people off of roof tops... I do not think any of this is any good. Peace will be the only way for Palestine to get rid of the conflict with Israel, stop the attacks on Israel, negotiate peace and try to get along with their neighbor and they very well may be happy people, but what has transpired over these last couple days is not good and I would bet that Allah is not smiling about it either.

 

[Keltoi]

I see a lot of Muslims on here are thinking this is really great, but maybe rather than being happy about this just because a militant group took over gaza you should take a look a little closer. Now Palestine is divided, the people of Gaza are fenced in, it is very likely that the maybe million people there will have a humanitarian crisis because no one is going to bring anything through to them now, with a ruthless group like hamas coming to power there. Also lets take a look at those who are now in power, they have slaughtered over 100 muslims in the area, that is not islamic is it? What is the point of them taking control like this, what will they now achieve? They executed people in front of their families, which is getting any supporters, they looted the place blind and threw people off of roof tops... I do not think any of this is any good. Peace will be the only way for Palestine to get rid of the conflict with Israel, stop the attacks on Israel, negotiate peace and try to get along with their neighbor and they very well may be happy people, but what has transpired over these last couple days is not good and I would bet that Allah is not smiling about it either.

I don't know how Allah feels about it, but those who feel some kind of "victory" because Hamas took over parts of the Palestinian territory aren't thinking about the Palestinians at all. It's pretty sad how many Muslims give lip service to improving the lives of Palestinians, but call those who are attempting to find a peaceful solution to the conflict as "traitors". Those who are happy about what is going on this week are living in their own little bubble.

 

[wilberhum]

I think it is interesting that some rejoice because this is some kind of “Great Blow” to the US.
The US was some what pro-Fatah because they were seen as the “Best Hope” for peace.

In reality they rejoice because now there is even less hope for peace.

 

[Sinbad]

Iran will send Hamas money, as always. Iran is the reason palestinians are still alive...

Still they worshipp Saddam and say death to the arabs enemies, Israel, USA, Iran...

 

[Cognescenti]

This notion that a "Bush Doctrine" has been undone by a Hamas capture of Fatah offices in Gaza is indeed rich.

The term "Doctrine" when applied to American foreign policy has been used historically to denote a broad, strategic diplomatic effort of global import. Typically it is accompanied by an official pronouncement because the whole point is for foreign countries to understand clearly the goal of the US. A good example would be the "Monroe Doctrine".

American lukewarm support for Fatah (or more importantly Abbas) has more to do about what is wrong with his opponents than what is right about Fatah. It's like going to the fishmarket and trying to pick between the 3 day old Halibut and the 5 day old cod. It is more a question of which fish doesn't smell quite as bad. It certainly is not part of some "Doctrine".

Fatah are corrupt, selfish, incompetent and clueless. Hamas are.......

 

[north_malaysian]

Hamas controls Gaza
Fatah controls West Bank

Hamas killed Fatah members in Gaza
Fatah killed Hamas members in West Bank

Hamas looted Fatah offices in Gaza
Fatah looted Hamas offices in West Bank

Now we all can say goodbye to an independent state of Palestine
And say welcome to Republic of Gaza and Republic of West Bank

We could no longer referring them as Palestinians
And should starting calling them Gazans or West Bankers

The Zionists are laughing
The Westerners are worrying
The Muslims are sick looking at their brethren there.