The future for Palestinians looks bleak. Gaza’s traumatised population remains trapped in a struggle for survival during a genocide that’s gone on for more than two years. Meanwhile, the West Bank is experiencing its highest levels of Israeli military and settler violence since records began. But instead of facing trial in the Hague for war crimes, Israel has come out on top again. Freedom and dignity for Palestinians is more distant than ever.

In this context, it may seem absurd to reflect on events 20 years ago. But the seeds of today’s disastrous situation were planted back then because it led to the split between the West Bank and Gaza and drove a deep, bitter division in Palestinian politics.

This is a story of Western manipulation that provoked a Palestinian civil war, set the scene for Israel’s devastating blockade of Gaza, and forced Hamas away from seeing the ballot box as a route to political change.

Hamas steps into the election arena

On 25 January 2006, an election took place in the occupied Palestinian territory. When the results were announced, it sent shockwaves throughout the Middle East and beyond. Hamas had won, receiving 76 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council, the Palestinian parliament. With a 77% voter turnout, Hamas believed it had received a strong message from the electorate.

Palestinians were tired and cynical of endless peace talks with no movement towards sovereign statehood. The occupation had tightened, settlements had expanded, and Israel’s violent military response during the second intifada had destroyed hope of a negotiated two-state solution. Resentment was high and Hamas harnessed it.

This was the first time Hamas had participated in nationwide democratic elections. It had boycotted the first PLC election in 1996 because it opposed the Oslo Accords. But a decade later, with the deadline of 1999 for a final peace settlement long passed, Hamas decided to stand for election. The party had done well in municipal elections in 2005, so perceived this as an endorsement of its policies.

Tareq Baconi, author of Hamas Contained, argues that neither armed struggle nor Islamic ideology featured prominently in the party’s electoral platform. Instead, most voters were attracted by Hamas’s promises to end corruption and renegotiate the Oslo Accords.

During the election campaign, Hamas politician Muhammad Abu Tir said: “We’ll negotiate [with Israel] better than the others, who negotiated for 10 years and achieved nothing.” Hamas was offering a strategy of resistance and hard negotiations with Israel.

An unanticipated shock result

Washington and Brussels funded the process and the US claimed that if the elections were free and fair, which they were according to the European Union Election Observation Mission, it would recognize the result. But neither anticipated Hamas’s success.

It was also a shock to Fatah, the party that had dominated Palestinian politics since the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, and long before through the PLO and towering personality of its first leader Yasser Arafat.

Long-standing tensions between Fatah and Hamas meant there was no love lost between the two rival parties. Despite this, President Mahmoud Abbas, who also chaired Fatah’s central committee, initially saw Hamas’s election as the first steps to decommission it through political integration. This view was shared by some European governments.

But the US had a different viewpoint. Instead, it tried to overturn the election result through a covert operation which provoked a Palestinian civil war. The US planned to fund Fatah to the tune of $1.27 billion to overthrow the Hamas administration. This was yet another scandalous project by the US to manipulate local politicians and provoke a coup against a democratically elected government.

Bankrupting the Hamas administration

Economic pressure was easily applied. The US stopped its funding to the Palestinian Authority and pressured other governments to do the same. It also used its dominant position in the diplomatic Quartet, which included the EU, Russia, and the UN, to promote a hard-line approach.

On 30 January, the Quartet issued a statement that future aid and diplomatic relations was contingent upon the new government committing to non-violence, recognising Israel, and accepting previous agreements.

Hamas refused the Quartet’s demands, insisting it had a strong mandate from the Palestinian electorate to renegotiate all deals with Israel.

The Quartet responded by shutting off aid. This provoked a financial crisis. Funds from the US and the EU to the Palestinian Authority had constituted $1 billon in 2005. Israel also stopped transferring the taxes and customs revenue it collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority – about $50 million every month. The US Treasury prohibited transactions with the Palestinian Authority meaning that the banking sector ground to a halt. Public sector workers went unpaid and the economy went into meltdown.

The US scuppered attempts at a unity government between Hamas and Fatah and put pressure on Abbas to announce a state of emergency and form a government without Hamas. But this didn’t work. So, it went for a more covert approach. Arms shipments were made to Fatah in Gaza and money was paid directly into accounts controlled by Abbas.

As tensions increased, violence spiralled out of control into a war between Hamas and Fatah.

A CIA-backed coup

On 30 April 2007, Jordanian newspaper Al-Majd published a leaked draft of the plan that looked like a CIA-backed Fatah coup against Hamas. Other leaks provoked Hamas to act.

In mid-June, after intense gunbattles, Hamas took control of Gaza. The world’s media reported it as a Hamas coup, but David Wurmser, Middle East advisor to US vice-president Dick Cheney, argues that Hamas acted to prevent a coup by Fatah.

This was a historic turning point.

These actions led to the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza, which created two separate governments funded from different sources. Political rivalry between Fatah and Hamas deepened into intense hatred, which has paralysed the Palestinian national movement ever since.

Israel instituted a devastating blockade on Gaza, legitimised by Western proscription of Hamas as a terrorist organisation and refusal to work with it even with a democratic mandate.

Since then there has been at least five Israeli bombardments of Gaza, often referred to as “mowing the grass” – the despicable dehumanizing metaphor Israel uses for killing Palestinians by mass bombing. International attempts to stop Israel were non-existent, even when it gunned down Palestinian civilians during the Great March of Return weekly demonstrations in 2018 and 2019.

The whole of Gaza was being punished. This was a pressure cooker situation.

Then came the attack on Israel of 7 October 2023 by Hamas and other groups. Israel responded by committing a genocide that has so far killed at least 70,000 Palestinians and destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure and way of life.

What might have happened if instead of isolating the Hamas government Western states had engaged with it? What might have happened if the US had not quashed Hamas’s entry into democratic politics and provoked a civil war between Hamas and Fatah?

The decisions made by Western states, particularly the US, twenty years ago led directly to the tragedy of today.

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Mandy Turner is a senior researcher with Security in Context. Her research focuses on the political economy of conflict and peace, humanitarianism and multilateralism, and the situation in Palestine and Israel.

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff, or the author’s employer.

 

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