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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| West Bank v. Gaza: unrelated people, different cultures |
| 2007-06-19 |
| Bernard Wasserstein, professor of history at the University of Chicago,write a backgrounder useful in understanding Palestinian fault lines. Suddenly there are two Palestines: a Hamas-ruled Gaza and a Fatah-controlled West Bank. It seemed to happen overnight but the roots of this division extend back far into Palestinian history. In the inter-war period, when Palestine was ruled by Britain under a League of Nations mandate, the Arab elite was divided into rival coalitions of notable families. One, headed by Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Yasser Arafat's uncle or near cousin, oddly enough. was traditionalist Muslim in outlook, suspicious of modernisation and Western values, and militantly hostile to Zionism and British imperialism. The mufti developed a countrywide network of power based on his control of Muslim religious institutions and trusts. He accused the Jews of designs on Muslim holy places. His followers rioted at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 1929 and rose in revolt in 1936. Even with massive troop reinforcements and brutal repression, it took the British three years to bring the rebels to heel. A second coalition was headed by the mufti's chief rival, Ragheb Bey Nashashibi, long the mayor of Jerusalem. He was a more pliable character who got on better with the British and the Zionists. Whereas the mufti wore old-fashioned robes and the traditional headgear of the hajji (pilgrim to Mecca), Ragheb Bey always appeared in a smart business suit. He and his supporters were widely suspected of being financially beholden to the Zionists. Pro-mufti newspapers accused Nashashibi and his supporters of being "pack animals of imperialism". During the revolt the mufti's men resorted to bullyboy tactics, assassinations and intimidation to cow their rivals. After the Israeli victory in the 1948 war, what remained of Arab Palestine was divided into two disconnected fragments. In the Egyptian-occupied Gaza strip the mufti set up a short-lived "All-Palestine Government" which drew support mainly from the refugees who had flooded in from elsewhere in Palestine. Meanwhile, what became known as the West Bank was annexed by King Abdullah of Transjordan who installed Ragheb Bey and many of his supporters in positions of authority. Between 1948 and 1967, Gaza, with its refugee majority, sealed off from Israel and Egypt, was economically prostrate. The West Bank, where the pre-1948 settled population still formed a majority, was a little better off; its elites formed a modus vivendi with the Hashemite rulers of Jordan, and, except in the refugee camps, some semblance of normal social life continued. The Israeli occupation in 1967 consequently evoked somewhat different reactions. In the early 1970s, resistance to Israeli rule was fiercest in Gaza until suppressed by Ariel Sharon. By contrast, the Israelis encountered little serious impediment in the West Bank during the first two decades of the occupation. Gaza remained the poorest region of Palestine; housing conditions were grim; population density, fertility rates, and family size were among the highest in the world. Traditional clan loyalties remained a basic element of the society. Much of the population depended for survival on international aid. The first intifada was sparked off in Gaza in 1987 and then spread to the West Bank. Hamas, which emerged in Gaza during the first intifada, found its inspiring leader there: the quadriplegic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. In several ways he resembled the mufti. He dressed in traditional garb and thought in pre-modern categories. His movement was based on Islamic institutions that also offered social services. His popularity was heightened by inflammatory religious oratory and his programme combined rigid piety with fierce rejection of Zionism, the West and any accommodation with enlightenment principles. He drew support from the most alienated and desperate sections of society. As the Oslo process faltered, Hamas denounced the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority as compromisers and traitors. The PLO leaders who returned from exile in the mid-1990s to lead the authority were regarded rather like the communist leaders who returned to Germany from Moscow in 1945 as outsiders who had done well out of the wars. They were secular in outlook, schooled in the precepts of Marx rather than Mohamed. With the notable exception of Arafat, they exchanged their battle fatigues for business suits. Like the Nashashibis a generation earlier, they were accused by their opponents of selling their political souls for self-enrichment. Men such as Muhammad Dahlan, the Fatah security chief in Gaza, a sophisticated and charming thug, were widely denounced as tools of the CIA. Palestine today consists of two pitiably unviable entities, governed by two deeply unpopular movements. The mayhem, carnage and gang warfare in Gaza are unlikely to earn Hamas much new kudos. Mahmoud Abbas's pathetically belated and futile response demonstrates yet again his inadequacy as a leader. On a microscopic scale, the separation of Gaza and the West Bank resembles that between East and West Pakistan in 1971. But the new state of Bangladesh had a powerful patron in neighbouring India. Hamas-controlled Gaza can look only to Iran and, to a lesser extent, Syria. In their tiny sliver of territory, hemmed in by Israel and Egypt, Gazans have no conception of themselves as a nation and no prospect of forming an independent state. The West Bank, which imagines itself the Piedmont of the Palestinian Risorgimento, is by no means solidly behind Fatah. Hamas boasts considerable support in Hebron and Nablus and among the minority of the population who still live in refugee camps. But the palpable failure of Hamas in government since its election victory in January 2006 has led to general despair. "A plague on both your houses" is the most common view. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |