Palestinians create hopelessness in Gaza

Amir Taheri:

HAMAS gunmen celebrated their victory over Fatah yesterday by parading the bullet-ridden corpses of the rival faction's fighters in the streets of Gaza City. Amid shouts of "Allah is the greatest!" they echoed their leader Khalid Mashaal's claim that Hamas had won "a triumph for Islam." Hamas women in hijab and Islamic masks ululated from the sidelines.

The four-day battle was a disaster for Fatah and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the increasingly irrelevant Palestinian National Authority. Fatah had some 60,000 armed men in Gaza, a strip of land covering some 65 square miles. It also had heavy cannons and rocket-propelled grenades, which Hamas lacked. Yet even Fatah's four chief bases of al-Hawa, al-Muntadam, Sarayah and al-Safineh, claimed to be impregnable, fell in just a few hours, as their defenders fled.

By losing Gaza, Fatah and its security chief, the ambitious Mohammed Dahlan, lose something more than armed presence in an enclave that accounts for almost 40 percent of Palestinians in the disputed territories. In Gaza, Fatah ran a lucrative protection racket that helped finance the corrupt life-style of its leaders and the armed units on which they depend.

Control of that protection racket could enable Hamas to meet part of its cash-flow problems. Despite a $250 million "Islamic gift" from Iran last January, Hamas was running out of money to finance its social-welfare networks and its armed groups.

With Gaza under its exclusive control, Hamas can now pursue its Islamicization program with greater vigor. It has already imposed the hijab, banned alcohol and Western music, and set up Islamic courts in parts of the enclave. With no one to challenge further Islamicization, Hamas can now impose the full sharia.

Yet, in winning Gaza, Hamas may have ended up with a poison chalice.

Some 85 percent of Gaza's estimated 1.7 million inhabitants depend on U.N. refugee organizations, mostly funded by the United States, for food and other daily needs. Yet Hamas would still need some $1.5 billion a year to keep the place afloat. Iran has promised to help, and the pan-Islamist movement of which Hamas is a branch is also certain to be generous. But even if that kind of money becomes available, Hamas' ability to keep Gaza going, even at the miserable level of its current existence, is not guaranteed.

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There is little doubt that Hamas' bid for exclusive control in Gaza was partly dictated by Tehran and Damascus. The Islamic Republic and Syria wish to kill all talk of a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict. They need Palestine to remain a cause with which to mobilize radical Islamists across national and sectarian divides.

Tehran and Damascus also believe that a military showdown with the United States and Israel is inevitable and that their best bet is to organize a pincer operation, from Lebanon through Hezbollah and from Gaza through Hamas, against the Jewish state.

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I think he is right about Iran's strategic plan for Israel. When Ahmadinejad made his latest statements about a time table for the destruction of Israel with his smirky smile he was probably talking about the planned Hamas offensive and giving it greater strategic importance than it deserved. but, we should not discount Iran's intent.

Like a dog that has been chasing a car, Hamas must somehow figure out how to make Gaza work. That is probably too tall an order for a bunch of religious bigots.