The stunning military victory by the Palestinian Hamas movement over the rival Fatah organization in the Gaza Strip last week was a strike against imperialism in the Middle East.
The US and its allies have described the Islamist group Hamas’s driving out of Fatah from Gaza as a “military coup” aimed at creating a “mini Taliban state”.
It is nothing of the sort. Hamas is the democratically elected Palestinian government. Its victory last week stopped an attempted military takeover sponsored by the US and its Israeli and Egyptian allies.
George Bush rushed to embrace the “Fatah moderates” in “the battle with extremism”.
Yet it is Bush who has worked hardest to strip Fatah of any credibility among the Palestinians by failing to deliver even the smallest concession in return for its recognition of Israel.
The showdown came last week after the attempted assassination of Hamas prime minister Ismail Hanaiya.
Angry Hamas fighters moved to crush what they considered to be the beginning of an Egyptian-inspired coup. Abandoned by its supporters, Fatah crumbled.
Hundreds of its fighters surrendered or walked away from the battle. Others fled across the border into Egypt.
Tag: imperialism
Mubarak’s regime (and AP?) to help fleeing Fatah loyalists reach West Bank
The AP editors still insist on inserting “moderate” whenever they refer to Abu Mazen or Fatah!
Egypt is trying to arrange passage to the West Bank for more than 300 Palestinians from the moderate Fatah group who fled the Hamas takeover in Gaza, Palestinian and Egyptian security officials said Monday.
Egyptians and Palestinians have agreed to “ease the trip back to the West Bank” for some 340 security officials close to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ moderate Fatah party, said a Palestinian official at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Read the rest of the report here.
I have another suggestion, instead of “moderate” why don’t you write the “progressive” Abu Mazen? Or Fatah “which believes in women rights” or any similar lie to make Dahlan’s thugs more polished up in front of the Western readers?
SHAME ON AP! Their editors also took the same approach re Mubarak’s regime in the 1990s (and up till 2004; now they don’t do it as frequently, except when Condi is in town) by insisting to describe Mubarak as a “moderate” while his security was kidnapping demonstrators, and rounding suspects in the thousands together with their families and children, torturing and sexually abusing detainees, and shooting at strikers and student demos.. That did not matter for AP. All what mattered to its editors was how our president was in dealing with America, and how lovely he was by fighting those terrorists. Now AP is repeating the same approach re Abu Mazen.
What’s even more hilarious, are those (like the Christian Science Monitor), who like to present the current conflict as one between “Islamist” Hamas and “Secular” Fatah!
First, it is NOT true Fatah is a “secular nationalist” movement anymore unlike what the CSM editors might have learned from Wikipedia or Memri. Guys, that was in the past. Fatah’s thugs now are as “Islamized” I can assure, moreover the fight in Palestine is not over implementing Shariaa or veiling women, so why the fuck is this Islamist/Secular dichotomy. But hey, if there’s anything we can smear Hamas with, and polish up Abu Mazen, then do it, even if it’s a lie.
Down with Dahlan’s thugs
I didn’t get the time to blog about it over the past few days… but regarding the horrible fighting happening in Gaza and the West Bank, my loyalty will always go the Palestinian people in the first place, and hence would like very much to see the resistance fighters stopping the fucking infighting, and solely focusing their operations against the occupation. However, I can’t see the two sides equally guilty in this current saga. I can never be on the side of Dahlan and his thugs, who are regular visitors to Egypt, and where their gangsters receive military training on the hands of Mubarak’s Gestapo, showered with US tax payers money. It’s those Fatah traitors who are responsible for the dismal situation in the territories, together with their master Abu Mazen, the dog who would sell his people if it meant he stays on his throne like any other Arab dictator. What’s happening today in Gaza and the West Bank is nothing but a plot that started from day 1 to Hamas’s triumph in elections, to undermine the elected Palestinian government… and all parties are involved, from the bloody US govt and Israel to the Arab regimes and their dogs in the Fatah leadership.
People are surprised Hamas fighters have stormed the Preventive Security camps?! They say its a “Coup against Legitimacy?”! What do you know about legitimacy ya zebalet Fatah?! Legitimacy, and you are the ones who lost all legitimacy as proved by the elections, due to your clientalism, corruption and failure in armed struggle. And those Preventive Security agents are no ones but Dahalan’s thug, who are very similar to Mubarak’s State Security but with more lethal rates of killings and torture of dissidents in the Oslo years and resistance fighters after the outbreak of the intifiada. I spit on you!
As for Hamas leadership: Have you seen the dead end of your contradictory bullet/ballot policies?!You can NOT fight occupation and at the same time be on the head of an entity that was created by the occupation itself. This is the dead end of reformism. The Oslo-founded Palestinian Authority should have been dissolved, not reformed, because it is IMPOSSIBLE to reform its institutions. You won in elections, a clean elections, unlike here in Egypt, but still they did not recognize your legitimacy… and instead of calling on the Arab people to mobilize on your behalf to pressure their governments to break the siege, you went on ass-kissing tours in the Arab capitals, begging from the leaders not the people to help you out, and appeared thanking President X for doing this and King Y for doing that. The same, same, same mistake Fatah had fallen into since its establishment, with Arafat wanting to find for himself a place among those dictators while confronting Israel.
Down with Dahlan’s Fatah thugs! Down with Mubarak’s Mukhabarat agents in Gaza! Down with the US govt and its Israeli dogs! Resistance fighters unite against the Zionist State!