High Stakes in Hamas-Fatah Feud

The jittery look on the bearded faces of Hamas politicians in the West Bank contrasts sharply with the swagger of their counterparts in the Gaza Strip.

The West Bank is the turf of the rival Fatah movement, a point dramatically driven home Monday when Fatah gunmen rampaged through the streets here, setting fire to government buildings and abducting and beating a Hamas lawmaker.

“There’s definitely tension,” another Hamas legislator, Mohammed abu Tir, said a few days later. The Ramallah episode occurred on a day of clashes that jumped from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.

The big question is whether those clashes, which left two people dead in the Gaza Strip, were a short-lived spasm of violence or part of a slow slide toward civil war. The answer hinges on how the rival groups behave in the coming weeks, say Palestinian analysts and politicians on both sides.

The confrontations reflect a risky exercise in brinksmanship that has escalated as Fatah, which once dominated Palestinian politics, tussles for power with the radical Hamas movement, which is now in charge of the government.

Hamas is flexing its muscles in the Gaza Strip, its chief base of support. Fatah is answering in the West Bank. The result is a growing sense of menace; the sporadic clashes in recent weeks have left about 20 people dead.

“The difference between heating up the situation and losing control, that difference is very narrow sometimes,” said Palestinian analyst Ghassan Khatib, a former planning minister who does not belong to either group.

Khatib said it remained to be seen whether a wider conflict lay ahead. “I don’t know. I think we Palestinians don’t know,” he said.

But the severity of Monday’s flare-up, which came as the two groups locked horns over a proposed referendum sponsored by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, appeared to have jarred both sides into a new appreciation of the stakes.

By week’s end, leaders from both groups were offering conciliatory statements and publicly expressing hope that they could forge a shared political program during a series of meetings that began Thursday.

Abbas and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas agreed that a controversial new Hamas militia would be absorbed into the rest of the security forces. Control over the security forces, long a domain of Fatah, has been central to the tensions.

The failure of past negotiations prompted Abbas last month to issue an ultimatum: If the two sides could not agree on a program, he would ask voters to approve a proposed statehood plan that would implicitly recognize Israel, a move Hamas has refused to make despite heavy international pressure.

Hamas, an Islamist movement that carried out dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israelis, rejects Israel’s right to exist and contends that Palestinian law makes no provision for a referendum. But the group’s lawmakers put off parliamentary action against the Abbas ballot measure in order to give the two factions more time to talk.

The parliament, where Hamas controls 74 of 120 seats, is scheduled to take up the matter again Tuesday.

The referendum has forced Hamas to play defense for the first time since taking power in March. Fatah leaders portray the measure as a way to break the political impasse and end the crippling effects of an international aid cutoff imposed by the United States and European Union after Hamas took over.

The economic toll has been worsened by Israel’s decision to stop transferring about $50 million it collects monthly in customs duties and taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

The acute shortage of money has left Hamas largely unable to pay the Palestinian Authority’s 165,000 workers. The pay issue prompted a group of angry civil servants, some from Fatah, to storm the parliament building two days after the shooting rampage. Speaker Aziz Dweik, who belongs to Hamas, fled the chamber as protesters barged in.

“We want to choose ballots to solve problems, not bullets,” said Saeb Erekat, a Fatah lawmaker and Abbas aide who is the chief Palestinian negotiator with Israel. “Undermining the referendum will only lead to bullets.”

The referendum may be a bluff, but it is perhaps the most daring move Abbas has made since being elected president by a wide margin in January 2005. Abbas, generally seen as reluctant to confront Hamas, risks a lot by proceeding with the referendum, which he has set for July 26. Losing would weaken him further and could spell the end of his presidency.

Ali Jarbawi, a political science professor at Birzeit University, said that both sides were running out of options and that the situation was “very bleak.”

“Hamas thinks Fatah is after it to make it fail. Part of this is true. Fatah doesn’t have any program, any political horizon it can offer the Palestinian people,” Jarbawi said.

Khatib said Israel had aggravated tensions among Palestinians. He said the proposal by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for Israel to set permanent national borders by 2010, unilaterally if necessary, had undercut Abbas and the Palestinian Authority president’s calls for peace talks.

“As long as he is weakened, it will encourage extreme elements to continue to take over, and that will bring a response from Fatah,” Khatib said.

Israel’s vice premier, Shimon Peres, traveling in Kazakhstan, said Friday that Israel would hold talks with Abbas soon.

The Palestinian impasse, and mounting concerns over the loss of foreign aid under Hamas, has given new life to a proposal for creation of a government that would be made up of technocrats who do not belong to any party.

Palestinian media reported that Egyptian officials were floating such an idea. One report says Palestinian billionaire Munib Masri has been mentioned as a possible prime minister. For that to happen, Hamas would have to surrender its Cabinet positions, an idea many view as unlikely, even though the group’s majority in parliament would give it veto power over a new government.

It remains possible that the two rivals can produce a political plan that is flexible or vague enough to satisfy both sides, leaving diplomacy to Abbas and the Palestine Liberation Organization and day-to-day government chores to Hamas, and resolving the tug of war over control of the 70,000-member security forces.

But Jarbawi said the fundamental point of contention, who gets and exercises authority, might not be easy to resolve. Both sides, he said, could stir the pot further as the haggling continues.

“They are raising the ante because this is the time for negotiations,” Jarbawi said.