A Leader of Hamas Warns of West Bank Peril for Fatah function getSharePasskey()
{ return 'ex=1340078400&en=57d94aa1bc4b758b&ei=5124';} function getShareURL() {
return
encodeURIComponent('http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/world/middleeast/21mideast.html');
} function getShareHeadline() { return encodeURIComponent('A Leader of Hamas
Warns of West Bank Peril for Fatah'); } function getShareDescription() { return
encodeURIComponent('An influential Hamas leader in Gaza warned that
Fatah’s effort to repress Hamas in the West Bank could lead to
Fatah’s downfall there as well.'); } function getShareKeywords() { return
encodeURIComponent('Palestinians,Gaza Strip,West Bank,Hamas,Fatah,
Al,Mahmoud Zahar'); } function getShareSection() { return
encodeURIComponent('world'); } function getShareSectionDisplay() { return
encodeURIComponent('International / Middle East'); } function
getShareSubSection() { return encodeURIComponent('middleeast'); } function
getShareByline() { return encodeURIComponent('By STEVEN ERLANGER'); } function
getSharePubdate() { return encodeURIComponent('June 21, 2007'); } <!-- function
submitCCCForm(){ PopUp = window.open('',
'_Icon','location=no,toolbar=no,status=no,width=650,height=550,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes');
this.document.cccform.submit(); } // --> By STEVEN ERLANGER Published: June
21, 2007
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/world/middleeast/21mideast.html
GAZA, June 20 — Mahmoud Zahar, perhaps the most influential Hamas leader in
Gaza, warned Wednesday that Fatah’s effort to repress Hamas in the West Bank
could lead to Fatah’s downfall there as well. In an interview here, Mr. Zahar,
the former Palestinian foreign minister, said Hamas would not sit idle if its
political rival, Fatah, dominant in the occupied West Bank and backed by the
United States and Israel, continued to attack Hamas institutions and
politicians. “If they continue to dismantle the local elections in the West
Bank and punish Hamas there, the United States and Israel will face another
surprise there,” Mr. Zahar said. Asked how, he said, “The way we defend
ourselves against Israel and this occupation.” Pressed if that meant attacks
and suicide bombings, he smiled and replied: “You said that.” Then he added:
“We are ending the reign of the spies and collaborators in Fatah.” In recent
days, Fatah gunmen have been attacking and burning Hamas institutions in the
West Bank, and its forces have arrested a number of elected Hamas officials
there as well. Mr. Zahar, a physician singled out in the past by Israeli forces
who killed one of his sons and his son-in-law, spoke on a day when Mahmoud
Abbas of Fatah, the Palestinian president, said he would not negotiate with
Hamas. In a televised speech, he said that “there is no dialogue with those
murderous terrorists” and added: “Our main goal is to prevent sedition from
spreading to the West Bank.” Also on Wednesday, at least six Palestinian
militants were killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers in Gaza and the West
Bank, and the Israeli Air Force attacked two rocket launchers in northern Gaza
after they had fired two rockets into Israel. It was the first time the Israeli
military had responded to rocket fire or clashed with Palestinians in Gaza
since Hamas seized power there last week. Some nine Qassam rockets were
launched into Israel from Gaza, with one Israeli lightly wounded. Islamic Jihad
and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, linked to Fatah, claimed responsibility. In his
interview, Mr. Zahar gave a ringing defense of Hamas’s ability to defeat what
he called Israeli and American plans to destroy Hamas and its government. The
first surprise for them, he said, was when Israel failed to break the
Palestinian uprising, or intifada; the second when “the resistance succeeded in
pushing Israel out of Gaza”; the third when Hamas won the legislative elections
of January 2006; the fourth when “they thought Hamas would collapse as a
government in three months through their sanctions”; and the last, so far, he
said, was the recent routing of Fatah, destroying what he called an
American-Israeli plan to “end Hamas militarily.” Mr. Zahar said that there was
no alternative but to renew political talks on a consensus between Hamas and
Fatah. Mr. Abbas, with American support, fired the Hamas-led unity government
and named a new emergency cabinet, whose powers run now only to the West Bank.
Under Palestinian law, its powers must be renewed by an act of the legislature.
But Hamas dominates the legislature, which lacks a quorum in any event since
Israel has detained up to a third of its members because they belong to Hamas.
Hamas held a rally here on Wednesday night to protest Mr. Abbas’s speech. “What
he said was disgusting and not appropriate for the Palestinian president,” said
a Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri. Mustafa Sawaf, the chief editor of a Hamas
daily newspaper, Felesteen (Palestine), begun four months ago, said that Hamas
felt forced into a confrontation now. Hamas had its own intelligence service,
which was fully aware of what he called the plans of Fatah. “Fatah was
preparing to get rid of Hamas,” he said. Lt. Gen. Keith W. Dayton, the American
security coordinator for the Palestinians, was pressing ahead with up to $80
million in aid to train and equip Mr. Abbas’s Presidential Guard, Mr. Sawaf
noted. “The American administration opposed the unity government and worked
hard with Palestinians close to Abbas to fail the government with all means,
even if it led to civil war,” he said. “So given all this, is it logical for
Hamas to wait until it is crushed?” asked Mr. Sawaf. “If you put a cat in a
corner and keep beating it, the cat will fight back.” The Americans say that
their effort to aid, train and equip the elite Fatah forces was to protect the
crossings to Israel and to deter Hamas, not to start a civil war. Mr. Sawaf
acknowledged that Hamas had been doing military planning for some time, but was
itself surprised at the low morale of the Fatah forces and how quickly they
disintegrated. While there were reports that Hamas had carefully prepared by
digging tunnels for explosives, for example under the Preventive Security
headquarters in Khan Yunis, Mr. Sawaf denied it. “Any tunnels we dug were to
try to protect ourselves from Israeli planes,” he said. “We dug them to try to
hit Israeli forces” in the event of another Israeli incursion, much the way
Hezbollah fought Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, he said. Mr. Abbas, known
as Abu Mazen, in his speech again accused Hamas of digging a tunnel under a
road he would pass in order to kill him, but “the Israelis would pass the same
way,” Mr. Sawaf said. “If Hamas wanted to kill Abu Mazen, it would be easy. It
would not need a tunnel.” Mr. Sawaf’s West Bank office in Ramallah has been
destroyed, and the Palestinian paper Al Ayyam has refused to continue printing
his paper in the West Bank. Israel continued Wednesday to take sick and wounded
Palestinians out of Gaza to hospitals in Israel, but officials said they were
frustrated at their inability to coordinate with the Palestinian side; the Red
Cross was doing most of the coordination. Alan Johnston, the BBC’s Gaza
correspondent, marked his 100th day in captivity on Wednesday, in the hands of
a shadowy group called Army of Islam, connected to a part of the Gazan Dagmush
clan. The leader of the group, Mumtaz Dagmush, has taken up a form of radical
Islam, and Mr. Zahar of Hamas called him “ignorant and illiterate — he can’t
even read and write.” The group has demanded the freedom of a West Bank-born
preacher, Abu Qutada, now in British jails on terrorism charges, and is also
said to be demanding $5 million. A member of the clan was shot dead on
Wednesday by a family affiliated with Hamas, but Mr. Zahar said the issue was
blood revenge, not politics. In this matter, as in so many things in Gaza and
the divided Palestinian world, temperatures were rising, not falling. But after
hot days in which children were kept at home by worried parents, the beaches of
Gaza suddenly seemed to explode Wednesday evening with the cries of hundreds of
children returning to the sea, throwing themselves into the waves beneath a
burnt-orange sun. Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
