It's from the New York Nazi Times, But this show you how dumb Israel is getting.
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Israel agreed today to transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars of Palestinian tax revenues to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, in an effort to support his new emergency government after the Muslim militants of Hamas seized control of Gaza 10 days ago.
More gestures of Israeli and international support are expected on Monday when Egypt will be the host of a summit meeting for Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. The policy aim is the strengthen Mr. Abbas’s rule in what is generally regarded as the pro-Fatah West Bank.
But the depth of Fatah support in the West Bank is far from clear. Only a year and a half ago, Hamas swept local elections in several major West Bank towns and in many of the villages and gained wide support in the parliamentary elections of 2006 as well.
In Nablus, for example, where Fatah militancy is widespread, Hamas won 13 out of 15 local council seats. In El-Bireh, adjacent to Ramallah, Hamas won 9 out of 15, and in Qalqilya, Hamas won all 15.
Analysts say the Hamas victories were at least partly protest votes against rampant corruption in Fatah, but the problems remain unresolved and some Fatah officials acknowledge that without serious correction efforts to prop up Mr. Abbas and Fatah may fail.
“The feeling in Fatah now is, ‘To be or not to be,’ ” Radwan Abu Ayyash, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy minister of culture, said by telephone from Ramallah, the administrative capital in the West Bank. “The West Bank is our last stronghold. But nobody would guarantee Fatah victory if it doesn’t reform itself.”
Immediately after the Hamas conquest of Gaza, Mr. Abbas became uncharacteristically assertive, firing the previous unity government headed by the prime minister, Ismail Haniya of Hamas. Then angry Fatah gunmen took to the streets around the West Bank, to take their revenge.
The most intense campaign got under way in Nablus, one of the largest and most important cities of the West Bank, with a population of more than 100,000. Mahdi Maraka, 30, a local leader of the Fatah-affiliated Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades militia in Al Ein refugee camp in Nablus, said he “read between the lines” after Mr. Abbas declared a state of emergency. He sent his men rampaging through the city, looting and burning offices and institutions affiliated with Hamas and threatening and kidnapping its representatives.
A week later, Mr. Maraka was in downtown Nablus checking on his father, who owns a bathroom fixture store. With a rifle slung across his shoulder and flanked by half a dozen armed guards, some of them masked, Mr. Maraka, who says he is wanted by Israel, perched among his father’s stock of toilet bowls and basins and gave a leisurely interview.
Fatah officials say that unless men like Mr. Maraka are reined in, the West Bank may be doomed.
“We’ll only be able to command the respect of the people if we succeed in getting rid of the armed thugs,” said Nasser Jumaa, himself a former Al Aksa Brigades chief and now a Fatah legislator.
But he added that Mr. Abbas “still has no clear plan” — not for creating order in Fatah, nor for confronting Hamas.
In the January 2006 parliamentary elections, Hamas took 74 of the 132 seats. This was not only because of voter anger at Fatah corruption but because deep rivalries within Fatah led to multiple candidates and a split vote in many districts. Those rivalries still exist.
There seems little immediate chance of a Hamas rout in the West Bank like there was in Gaza, but that is at least partly because, unlike Gaza, the West Bank remains under Israeli military occupation. Most of the prominent Hamas legislators and politicians from the West Bank are in Israeli jails, and the rest are lying low, trying to evade a new sweep of arrests by the security forces of Fatah.
“No one in the West Bank dares to say they are from Hamas now,” Mr. Abu Ayyash said. “They have all disappeared.”
Still, while less powerful than in Gaza, nobody doubts that Hamas forces exist. The Al Aksa Brigades in Nablus have circulated a list of 32 wanted men whom Mr. Maraka says are “Hamas leaders trying to plan for a coup.” Many of them, he said, are members of the Executive Force, a West Bank version of the Hamas police militia in Gaza that was set up to counter the Fatah-dominated official security apparatuses there.
Mr. Jumaa, the Fatah legislator, said Hamas had driven the price of weapons up in the West Bank by 100 percent or more over the past three years. “They have money from Iran,” he asserted. And although Israeli forces enter Nablus almost every night looking for wanted men, Mr. Jumaa says, Hamas never engages them. Instead, he says, “They are saving their bullets for us.”
Mr. Abu Ayyash said Mr. Abbas was ready to use “all means” to suppress Hamas in the West Bank, “whether democratic or not.”
The actions of the Al Aksa militiamen, which were more concentrated in Nablus but also occurred in other areas of the West Bank, may be one example of that. Though Fatah leaders protested the deeds, nothing was done to stop them.
One target was the Judhur Center for Culture and Arts in Nablus. It was founded 10 years ago by Khulud Masri, a Nablus council member who is affiliated with Hamas. According to the literature, the center, whose name means “roots,” was set up to promote women’s development “in the Palestinian, Arab and Islamic tradition.”
The night after the Hamas takeover of Gaza, two cars of armed, masked Fatah gunmen came and looted the place, then torched it. Elsewhere in the city, Ms. Masri’s personal office was raided and burned, her laptop, scanner and fax machine all stolen.
Ms. Masri, 38, was elected to the Nablus city council on Hamas’s Change and Reform list. The Hamas-affiliated mayor, who owns the Mercedes dealership in town, and his two deputies, were recently arrested by Israel, charged with belonging to Hamas, and Ms. Masri became acting deputy mayor.
But last week, Ms. Masri said, 10 Fatah gunmen stormed into the City Hall and ordered her to leave. She says they threatened that if she did not, “Tomorrow will bring something different.” She did not go back.
Dozens of other Islamic and Hamas educational and charitable institutions have been attacked. While Israel has long asserted that many of these organizations serve as fronts for financing and recruiting terrorists, Ms. Masri maintains that it is the poor people who benefited from them, and who will suffer. About 200 women participated in her center’s activities, including cooking and making handicrafts as an extra source of income.
“People are cursing the militants; they are mad at them,” she said.
Yet in the current atmosphere, even Ms. Masri is afraid to identify explicitly with Hamas. “I am an Islamist. Maybe I’ll be supportive,” she said.
Back among the bathroom fixtures, Mr. Maraka said he thought it was his men who raided Ms. Masri’s office and center. He definitely remembers being in the City Hall. “We changed the mayor of Nablus from Hamas to Fatah,” he said.
But while he was talking, he received two calls on his cellphone from informants warning him that he and another Al Aksa Brigades leader from Al Ein are on a Hamas hit list. “Now I’m hunted by Israel and by Hamas,” he said.
Walking out into the street, he nervously flicked a switchblade open and closed before speeding off in a beat-up silver vehicle.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/world/middleeast/24cnd-westbank.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&ref=world&oref=slogin
Topic: Israel to Transfer Millions of dollars to Abbas to Bolster Him (Read 2378 times)