YESTERDAY in the aftermath of the bombing in Gaza that killed five leading Hamas fighters, and a five-year-old girl, accusations and counter-accusations were being hurled between the Hamas and Fatah movements.
Hamas security forces have arrested dozens of people, most of them Fatah members, after the bomb blast.
Hamas has blamed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah movement, accusing it of collaborating with Israel, saying, ‘This criminal act proves that the call for dialogue from Ramallah was a lie designed to throw sand in our eyes and conceal a conspiracy to kill and assassinate and terrorise our security forces.’
A Hamas leader, Khalil al-Haya, and the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades accused Palestinian ‘groups who collaborate with the enemy’ of being responsible for the explosion.
Fatah spokesperson Ahmad Abdul-Rahman spoke of Fatah’s ‘desire to solve all political rivalries through dialogue and the spirit of brotherhood which reflects our people’s stance towards the coup’.
The issue is who gains from these bombings and who will gain from a Palestinian civil war?
There is only one answer and that is Israel and the imperialist powers who stand behind it, who consider that it can do no wrong.
Mossad’s prints are all over this outrage that has killed six Palestinians including a five-year-old girl.
This comes at a time when President Abbas has been forced by big pressures from within his own movement to initiate a tentative effort at a dialogue, which has not yet got off the ground, the aim being a reconciliation between the Hamas and Fatah trends, with the object of moving to a new general election, which will elect a Palestinian government to reunite the Gaza Strip with the West Bank.
This move is not in Israel’s interests, and this is why the Gaza bomb blast has taken place. No doubt it will be followed by others.
After their defeat in the Lebanon and with a US presidential election in the offing, the Zionists are nervous and worried about the future.
They want to smash Hamas and all of the ‘irreconcilable’ Palestinian trends that will not give up the right of the Palestinian refugees to return, want the end of all Zionist settlements, and insist that East Jerusalem is to be the Palestinian capital.
However, the determination of the people of Gaza not to capitulate to the siege and not to turn on Hamas has further weakened the Zionist position and embarrassed the imperialist powers.
it is because of this determination that ex-Prime Minister Blair, now a fixer in Palestine for President Bush, was forced to say that he would visit Gaza, despite the fact that it is under Hamas rule.
He actually set out for Gaza City, but turned back when Israeli intelligence informed him that there was a plot to assassinate him.
Hamas, which had mobilised all of its security forces to protect Blair was adamant that there was no threat. Israel was however determined that Blair would not visit Gaza and thereby recognise Hamas.
Now the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee has said that more support should have been given to the Hamas-led National Unity government, when in fact the West and Israel did everything they could to wreck it.
The same House of Commons Committee has called on the Western governments to start talking to Hamas, a development that Israel is completely opposed to.
It is Israel that wants to foment a Palestinian civil war as the means to getting the settlement that it wants. This is why the Gaza bombing has taken place.
Hamas and Fatah must form a joint committee to investigate the bombing and expose the Israeli hands behind it.
Hamas and Fatah must begin a dialogue to reunite the Palestinian movement and to prepare the way for new elections that will bring forward a Palestinian government to reunite the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in preparation for the founding of the independent Palestinian state.
