THERE is no doubt that the US and UK ruling classes are hard at work seeking to organise a Palestinian civil war.
The object is to overthrow the Hamas Palestinian government that was elected with a huge majority by the Palestinian people.
The UK and US ‘champions of democracy’ – as long as the party of their choice is elected – immediately announced that they would not recognise the Hamas government and imposed a financial and trade blockade on Palestine, in an attempt to starve the Palestinian people into accepting the government that Blair and Bush want to see in Palestine.
This policy has failed. However it created the conditions for Israel to intervene militarily in Gaza and murder hundreds of people in attacks from the ground, sea and the air.
The Palestinian people remained loyal to the government of their choice.
Now the US, Israel and even Arab countries like Egypt, have moved to aid the defeated party in the election, Fatah, led by President Abbas.
The US is supplying $80 million of allegedly non-lethal military aid to Fatah, as well as assisting in training its forces.
Hamas yesterday accused Egypt of seeking to send arms into Palestine for the use of the anti-Hamas movement.
These interventions have stoked the conflict to the edge of the abyss of a Palestinian civil war from which only the US-UK imperialists and Israel will gain.
Yesterday the Fatah movement launched an attack on the Islamic University of Gaza.
Also yesterday, the US announced that it is going to continue with its policy of blockading Palestine and refusing to recognise the Hamas government, adding that it expects the remainder of the Quartet – the UN, Russia and the EU, to support this policy and support President Abbas when the Quartet meets in Washington today.
However, Russia has seen that the Hamas movement cannot just be starved out or overthrown by an internal pro-US coup, and has called for the recognition of the Hamas government. The US led coalition has begun to crack.
There are also reports that Palestinian Authority President and Fatah chief Mahmud Abbas and Hamas political chief Khaled Mishaal are to meet in Saudi Arabia next Tuesday to try to end the fighting.
The Palestinian masses are meanwhile shocked and shaken by the fighting, and the role that the Fatah movement has decided to play at the behest of the US and the UK.
Every Palestinian knows how Yasser Arafat, even when he was imprisoned in his Ramallah compound by Israel, successfully guarded the unity of the Palestinian people and worked to prevent any actions that could breach that unity.
Imprisoned Fatah leader, Marwan al Barghouthi can only be disturbed by the sight of Fatah, which carried forward the struggle for the liberation of Palestine, in the most adverse conditions of the mid-1960’s, now receiving supplies of ‘non lethal’ military equipment from the US.
There is only one way forward.
The Fatah movement must accept the result of the Palestinian general election.
There must be serious discussions to form a national unity government, without any attempt to impose recognition of Israel onto the Hamas movement.
A third Intifada must be launched to achieve a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with Jerusalem as its capital, with the demolition of all of the settlements, and with Palestinian refugees having the right to return to Palestine.
This is the only way forward in the face of the US-UK-Israeli effort to force the Palestinians to accept a Bantustan in place of a state, and live in a bigger prison, surrounded by Israeli security fences and apartheid walls.
