The creation of Hamastan?

In the wake of an all out civil war in the Gaza Strip, Hamas forces have beat the forces of Fatah (at times brutally) and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) out of Gaza. Immediately this was seen as a failure of the Bush administrations vision for the ME and an end to the prospect of peace between Israelis and Palestinians and a Palestinian two-state solution. Well, at least for the time being.

Without skipping a beat, many are now saying that this may isolate Hamas in Gaza and open up an avenue for progress in the West Bank where Fatah is still viable. Israel has requested that the new landscape in Palestine view the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as two separate entities. I’m sure someone has suggested sending aid to the West Bank Palestinians and not those in Gaza. Of course we heard similar claims after Hamas won the Palestinian election. The claim then was that they wouldn’t be able to govern and they would become unpopular and weaken culminating in another round of elections where Fatah would resume control. That never happened and Hamas is not weakened and not out of power (although the government they were part of no longer stands according the Abbas) and they currently have full control of a significant territory.

Holiday Roundup

As you may have noticed, I spent the holiday’s blog free. Therefore, I will now brief some of the main stories that I missed from both the media and blogs. In the likely case that I’ve missed something, please leave a comment. (note: I’m saving a separate post on Saddam Hussein’s hanging for later.)

The Palestinian Conflict

Fatah and Hamas reach agreement

A top Palestinian security official said Tuesday that Hamas and Fatah officials had agreed to pull their armed men off the streets of Gaza City after more than a week of rampant street violence.

The two sides also agreed to form a joint operations room with the Fatah-led security forces to respond quickly to any outbreaks of violence, the official said.

The agreement was reached after intense mediation by Egypt, the official said. A tenuous truce signed Sunday broke down within 24 hours, as violence continued on both sides.

Under the current deal, only Palestinian police would be allowed to patrol the streets with weapons, the official said. The withdrawal will begin within hours, he added.

A similar deal was announced earlier this week and lasted a matter of hours. I’ll update when this one collapses.

In related news, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has again called for “…an independent Palestinian state is established in territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.”

…Haniyeh said the truce could last as long as 20 years, after an independent Palestinian state is established in territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

During his speech, the Palestinian prime minister also called on the warring Palestinian factions to desist infighting and unite together against Israel.

Who says Hamas refuses to acknowledge Israel… (/snark)

[2006-12-20 9:24 PM] As expected, within hours of the new truce continuing violence has threatened the relative calm in Gaza.

Israeli Settlements, Palestinan Land

One salient point in the ongoing land dispute between the Israelis and Palestinians was solidified a month, or so, ago by Peace Now (.pdf). [What is peace now?] This point being that the state of Israel never formally annexed the West Bank and that area remains a spoil of war. Therefore, international law requires Israel – as an occupying power – to protect the property rights of those people residing in the area in question. This report concludes that the rights of many Palestinians have been violated. This is confirmed using information provided by the Israeli government and it appears that the effort to settle the occupied areas was and is a violation of “the landmark Elon More decision of the High Court of Justice in 1979” (p.3- 4).

This is the first time this data has been analyzed and made public. The analysis indicates a direct violation of Israeli law, carried out by the state at the command of the so-called “architects and leaders of the settlement movement” (p. 3). From this conclusion you can say that the state of Israel has failed to ensure the rights of thousands of Palestinians. This study is a comment on the settlement enterprise and the states role in that procedure. In addition, this act was and is a violation of international laws such as the 4th Geneva Accords and the Hague Agreement; not just established laws in Israel pertaining to its occupation of the West Bank. In conclusion this study finds that a large amount of private Palestinian land was settled by Israel.

Key findings:

Palestinians privately own nearly 40% of the land on which Israeli settlements were built.

Palestinians privately own more than 40% of the land located in Israeli “settlement blocs.”

More than 3400 buildings were contracted on private Palestinian land.

(view the full report here)

More coverage:

The Washington Post

The Independent Online

The BBC

MENA Blog Roundup (12/13/2006)

Marc Lynch (aka the aardvark): “I want to throw this out for discussion: in the not so distant future, we may be looking at the return of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.”

Why? Lynch notes that Nouri al-Maliki has lost the confidence of the US and holds no parliamentary mandate. Abd al-Aziz Hakim (of SCIRI) is presented as the current replacement for Maliki here in the US but he is also a figure complacent in the current sectarian/civil war driving the Sunni-Shi’a divide. A Sunni sponsored nationalist alliance is in the works that proposes to unite “Salah Mutlaq, a key secular Sunni leader…” and his “Iraqi National Dialogue Front, Muqtadar Sadr’s organization, and the al-Wifaq movement headed by Allawi (who recently returned from London to Amman), in a ‘nationalist’ (wataniya) front.”

Why Allawi? He’s an ex-Baathist secular Shi’a with an existing record. And he’s more palatable to the West (and US) than anyone else mentioned above at this time and he is not an Iranian puppet.

Full disclosure: Commenter’s at Abu Aardvark rejected this idea soundly… Lynch points out Allawi’s work of late with the insurgency, pointing to recent reports:

Brushing aside the results of Iraq’s democratic elections, the insurgents proposed that an emergency government be formed under Allawi’s leadership. Non-sectarian politicians should be appointed to the crucial ministries of defence and the interior, they urged, because they would be responsible for rebuilding a strong national army and security service. Under this proposal, the newly elected Iraqi government would, in effect, have been sidelined.

We’ll have to see, for no one knows. My question is, why would an American voice pull any weight in a sovereign Iraq?

The Religious Layout of the Greater Middle East

Mark I Levenstein writing at Foreign Policy’s internal blog the Passport passes along a few pointers to incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes, who like most Americans has no idea about the MENA and it’s religious intricacies. Read the full link here, here are some of the more important details…

Israeli Nuclear Weapons

Breaking nearly 40 years of denial, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seems to have admitted that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. For some time now it was assumed, but not stated, that the Jewish state was a nuclear power.