Publication
Omar Shaban Ismail · PalThink for Strategic Studies · 2019
An Arabic analysis of how sustained Palestinian political division enabled external actors — especially the Trump administration — to advance plans that deepen separation between Gaza and the West Bank instead of national reconciliation.
An Arabic analysis of how sustained Palestinian political division enabled external actors — especially the Trump administration — to advance plans that…
Ramifications of the Palestinian Division and the American-Israeli Plan to Exploit It
Omar Shaban
There is no genuine transition from authority to a Palestinian state before ending the Palestinian–Palestinian division. This division has produced consequences and a fait accompli that can no longer be addressed merely by reaching agreements. Perhaps the most notable development under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has been the open effort to instrumentalize this division—both to preserve it and, in practice, to obstruct the establishment of a Palestinian state by perpetuating the political and geographic separation between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This administration seeks to exploit deteriorating humanitarian and economic conditions, in which the division itself played a role, to achieve political and legal objectives. This article first examines the internal ramifications of the Palestinian division, and second traces shifts in the American position toward it up to 2018, when it became especially clear that the aim was to turn back the clock and make an independent, unified Palestinian state more difficult to achieve by preserving the division.
Many observers, writers, and specialists associate the term "Palestinian division" with Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, following nearly a year of internal tension and clashes since the second legislative elections in January 2006, and the resulting severance of contact between the West Bank and Gaza and the formation of two separate governments. Other writers trace the roots of the division further back, viewing it as the outcome of an accumulated series of political and ideological differences between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas since the latter's emergence in 1987—differences that deepened over time until they undermined the two pillars of the national liberation project: resistance and settlement, not to mention their impact on every aspect of life in Palestine.
Since the division occurred, it has not ceased to command Palestinian attention and concern over its consequences. Numerous initiatives have been put forward to heal the rift, emerging from a series of agreements reached between the two sides, including the Cairo Agreement of 2006, the Palestinian Prisoners' Document for National Accord of 2006, the Mecca Agreement of 2007, the Egyptian Paper of 2009, the Cairo Agreement of 2011, the Doha Agreement of 2012, the Beach Agreement of 2014, and the Cairo Agreement of 2017. None of these succeeded in achieving reconciliation, for reasons both internal—such as inter-factional competition, lack of seriousness in pursuing reconciliation—and external, relating to regional and international interventions that at times obstructed reconciliation and at other times sought to impose a particular form of it serving their own interests.
First: Ramifications of the Division
The Palestinian political system was already suffering a crisis encompassing structure and performance before the results of the legislative elections of 25 January 2006. Hamas's military takeover of the Gaza Strip inaugurated a new phase in the context of an escalating and all-encompassing crisis, as conflict intensified within the Palestinian political system itself over the requirements of legitimacy, identity, and their foundations. Hamas's control of Gaza entrenched a state of political and administrative separation between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, accompanied by practices that constituted a flagrant assault on the freedoms, rights, and achievements of the Palestinian people over past decades.
The Palestinian political system fractured on account of its fragility and weakness, deepening the phenomenon of political, social, administrative, geographic, and even cultural and psychological division among members of a single society on the land for which they struggle to establish their sovereign state. The division took root and extended horizontally and vertically: the political system grew more fragmented, and geography itself was fragmented. An entire generation grew up with the image fixed in its eyes and mind that Palestinian–Palestinian contradiction runs parallel to contradiction with the occupier. The division became a threat to the supreme interests of the Palestinian people wherever they are located. A reality emerged in which each Palestinian community had its own particular concerns, interest in the central cause—the cause of liberation, independence, and return—receded, and each community became absorbed in its own preoccupations and the challenges to its existence. The ramifications of the division can be grouped under the following headings:
Institutional Ramifications:
The Palestinian Authority became divided into two authorities, one in the West Bank and the other in the Gaza Strip. The division paralyzed democratic life: Hamas's seizure of authority by force of arms in Gaza is the antithesis of democratic practice, not to mention the consequences of creating a state of division within the Palestinian political system and paralyzing the mechanisms of democracy and its development. The work of the Palestinian Legislative Council was suspended, with a fundamental impact on the separation of powers, as executive authorities dominated Palestinian political, legislative, and judicial work. Freedom of partisan activity, civil society institutions, and freedom of expression declined in both parts of the Palestinian homeland, and the outlines of two different political systems began to take shape on Palestinian territory, embodied in parallel institutions and two separate entities—one in the Gaza Strip and another in the West Bank.
As a further consequence, problems emerged relating to the administrative apparatus in the Gaza Strip and the difficulties of integrating employees and workers in the sector and absorbing them into the administrative apparatus of the Palestinian Authority, especially with regard to bearing their salaries—no easy matter for the Authority, which may be unable to meet its financial obligations, particularly amid the chronic economic crisis it faces.
Multiplicity of Arms and Law-Enforcement Bodies:
One of the main thorny issues arising from the division is the question of multiple arms and military wings, and who controls security in Gaza. Hamas's military wing and other resistance movements built a vast arsenal of weapons of all kinds, in addition to a network of fortified tunnels, and entered three major wars against Israel. Hamas says that its continued control over "resistance weapons" is non-negotiable. But President Mahmoud Abbas said he would not tolerate the emergence in Gaza of a version of "the Hezbollah model in Lebanon," where a heavily armed organization exercises influence over a weak government and hollowed-out institutions.
Multiplicity and Problems in Legislative Processes:
The division produced a disruption and alteration of the legislative mechanism, which no longer rested on the Basic Law or the internal regulations of the Legislative Council. New laws were thus enacted in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas bloc in the Legislative Council and published without referral to the President of the Authority, who holds the power of promulgation, and applied only there. The number of laws and legislation passed by the Legislative Council in Gaza after 2008 reached approximately 47 laws in just seven years, in addition to 2,446 decisions. In the West Bank, laws were enacted through decisions with the force of law issued by the President of the Authority and applied in the West Bank. Although this is one form of exceptional legislation, it is subject to conditions that were exceeded and not observed. The application of new laws created legal centers that cannot be disregarded or overlooked in a phase of unity and after reconciliation.
The division compounded the problem of the absence of the rule of law in applying the legislative and legal system for rights and freedoms and enforcing them, since the division objectively constitutes a state contradictory to the rule of law—as revealed by violations affecting these rights and freedoms in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with these freedoms in continuous decline according to human rights center reports. All of this reflects a set of significations, foremost among them the trend toward creating a new legal reality with an ideological bent, resulting in tension and confusion in the existing legal system and a break with it.
Convergence of Political Programs and Widening Cultural, Moral, and Psychological Gap
If the contents of Hamas's new document issued in 2017 bring its political program closer in substance to Fatah's current program, this may perhaps indicate steps within a framework of competition rather than convergence—a fact made clear by the widening cultural, moral, and political gap accompanying the division. Sharp polarization between Fatah and Hamas, manifested in the existence of two balanced forces each drawing on sources to reinforce its legitimacy amid division and conflict, turned into a means of preserving the status quo and a arena for internal competition over positions of power and influence under occupation. Differences and diverging interests of the two movements contributed to further fragmentation among Palestinians. Dynamics of self-undermining, such as militarization, moved forward; the unified vision disappeared; political and social integration processes failed; and various forms of primordial loyalty—class, regional, and familial—were unleashed. The use of violence and excessive force in addressing internal contradictions within the people became common; a culture and values of violence spread; human rights were violated; the Palestinian person's capacity for steadfastness was endangered; political pluralism and democratic mechanisms were struck; and phenomena of exclusion, takfir, accusation of treason, and non-recognition of the other and the right to differ intensified.
This stands in contrast to what national identity had been when the Palestinian people confronted occupation through revolution and intifada. Palestinian nationalists then knew no competing sub-identities or allegiance except to Palestine—something that spared them the ethnic, sectarian, and regional conflict mazes that many Arab and Islamic countries suffer today. However, the cessation of hot confrontation with the enemy and the state of division produced negative consequences for the unity and cohesion of society and identity.
Israel was among the most important actors working to manufacture a West Bank identity and a Gaza identity and to reinforce divergence between the two sides in order to defeat the national project calling for an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 was the most important step in this context. Yet Arab and Palestinian parties also reinforced this divergence between the West Bank and Gaza. All parties complicit in creating divergence between a Gaza identity and a West Bank identity sought to sever the bond between the West Bank and Gaza and to transform the division from a geographic and political division into a social and cultural division—the more dangerous form, because it leads to dismantling the national bond that unites everyone.
The identity crisis intensified when Hamas linked itself to the political Islam project, which manufactures a contradiction between national identity and Islam, or between the national project and the Islamist project. With Hamas's control of the Gaza Strip, national identity was marginalized and threatened when Hamas worked to attach the Palestinian cause to the Muslim Brotherhood's political Islam project, turning its back on national reconciliation and national work in favor of consolidating the Gaza Strip as a base among the bases of an Islamist project that transcends nationalism.
Economic Conditions
The economy of the Gaza Strip in particular, and the Palestinian economy in general, has since mid-2007 suffered a devastating blow as a result of the Palestinian division. Israel imposed a comprehensive blockade on the Gaza Strip, justifying it on the grounds that the sector had come under Hamas control. It closed crossings and prevented the entry of many basic goods into Gaza, and also barred the export of industrial and agricultural products. As of 2018, the economy still suffered from the blockade policy Israel imposes on the Gaza Strip, in addition to repeated wars and military attacks that deepened the crisis and produced massive destruction in infrastructure and across all economic sectors and activities. Specialists estimate that the cost of the division and blockade over ten years (2007–2017), directly and indirectly, reached approximately $15 billion.
The year 2018 brought further difficulties. The Palestinian economy suffered a reduction in American aid to the Palestinian Authority for its failure to respond to American policies aimed at undermining the Palestinian cause. Meanwhile, the population, merchants, and economy of the Gaza Strip experienced successive crises, one after another, that exhausted the faltering economy and inflicted losses affecting the livelihoods of two million Palestinians living in the sector.
The World Bank warned that the deterioration of economic conditions in Palestine had become alarming, noting that the economy in the Gaza Strip had entered a phase of collapse, and that basic services provided to residents were at risk amid a liquidity shortage: one in two people suffers from poverty, and the unemployment rate among Gaza residents—predominantly youth—exceeds 70%. Economic growth reached negative 6% in the first quarter of 2018, and indicators in the following months pointed to further deterioration.
What compounded the situation in Gaza was the gradual reduction of the U.S. government aid program, ranging between $50 million and $60 million annually, and cuts to programs of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Then came official Palestinian government measures in early April 2017, consisting of a 30% deduction from the salaries of Palestinian Authority employees in the sector—deductions that later increased until they reached 50%. These measures reduced the purchasing power of residents in the sector, and merchants incurred major losses, including the closure of some commercial establishments. Specialists estimate that measures imposed by the Palestinian Authority on Gaza deprived the sector of approximately $20 million per month in liquidity that had flowed to various commercial sectors within an economy already exhausted.
Marina Wes, World Bank Country Director for the West Bank and Gaza, commented: "War, isolation, and internal conflicts have converged, leaving Gaza's economy in a state of paralysis that has compounded humanitarian suffering. It is a situation in which people struggle to meet basic life requirements, endure worsening poverty, rising unemployment, and deteriorating public services such as health care, water, and sanitation. It is a situation that requires urgent, genuine, and sustainable solutions."
Although the situation in the West Bank is not as severe, growth previously driven by consumption is declining, and economic activity is expected to slow sharply in the period ahead.
Among factors that compounded the poor state of the Palestinian economy overall was the decline in Arab support for the Palestinian cause on the grounds that support would not be effective in a reality of division, and would not be useful if directed toward currents that place loyalty to the group above loyalty to the nation. This is supported by divergences, as in the Egyptian, Qatari, and Turkish cases regarding the Gaza Strip and support for it. Divergence in positions was clear in the 2014 war on Gaza, when Qatar sought to organize a conference away from the Egyptian paper that carried Cairo's vision for defusing the war between Hamas and Israel. These Arab regional divergences prolonged a war that lasted 51 days, inflicting on the Palestinian people devastating losses in property estimated at $3.6 billion, and in lives exceeding 2,147 martyrs and 10,870 wounded.
In addition, Arab and regional states became preoccupied with confronting a set of challenges, such as the so-called war on terror and the draining of most of the nation's military, security, media, political, and financial energies in facing internal threats and political and economic challenges, as well as confronting the expansion of Iranian influence in Yemen and Iraq—meaning a weakening of the Arab and Islamic support factor alike for both sides. This was accompanied by a major decline in the volume of grants provided to the Palestinian Authority, as many Arab countries retreated from providing support to the Authority.
Second: American-Israeli Instrumentalization of the Division
The division is convenient for Israel, which always seeks to confuse the scene and entrench the splitting of Palestinian ranks.
Initially, the United States dealt with the Palestinian Authority as responsible only within Palestinian territory, but without taking supportive practical steps. It links the provision of aid to the Authority to security cooperation measures between the Authority and Israel. While Washington's view of Hamas is that it is a terrorist movement that does not meet the Quartet conditions and still seeks to destroy Israel—making Hamas's assumption of governance difficult—the American-Israeli position has become prepared for a separate calm with Hamas to prevent reconciliation. For example, when Egypt sought intensively to heal the rift in 2018, Israel sought to conclude a separate calm with Hamas that would entrench the separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank. This reflects two types or phases of instrumentalizing the division.
On one hand, Israel exploited the division in ways that serve its interests, devoting itself to settlement in the West Bank and the Judaization of Jerusalem, and adopting racist measures such as the Nation-State Law without meaningful international reaction to its behavior. On the other hand, the strategy of the Israeli project based on fragmenting the Palestinian people, dissipating its national identity, and dismantling its unified representative entity is now registering success—even if this required extending a lifeline to Hamas. Israel worked to complete the policy of separating the Gaza Strip from the West Bank that it began before signing the Oslo Agreement and continued to implement it steadily, culminating in the redeployment operation around the sector under the title of the unilateral disengagement plan (2005). Palestinian resistance played an important role in bringing it about, but it aimed to deepen separation, block the establishment of a Palestinian state, and sow discord, division, and infighting within Palestinian ranks.
This strategy formed the material basis for separating the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, in an attempt to entrench a Gaza state project and transform the West Bank into divided, exposed cantons crowded with settlers whose numbers multiplied amid the faltering national project, the weakened Palestinian condition resulting from the division, and 25 years after signing the Oslo Agreement.
The division helped reduce international attention to the Palestinian cause as a central and pivotal issue in the Middle East to mere humanitarian, relief, food-aid, and calls-to-lift-the-blockade concerns—the definition Israel and the current American administration wish to promote.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to exploit deteriorating humanitarian and economic conditions to reiterate its plan of offering humanitarian aid in exchange for political concessions.
The Trump administration welcomed Cairo talks between Hamas and Egyptian officials, in addition to other Palestinian factions, to reach a calm—but the Authority opposed the measure and prevented its implementation. The Trump administration views the calm agreement as consistent with its plan to deal with the Palestinian problem as separate parts. This was expressed by Jared Kushner, Trump's senior adviser on the Middle East, in his statements: "I think the Palestinian people are less invested in the politicians' talking points and more interested in seeing how this deal will give them and their future generations new opportunities, more and better-paying jobs, and prospects for a better life." According to writer Robert Fisk, this is money for peace instead of land for peace—dollars instead of the Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, ending settlement, and implementing the right of return. Thus it becomes clear that the American administration uses the humanitarian cover to pass a settlement, media-framed in Arabic as the "Deal of the Century," and to end discussion of establishing a Palestinian state by removing the foundations necessary for a future Palestinian state.
Observers can easily detect the deep paradox in recent American moves: on one hand, the Trump administration cut aid to the Palestinian people, cut funding to Jerusalem hospitals, and cut its annual financial contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)—a humanitarian organization; on the other hand, it announced support for efforts that could lead to rebuilding the Gaza Strip. This shows that the support offered is not free.
Cutting support for UNRWA was the most damaging, leading the United Nations organization to freeze a large number of its projects and end the employment of hundreds of needy Palestinian workers and employees in the Gaza Strip. Thus the separation between the fertile reality produced by the division, the calm agreement, and the "Deal of the Century" is a waking dream. All aspects are suspect in terms of timing, content, and dynamics.
Conclusion
The prolonged continuation of internal Palestinian division constitutes an immediate and long-term strategic threat. It has produced other societal, political, and economic transformations—intended or unintended—that in turn contributed to deepening separation between the two areas and creating classes and parties with an interest in perpetuating the division, which may make restoring unity more difficult and threaten the Palestinian condition as a whole. The American administration and the Israeli government have come to exploit this in multiple ways to entrench the separation of the West Bank from the Gaza Strip and thereby prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state—especially by exploiting the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip to transform the Palestinian cause from a question of national rights into relief and aid.
Topic: National Reconciliation — National Reconciliation · Regional & International Politics · Trump plan · reconciliation · Gaza Politics · West Bank · Deal of the Century — Original source — PDF