Alastair Crooke
Almost no-one believes that putting Palestinians on a "diet" will make them more moderate or help to restart a political process with Israel. The diet — a term coined by forumer Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weisglass — refers to the US and European Union (EU) policy of trying to cut off the Hamas government politically and financially so that it cannot pay the salaries of civil servants or function as a government.
The pressure is designed to give the new government no option but to accede to three US and EU demands — recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence, and acceptance of all earlier agreements dating back to the Oslo accords signed by the late Yasser Arafat, leader of Hamas's rival Fatah movement.
Privately, most EU officials doubt the policy will work. But they feel trapped into adopting a position from which they lack the leadership or energy to escape, and the paralysis caused by the European divisions over Iraq still haunts Brussels in any area that risks a breach with the US.
Some very senior US officials, however, are more than ready to make plain that the US is not interested so much in Hamas's transformation to non-violence as in the failure and collapse of the Hamas-led government. US diplomats have told their European counterparts that "the Palestinians must suffer for their choice" (in electing Hamas). They would like to see Fatah return to power, albeit led by someone like Salaam Fayad, a former Palestinian finance minister and World Bank official.
To this end, the US is seeking to build a militia of 3500 men around the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to enlarge the presidency staff and to channel as much of the expenditure and work of the government as possible through the presidency. The US aims to create a shadow government centred around the president and his Fatah party as a counterpoint to a financially starved Hamas-led government — which will, US officials hope, prove ineffective and wither.
Officials associated with US Vice-President Dick Cheney's office talk openly with Fatah visitors about the desirability of mounting a "soft coup" that will restore the more pliant Fatah to power on the back of a humanitarian crisis.
In Beirut in early May, I spoke to Osama Hamdan, Hamas's chief representative in Lebanon and a senior member of the Hamas political committee, about the situation facing the organisation.
"Before the US or Europe had time to judge us by our actions, US pressure for building a siege had begun", he said. "Initially, the new government made good progress in finding replacement finance from Arab and Islamic states, but subsequently there has been huge pressure exerted by the US on the Arab banking system in order to block others from transferring any funds by the commercial banking system to any bank in Palestine. People will suffer.
"In addition, Israel is withholding Palestinian revenues and tax receipts amounting to some $60 million per month, and is restricting border access. These actions are endangering the survival of the internal Palestinian economy."
Palestinians, in his view, needed to be more self-reliant, both economically and in finding a solution to the creation of a Palestinian state. The problem, he said, was how to move from heavy dependency on European funding to greater self-reliance without creating more unemployment among the Palestinian Authority's 160,000 employees, none of whom have been paid for two months. About a quarter of the Palestinian population of 3.9 million depends directly or indirectly on these salaries.
Hamas does not want to swap dependency on Europe for dependency on Arab governments, but neither can the government move towards greater self-sufficiency without some bridging finance.
On current trends, the World Bank forecasts that by the end of this year 67% of people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories will be living in poverty (defined as less than $2 per day) — up from 44% in 2005.
Hamas's first priority is to pay the salaries of government employees, but it has also been looking to Arab states to fund projects, such as building social housing in Gaza, that could soak up surplus public sector workers. Its problem is that, despite having secured pledges of finance from alternative Islamic sources, it can find no bank willing to undertake the transfer for fear of legal action by the US treasury.
On May 10, the "quartet" (the US, EU, UN and Russia) agreed to provide limited emergency assistance to the Hamas government, to be channelled through a mechanism that the EU agreed to propose.
This initiative, although welcome to Palestinians, is unlikely to do more than keep institutional collapse at bay. It will not resolve Hamas's inability to transfer the funds the government has raised from Arab and Islamic states. It will also channel the assistance via the Fatah presidency rather than the Hamas-led ministry of finance, thus perpetuating the tensions between the rivals.
Originally, the US and EU argued that they had a moral duty to ensure that no funds raised from their own taxpayers reached a government they categorised as "terrorist". Now it seems they are extending the argument to include monies from Bahrain and Qatar. But have the US and the EU thought through the consequences of a complete Palestinian institutional collapse?
Hamdan was not worried that the crisis might turn Palestinian opinion against Hamas. Recent polls have shown Hamas increasing its popularity by five percentage points since the January election, with Fatah slipping by three points.
Hamdan said: "People know it is not Hamas that is working against them, that the pressure is coming from Israel and the US. Equally, they understand the part played by a minority of Palestinians who do not accept the reality of change through a democratic process."
Hamdan describes why the US policy of channelling assistance to Abbas alone is so damaging: "Trying to create a parallel government threatens to undermine all Palestinian institutions. A failure here could damage the whole situation. No one will know which is the real government each side will blame the other. There will be no Palestinian side, just two warring rivals. The impact of this internal conflict will not be confined to Palestine — it will affect the whole region."
Cynics may suggest that Israel has nothing to lose from internal Palestinian conflict. In practice, however, it seems that many Israeli officials are not keen on the US hardline objective of trying to return Fatah to power because they believe it to be fragmenting into personal fiefdoms. Not for the first time, we see the US being more Israeli than the Israelis.
The Palestinian president and some of the Fatah leaders are busy advocating to Israel the prospect of a "quickie" six-month negotiation on all final status issues related to a Palestinian state. The outcome would be put to a referendum of Palestinians, effectively bypassing Hamas and the government.
Abbas is convinced that the "peace majority" of Palestinians would endorse it wholeheartedly. But it seems Israelis are not convinced that Abbas, whom they regard as weak, can deliver on any agreement. They are less sure than Abbas that Palestinians would endorse any proposal that Israel would be likely to offer him.
Indeed, Israelis are not convinced that they want a Palestinian partner at all. The public mood is one of unilateralism. The new prime minister, Ehud Olmert, will have a sufficiently difficult time persuading his coalition colleagues — particularly Shas, the Orthodox Jewish party — to proceed with unilateral withdrawal.
There is little appetite for final status talks, and not much popular enthusiasm even for Olmert's plan to finalise the borders of Israel on the back of a partial withdrawal from the West Bank. Many Israelis feel that even if the US endorsed a partial withdrawal to a "final border", such a declaration would have no real legitimacy. They expect the world at large would reject it.
It seems, however, that the new Israeli government will aim towards partial independent withdrawal from the West Bank, for the time being at least. And for this, Israel prefers Hamas to Fatah. To engage with Abbas would undermine the claim that unilateralism is necessary "because there is no Palestinian partner".
Unlike Fatah, Hamas does not want to negotiate on a partial solution, and can be plausibly labelled "a non-partner". As a result, some Israelis perceive Hamas as sharing a common interest in Israeli withdrawal that could lead to some "understandings". And as Israel knows, Hamas counts all Israeli departures from Palestinian land as a victory, especially without a quid pro quo.
[Alastair Crooke is former security adviser to Javier Solana, secretary-general of the European Union. Abridged from <http://www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org>. Originally published in the June 2006 edition of Prospect magazine.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 7, 2006.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.