The Causes of Palestinian Infighting

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Many bewildered questions are being raised about the Palestinian infighting, as those asking them try to make sense of their own confusion, especially since the Palestinian people have not yet returned to their homeland, the occupation still sits heavy upon the land, and an independent Palestinian state remains far out of reach. There are no spoils to be fought over, and there is no Palestinian inside Palestine who does not fall under the weight of the occupation. In this article I will answer these questions, laying out what I assess to be the underlying, objective causes of this infighting.

People grow greatly hopeful with every announcement of a ceasefire between Fatah and Hamas, and observers come to believe that the infighting in Gaza has ended for good, only for events to catch them by surprise and reveal that their calculations were mistaken. Gaza calms down for a while and enjoys a bit of respite, and then clashes erupt anew. The leaders of the two large factions appear before us in the media with statements about an agreement to withdraw gunmen from the streets, and no sooner have they finished their press conference or their statements than gunfire breaks out once again. Why the infighting? And why is it always expected to erupt again?

Historical Background

The 2007 infighting is not the only instance of infighting among Palestinians; rather, it is a repetition of earlier bouts of infighting that stretched over a long period of time. Fighting broke out between Palestinian factions while the Palestinian resistance was based in Jordan, particularly between Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, owing to the rivalry that existed between them. That rivalry intensified after 1967 between the “nationalist” Fatah and the “pan-Arabist” Popular Front over leadership of the Palestinian resistance, which was flourishing in the wake of the June defeat. Fatah took the throne of the PLO in 1968, regarding itself as the great resistance faction waging the battle of liberation, while the Popular Front was still in the process of forming itself, having set aside — without abandoning — its unionist, pan-Arab philosophy. The rivalry was essentially between “Palestinianizing” the Palestinian cause and searching for its Arab, pan-national dimension.

The Palestinians continued their infighting while the resistance was based in Lebanon; Fatah fought with almost everyone, and it also fought with various Lebanese factions. Some battles took place among Palestinian factions themselves, but it was noted that Fatah was, more often than not, one of the two sides involved.

The splits that occurred within Palestinian factions led to battles between the parent organization and the breakaway groups. Supporters of the Popular Front clashed with those who broke away from it to form the Democratic Front, and supporters of Fatah fought with supporters of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council. The fiercest of these clashes came in 1983, between the Fatah movement led by Arafat and the Fatah al-Intifada movement led by Abu Musa, a confrontation that ended with Arafat and his supporters being driven out of the Tripoli region of Greater Syria.

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, some friction used to occur between supporters of the various factions, sometimes escalating to physical scuffles. Such clashes took place between Fatah supporters and supporters of the Islamic Movement (before Hamas) in a number of locations, and between Fatah supporters and supporters of other factions in the wake of the 1984 Amman Agreement and Arafat’s 1985 statement renouncing terrorism; and various parties took to attacking with stones the homes of those who supported Fatah al-Intifada.

After the Oslo Accord, considerable tension arose among supporters of the various factions, but the clashes remained confined to individual scuffles, carried out by hands that held no weapons. What did occur, instead, were clashes among the security apparatuses belonging to the Palestinian Authority. Preventive Security clashed with General Intelligence, General Intelligence with Military Intelligence, Military Intelligence with Presidential Security, and so on. It appears these clashes were driven by personal rivalries among the leaderships of these apparatuses, not by ideological, political, or intellectual causes.

The Oslo Accord Lays the Groundwork for Infighting

It was to be expected, from the very first day the Oslo Accord was signed, that Palestinian infighting would occur; indeed, Arafat’s letter to Rabin, sent a few days before the agreement was signed, laid the very groundwork for that infighting, since it pledged to combat terrorism. The letter stated: “… the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations, and discipline violators.” The letter did not specify Palestinian terrorism, yet no one imagined it was referring to terrorism in Latin America or Africa. As for the Oslo Accord itself, it stated: “There will be a phased implementation of further redeployments to specified locations, corresponding to the assumption of responsibility for public order and internal security by the Palestinian police, in accordance with Article 8 above.” Article 8 speaks of security and overall security, to be handled jointly by the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

The Taba Agreement was even clearer and more explicit, when the Palestinian Authority pledged to pursue terrorism and terrorists, and pledged not to pursue or hold accountable those who collaborated with Israel. These are agreements and pledges that pit Palestinian against Palestinian, and that incite and breed hatred and enmity among Palestinians. And in practice, the Palestinian Authority did arrest hundreds of Palestinians and throw them into prison without clear cause and without bringing them to trial.

These agreements were bound, in the end, to sow the seeds of infighting. Hamas and Islamic Jihad showed a great deal of patience over the arrests carried out against their members, but it was never to be expected that this patience would last indefinitely, especially once sufficient strength had been accumulated to be able to confront the Palestinian security apparatuses. There were many warnings about the gravity of the matter, and about the suffering that awaited in the future as a result of direct and indirect friction. Some intellectuals — myself among them — tried to argue that internal Palestinian reconciliation was far more important than any agreement that might be signed with Israel, but no ears were open to listen.

The Factional Makeup

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…closed in on itself, imbued with a sense of superiority over others, with every faction convinced that it alone possesses the absolute truth. Members of each faction are culturally steeped in a chauvinistic mindset that glorifies the self and belittles the worth of the other factions, and that breeds within them rancor and hatred toward others. The upbringing the factions instill is built on antagonism toward others, on refusing to accept them, and on dealing with them with the utmost wariness. Such an upbringing can never lead to civil peace or to cooperation among the factions, and it tends to subordinate the homeland to the faction, so that national values become mere appendages of factional values, defined in their terms. Each faction defines the national interest in whatever way it sees as perfectly suited to its own vision and its own particular interests. The Palestinian factions focus heavily on tearing each other down rather than on genuine accomplishment. Each faction — Fatah and Hamas above all — searches for the other faction’s mistakes in order to seize on them, blow them out of proportion, magnify them, and portray them as a terrifying catastrophe about to bring ruin upon the Palestinian people. The unspoken rule is: the other faction’s mistake is huge no matter how small it is, and our faction’s mistake is trivial no matter how huge it is. The mutual denunciations issued are countless, the accusations and counter-accusations in the media never end, and spreading hatred and enmity among the ranks of the youth has become a fixed policy.

Political parties elsewhere in the world try to win popularity through genuine accomplishment, which reflects a party’s sincerity in both word and deed. It is true that parties elsewhere trade mutual attacks, but their comments are not filled with exaggeration, nor are they mere baseless accusations. In Palestine, the accusations go on night and day, with cause and without cause, through a multitude of means and methods. This is bound to sow the seeds of strife and confrontation.

The Palestinian Security Apparatuses

The Palestinian security apparatuses emerged out of the agreements with Israel, and are responsible for pursuing terrorism and terrorists — that is, the Palestinian resistance and the resistance fighters themselves. These security apparatuses have previously announced the foiling of martyrdom operations and the dismantling of explosives-manufacturing workshops, and have previously handed over resistance fighters — such as Hamas’s Surif cell — to Israel, and have transferred enormous quantities of information to the Israeli security services. This is why the Palestinian leadership took such care to install, at the head of these apparatuses, people with the will to implement the agreements. It was never to be expected that the Palestinian leadership would appoint people committed to resistance to lead the security apparatuses, nor would Israel have agreed to anything other than the appointment of whomever it deemed suitable for safeguarding its own security. This is why these security apparatuses are not, in truth, there to defend Palestinian security at all, but rather Israeli security.

Palestinian security has continually run up against Israeli security, and the security apparatuses have found themselves in the same defensive, argumentative position as the Arab regimes who claim that agreements with Israel serve Arab security. It is true that the absence of Palestinian resistance spares Palestinians from Israeli reprisal operations, but without resistance, rights are lost. Here, definitions of the national interest multiplied, and along with them, the intensity of mutual accusations of treason across the Palestinian political scene grew ever sharper.

Israeli Weapons

Ever since 1994, the doors were flung wide open for Zionist intelligence to funnel weapons and ammunition into the West Bank and Gaza market, to the point that weapons were being sold on street vendors’ stalls in public places. The ignorant and the thuggish (the zu’ran) on the Palestinian scene rushed to buy up these weapons, and it became clear that the Palestinian people were headed toward a genuine tragedy concerning civil peace. Many people cried out for Arafat to put a stop to this, but to no avail. Time and again these thugs opened fire on people, killing and wounding them, without facing any punishment from the Palestinian Authority — some of them were even promoted or granted special favor.

The Weight of the Agreements with Israel

A president of the Palestinian Authority committed to the Oslo Accord cannot cooperate on security matters with any Palestinian interior minister who wishes to establish security and peace independently of the Oslo Accord. If he were to do so, he would first have to dismiss the commanders of the Palestinian security apparatuses and open the way for new commanders who believe in the need to correct the Palestinian security situation. In this particular period, the president of the Palestinian Authority cannot dismiss any security commander, because all the commanders of the security apparatuses are more powerful and more influential than he is, and he knows he would be putting himself at risk if he took such a step.

Israel’s Agents

Israel and America both incite Palestinian infighting, and we know that America supplies certain Palestinian parties with money and weapons; Israel has made no secret of the matter, having said repeatedly that it hands new weapons over to Abbas and certain Palestinians, and Bush made no secret of his financial assistance to certain Palestinians either.

The Executive Force

Hamas erred when it formed the government, which it would have been wiser to hand over to independents, and it erred again when it created the Executive Force. Hamas believed that, after winning the elections, it could achieve calm and stabilize institutions by establishing a deterrent force of its own. Hamas failed to grasp that an internal armed force belonging to a people living under occupation inevitably turns back against that very people, precisely because the occupation is always working to stoke the flames. Hamas committed the very same mistake Fatah had committed when it created the security apparatuses.

For it to be possible to halt Palestinian infighting, there is no escaping the need to eliminate its causes. Treatment through television appearances or diplomatic protocol has no value whatsoever, and our experience with the Mecca Agreement — which addressed the matter of gunfire while clearly leaving the ground that feeds the flames unaddressed — ended in failure. This means the road ahead is a long one, and nothing in the current state of affairs suggests that the faction leaders possess the composure required to achieve calm and cooperation.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “أسباب الاقتتال الفلسطيني” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.