Fighting in Gaza yields dual rule
Hamas controlled the strip; Fatah was forging ahead in West Bank.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - An uncertain era of fractured Palestinian rule began yesterday, as Hamas forces celebrated their decisive military victory over vanquished Fatah rivals with a mix of pillaging and mercy.
Curious Hamas gunmen took turns playing with a fixed, but empty, antiaircraft position outside the ransacked Gaza City office of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah's leading figure. Nearby, gunmen fought over who should cart away one of the last television sets from the president's office.
By day's end, Palestinians were faced with the confusing situation of having two prime ministers - one in Gaza, the other in the West Bank - looking to run dueling governments.
In the West Bank, Abbas sought to marginalize his Islamist rivals by establishing an emergency cabinet, led by pro-Western former Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, to replace the three-month-old Hamas-led unity government.
But Hamas leaders in Gaza City rejected the president's decree: Ismail Haniyeh said he would remain as prime minister, and with Hamas firmly in control, there was no reason to doubt him.
After working for a year to undermine the democratically elected Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, Israel and the United States indicated that they would back Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, and his move to establish an emergency government.
"The extremists need to be sidelined," said Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, "and, in this case, Abu Mazen's action of firing Ismail Haniyeh we see as a positive step of trying to take over responsibility and authority."
If the new government is Hamas-free, Israel will consider resuming full diplomatic relations and restoring the flow of tax money to the Palestinian Authority, which it cut off when the Islamist party took control 15 months ago.
"It makes it easier for us in our way to cooperate and say, 'Look, moderates, if you stand up against extremists, then at least we on our side can talk about a two-state solution,' " Eisin said.
Abbas also received immediate pledges of support from the United States, Egypt, Jordan, the United Nations and Saudi Arabia.
Although the moderate government that Abbas plans to appoint will have no say in Gaza, it stands a stronger chance than the Hamas-Fatah coalition it replaces of restoring foreign aid to the West Bank.
The yearlong aid embargo imposed after the Hamas election victory has crippled the Palestinian economy, and many Gazans feared they would become even more isolated and impoverished.
"I expect to have economic development here and poverty there in Gaza," Salah Haniyeh, a government employee, said as he watched masked Fatah gunmen parading in pickup trucks through the West Bank city of Ramallah.
But no one is sure how to deal with the fact that Hamas now controls the Gaza Strip, one of the world's most densely populated regions with more than 1.4 million residents in less than 140 square miles.
Some speculated that Israel and the United States would treat the West Bank, with secular Fatah still in control, and Hamas-controlled Gaza as separate entities and would move toward using the West Bank as the foundation for diplomatic efforts to establish a Palestinian state.
That issue is likely to be central to discussions that Olmert will have in Washington this coming week with President Bush.
Secular Muslims worried that the now-unfettered Hamas regime would force adherence to Islamist practices, something at least some of the Hamas fighters seemed to favor.
"Islam is spreading over Gaza," said a 24-year-old who gave his name only as Abu Suhaib as he stood in Gaza City. "God willing, this will bring us much closer, not to a Palestinian state, but to an Islamic state."
As its members boasted of implementing Islamic rule, Hamas leaders tried to present a conciliatory face.
Hamas fighters rounded up nearly a dozen Fatah leaders, but quickly announced that they would grant them amnesty and set them free.
"When we take over, we will offer mercy and not take revenge," said a masked leader of the Hamas military wing known as Abu Obaideh, who appeared at a sidewalk news conference in Gaza City surrounded by armed fighters.
Abu Obaideh also called for the immediate release of BBC Gaza City correspondent Alan Johnston, who has been held by kidnappers for more than three months.
The pledges of mercy and law and order came as Hamas followers looted and burned key Fatah homes and buildings.
Hundreds of Palestinians stood on the beach as swirls of black smoke rose from a row of oceanview villas owned by prominent Fatah figures.
Across town, scores of young men flooded into the abandoned home of Mohammed Dahlan, the reviled Fatah police leader blamed for fanning the flames of discontent between the rival parties.
In a scene reminiscent of the Palestinian scavenging of Jewish settlements after Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in late 2005, men and boys stripped Dahlan's home to its frame. Boys tossed clay tiles from the roof and set the wood ceiling ablaze. Groups of men tore electrical coils from the walls as others dug up 25-foot-tall palm trees.
Four Lebanese Soldiers Killed in Battle at Camp
At least four Lebanese soldiers were killed and six were wounded yesterday in renewed fighting with Islamic extremists holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, security officials said.
Lebanese troops unleashed artillery barrages into the besieged camp of Nahr
el-Bared on the outskirts of the northern city of Tripoli as they continued their sustained assault against the al-Qaeda-inspired fighters inside.
For nearly two hours, troops pounded with heavy artillery and tank fire suspected hideouts of Fatah al Islam fighters barricaded in the camp, sending smoke billowing in the sky, security officials said. The intense bombardment started fires in several shell-pocked buildings in the camp.
The army's casualties apparently occurred during a raid on a suspected Fatah al Islam hideout in the camp.
- Associated Press
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