Prospects for Palestinians Fade as Gaza’s Isolation Grows - NYTimes.com

By ETHAN BRONNER

Published: October 26, 2009

GAZA — The bank executive sits in a suit and tie behind his broad empty desk with plenty of time to talk. Almost no loans are being issued or corporate plans made. The Texas-trained engineer closed his firm because nothing is being built. The business student who dreamed of attending an American university — filling a computer file with meticulous hopes and plans — has stopped dreaming. He goes from school to a part-time job to home, where he joins his merchant father who sits unemployed.

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Hamas members in Gaza set fire to a coffin with pictures of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Many professionals in Gaza reject Hamas's ideology.

Ten months after the Israeli military said it invaded this Palestinian coastal strip to stop the daily rocket fire of its Islamist rulers, there are many ways to measure the misery of Gaza.

Bits of rubble are being cleared, but nothing is going up. Several thousand homes remain destroyed. Several dozen families still live in United Nations tents strung amid their ruined houses. A three-year-old embargo on Hamas imposed by Israel and Egypt keeps nearly all factories shut and supplies away. Eighty percent of the population gets some form of assistance.

But the misery of the educated and professional class has a particular poignancy. Many abroad view Gaza as a large slum, yet there is near universal literacy here and infant mortality is low by regional standards. Midsize glass towers gleam. Many thousands have advanced degrees. Half a dozen stylish restaurants fill each day with young women — a few with heads uncovered — carrying laptop computers, and with the underemployed, who smoke hookahs and lament their future.

“We are entering very dark years,” remarked Slama Bissiso, vice chairman of the Palestinian Bar Association, slowly exhaling scented tobacco smoke on the balcony of the Deira Hotel overlooking the Mediterranean. He said that the embargo on Gaza and the divide between the Hamas government here and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank were driving Gaza into deeper isolation every month.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, announced on Friday that elections would be held in January. But it was effectively an announcement that Fatah and Hamas had failed to reconcile their differences despite Egyptian mediation. There will be no election here without the agreement of Hamas, and it has no intention of granting it now. If that means a vote will be held in the West Bank only, the horizons of Gaza will retreat even further.

Hamas’s control of Gaza feels solidly unchallenged. Its security forces patrol the streets. Pictures of President Abbas with big X’s across his face line the main avenue, sadly known as Unity Street. A new sign on the Gaza side of the Israeli border bars even foreigners from bringing in alcohol.

Left out of the banking system, Hamas affiliates opened their own bank recently. In keeping with Muslim strictures, it does not charge interest or offer loans, making money by buying cars or homes the customer wants, then reselling them at a higher price.

Israel allows about 100 trucks a day to pass into Gaza bearing food, medicine and other humanitarian goods. But it has closed off commerce in the hope of alienating the population here from their rulers. That seems to be happening. Yet if no election occurs, it is hard to see how the alienation can be expressed or government changed.

Israel wants to isolate Hamas because the group rejects Israel’s existence. As Ayman Taha, a Hamas movement spokesman, said in an interview, “Our long-term strategy is the liberation of all of Palestine, but we would agree to a temporary solution involving a state in the 1967 borders with a truce of about 10 years, depending on the conditions of the truce.”

Egypt rejects Hamas because of its affiliation with the Cairo-based Muslim Brotherhood. Both Egypt and Israel worry about Iranian arming of the group as well.

The increasing isolation of Gaza is taking its toll. Opportunities for training and education abroad or for outsiders to come here, for example, are scarce. The children’s library in the center of the city could not persuade either Israeli or Egyptian officials to let anyone in to help set up new programs or carry out quality control.

Executives at Jawwal, the Palestinian cellphone company, sat last week at their work stations in blue jeans — as at the end of every work week it was Casual Thursday — and said their jobs were getting harder because spare parts and training were unavailable. Their senior managers, who used to travel abroad once a month, now cannot travel at all.

While 1,100 students admitted to programs abroad did get through the crossing into Egypt over the past few months — and another 50 were granted permission through Israel — more than 800 others who had spots waiting for them were unable to leave, according to Gisha, an Israeli human rights group.

Many of the professionals here reject Hamas’s ideology, although some voted for the party in 2006 out of rage over the corruption in Fatah.

“Hamas won by a slim margin, and it was because of people like me,” said Mohamed, who comes from a Fatah family and works for a charity. “I regret voting for them. I wanted to punish Fatah.”

Like nearly all in Gaza who spoke about politics, he asked that his identity be hidden for fear of what the government might do. The rules of political dissent remain fuzzy.

The Texas-trained engineer also voted for Hamas in 2006 and wishes he had not.

“Israel is saying, ‘Because you elected Hamas, you should have no life,’ ” he said. “Yet people elected Hamas because of Fatah corruption. I believe in peace with Israel, but I wanted desperately to get away from the corruption. I didn’t expect Hamas to win. Next time, I won’t vote at all.”

While the legitimate economy here depends on foreign aid that provides salaries for tens of thousands to do little, the black market for high-priced goods smuggled in from Egypt through hundreds of tunnels is thriving, leading to the growth of a tunnel mafia.

Professionals here are frustrated that their political options are Fatah, which they still consider corrupt, and Hamas, whose ideology poses problems for them and for many foreign governments.

Some said the rejection of Hamas by the world meant it made no sense for it to stay in power, but they had no idea how to effect a change.

“I’d like to see the creation of a political alternative with businesspeople instead of Hamas and Fatah,” said Rami Alagha, 39, manager of the Jawwal cellphone company. “The United States and the Europeans could get behind such a program. Otherwise we have no future.”

Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting.

Fatah Election Brings In Younger Leaders

By ISABEL KERSHNER

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Fatah, the mainstream Palestinian nationalist party, elected a mostly new leadership committee, ushering in a younger generation and ousting some prominent veterans, according to preliminary results released here on Tuesday.

The new leaders are considered more pragmatic than their predecessors and grew up locally, in contrast to the exile-dominated leadership they are replacing. But many are familiar names who have already played active roles in Palestinian society and the peace process, and their election to the committee is not expected to bring about significant changes in Fatah policies.

Nevertheless, party leaders said they hoped the democratic process would lift Fatah’s popularity, strengthen the party in its dealings with Israel and increase its leverage in reconciliation talks with its main rival, the Islamic group Hamas.

Fourteen of the 18 people elected to the Fatah Central Committee have never served on it before. Among them are the veteran negotiator Saeb Erekat and two former Palestinian Authority security chiefs, Jibril Rajoub and Muhammad Dahlan.

Mr. Rajoub said there had been a “coup” in the party hierarchy as a result of an “honest competition.”

Marwan Barghouti, a popular leader of Fatah’s younger guard, also won a seat, but the post is likely to be largely symbolic for now, because he is currently serving five life terms in an Israeli prison. Mr. Barghouti, 50, was convicted in the deaths of five people during the second intifada, the violent Palestinian uprising that started in 2000.

This election was the first for the Central Committee, Fatah’s main decision-making body, since 1989. It rounded off a weeklong party conference in Bethlehem attended by roughly 2,300 delegates, the party’s first in 20 years and the first ever to be held on Palestinian soil.

By the end, many of the participants seemed buoyant. They said that Fatah, led by the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, had emerged from the conference energized and more unified than it had been in years.

The party at the vanguard of peace negotiations with Israel, Fatah has been tarred by corruption, cronyism and infighting. That and a lack of party discipline led to its loss to Hamas in Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. The following year, Hamas took over Gaza by force, routing Fatah there.

Many Palestinians also lost faith in the peace talks with Israel, which are now stalled.

Now Fatah must prepare for new Palestinian presidential and parliamentary elections that are provisionally scheduled for early next year.

“Fatah is the strongest movement in Palestinian society,” said Ziad Abu Ein, a member and Barghouti supporter from the Ramallah area. “It will succeed in everything — in peace, in resisting the occupation and in any election.”

One of the old guard who lost his seat in the Central Committee election was Ahmed Qurei, a longtime partner and rival of Mr. Abbas.

Nabil Shaath, another of the older leaders, retained his place on the committee. He noted that the younger members were “not that young,” with many of them now in their 50s.

“It was their first chance to be elected, but they are not novices,” he said.

Khaled Abu Aker contributed reporting.

Palestinians Elect Leader, Unopposed, as Party Chief

By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, will retain control of his Fatah party after an election on Saturday in which he ran unopposed.

More than 2,000 delegates, a nearly unanimous majority, voted for him in a show of hands at a party conference in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Fatah’s first such gathering in 20 years. Mr. Abbas succeeded Yasir Arafat as the leader of Fatah, a mainstream nationalist movement, after Mr. Arafat, the Palestinian leader who founded it, died in 2004.

Elections for Fatah’s main governing bodies, the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council, were expected to take place in the coming days.

Only 65 delegates opposed the motion to elect Mr. Abbas as the party’s leader, according to the Bethlehem-based Palestinian news agency Maan.

Mr. Abbas has won staunch international backing as the leader of the Palestinian Authority. In a victory speech on Saturday, he said he wanted to tell the world that Fatah “adheres to the national project” and to “true positions” and that it would continue to work for an independent Palestinian state.

In a sweeping two-hour speech at the opening of the conference on Tuesday, Mr. Abbas charted Fatah’s course from its early years of armed struggle in the 1960s, which he called a “necessity,” to its current efforts to forge peace deals with Israel. The challenge, he said, is how to turn the limited autonomy the Palestinians have into a “normal state.”

He urged the Palestinians to hold fast and be patient “as long as there is a glimmer of hope” of negotiating a settlement.

Saeb Erekat, a senior Abbas aide who is a veteran Palestinian negotiator, said most of the delegates remained in favor of a two-state solution with Israel despite criticism over the way negotiations have been handled. Specifically, he said there was major criticism that negotiations continued while Israeli settlement activity progressed.

Delegates at the conference have been pushing Fatah leaders to take tougher positions against Israel, participants said, rejecting the idea of negotiations for their own sake and insisting on reserving the option of some kind of resistance should peace talks fail.

Fatah Holds Key Party Congress

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction has begun a congress - its first in 20 years.

Speaking at the congress, Mr Abbas said Palestinians sought peace with Israel but "resistance" remained an option.

Fatah is widely seen as corrupt and ineffective, the BBC's Middle East correspondent Tim Franks says.

Our correspondent says there will be close interest in who is elected to the faction's main internal positions of power.

Some 2,000 delegates are convening for Fatah's three-day congress in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.

An estimated 400 Fatah delegates who live in the Gaza Strip were banned from travelling to Bethlehem for the conference by the territory's rulers, Hamas.

“ The Palestinians of course are committed to a peaceful solution, however, we maintain the right for armed struggle when it is necessary and as an option ”
Mahmoud Abbas

Israel had allowed about 500 delegates who live abroad to travel to the congress.

"Having the conference at all is a miracle, and having it in the homeland is another miracle," Mr Abbas said on Tuesday.

Commenting on the conference, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev, said: "Israel seeks peace and reconciliation with our Palestinian neighbours - reconciliation that must be based on both sides recognising the rights of the other: Israel recognising that the Palestinians have national rights, and the Palestinians recognising that Jews have national rights too."

Renewal

The congress will be discussing a new platform that seeks to rejuvenate the movement.

Another key test will be whether the conference alters the wording of Fatah's charter, which refers to eradicating Israel.

The draft document proposes to keep the option of "armed struggle" if peace talks with Israel fail.

It also says that an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank is a precondition for any further talks with Israel.

The congress comes as the US is hoping to broker a new round of peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Maybe more important is the issue of who the delegates elect to the internal positions of power, our correspondent says.

He adds that - in the words of one reformer - the current leaders are like princes in the Gulf.

Opinion polls still suggest that Fatah is currently more popular than its main rival - the Islamist Hamas movement which controls the Gaza Strip.

But without a strong infusion of freshness, in the long-term Palestinians say that Fatah will only decline, our correspondent says.