The Seeds of Civil War

By Lisa Beyer

The graffiti that covered the white concrete walls of Gaza City during the Israeli occupation are back. Freshly scrawled slogans denounce and threaten in language as bloodcurdling as that used during the intifadeh -- only this time Palestinians are cursing one another, not Israel. RATS, RETURN TO YOUR HOLES, OR ELSE, the Fatah faction warns the more militant Hamas group, which replies, A TRAITOR IS HE WHO FIRED AT OUR PEOPLE. On another wall is the vow FATAH ZEALOTS WILL CHOP OFF THE HEADS OF CONSPIRATORS. Hamas' counterwarning: THE RETRIBUTION WILL COME WITHOUT YOU EVEN HEARING IT.

So much for the notion of Palestinian unity. Bloody Friday took care of that the day two weeks ago when the security forces of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority opened fire on Hamas supporters and the Islamic Jihad rioting outside the Palestine Mosque in Gaza City and provoked street battles that killed 13 people and left 200 wounded. A few days later, in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, Arafat loyalists were fighting other opponents of the peace deal with Israel, this time dissidents within Fatah. While infighting in Lebanon is an old phenomenon, in the Gaza Strip, it was something new. "All the factions had sworn that they would never resort to violence," said Ziad Abu-Amr, an expert on Islamic fundamentalism at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. "Now taboos have been broken. The glass has been shattered. So we are waiting for another round. Are the conditions of the + first round still present? Yes, and more."

Round 2 threatened to come quickly when Hamas, which is struggling with Arafat for the soul of the Palestinians, held a mass rally last Saturday afternoon that attracted 20,000 people. The demonstration, however, passed peaceably. By agreement, Arafat's security forces stayed away, while Hamas refrained from public displays of weaponry and sent supporters directly home. Still, negotiations to achieve anything beyond a temporary cease-fire between Arafat and his opposition were foundering. "Our task is worse than very difficult," said Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab working to bring about a reconciliation between the two factions. At one point the truce talks broke down over the Palestinian Authority's refusal to accept responsibility for the mayhem outside the mosque. Arafat and his aides blamed the bloodshed on third parties: Israel, Palestinians collaborating with Israel, and Iran, a patron of Hamas.

Arafat's spirits were temporarily buoyed when 10,000 Gazans rallied for him last week. Among them were several hundred Fatah Hawks, a military branch of Arafat's Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Hawks, who had been ignored of late by Arafat, swore, in chanted slogans, to defend him and the Authority. The militiamen then drove around the Gaza Strip, brandishing their guns and shouting slogans such as, "We shall shave the beards ((of the Islamists)) with our shoes."

The Hawks' demonstration inflamed Arafat's opponents in Gaza. "This show of muscle was a big mistake," said Mansour Shawa, president of the charitable Benevolent Society for the Gaza Strip. "It just provoked a lot of people." By aligning himself with a factional militia, critics said, the chairman had undercut his claim to be a national leader. "He is going back to acting like the head of a gang," said Ghazi Abu Jayyab, an activist in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Bloody Friday also tainted the image of the Authority's 9,000-member Gaza Strip security force. "The uncommitted, nonpolitical man in the street is now hostile to the police," said Akram Ibrahim, a Gaza cabdriver and former Fatah activist.

Most observers do not expect the Hamas leadership to provoke civil war deliberately, at least not now. Instead of aiming its fire at Arafat's forces, Hamas is expected to zero in on Israeli targets. During noon prayers at the Palestine Mosque last Friday, Sheik Said Siam vowed, "Our weapons will not accept any address except the chests of the Zionist enemy." Since Bloody Friday, there have been seven attacks or attempted attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers in the Gaza Strip.

Whether the Hamas leadership speaks for the most radical elements in the organization, however, remains a question. "The militant, hard-line trend is dominant now, and the prevailing notion that Mr. Arafat is in deep trouble pushes them forward," said Abu-Amr. Referring to the Oct. 19 suicide bombing of a Tel Aviv bus that killed 22 people, a Hamas leader added, "Have no doubt, some people are ready to imitate what happened in Tel Aviv in the center of Arafat's Authority." Civil war could also be provoked by Arafat's security forces, which include men who believe that now is the time to finish off Hamas.

Cooler heads in Hamas' ranks have begun to talk about disavowing internecine violence in the Gaza Strip in return for being allowed a role in the Authority. Would Arafat go along? Before Bloody Friday, the chairman had appointed a Hamas member to serve on the Muslim religious courts in the West Bank, but in the wake of the fracas, he may no longer be interested in sharing power at any level.

An improvement in the sad economic shape of the Gaza Strip would help limit the appeal of Hamas -- which is why Palestinian officials, backed by the U.S. and Israel, will lobby international donors this week in Brussels to give the Palestinian Authority significant funding. Foreign aid is especially important now, since, as Khaled Abdul-Shafi, a Gaza economist, notes, "what happened last Friday reduces the chances of private investment to zero."

While some Israeli commentators see the conflict in the Gaza Strip as the beginning of the end for Hamas and other fundamentalist radicals, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's government is alarmed by the developments. "Last Friday opened Israeli minds to how fragile the whole peace process is," said Uri Dromi, director of the Government Press Office. "And Rabin is also invested in this. What can he tell the Israeli people? That he was wrong to make peace with Arafat?"

One school of thought in the government argues that Palestinian self-rule should be limited to the Gaza Strip and Jericho and not expanded, as promised, to the rest of the West Bank -- at least until Arafat proves he can effectively govern Gaza. The alternate view holds that Israel must help Arafat by granting him a political victory, namely extending autonomy to the West Bank as soon as possible. Dromi believes the second school will win out.

In the meantime, the situation in Gaza remains perilous. Warns Mansour Shawa: "If the path is not corrected, we are heading for calamity. Any future confrontation -- any -- will lead to widespread violence." Whatever the remedy, it had better come quickly, lest the slogans on Gaza's walls turn out to be prophetic.

With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Gaza City