Palestinian divisions - SIR 22 March 2007

Most Palestinians have been campaigning for a two-state solution with Israel: an independent Palestinian state existing alongside the Jewish state. However, as internal Palestinian divisions between the secular Fatah and fundamentalist Hamas persist, the Palestinians may find themselves with a two-state solution they had not bargained for: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip separating. An SIR correspondent reports from the Middle East and examines the current strategic threat to Palestinian aspirations of statehood.

The West Bank and the Gaza Strip, geographically separated by a 40 km-wide swathe of the Negev desert, are part of historical Palestine and were to have been joined at a point south-west of Jerusalem under the 1947 UN Partition Plan. However, they have always been distinctly different regions: before the 1967 war the former was under Jordanian authority and the latter was governed by Egypt. Jordan, which annexed the West Bank in 1950, did much to develop the region. Egypt’s rule over Gaza was notable only for its neglect.

Since the death of Yasser Arafat in November 2004, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has disintegrated into feuding power factions. These days, the West Bank is dominated by Fatah – which dominated Palestinian politics since the early 1960s – while Gaza has become the stronghold of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) after Fatah forces were crushed there during several months of internecine violence. This rivalry continues to bedevil efforts to form a unity government, and only exacerbates the regional differences between the two territories.

As hopes of a viable Palestinian state evaporate in the face of constant Israeli encroachment in the West Bank and the punitive destruction of the Palestinian economy, so too does the concept of a two-state solution, with a Palestinian entity and Israel co-existing beside each other and an end to a century of bloodshed in the region. In early March, Shalom Hariri, a leading Israeli specialist on Palestinian affairs, warned: "We’re seeing the beginning of two states – a state of Gaza under Hamas control and the state of the West Bank governed from Ramallah."

Israel has long sought to divide Palestinian society to prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The former PNA planning minister, Ghassan Khatib, says this "intentional and systematic policy of separating the West Bank from the Gaza Strip" is a key Israeli strategy "vis-à-vis the occupied territories" along with the continued expansion of West Bank settlements to divide the Palestinian population and dominate it. "Separating Gaza and the West Bank from each other probably constitutes the most immediate strategic threat to the Palestinian objective of establishing an independent state," adds Khatib.

As Yisrael Harel, who heads the Institute for Zionist Strategy in Jerusalem, wrote recently: "It is indeed in Israel’s interest that Gaza be separated from Judea and Samaria [the biblical name for the West Bank] and that Gaza be linked to Egypt and not to Judea and Samaria by means of a corridor crossing Israeli territory."

Harel also suggested that "Gaza would be Egypt’s headache, while in areas A and B of Judea and Samaria, Israel could maintain its military rule as long as terrorism continues. And on the day that it ends, there could emerge Palestinian self-rule linked to Jordan." In other words, there would be no independent Palestinian state embracing both the West Bank and Gaza.

The Oslo accords stipulated that the West Bank and the much smaller Gaza Strip were "a single territorial unit" that would be linked by a safe corridor. However, that arrangement collapsed when the current intifada erupted on 28 September 2000. Since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in September 2005, it has blocked all Palestinian travel between the two territories, citing security concerns.

According to Hanna Siniora, a Palestinian publisher who was a key figure in the previous Palestinian intifada in 1987-91, this "forces us to revisit the possibility of a confederation with Jordan".

Moreover, Yival Diskin, director of Israel’s General Security Service (Shin Bet) recently told The Washington Post that: "I’m not one of those who say there are two Palestinian peoples, but there are two mentalities. Two geographies, two economies that make the places different. We have very strong security interests in not allowing strong ties between Gaza and the West Bank. If you open channels between the areas, you’ll see an increase in terror in the West Bank."

Amid the collapse of central authority in the Palestinian territories, accelerated by Hamas’ domination of Gaza, there are even fears that the West Bank could split in two, a northern enclave around the towns of Nablus and Jenin, and a southern region centred on Bethlehem and Hebron. This is being highlighted by Israel’s envelopment of Arab East Jerusalem and the security barrier that will to all intents and purposes slice the West Bank in two along a line running eastward from Jerusalem.

Nablus, the main city in the northern West Bank, and other population centres in the region are already largely out of the PNA’s control are now run by clan-based warlords, and crime is rife.

Palestinian society has always tended to be tribally-oriented, and the powerful clans in the two geographically distinct segments of the self-rule Palestinian territories have reasserted themselves as central authority has crumbled. When the PNA was established it was based in Ramallah, the West Bank’s commercial hub. Since Hamas won its landslide victory in parliamentary elections in January 2006, the seat of political authority has moved to Gaza City.

In the West Bank, the patriarchal Hashashibi, Husseini, Ja’abari, and Masri clans dominate. These have close ties with Jordan, where more than half the population is Palestinian or of Palestinian origin. Leading Palestinian families, well integrated into Jordanian society, have controlling interests in the industrial, banking, commercial, and agricultural sectors. This prosperous elite has significant financial holdings in the West Bank.

There has long been animosity between the peoples of the two regions. Khalil Shiqaqi, a leading Palestinian sociologist, noted in an exhaustive demographic study that there is "a psychological barrier between the inhabitants of the two territories and…mutual suspicion" that cannot be "disregarded or ignored".

He also concluded that the more prosperous, better educated West Bankers view Gaza as "one big refugee camp" with a backward society "inclined to roughness, extremism, grimness, fanaticism, and instability". For their part, Gazans consider West Bankers to be aloof, patronising and "racist" who treat them as "third class citizens".

In Gaza, the influence once held by the Shawwa, Shafei, and Middein families has been largely seized by the private militias run by Palestinian security service chiefs and the clans who control organised crime in the territory such as the Dughmush and the Abu Samhadanna. These crime syndicates have largely allied themselves with Hamas.

In contrast, the more secular West Bankers, who number about 2.5 million, see little benefit in being tied to the anarchic Gaza Strip and its 1.4 million population. One million of the latter are refugees who have largely transferred their allegiance to Hamas.

The late King Hussein of Jordan relinquished responsibility for the West Bank in July 1988, but his son, King Abdullah II, has been showing a revived interest in the region of late. Leading West Bank families have bombarded Amman with appeals to send security forces to help restore law and order in the region.

In 2005 Abduallah agreed to send the Badr Battalion of the defunct Palestine Liberation Army, whose forces in the Hashemite kingdom were under the control of the Royal Jordanian Army, to the West Bank to help bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s forces, although to date it has still not shown up. Interestingly, Abbas maintains a home in Amman and enjoys close ties to Abdullah.

Moreover, the Jordanian royal family itself has strong links to the West Bank. Queen Rania’s family hails from the west Bank town of Tulkarem, and in February 2005, the monarch replaced his half-brother Prince Hamza as crown prince in favour of his own 10-year-old son, Prince Hussein, who has Palestinian blood through his mother.