"Thank you for this great post"
Arise and Shine
Rift apparent in Hamas as fighting intensifies & War on Hamas Saps Palestinian Leaders
Rift apparent in Hamas as fighting intensifies
By SALAH NASRAWI and SALLY BUZBEE
CAIRO, Egypt – Signs of sharp division are appearing within the top ranks of Hamas as fighting with Israel in Gaza intensifies and cease-fire talks brokered by Egypt reach a critical point.
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
The differences have sharpened over the past two days and could have a significant impact on the outcome of the truce negotiations.
Gaza-based Hamas officials have sounded more willing in recent days to consider a deal for a temporary cease-fire, being pushed by Egypt, even though the proposal would leave Israeli troops on the ground in Gaza temporarily and keep the territory's borders sealed in the short term. But Hamas political officials, close to the group's leadership-in-exile in Syria, have characterized a cease-fire as still far away.
One key Hamas official from inside Gaza, Ghazi Hamad, told the BBC Wednesday he was optimistic the cease-fire being worked on in Egypt could be reached.
Salah al-Bardawil, another Hamas official from Gaza, stopped short of saying the militants had accepted the Egyptian proposal for a 10-day cease-fire but told reporters, "We hope that this Egyptian effort will succeed."
But a top Hamas spokesman in Syria, Moussa Abu Marzouk, told The Associated Press on Thursday that Hamas would not abandon its demand that Israel withdraw its troops from Gaza and open border crossings before any cease-fire, even a temporary one, could take effect.
Another top Hamas figure linked to the leadership in Syria, Osama Hamdan, said late Wednesday that Hamas had not agreed to some points of the Egyptian plan.
Israeli intelligence assessments have repeatedly suggested differences emerging between the Syria and Gaza wings of Hamas.
Israel's goal in the offensive is to inflict heavy damage on Hamas and force it to stop rocketing southern Israel.
A rift in the Hamas leadership could benefit Israel because it suggests the on-the-ground Hamas people in Gaza — bearing the brunt of the offensive — are leaning toward a pragmatic compromise to end the bloodshed.
While the offensive has dealt a blow to Hamas' battle capabilities, the divisions within the group's leadership could also work against Israel. It is unclear who truly speaks for the Islamic militants and it remains to be seen whether the group is prepared for a longer-term arrangement. Also a divided Hamas would make it more difficult for Israel to ensure any deal will be observed.
Another problem for Israel is Hamas appears to be enjoying a groundswell of public support at the expense of pro-Western Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has been harshly criticized for not taking a tough enough stance against Israel during this offensive. Abbas has been conducting peace negotiations with Israel.
Egyptian officials also have suggested there are Hamas rifts.
Hamas, however, has denied any internal divisions and has accused Israel of spreading such reports as psychological warfare. And the tougher tone from Syrian-based officials could be merely a negotiating tactic.
The group's official structure complicates the picture. Hamas insists it makes decisions through a consensus process among an estimated 50 members of the secretive Shura Council who live both inside and outside Gaza and the West Bank.
But the members rarely meet because of travel restrictions and security concerns, and observers note it would be near-impossible for such a big group to make fast decisions.
In practice, Hamas' most powerful official is widely thought to be Khaled Mashaal, the Syrian-based political leader. Mashaal is considered a hard-liner who consults frequently with Syrian and Iranian officials. Top Iranian officials have visited Damascus frequently throughout the Israeli offensive that began on Dec. 27.
Mashaal has repeatedly called for the militant group to fight on despite more than 1,000 deaths during the offensive. Hundreds of those who died are believed to be fighters, but Gaza medical officials say about half of the dead were civilians.
Mashaal's power lies in the fact that he controls the group's purse strings and funnels money as he chooses — much of it thought to come from Iran — to individual Hamas leaders, inside both Gaza and the West Bank. Gaza Hamas leaders in particular depend almost entirely on outside money because the territory's borders are sealed.
Privately, however, some officials in Gaza say the rising casualties — and the severe hardships caused by Israel's offensive — have put new pressure on Hamas leaders inside Gaza to find a way to end the fighting.
"The war sparked a strong debate within Hamas over whether we could have avoided this war or not," said a senior Gaza official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Another sign of the growing Hamas rift is a sharp escalation in the public bickering between two camps of countries in the Mideast.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia, allies of the United States, are pushing Hamas to agree to cease-fire terms. Those moderate Arab governments and others hope a Hamas rift could steer the Hamas leadership in Syria away from Iran and Syria and help bring Hamas closer to the Arab moderate camp.
But Syria and Iran have been sharply critical of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others. Iran's president on Thursday sent a letter to Saudi's King Abdullah calling on him to do more to defend Hamas and Palestinians and resist Israel.
Iran, however, also seems to be hedging its bets, toning down its rhetoric sporadically in apparent hopes of keeping open the possibility of negotiations with the U.S. on a range of issues after President-elect Barack Obama takes office next week.
___
Associated Press writer Sam F. Ghattas in Beirut, Lebanon contributed to this report.
War on Hamas Saps Palestinian Leaders
by Isabel Kershner
JERUSALEM — Israel hoped that the war in Gaza would not only cripple Hamas, but eventually strengthen its secular rival, the Palestinian Authority, and even allow it to claw its way back into Gaza.
Objective: To weary the Beast
But with each day, the authority, its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and its leading party, Fatah, seem increasingly beleaguered and marginalized, even in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, which they control. Protesters accuse Mr. Abbas of not doing enough to stop the carnage in Gaza — indeed, his own police officers have used clubs and tear gas against those same protesters.
The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas’s support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, already considered corrupt and distant from average Palestinians.
“The Palestinian Authority is one of the main losers in this war,” said Ghassan Khatib, an independent Palestinian analyst in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “How can it make gains in a war in which it is one of the casualties?”
Israel is proposing, with the tacit agreement of Egypt and the United States, to place the Palestinian Authority at the heart of an ambitious program to rebuild Gaza, administering reconstruction aid and securing Gaza’s borders. But that plan is already drawing skepticism. Mr. Khatib, for example, called the idea of any Palestinian Authority role in postwar Gaza “silly” and “naïve.”
Perhaps more dispiriting to the ever fewer who believe that any overall settlement is possible now — with peace negotiations suspended and Palestinians divided between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — is that Israel itself does not really hold out high hopes for a larger postwar role for Fatah. Israel’s proposals seem dutiful, an acknowledgment of a stalemate that not even so ferocious an assault on Hamas can undo.
“There are not too many realistic ideas around,” conceded Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The reason: Most ideas, he said, largely rely “on the good will of Hamas.” That may be in short supply, because Hamas, deeply embedded in Gazan society both as a fighting force and a provider of social services, seems highly likely to survive in some form after this war.
Ever since Hamas began its one-party rule of Gaza, in the summer of 2007, Israel and the West have tried to turn Gazans against Hamas through an economic embargo and diplomatic isolation. While there is certainly anger at Hamas among Gazans, it pales beside the anger at Israel, the West and what some see as Fatah’s collusion with those enemies.
Mr. Abbas and his loyalists have not entered Gaza since 2007, when they were ousted by Hamas, which took over the area after a brief but ruthless factional war. They are now hoping that the Egyptian cease-fire initiative will serve as a vehicle to regain a foothold there.
The Palestinian Authority hopes that a severely weakened Hamas would be forced by Egypt into a process of reconciliation with Fatah. That, in turn, would result in some kind of unified national leadership, with “all Palestinians sharing responsibility for administrating the country,” said Jamal Zakout, an adviser to the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad.
Talal Okal, a political analyst in Gaza and a member of the board of trustees of Al Azhar University, which is affiliated with Fatah, said Hamas wanted to preserve its own rule and would be likely to cooperate with Fatah only as a last resort.
Indeed, Hamas has shown only hostility to anyone perceived as cooperating with Israel. Yuval Diskin, chief of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency, told the cabinet here on Sunday that Hamas had cold-bloodedly killed about 70 Fatah supporters in Gaza under the cover of the war.
Mr. Abbas also faces a constitutional crisis. Months ago, Hamas declared that it would no longer recognize him as president after his four-year term technically ended last Friday. Mr. Abbas has said he will call for new presidential and parliamentary elections, but that could be risky: Hamas won the last parliamentary vote in 2006.
Even if Israel succeeds in toppling Hamas, nobody here seems to believe that the Abbas-led authority would be in any position to fill the vacuum right now, especially because the authority would be perceived in Gaza as having ridden in on a proverbial Israeli tank.
Indeed, with their credibility on the line, Palestinian Authority officials are naturally cautious about being seen to want to benefit from the Israeli assault. “Our first priority is to stop the bloodshed,” Mr. Zakout said.
The 19 days of bombing, aimed at impeding Hamas’s ability to threaten southern Israel with its rocket fire, have killed more than 1,000 Gazans, according to Palestinian health officials, and have turned the Gaza Parliament, government ministry offices and countless other buildings and homes to rubble. Foreign donors are expected to give money for extensive reconstruction.
Israeli officials would rather see the authority vested with the responsibility and the budget for the reconstruction bonanza than the Iranian-backed Hamas.
At the same time, they believe that Hamas will try to obstruct any such move, seeking to foster its own popularity and legitimacy by overseeing the rebuilding effort itself. The Palestinian Authority has had a reputation for corruption, though that has been redressed in part by the efforts of Mr. Fayyad.
And even if Hamas were forced to agree to a Palestinian Authority presence at the border, there are questions about how effective it would be.
Israel and Egypt have said they are willing to resume operation of their border crossings with Gaza on the basis of the American-brokered Agreement on Movement and Access of 2005, which called for Palestinian Authority security forces — and, in the case of Rafah on the Egyptian border, European observers — to be stationed on the Palestinian side.
“Clearly, we want the Palestinian Authority to be at the crossings,” said an Israeli defense official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the issues currently under discussion. “The question is, will they really be in charge?”
Mr. Khatib, who was involved in the negotiations for the 2005 border crossing agreement, suggested that there could be other solutions for the crossings, like setting up an independent, technocratic Palestinian border control agency led by a figure acceptable to both Fatah and Hamas.
Grappling with the complexities, the Israeli defense official said: “Hamas will not let the Palestinian Authority come out of this with an achievement. I don’t know what to say. We’re not there yet.”
Venezuela Breaks Off Ties
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela said Wednesday that it had broken off diplomatic relations with Israel to protest its military offensive in Gaza.
The decision by President Hugo Chávez’s government came more than a week after it expelled the Israeli ambassador.
Bolivia also broke off relations with Israel.
By SALAH NASRAWI and SALLY BUZBEE
CAIRO, Egypt – Signs of sharp division are appearing within the top ranks of Hamas as fighting with Israel in Gaza intensifies and cease-fire talks brokered by Egypt reach a critical point.
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
The differences have sharpened over the past two days and could have a significant impact on the outcome of the truce negotiations.
Gaza-based Hamas officials have sounded more willing in recent days to consider a deal for a temporary cease-fire, being pushed by Egypt, even though the proposal would leave Israeli troops on the ground in Gaza temporarily and keep the territory's borders sealed in the short term. But Hamas political officials, close to the group's leadership-in-exile in Syria, have characterized a cease-fire as still far away.
One key Hamas official from inside Gaza, Ghazi Hamad, told the BBC Wednesday he was optimistic the cease-fire being worked on in Egypt could be reached.
Salah al-Bardawil, another Hamas official from Gaza, stopped short of saying the militants had accepted the Egyptian proposal for a 10-day cease-fire but told reporters, "We hope that this Egyptian effort will succeed."
But a top Hamas spokesman in Syria, Moussa Abu Marzouk, told The Associated Press on Thursday that Hamas would not abandon its demand that Israel withdraw its troops from Gaza and open border crossings before any cease-fire, even a temporary one, could take effect.
Another top Hamas figure linked to the leadership in Syria, Osama Hamdan, said late Wednesday that Hamas had not agreed to some points of the Egyptian plan.
Israeli intelligence assessments have repeatedly suggested differences emerging between the Syria and Gaza wings of Hamas.
Israel's goal in the offensive is to inflict heavy damage on Hamas and force it to stop rocketing southern Israel.
A rift in the Hamas leadership could benefit Israel because it suggests the on-the-ground Hamas people in Gaza — bearing the brunt of the offensive — are leaning toward a pragmatic compromise to end the bloodshed.
While the offensive has dealt a blow to Hamas' battle capabilities, the divisions within the group's leadership could also work against Israel. It is unclear who truly speaks for the Islamic militants and it remains to be seen whether the group is prepared for a longer-term arrangement. Also a divided Hamas would make it more difficult for Israel to ensure any deal will be observed.
Another problem for Israel is Hamas appears to be enjoying a groundswell of public support at the expense of pro-Western Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has been harshly criticized for not taking a tough enough stance against Israel during this offensive. Abbas has been conducting peace negotiations with Israel.
Egyptian officials also have suggested there are Hamas rifts.
Hamas, however, has denied any internal divisions and has accused Israel of spreading such reports as psychological warfare. And the tougher tone from Syrian-based officials could be merely a negotiating tactic.
The group's official structure complicates the picture. Hamas insists it makes decisions through a consensus process among an estimated 50 members of the secretive Shura Council who live both inside and outside Gaza and the West Bank.
But the members rarely meet because of travel restrictions and security concerns, and observers note it would be near-impossible for such a big group to make fast decisions.
In practice, Hamas' most powerful official is widely thought to be Khaled Mashaal, the Syrian-based political leader. Mashaal is considered a hard-liner who consults frequently with Syrian and Iranian officials. Top Iranian officials have visited Damascus frequently throughout the Israeli offensive that began on Dec. 27.
Mashaal has repeatedly called for the militant group to fight on despite more than 1,000 deaths during the offensive. Hundreds of those who died are believed to be fighters, but Gaza medical officials say about half of the dead were civilians.
Mashaal's power lies in the fact that he controls the group's purse strings and funnels money as he chooses — much of it thought to come from Iran — to individual Hamas leaders, inside both Gaza and the West Bank. Gaza Hamas leaders in particular depend almost entirely on outside money because the territory's borders are sealed.
Privately, however, some officials in Gaza say the rising casualties — and the severe hardships caused by Israel's offensive — have put new pressure on Hamas leaders inside Gaza to find a way to end the fighting.
"The war sparked a strong debate within Hamas over whether we could have avoided this war or not," said a senior Gaza official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Another sign of the growing Hamas rift is a sharp escalation in the public bickering between two camps of countries in the Mideast.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia, allies of the United States, are pushing Hamas to agree to cease-fire terms. Those moderate Arab governments and others hope a Hamas rift could steer the Hamas leadership in Syria away from Iran and Syria and help bring Hamas closer to the Arab moderate camp.
But Syria and Iran have been sharply critical of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others. Iran's president on Thursday sent a letter to Saudi's King Abdullah calling on him to do more to defend Hamas and Palestinians and resist Israel.
Iran, however, also seems to be hedging its bets, toning down its rhetoric sporadically in apparent hopes of keeping open the possibility of negotiations with the U.S. on a range of issues after President-elect Barack Obama takes office next week.
___
Associated Press writer Sam F. Ghattas in Beirut, Lebanon contributed to this report.
War on Hamas Saps Palestinian Leaders
by Isabel Kershner
JERUSALEM — Israel hoped that the war in Gaza would not only cripple Hamas, but eventually strengthen its secular rival, the Palestinian Authority, and even allow it to claw its way back into Gaza.
Objective: To weary the Beast
But with each day, the authority, its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and its leading party, Fatah, seem increasingly beleaguered and marginalized, even in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, which they control. Protesters accuse Mr. Abbas of not doing enough to stop the carnage in Gaza — indeed, his own police officers have used clubs and tear gas against those same protesters.
The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas’s support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, already considered corrupt and distant from average Palestinians.
“The Palestinian Authority is one of the main losers in this war,” said Ghassan Khatib, an independent Palestinian analyst in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “How can it make gains in a war in which it is one of the casualties?”
Israel is proposing, with the tacit agreement of Egypt and the United States, to place the Palestinian Authority at the heart of an ambitious program to rebuild Gaza, administering reconstruction aid and securing Gaza’s borders. But that plan is already drawing skepticism. Mr. Khatib, for example, called the idea of any Palestinian Authority role in postwar Gaza “silly” and “naïve.”
Perhaps more dispiriting to the ever fewer who believe that any overall settlement is possible now — with peace negotiations suspended and Palestinians divided between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — is that Israel itself does not really hold out high hopes for a larger postwar role for Fatah. Israel’s proposals seem dutiful, an acknowledgment of a stalemate that not even so ferocious an assault on Hamas can undo.
“There are not too many realistic ideas around,” conceded Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The reason: Most ideas, he said, largely rely “on the good will of Hamas.” That may be in short supply, because Hamas, deeply embedded in Gazan society both as a fighting force and a provider of social services, seems highly likely to survive in some form after this war.
Ever since Hamas began its one-party rule of Gaza, in the summer of 2007, Israel and the West have tried to turn Gazans against Hamas through an economic embargo and diplomatic isolation. While there is certainly anger at Hamas among Gazans, it pales beside the anger at Israel, the West and what some see as Fatah’s collusion with those enemies.
Mr. Abbas and his loyalists have not entered Gaza since 2007, when they were ousted by Hamas, which took over the area after a brief but ruthless factional war. They are now hoping that the Egyptian cease-fire initiative will serve as a vehicle to regain a foothold there.
The Palestinian Authority hopes that a severely weakened Hamas would be forced by Egypt into a process of reconciliation with Fatah. That, in turn, would result in some kind of unified national leadership, with “all Palestinians sharing responsibility for administrating the country,” said Jamal Zakout, an adviser to the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad.
Talal Okal, a political analyst in Gaza and a member of the board of trustees of Al Azhar University, which is affiliated with Fatah, said Hamas wanted to preserve its own rule and would be likely to cooperate with Fatah only as a last resort.
Indeed, Hamas has shown only hostility to anyone perceived as cooperating with Israel. Yuval Diskin, chief of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency, told the cabinet here on Sunday that Hamas had cold-bloodedly killed about 70 Fatah supporters in Gaza under the cover of the war.
Mr. Abbas also faces a constitutional crisis. Months ago, Hamas declared that it would no longer recognize him as president after his four-year term technically ended last Friday. Mr. Abbas has said he will call for new presidential and parliamentary elections, but that could be risky: Hamas won the last parliamentary vote in 2006.
Even if Israel succeeds in toppling Hamas, nobody here seems to believe that the Abbas-led authority would be in any position to fill the vacuum right now, especially because the authority would be perceived in Gaza as having ridden in on a proverbial Israeli tank.
Indeed, with their credibility on the line, Palestinian Authority officials are naturally cautious about being seen to want to benefit from the Israeli assault. “Our first priority is to stop the bloodshed,” Mr. Zakout said.
The 19 days of bombing, aimed at impeding Hamas’s ability to threaten southern Israel with its rocket fire, have killed more than 1,000 Gazans, according to Palestinian health officials, and have turned the Gaza Parliament, government ministry offices and countless other buildings and homes to rubble. Foreign donors are expected to give money for extensive reconstruction.
Israeli officials would rather see the authority vested with the responsibility and the budget for the reconstruction bonanza than the Iranian-backed Hamas.
At the same time, they believe that Hamas will try to obstruct any such move, seeking to foster its own popularity and legitimacy by overseeing the rebuilding effort itself. The Palestinian Authority has had a reputation for corruption, though that has been redressed in part by the efforts of Mr. Fayyad.
And even if Hamas were forced to agree to a Palestinian Authority presence at the border, there are questions about how effective it would be.
Israel and Egypt have said they are willing to resume operation of their border crossings with Gaza on the basis of the American-brokered Agreement on Movement and Access of 2005, which called for Palestinian Authority security forces — and, in the case of Rafah on the Egyptian border, European observers — to be stationed on the Palestinian side.
“Clearly, we want the Palestinian Authority to be at the crossings,” said an Israeli defense official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the issues currently under discussion. “The question is, will they really be in charge?”
Mr. Khatib, who was involved in the negotiations for the 2005 border crossing agreement, suggested that there could be other solutions for the crossings, like setting up an independent, technocratic Palestinian border control agency led by a figure acceptable to both Fatah and Hamas.
Grappling with the complexities, the Israeli defense official said: “Hamas will not let the Palestinian Authority come out of this with an achievement. I don’t know what to say. We’re not there yet.”
Venezuela Breaks Off Ties
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela said Wednesday that it had broken off diplomatic relations with Israel to protest its military offensive in Gaza.
The decision by President Hugo Chávez’s government came more than a week after it expelled the Israeli ambassador.
Bolivia also broke off relations with Israel.
About
We are serious about your spiritual/physical health & well being~~~
Thank you for joining and adding value to the quest of the meaning of life/chayim
~Shalom/Welcome to SHEKINAH~LIFE'¬ Your hosts Jim and Terry Hamilton
B"H.
As The Zohar itself proclaims: "Woe unto those who see in the Law nothing but simple narratives and ordinary words .... Every word of the Law contains an elevated sense and a sublime mystery .... The narratives of the Law are but the raiment within which it is swathed."
Shalom to one and all/.....Your host:
Jim and Terry
http://ShekinahLife.ning.com/m (mobile)\
TZEDAKAH / donations
SHALOM ALEICHEM
join us here Shekinah~Life
Leaving Comments: The Comments section of ShekinahLife-is provided in the interests of free speech only.
It is mostly moderated, however comments that are off topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying-and-or-spamming stand a chance of being edited or deleted
Enjoy your Journey~"Y&T"
Latest Activity
- Top News
- Everything
Rose sharon -shekinahlife
In the beginning of the "Zohar" the Article, the Rose,..it says: "Just as the rose among thorns is…
© 2025 Created by James and Terry Hamilton.
Powered by
