Is the Hamas-Fatah civil war another scam?
It is universally reported that Hamas and Fatah have been engaged in violence and have been massing arms in preparation for battle with each other. This is expected by most analysts to flare into a civil war.
Of course it is possible that this is true, but there is little truth reported about the Palestinians, so it is prudent to be skeptical. Abbas has been following his long-time mentor (Arafat) in a Fatah good cop / Hamas bad cop ruse, which has succeeded in frightening the US, Europe and even Israel to fund, arm and train Fatah’s terrorist forces, lest Hamas gain the upper hand. It has been reported about Arafat that he okayed the murder of Palestinians purely for propaganda benefits (for the source, see this absolute must-read on Arafat).
Some of the alleged Hamas-Fatah skirmishes have been reminiscent of the obviously fraud of Moussa Arafat’s bodyguards in pretending to protect him. Ten of his bodyguards fired guns for forty minutes against his assassins and did not hit a single person. Although Moussa Arafat was shot dead when his bodyguards ran out of ammunition, none of them were subsequently harmed. Of course all this had occurred a stone’s throw from Abbas’ office, but none of the ubiquitous Palestinian security forces seemed aware of the battle.
The attack on Haniyeh’s convoy similarly smells fishy. His convoy came under attack, one of his cars was torched, gunfire was exchanged, yet no one was injured.
It is completely possible that this is all a ruse. Certainly it has been very successful for Abbas, gaining him enormous quantities of money and arms from those he demonizes with the media he controls.
Of course the upshot of Abbas’ recent threats to fire the entire Hamas-led cabinet has been to form a unity government in the end. Abbas has promised to ban Hamas numerous times. Most ludicrously, he promised to ban Hamas’ participation in the elections in which Hamas won a landslide. Later when pressed by the US to implement his commitment, he promised to ban Hamas just after the election.
