Another Somalia in the making?

National Catholic Reporter, Feb 9, 2007 by Neve Gordon

The clashes between Palestinian factions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have intensified. Within three days more than 30 people have been killed and hundreds wounded, and it seems like Palestinian society is on the brink of a civil war. One can hope that the cease-fire implemented Jan. 30 will hold, but previous cease-fires have proved shortlived.

The two major sides in this fray are Hamas and Fatah. The first, a fundamentalist Islamic party, won a landslide victory in the January 2006 democratic elections and since then has taken over the Palestinian government. The second, a secular nationalist party, served as the ruling faction until Hamas' victory and still controls the president's office.

The clashes between the members of these two parties have been interpreted in two ways: either as an internal Palestinian fight over who will control the government and resources, or as a local manifestation of a much broader conflict between fundamentalist and secular Islamic forces. Both interpretations have obscured the central role that Israel and the United States have played in producing internal Palestinian violence.

Even before Hamas won the elections and foreign aid to the West Bank and Gaza Strip was cut off, the hermetic closure that Israel imposed on the Palestinian territories since the eruption of the second intifada in September 2000 ensured that 64 percent of the Palestinian inhabitants were living under the international poverty line of $2.20 a day. The World Bank reported that acute malnutrition affected 9 percent of Palestinian children. Taking into account that the financial aid provided to Palestinians amounts to almost one third of the per capita gross national income in the West Bank and Gaza, the decision to cut off the aid and impose economic sanctions on the two regions could lead to an experiment in famine.

For months now the Palestinian Authority has been unable to pay salaries to its 160,000 employees. These workers provide the livelihood of over 1 million people (almost a third of the population), and if their salaries are not paid within a few more months the Palestinian economy may very well collapse completely. The idea behind the economic sanctions, which both Israel and the United States have imposed and pressured other countries to enforce, is to alter the power relations within Palestinian society by adopting a scheme that for clarity's sake, one could call the "Somalia Plan."

Among the 160,000 unpaid government employees are no less than 70,000 Palestinians who work for one of numerous security apparatuses in the Occupied Territories, most of which are linked to political factions (although some groups are currently associated with hamullahs--family clans). Like their brethren who are employed by civil institutions, such as the education and health ministries, the 70,000 security personal are deeply frustrated and angry because they cannot feed their families. The only difference is that unlike the civilian workers, they are armed. Under conditions of scant resources and uncertainty about which faction controls the scene, it is not surprising that a struggle is breaking out among the armed Palestinians.

The hermetic closure and economic sanctions are not only hurting the Palestinian society directly but seem aimed at precipitating the violent clashes among the armed factions.

The United States' recent decision to transfer $86 million to the Palestinian Authority to bolster the security forces of President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction further suggest this.

If the existing skirmishes develop into a full-blown civil war, it may very well be that certain segments of the Palestinian population will go hungry. If this happens, the warlords or faction leaders, rather than Israel or the United States, will be blamed for the human catastrophe. We are, in other words, witnessing a Somalia in the making. The tragedy is not only local, however, since a civil war in the occupied territories will also destabilize the entire region for decades.

[Neve Gordon teaches in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.]