The Palestine Papers 3: PA Colluding to Strangle Gaza

Qurei to Israel: "Occupy the crossing"

On January 23, 2008, masked gunmen demolished the steel wall alongside the Philadelphi route in Rafah and hundreds of thousands Gazans entered Egypt to buy food and supplies. Less than two weeks later, in a meeting in West Jerusalem, Ahmed Qurei, the former Palestinian Authority prime minister, asked Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister, if Israel could re-occupy the Philadephi corridor to seal the border and cut off supplies to Hamas.

Livni: We’ll not give legitimacy to Hamas and we’ll stop the smuggling of money and arms from Egypt. Did the opening of the borders appear to be a victory of Hamas?”

Qurei: Yes, they appeared to have ended the siege.

Livni: The Egyptians don’t do enough, and we’re sure they can do much more.

Qurei: What can you do about the Philadelphi Crossing?

Livni: We’re not there.

Qurei: You’ve re-occupied the West Bank, and you can occupy the crossing if you want.

Livni: We can re-occupy the Gaza Strip. What is your position?

Qurei to Israel: "Occupy the crossing"

Later that month, during another meeting on the issue of security, Livni seemed willing to retake control of the corridor after Israel and the PA would reach a peace agreement.

Livni: Regarding Philadelphi, whether or not it was a mistake to leave it. If indeed it was a mistake, since Egypt is not effective like Jordan, can our agreement provide for Israeli presence in Philadelphi?

Qurei: Palestine will be independent but can co-ordinate. Agreement should reflect that with a commitment to security. Therefore regarding parameters I believe security is part of regional vision. Other neighbours don't have a problem -- regional security is interconnected.

Even before the takeover in 2007, the PA was desperately trying to keep control over the Gaza Strip by pleading for more weapons from the US, as is reflected in a meeting between Saeb Erekat, the chief PA negotiator, and Keith Dayton, the then-US security co-ordinator for Israel and the PA in May 2006:

Erekat: The PG [Presidential Guard] is in dire need of guns and ammunition. Particularly with the situation in Gaza, this issue is critical. [Keith Dayton replied that he will raise this point with Israelis particularly in meeting with Ephraim, (Israeli deputy defence minister) tomorrow]. "We need to re-establish security liaison with Israel. This is the best way to maintain security."

After the Hamas takeover in 2007, the fighting capabilities of Hamas and other resistance forces in the West Bank were crushed. The PA then started to crack down on the civilian infrastructure of the movement, as is shown in a meeting between Yoav Mordechai, the the head of the Civil Administration in the Occupied Territories, and Hazem Atallah, the PA police chief in the West Bank, in May 2008 in Tel Aviv.

In one of the most candid examples of the PA’s bid to tighten the noose around the Gaza Strip in order to punish Hamas, Erekat shows his disagreements with Israel and Egypt on their Gaza policy. In a meeting with George Mitchell, the US Middle East envoy in October 2009, Erekat appears frustrated that not enough was being done to maintain the siege on Gaza:

Erekat: Senator, I am just briefing you on my meetings with the Israelis. I am not giving you a message. They were good meetings. I told Amos Gilad [Israel’s chief negotiator]: you are Egypt’s man. You know the Egyptians. 11km! [Referring to the length of the border with Gaza]. What’s going on with you and the US, the $23 million [given by the US Agency for International Development to prevent tunnels] and ditches - its business as usual in the tunnels - the Hamas economy...Amos Gilad started laughing!

Mitchell: What did he say?

Erekat: They don’t want to say anything negative about Egypt. It’s their strategic relation with them. But they make me pay the price. I am no longer there. I am not alone responsible for the coup d’etat in Gaza

(al Jazeera & Guardian sources)

Gaza and the West Bank

The Goldstone report cited Eli Yishai, Israeli interior minister, as saying, “We should bombard thousands of houses in Gaza, destroy Gaza. As simple as that.”

Noam Chomsky says that in the case of Gaza, it's just savage torture. They are keeping the population barely alive because they don't want to be accused of genocide, but that's it. It's limited to survival. It's not the worst atrocity in the world, but it is one of the most savage. Egypt is cooperating fully by building a wall and refusing to allow concrete to go in and things like that, so it's an Israeli-Egyptian operation that is literally torturing the people of Gaza in a way that one can't think of a precedent, and it's getting worse.

In the West Bank, first of all it's not Israel: it's the United States and Israel. The United States sets the bounds of what they can do and cooperates with them. It's a joint operation, just as the attack on Gaza was. But they're continuing to impose their stranglehold, and they're taking what they want. The land inside the separation wall, which is in fact an annexation wall, they'll take that. They'll take the Jordan Valley, and they'll take what's called Jerusalem, which is far larger than Jerusalem ever was, as it's a huge area expanding into the West Bank.

In the West Bank they moved, in their phrase, from 'colonialism' to 'neo- colonialism'. They construct neo-colonial structures on the West Bank. Typically, they have a sector of extreme wealth and privilege that collaborates with the former colonial power, and then a mass of misery and horror surrounding it. That's what's being done. So if you go to Ramallah, it's kind of like Paris, you live a nice life, there are elegant restaurants, and so on, but of course if you go into the countryside, it's quite different, and there are checkpoints and life's impossible. There's only totally dependent development, and they will not allow independent development, and they're trying to impose a permanent arrangement of this kind.

An advocate of economic peace, Salam Fayyad is trying to arrange for Palestinians to have forms of employment other than working in the settlements and doing whatever construction they can manage to do within the Israeli framework, maybe even in Area C, the Israeli- controlled area, and just taking small steps towards trying to lay the basis for a future independent Palestinian entity. Israel might very well accept it. The Israeli deputy prime, Silvan Shalom said it's fine, if they want to call the cantons they'll leave to them a state, then that's fine, but it'll be a state without borders.

There's another element to it, which is the military force. There is an army run by an American general, Keith Dayton, which is trained by Jordan with Canadian and Israeli cooperation, and has caused a lot of enthusiasm in the United States. John Kerry, who is head of the Senate foreign relations committee, said that for the first time Israel has a legitimate negotiating partner because during the Gaza attack or Operation Cast Lead, the Dayton army was able to prevent any protests. They were so effective during the Gaza attack that Israel was able to shift forces from the West Bank to Gaza to extend the attack with para-military forces controlled by the colonial power that keep the population under control.

The largely docile Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is known for its corruption, passivity and its ridiculed belated campaign to boycott the settlements and their products. PA officials are virtual hostages albeit quite appreciative and cooperative collaborators. The resistance has apparently been crushed by General Dayton's army. All the militias and fighters in the West Bank have been effectively subdued especially Hamas.

The Fatah-heavy West Bank government headed by president Mahmoud Abbas receives considerable support, financial and otherwise, from the United States and Europe, so Hamas is persona non grata in this part of the Palestinian territories. Palestinian soldiers say the drop in terror attacks across the West Bank have little to do with Israeli actions - like checkpoints and the "security barrier" - and much to do with the National Security Force. Now, Palestinian and Israeli military commanders sometimes share information with each other have "some small degree of co-operation," . Also the degree of collaboration is such Israel insists the National Security Force not patrol between midnight and 6am, to not interfere with Israeli night raids in the West Bank villages.

In early 2006, immediately following the election of Hamas, Canada was the first country in the world to boycott the new government, ahead even of Israel. "Not a red cent to Hamas," said Peter MacKay, the then Canadian foreign minister, setting the tone for a crippling blockade that the United Nations has called "possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions imposed in modern times". In 2005, immediately following Israel's 'disengagement' from Gaza, Canada dispatched a top official from the Canada Border Services Agency, Denis Lefebvre, to advise Israel and the Palestinian Authority during the earlier stages of the blockade of Gaza.

It was at this juncture that Canada began funding and training Palestinian forces to monitor the sealed borders of the Gaza Strip, under the auspices of General Keith Dayton, the US security coordinator. Known at the time as the Karni Project, named after the principle commercial crossing into Gaza, the initiative was a covert - though not clandestine - effort to train a pliable security force to work with Israel.

A Jerusalem Post analysis tabbed the project as "a prototype for the running of Palestine". Provocations by Dahlan's security forces were seen by Hamas and many others as precipitating the Hamas takeover in Gaza. The Karni project saw the US and its Canadian allies "engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt PA dictatorship with victory".

On the heels of the Hamas takeover, Canada re-instituted its funding for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and redoubled its efforts to back Dayton's security forces training initiative to back appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and to prevent the Hamas government from taking power in the West Bank. In many crucial ways, Canada is the heart of the Dayton project - 18 of the training officers are Canadian and 10 are American.

Fayyad lauded US and Canada's efforts in not only the security sector but also governance and working to create legitimacy for Fayyad's impending unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. Canada recently removed longstanding funding for UNRWA, the agency responsible for Palestinian refugee affairs, and reallocated it to Fayyad's security project. "Our paramount concern is the security of Israel," said Canada's minister of public safety.

General Dayton is in charge of equipping and training the new Fatah-allied Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces in the West Bank. While the PA says its forces are trained to impose law and order, they have also clamped down on political opposition, including Hamas. Under the Oslo peace agreements the West bank is divided into three zones, Area A - full PA control, Area B - Palestinian civil control and Israeli security control, and Area C - complete Israeli military control. However, Israeli forces have freedom to operate wherever they choose in the West Bank.

Israeli security officials said despite recent U.S. training, they were also concerned Abbas is not strong enough in the West Bank to impose law and order without the help of the Israeli army. According to the officials, Fatah's intelligence apparatus routinely hands the Israel Defense Forces lists of Hamas militants that threaten Fatah rule, requesting that Israel make arrests.

A supporter of economic peace says that If the Palestinians were to form a state while the people were poor, uneducated, unemployed, and angry — then that would be a recipe for further disaster and war. If they were to have stable lives, then they would be less likely to throw that away by pursuing further war and terrorism against Israel. After all, people in the comfortable middle-class — in any country — are the least likely to rock the boat. If given a choice, most people would prefer not to starve — even if it means accepting a political arrangement that they might not necessarily like.

In the meantime, for those who still resist this grand US-Israeli project on pliant Palestinian governance, there is Gaza as a living showcase as the most deplorable and miserable state whom any Palestinian would dread with the latest fear of forced deportation out of the West Bank.

(various news sources)