THE WAR between Hamas and Israel has deepened the chasm between the self-styled Islamic resistance movement and the late Yasser Arafat’s party, Fatah.
You can spot a Fatah man by the cut of his suit, no beard and a western, bourgeois manner. The home of Ibrahim Abu Naja, the highest-ranking Fatah leader remaining in Gaza, is decorated with portraits of Arafat.
Abu Naja says Hamas kidnapped 70 Fatah men during the war: “Some were killed. Some were beaten. Some are still in Hamas jails. Some are missing. We have more than 1,000 men under house arrest in the Gaza Strip.”
How many Fatah men were “executed” by Hamas? “I know they killed someone from the Abu Jazar family in Rafah, and someone from the Shakkoura family in Khan Younis. There are many, but I don’t know the names,” replies Abu Naja.
Fatah are reluctant to admit they sat on the sidelines, for the first time since the movement was founded in 1962. Abu Naja says the group’s armed wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, lost 80 men – more than Hamas – a claim which enrages Hamas supporters.
Hamas says it won the war; Fatah says the war was a devastating defeat for Hamas. Hamas accuses those Fatah members remaining in Gaza of exaggerating their persecution so President Mahmoud Abbas will obtain permits for them to move to the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Hamas supporters refer to those in Ramallah as “collaborators” and “the Dayton government”, after the US general who is supervising the training of Fatah’s intelligence and military apparatus.
“Fatah were preparing a plan to take the Gaza Strip back from Hamas,” says Brig Gen Hussein Abu Athra, commander of a paper Palestinian army in the Gaza Strip. Brig Gen Athra switched allegiance to Hamas when the group drove most Fatah officials out of Gaza in street battles in 2007.
Fatah blocked the transfer of wounded Palestinians from Gaza to Israel on the grounds it would “give Israel a propaganda victory”. And Brig Gen Athra accuses Ramallah of thwarting the transfer of humanitarian relief through the Egyptian border at Rafah.
Israel’s occupation of Arab land has been marked by its reliance on collaborators to help it track and target enemies. Residents recount how a Palestinian who was working for the Israelis was caught talking on a cellphone that operated on the Orange (Israeli) network. The man swallowed the Sim card. Hamas shot him and he ended up in the refrigerator of the Shifa hospital, along with victims of Israeli bombardments.
About a dozen suspected collaborators reportedly escaped from the Serail prison when the Israelis bombed it. One family killed their own son, to wash away the shame of his betrayal. The others were caught by Hamas and killed.
