Members of Fatah believe Hamas is responsible for the deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip and for the deaths caused by Israel’s military offensive there.
More than 350 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli military operation, which began on Saturday and aims to weed out terrorists and end the barrage of rocket attacks on Israeli homes.
Fatah members are implying that the current crisis could have been averted if Hamas had not taken over the Gaza Strip in a violent coup in June 2007.
The takeover caused a de facto rift between the two rival organizations, resulting in two separate governments – an internationally isolated Hamas government in the Gaza Strip and a separate government in Ramallah, which is backed by Fatah and has international support.
Since the takeover, Israel has been imposing restrictions on cargo entering the Gaza Strip in order to pressure Hamas into relinquishing power.
Life was hard enough in Gaza before Hamas took over, Ibrahim Abu A-Naja, a senior Fatah member in Gaza said, but since the coup, the siege has compounded the suffering of the Gazan population.
“Fatah was in power for many years,” he told The Media Line. “The Fatah movement didn’t instruct or allow any Palestinian to lift a weapon against his Palestinian brother. Not one drop of blood was spilled under the Palestinian National Authority,” he said.
“We were protective of the people and made sure that the Palestinian cause was on the right path until we got the world on our side.”
Fatah people are being cautious about criticizing their rivals, while so many Palestinians are being killed.
One Fatah member told The Media Line this was not the time to use Palestinian blood to settle political accounts. He said Fatah was not looking to make political gains from the bloodshed.
But analysts at The Media Line say Fatah is set to benefit politically from the operation, which will likely sway public Palestinian opinion in favor of Fatah in any future election that pits Hamas and Fatah against each other.
Ramzi Rabbah, another Gaza-based Fatah member, said the operation indicated Israel’s deteriorating morality.
Without explicitly slamming Hamas, Rabbah said Fatah had extensive international contacts needed to solve the crisis, indicating that Hamas did not have the experience or the capability to end the emergency.
Hafez Barghouthi, editor in chief of Al-Hayyat Al-Jadida, a daily that generally toes the line of the Palestinian Authority, criticized Hamas in his Sunday editorial for failing to prolong the truce with Israel.
“How many times have we talked about what [Palestinian Authority Chairman] Abu Mazen describes as ineffective missiles, that go against the highest national interest?” he posited.
Barghouthi continued by saying that Hamas’ capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on the Gazan border in June 2006 had cost the Palestinians 500 lives in one year.
“All this happened because there is no internal Palestinian agreement, leading to losses and massacres.”