No Fatah Solidarity With Hamas

Hillel Fendel No Fatah Solidarity With Hamas

Reports emanating from Shechem (Nablus) and other areas in Palestinian Authority-controlled Samaria indicate that the Arabs there are not showing great solidarity with their war-torn brethren in Gaza. Some attribute it to apathy, and others to the PA government, which may be “waiting in the wings” for its return to power in Gaza. PA's Fatah Gov't on Preventative Alert

Fatah security forces belonging to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas have been deployed very intensively throughout Judea and Samaria over the past two weeks, since Israel’s war in Gaza began. Correspondent Ali Waqed of Ynet reports that the forces are stationed in all intersections, near mosques, at potential clash points along the Green Line separating the areas from pre-1967 Israel, and at every place from where a spark can ignite widespread disturbances. Youths who try to approach Jewish-populated areas have been forcibly rebuffed by PA forces, Waqed reports.

“People here are busy with making a living,” a Fatah leader in Shechem told Waqed, “and they have either forgotten – or been caused to forget – about the issues of nationalism and occupation.”

PA Kills Attempts to Display Solidarity

An unnamed city councilman from an unnamed PA-controlled city said, “The means used by the PA made it clear to the people that it would not be worth their while to enlist for a serious protest wave. They have killed every attempt to display solidarity with Gaza and to ease the pressure on our brethren there.”

"They Are Alive, We are Zeroes"

He continued: “True, in Gaza there are hundreds of dead and thousands of destroyed building – but despite that, I can tell you for sure that they are the ones who are alive, and we are the dead. All spirit of solidarity and mutual support is dead here; we are zeroes, we are wretched, we are dead. They in Gaza are the living ones, they have the honor, and we are the pitiful ones.”

Hamas, for its part, has not done very much to arouse sympathy among Fatah members. Over the past two weeks, 35 Fatah members have been summarily executed in Gaza, according to some reports; Cabinet Secretary Oved Yechezkel said on Sunday that there have been testimonies that "tens of Fatah supporters" have been killed in cold blood by Hamas. In addition, more than 70 Fatah members have been shot in the legs or had their hands broken at the hands of Hamas terrorists. “Only scattered and buried mentions of these attacks have appeared in such newspapers as the New York Times and the Washington Post,” writes Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

Fatah Claims: We Fired 4 Rockets

There are those within Fatah whose hatred for Israel overcomes all of the above, however. The Ramallah-based Al-Ayyam reported an “exclusive” of Friday, to the effect that Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades had shelled two Israeli locations. Four Fajr missiles reportedly hit Nachal Oz and another area just east of Gaza. Al-Aqsa is the fundamentalist Moslem wing of the mostly secular Fatah movement.