This is a story of Western manipulation that provoked a Palestinian civil war, set the scene for Israel’s devastating blockade of Gaza, and forced Hamas away from seeing the ballot box as a route to political change.
On 25 January 2006, an election took place in the occupied Palestinian territory. When the results were announced, it sent shockwaves throughout the Middle East and beyond. Hamas had won, receiving 76 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council, the Palestinian parliament. With a 77% voter turnout, Hamas believed it had received a strong message from the electorate.
Palestinians were tired and cynical of endless peace talks with no movement towards sovereign statehood. The occupation had tightened, settlements had expanded, and Israel’s violent military response during the second intifada had destroyed hope of a negotiated two-state solution. Resentment was high and Hamas harnessed it.
Washington and Brussels funded the process and the US claimed that if the elections were free and fair, which they were according to the European Union Election Observation Mission, it would recognize the result. But neither anticipated Hamas’s success.
The US tried to overturn the election result through a covert operation which provoked a Palestinian civil war. The US planned to fund Fatah to the tune of $1.27 billion to overthrow the Hamas administration. This was yet another scandalous project by the US to manipulate local politicians and provoke a coup against a democratically elected government.
Economic pressure was easily applied. The US stopped its funding to the Palestinian Authority and pressured other governments to do the same. It also used its dominant position in the diplomatic Quartet, which included the EU, Russia, and the UN, to promote a hard-line approach.
On 30 January, the Quartet issued a statement that future aid and diplomatic relations was contingent upon the new government committing to non-violence, recognising Israel, and accepting previous agreements.
Hamas refused the Quartet’s demands, insisting it had a strong mandate from the Palestinian electorate to renegotiate all deals with Israel.
The US scuppered attempts at a unity government between Hamas and Fatah and put pressure on Abbas to announce a state of emergency and form a government without Hamas. But this didn’t work. So, it went for a more covert approach. Arms shipments were made to Fatah in Gaza and money was paid directly into accounts controlled by Abbas.
On 30 April 2007, Jordanian newspaper Al-Majd published a leaked draft of the plan that looked like a CIA-backed Fatah coup against Hamas. Other leaks provoked Hamas to act.
In mid-June, after intense gunbattles, Hamas took control of Gaza. The world’s media reported it as a Hamas coup, but David Wurmser, Middle East advisor to US vice-president Dick Cheney, argues that Hamas acted to prevent a coup by Fatah.
Since then there has been at least five Israeli bombardments of Gaza, often referred to as “mowing the grass” – the despicable dehumanizing metaphor Israel uses for killing Palestinians by mass bombing. International attempts to stop Israel were non-existent, even when it gunned down Palestinian civilians during the Great March of Return weekly demonstrations in 2018 and 2019.