THROUGH the heat haze, the sounds of shots and screams carried to the
desperate men holed up inside a great white building in Gaza City.
This was the American-built headquarters of the Office of General Security, a
“moderate” Palestinian intelligence service charged with tracking and
curbing the activities of Hamas extremists in an attempt to bring stability
to Gaza and pave the way to peace.
Sweating, terrified, gabbling into their dying mobile phones to the outside
world, the hunters were now the besieged.
Nearby, neighbours cowered in their high-rise flats overlooking the deceptive
calm of the Mediterranean. They cringed at the din of mortar shells and
blasts of machinegun fire. They could tell, after years of grim experience,
that these were not the usual amateurish volleys let off by teenage gunmen.
It was regular, disciplined shooting.
A meticulous plan, drawn up by Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, with
tactical guidance from their Iranian mentors, was being put into action, and
to devastating effect.
It was designed to defeat, once and for all, Fatah, the secular Palestinian
nationalist party that talked peace with Israel. And it worked with
lightning speed in a fratricidal three-day war in which at least 116 people
died.
Inside the security headquarters, Abu Fadi, a Fatah intelligence officer,
could hear what was happening to his colleagues. Their masked attackers had
sprinted in, heedless of casualties. Their doors had been kicked down and
they had been dragged outside, their arms flailing in gestures imploring
mercy.
Then the black-masked gunmen bowed their heads to the dust in prayer and
separated those of their foes who might live from those about to die.
The victims were killed immediately, some in front of their wives and
children, said a Palestinian witness hiding in a building overlooking the
scene.
The witness, who gave his name only as Amjad, got on the phone to a local
reporter in Gaza and told him: “They are executing them one by one.”
As he watched, he described what was happening. “They are carrying one of them
on their shoulders . . . putting him on a sand dune . . . turning him around
- and shooting.”
The testimony, direct from an Arab source, is crucial to refuting Hamas claims
that its fighters killed only in hot blood.
Now those zealots - many just back, armed and trained, from Iran, were at
Fadi’s door to wreak vengeance on him.
It was when he heard the Hamas battle cry - Allahu akbar! (God is the
greatest!) - that Fadi realised it was all over. He grabbed his service
handgun and escaped through a secret exit door. He ran for his life to the
beach. A fisherman’s boat was waiting for him.
Not all his colleagues were so lucky. Minutes later the first Hamas hand
grenade exploded in Fadi’s office. Dozens of fighters, with gleaming new
weapons, ran wild through the building.
Amid the chaos, a Hamas man grabbed a laptop computer and ran a name search
while the grenades were still exploding. When he found the people he was
looking for they were handcuffed and taken away.
Soon after, bursts of AK47 fire were heard. The officials were shot dead at
point blank range and thrown into an alley. Several hours later their
families found their bodies - some mutilated - in the nearby morgue.
By late on Thursday, the green flag of Hamas flew from the building that had
once been visited regularly by liaison officers from MI6 and the CIA.
As dusk fell over the Gaza Strip, its teeming refugee camps and its tenements
housing 1.4m Palestinians, Hamas’s spokesman, Islam Shahawan, proclaimed:
“The era of justice and Islamic rule has arrived.”
For the Palestinians, the “two-state solution”, so often talked of as a
solution to their entanglement with Israel, had arrived in brutally
unexpected form.
Gaza was always poorer, more radical, more pious and more violent than the
West Bank, where Fatah’s leader, President Mah-moud Abbas, has taken refuge
amid 2m of his people and where Hamas members are being rounded up.
Although both sides still cling to a belief in a single Palestinian state,
they are now irredeemably divided by soil and ideology, one pinning its
hopes to compromise and peace, the other infused with a mission to conquer
Jerusalem, expel the Jews and rejoin the lands of Islam in a holy union.
It was the most significant moment for Palestinians since the death of Yasser
Arafat three years ago.
ACROSS the heavily guarded border in Israel, a fighting general who had tried
and failed to make peace with Arafat woke up to the news that the Jewish
state faced an implacable new reality in the south: Hamastan.
Ehud Barak, 65, is the classic Israeli man of action turned politician. After
years in the wilderness - after his own unpopular spell as prime minister -
he had just taken back the helm of Israel’s Labour party.
It was Friday morning when Barak talked to Ehud Olmert, the Kadima prime
minister. They agreed the crisis in Gaza was so grave that they would rush
through his appointment as defence minister in Olmert’s coalition government.
Olmert, whose conduct of Israel’s fight in Lebanon last summer against another
Islamic guerrilla movement, Hezbollah, had been bitterly criticised, needed
Barak’s support. Morale in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had taken a blow.
The IDF, for all its history of rapid victories over Arab armies, found
Hezbollah’s martyrdom-seeking fighters hard to defeat.
Now the fragile Lebanese state was beset by Islamic militants and undermined
by the hardline regime in Syria. Hezbollah might see an ally and a second
front in the south - so there could be worse to come.
Barak, the decorated veteran, and Olmert, the smooth civilian operator,
quickly agreed a two-pronged strategy. They would help Abbas with cash and
intelligence to shore up his power in the West Bank.
Israel had never wanted to get enmeshed in Gaza anyway. It had withdrawn,
pulled down its settlements and tried to fence in the problem in 2005.
This could be an opportunity for Israel to divide and bargain, they reasoned.
On the other hand, there stood Hamas, exultant, fired with victory and
poised on Israel’s southern doorstep with its crude rockets, its growing
arsenal of weapons from Iran and Syria and a legion of would-be suicide
bombers at its command.
Barak, according to close sources, argued that Israel could not avoid a fight.
It must go in to shatter the military mystique of the fundamentalists; after
that, perhaps, the Israelis could agree to a United Nations peacekeeping
force including Arab units.
As Israel’s best military brains got to work analysing the flow of information
on the uprising - almost every minute of it had been monitored by drones and
signals intelligence - there was growing unease.
For not only had Hamas displayed superb tactical skills, allied with ruthless
determination; its engineers, bomb makers and planners, some who devised
Iranian trench and bunker systems in the Gulf war against Saddam Hussein’s
Iraq, had turned Gaza into a Middle Eastern Stalingrad.
THE Israelis sealed Gaza’s gates last Monday. Tension was crackling in the
air, though after months of feuding, that was nothing new. On Fatah’s radio
station, a commander named Samih al-Madhun boasted: “I swear I’ll kill all
Hamas, civilian or not. I’ll kill them all!”
Coming from one of Abbas’s chief lieutenants, it was a declaration of war that
Hamas was happy to accept. By Tuesday morning, Gaza’s on-off skirmishes had
turned deadly serious.
Fatah fired rocket-propelled grenades at the home of Ismail Haniya, a Hamas
leader who served as Palestinian prime minister in the “unity government”.
An hour later, Hamas landed mortar shells around the presidential compound of
Abbas. This seems to have been the start of the Hamas offensive.
On Wednesday, its fighters consolidated control of the north and seized the
south of Gaza. Then they tightened a vice around Gaza City and Fatah’s four
command centres. A huge bomb, planted in a tunnel under the General Security
building, shattered the morale of its defenders and started a battle that
raged overnight.
By Thursday morning, fast-moving Hamas squads were deployed to attack all four
Fatah posts. As they did so, 200 Hamas men surrounded the house where the
loudmouthed al-Madhun was cornered.
Witnesses told how the mob shouted at him to get out of his house. He must
have known he was doomed as he was dragged out, already wounded in the
stomach from a single shot.
The mob was now all but hysterical. A Hamas television crew recorded what
happened next. Al-Madhun begged for his life, crawling in the dirt,
bleeding, surrounded. He was beaten and thrown to the ground. Then at least
five gunmen riddled him with bullets.
That night, all Gaza saw al-Madhun’s killing on Al-Aqsa TV, which intersperses
its war coverage with breaks for the call to prayer.
Victory was assured after Hamas took the main road that runs from north to
south through the territory. Fatah soldiers, who fought poorly, ran or were
easily outmanoeuvred.
On Friday morning, Hamas announced the “liberation” of Gaza and began changing
well known place names into Islamic ones. The Tal-al Hawa, or the Hill of
Winds, as it was known for hundreds of years, is now officially Tal al-Islam.
While his people were being slaughtered in Gaza, the Palestinian president was
sitting in his well protected compound in Ramallah on the West Bank. The
co-founder of Fatah, Abbas, Arafat’s heir, saw part of his movement crushed.
In Gaza, looters swarmed through his offices and a laughing gunman sat in his
chair, picked up his phone and pretended to call Condoleezza Rice, the
American secretary of state. Abbas was being humiliated.
Israel and the US moved fast to prop him up. Abbas, who was choosing a new
government yesterday, immediately denounced by Hamas, was boosted by an
announcement that Washington was prepared to lift its embargo on aid,
clearing the way for Israel and Europe to follow suit. But a cash infusion
may be too little too late. His defeat has greatly diminished his authority.
Matti Steinberg, an Israeli analyst, claimed Israel itself was partly to
blame. “Israel systematically destroyed the Palestinian Authority’s
institutions,” he said. “Those who didn’t want to deal with Arafat and said
he was irrelevant have now got Hamas. And, if they don’t help Abbas, they’ll
get Al-Qaeda.”
“GOING into Gaza is inevitable,” said Brigadier-General Moshe Yaalon, a former
chief of staff of the Israeli army. “No one will do the job for us, we
should prepare for a land attack in Gaza, and the question is not if but how
and when.”
Yaalon said he was aware of the heavy price Israel might pay for a major land
incursion into Gaza. But that was the army’s job, he insisted.
Military sources said three Israeli divisions amounting to 20,000 soldiers
stood ready for an onslaught. An attack is not imminent, but the troops are
on standby for a possible incursion later this summer.
Earlier this year, in the remote Negev desert, the army rehearsed a full-scale
offensive into Gaza. A giant Palestinian “refugee camp” was built to help
troops practice assault methods in the tightly packed camps.
Since its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Israel has lost control of the
southern border separating Gaza from Egypt. As a result, tons of explosives
and arms have been smuggled in. “We even know about Iranian instructors
who’ve arrived in Gaza,” said the commander of the southern sector,
Brigadier-General Aluf Yoav Galant.
Palestinian security sources claim that hundreds of Hamas militants returned
recently from weeks of training in Iran. “They left Gaza for Cairo, then
flew to Tehran without anyone to stop them,” said a Palestinian official.
A warren of tenement flats, camps and shanty towns strung among the desert
sands along the coast, Gaza is a perfect laboratory for the street fighting
skills that Iran perfected in the ruins of Khorramshahr and Abadan during
its own war against Iraq.
Israeli military intelligence says Gaza’s 115 square miles have been turned
into a giant arms warehouse, honeycombed with strongpoints, booby traps and
tunnels.
Having learnt from last summer’s conflict in Lebanon, the Israelis will go for
a quick onslaught, aimed at killing as many militants as possible in a
matter of days. Hamas will try to bog down the Israeli army in close-quarter
fighting.
“We won’t have more than a week for the fighting,” said an Israeli source
familiar with the plan. “We’ve been instructed to cause as little damage as
possible to the local population.”
So enormous are the political and diplomatic sensitivities that Israel’s prime
minister is flying to Washington this weekend to outline his plan at the
White House.
America does not want another summer of gruesome television pictures showing
its ally at war with an elusive Muslim foe in a landscape of shattered homes
and dead civilians. It also knows that if Gaza is to remain cut off, short
of food and denied money from overseas, this could prompt a humanitarian
crisis that will be quickly exploited for propaganda throughout the Middle
East.
Israel move swiftly yesterday to announce it would allow food and humanitarian
aid into Gaza, and in London Gordon Brown promised new investment.
Tel Aviv knows it will have to show it has been goaded beyond endurance -
perhaps by an esca-lated Hamas campaign of rocket attacks or, worse, a
resumption of suicide bombings - before it can show it has no alternative
but to storm Gaza.
The US will urge caution. Officials close to Rice fear a raid on Gaza could
deal another blow to American influence. Against this, the Israelis will
argue that Hamas will only get stronger with every passing day unless it is
defeated.
Among Palestinians, of whom Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state,
remarked that they never lost an opportunity to lose an opportunity, many
will complain of another self-inflicted wound in Gaza.
Long wedded to the dream of unity, Palestinians are confronted with the truth
that their society is fractured by clan, by religion, by ideology and by
political loyalty.
Last week, witnesses in Gaza told of celebrating Hamas fighters who sent small
boys to distribute sweets to passers-by. Previously, it was a gesture made
only when Israelis were killed by a suicide bomb. This time the sweets were
offered to celebrate the killing of Fatah men.
Down on the Gaza shore, the fleeing intelligence man, Fadi, jumped into his
waiting boat. An Israeli gunboat signalled to the crew as he and his men
scrambled aboard – Palestinian fugitives on an Israeli vessel saving
them from the Hamas hit squads.
There are many strange allies in wartime, and, if Hamas has anything to do
with it, the covert British and American alliance with Palestinian
“moderates” is about to be made embarrassingly public.
Ransacking Fadi’s office, the masked gunmen will have found a treasure trove
of intelligence files. “We’ve discovered documents that will shock the world
when published,” the movement proclaimed. The propaganda war, at least, has
already started.
R A, NY, USA/ NY: "It is absolutely true that we should stay out of the way of the Israelis and its affairs, including feeding it $5 billion a year for weapons and enabling its colonizing. Let them use their own money to kill other people."
What about the $5 billion a year given to Muslim countries, "R A"? There's no shortage of weapons there but strangely enough plenty of poverty, illiteracy, religious and secular bigotry. I also don't see women being murdered for the way they dress in Israel.
Dan, Hampton, UK
Iran and it's president is the buggest threat to Muslims, Palestine, Israel, Middle-East, Peace and Mankind.
Nils Larsson, Stockholm, Sweden
It is absolutely true that we should stay out of the way of the Israelis and its affairs, including feeding it $5 billion a year for weapons and enabling its colonizing. Let them use their own money to kill other people.
R A, NY, USA/ NY
A most fascinating account -- many thanks. It is tempting, in response, to suggest that Ms. Rice is a bit deluded about what is necessary to enjoy 'influence' in this brutal region. Surely what is required is a transparent commitment to justice wedded to an equally transparent readiness to be ruthless with the unjust. The US should, this summer, completely annihilate all Iranian military capacity, and at the very same time should redistribute seized Iranian petroleum wealth to the poor. Israel should act in counterpart fashion vis a vis Hamas. One guesses Syria and Hizbola then fall into line, but if they don't then we know what to do.
Maynard, Oxford, UK
i believe president george w. bush should stay out of the israelis affairs this time as he has only made it harder for israel to defeat hammas with his limited casualty to civilian's policy.
IN WAR YOU FIGHT TO WIN AND WORRY ABOUT COLLADERAL DAMAGE LATER. THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T WIN IN IRAQ IS BECAUSE PRESIDENT BUSH CAN'T STAY OUT OF THE WAY OF THE GENERAL'S WHO COULD WIN THIS WAR. THOSE TRAINED TO GO TO WAR WHO ARE LED BY THOSE WHO HAVE NEVER BEEN TRAINED TO GOT TO WAR ARE DOOMED TO LOOSE.
IRA ALDRIDGE, DOUGLAS, USA/ GA.
James Doyle's comment about vigorously opposing those who are intolerant, does not show much tolerance. Should not a tolerant person tolerate even the intolerant?
Milcheal Riley, Longview, TX
Israel can only beat people down so far till they have to stand up.I blame Israel because they have beat the palestinians down and starved them.Israel do you act like the God who gave you that land ?And America that backs everything you do,is this how your God acts?I say NO ITS NOT.Somewhere somehow a evil corrupt group has took over Israel and America.GOD HELP US ALL.
Debra, memphis, tn.
There is one possibility that has been overlooked in these recent reports and that is Israels panache for doing the unexpected. The saying "Cut the root destroy the plant" is never more appropriate in this escalating conflict. It is not beyond the bounds of belief that Israel could attack both Iran and Syria with surgical nuclear strikes. They may normally need the USA's permission for these but if Israel feels cornered all bets are off!!!
Tom Seagraves, Glasgow,
Im not sure where this guy gets his information from but i was unaware that Iran was militarily backing hamas, by their own accord they back Hamas under the Organization of Islamic Conference, polticaly only... The US however has openly backed fatah, once a foe, with weapons to defeat a DEMOCRATICALLY elected Gov. nevermind if we like them or not that is not the point.
Also Hamas has repeatedly claimed they would be open to negotiations, as well as refuted the claim they do no recognize Israel, i believe there exact statement is WE Do not recognize israel beyond their 1967 borders.... WAY different than at all, i dont recognize israel beyond 1948 borders, capturing territory in a time of war and than procceeding to annex it is by my account illegal under international law..?
Hamas should be dealt with politically, they are more than willing to negotiate, its the leaders who need a Boogyman, an enemy, a terrorist to wage war on, that are unwilling to negotiate...
Peace.
George Jackson, Madison, Us/WI
Hamas' charitable organizations amount for 90% of its works, and are the basis of its popularity , the idiocy of American, Israeli and European foreign policies in deliberately and caustically isolating and castigating this generally benevolent organization which was attempting to enter the political process and end the years of Fatah corruption is clear as they caused Hamas' relatively small military wing to maintain the upper hand , caused widespread unemployment and other humanitarian crises in the territories and generally disabled the government from governing , as such their policies PROMOTED and now see the realization of anarchy : no , Israel does not look like the good guys, they look like the short sighted bigots that they are , and the Americans and Europeans appear to be naive ideological fundamentalists , whose incapacity to grant a preventive ounce of grace to Hamas has lead NECESSARILY to merciless chaos : " It is more blessed to give than to receive. " said Christ
Farjad Gorgin , Kazan, Russia
There is no evil, militant Islam "James Doyle".
klip, London,
sad day for chances of peace between the Palestinians and Israel. Hamas' takeover of the Gaza and the creation of Hamastan will not bode very well for any compromise. It is in both Israel and Fatah interest to see Hamas and its supporters in Iran defeated. A war within weeks is inevitable, before Iran resupplies Hamas. The Iranians are the prime supporters and instigators of extremism in the Middle East and they too have to be dealt with firmness. Europe and the US needs to find the courage to stop Iran's adventurism. When Gaza is again in moderate Palestinian hands, chances for a resolution of the conflct are good.
John Dugan, Phoenix, USA
The Palestinians have found new enemies to attack-each other. The photos of Hamas gunmen firing their weapons into the air shows just how stupid they are. They should be saving their ammunition. They will soon need it when the Israelis come for them. Hamas has succeeded in making the Israelis seem like the "good guys". This reverses years in which the Israelis were the "bad guys".
I think Israel will let the Palestinians kill each other for awhile. Gaza is another case showing the evils of militant Islam. It is the fundamentalists of any religion which give religion a bad name. The true followers of Islam should be alarmed that their religion has been scarred and hijacked by the militants who kill in the name of Islam. Decent people should vigorously oppose fundamentalism regardless of religion. Fundamental Islam, Judaism, Christianity are all wrapped in intolerance and should be vigorously opposed by every person who believes in tolerance.
James Doyle, Beijing, PR China
Among Palestinians, of whom Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, remarked that they never lost an opportunity to lose an opportunity, many will complain of another self-inflicted wound in Gaza.
Actualy, I think this comment was made by Aba Eban
Ronald Klein, Manorville, NY
Uzi Mahnaimi thankyou. This is superb journalism - and as coherent an explanation as one could squeeze into a brief newspaper article about this benighted land and its people.
Justin, Melbourne, Australia
For years the "enlightened" West assumed that the creation of a Palestinian state is inevitable and a key element in the solution of the problems of the Mideast. Now it should be obvious that a Palestinian state has no justification and is part of the problem rather than the solution. The bloodshed in Gaza shows that there is no glue uniting the Arabs of Palestine other than the desire to destroy israel. Israel must settle for nothing less than the total military defeat of all Palestinian forces and allow no hostile state to be created on its doorstep.
Samuel, tel aviv, israel
Mr Uzi Mahnaimi will need to review his knowledge of the Israeli military ranks In it's English equivalent.
here's a crash course:
tat aluf=Brigadier General(1 star)
aluf=Major General(2 stars)
rav aluf=Lieutenant General(3 stars)
Israel doesn't have a General rank of 4 stars.
here's a good link :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Defense_Forces_ranks
old timer, Tel Aviv, Israel
Wow, this is one of the best pieces of writing and analysis I've seen. Uzi Mahnaimi is in a class of his own
Ed, Nairobi, Kenya
"Tel Aviv knows it will have to show ..."
Not a bad article but what kind of political correctness prompts Uzi Mahnaimi to refer to Jerusalem , where the Knesset and seat of Israeli government is, as Tel Aviv?
malcolm, New York ,
This is just more proof that arabs get along with knowone, not even eachother. Their religion speaks for itself. Iran needs to be dealy with or else this will never stop.
john, huntington beach, usa, ca
Your Uzi Mahnaimi is one of the best writers I have ever read! He mades a news story come absolutely alive. He is absolutely superb. Please tell him, this from a reader in New York.
R.S. Greene, Amagansett, New York
It was Abba Eban, not Henry Kissinger, who coined the phrase about the "Palestinians never missing and opportunity to miss an opportunity"
Celia, Great Neck,
I think that Hamas getting elected was a protest vote gone wrong. The majority was not supposed to protest.
I feel sorry for all of the pawns, irrespective of colour, class, creed or location.
E J Murray, Kerry, Ireland
As horrendous as the content is, this is a brilliant , Pulitzer-prize-worthy piece of journalism such as one rarely finds nowadays. Congratulations.
elizabeth schumann, Paris, France
It was not Henry Kissinger, but Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban who made the observation that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Ludvikus, New York, USA/New York
Yes, indeed, Hamas was elected. When the Palestinian people voted for Hamas, they voted for war with Israel. It was not as though Hamas had a secret agenda, it's war plank was not merely well known. It's war plank defined it.
The fact that Hamas was democratically elected does not imbue it with immunity from retaliation when it wages the war it promised. The Palestinians voted for war with Israel and their elected leadership has committed hundreds of acts of war by indiscriminately firing rockets into Israeli communities; you might say Hamas is keeping its campaign promise.
However, those like Redford who seem to believe that Hamas exists in a state of grace because it (like the Nazis) took power in a popular election, fail to understand decision-making in a democracy. The fact that you vote for a war to the death with your neighbor only guarantees that you will have a war to the death with your neighbor. It doesn't guarantee that you will win it or survive it.
Paul Danish, Longmont, Colorado, USA
This has been a long time coming. The world should have known that a Hamas led government and majority in Gaza would could bring about a disaster. More violence and more bloodshed is on the way, as they systematically eliminate fatah opposition. Israel will be drawn into this sooner rather than later. The Iranians and Syrians are awaiting the Israeli response as they have made plans for this. It will be a long summer.
Robert, Toronto, Canada
When Iran finally has The Bomb" it will be distributed around .The world, as presently known, in my opinion, may soom come to an end.
S. Van Os, Tyler, Tx.,
Thanks for this excellent read. Hamas was democratically elected, only not under Israel's and the U.S.A.'s brand of democratic results. After this blatant attempt to liquidate Hamas, it's clear to me who the real terrorists are.
J.A. Redford, Toronto, Canada