Cheney Drive for Civil War
Succeeding in Gaza Strip
by EIR Staff
The conflict between the Palestinian Fatah movement, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas, headed by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, took a dangerous step closer to full-fledged civil war in the Gaza Strip on June 14. On May 17, the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC) had warned about the bloody game towards civil war that was coming from an Anglo-American fascist circle, of which Dick Cheney is the best-known figure.
On the surface, the conflict looks like a power struggle to control an already starved-out and besieged area under the mercy of Israeli "Hell Fire" missiles; in reality, it is a product of the Dick Cheney-Elliott Abrams strategy of sowing civil wars throughout Southwest Asia. Cheney-Abrams, and their key ally, Israeli fascist Benjamin Netanyahu, have used as a pretext for the fighting, the victory of Hamas in the democratic elections of 2006. They have succeeded in using the manipulated unwillingness by Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas to concede or share power, to trigger this brutal civil war. The manipulation and pressure comes from the United States, the European Union, and Israel, which, with false promises of a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel, have forced Fatah and Abbas to try to undermine and push Hamas out of the way.
The other arenas for civil war, or permanent war, in which Cheney and his British backers have shown remarkable success, are in Lebanon (see article, p. 40), and of course, Iraq. What must be emphasized, is that the resulting mayhem and chaos are the desired result, of a imperialist political faction which is bent on destroying the nation-state system, including by a direct war challenge to Russia and China—in favor of a globalized New Dark Age.
Palestinian Civil War
After days of street fighting to control Gaza, Abbas issued a decree June 14, sacking Haniyeh, in effect dissolving the Hamas-led unity government. Abbas also declared a state of emergency. Tayeb Abdel Rahim, an aide to Abbas, said in Ramallah that an interim government would run the Palestinian Authority and hinted that new elections could be held. Hamas rejected the Palestinian President's decision as "worthless."
According to Al-Jazeera.net, Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas official, said: "Hamas rejects the Abbas decisions. In practical terms these decisions are worthless. Prime Minister Haniyeh remains the head of the government even if it was dissolved by the President."
Abbas considers the Hamas fighters who have seized control of most of the Fatah-allied security headquarters in Gaza to be an "outlaw militia," Abdel Rahim said. On June 14, Hamas said it had seized the last security bases occupied by forces loyal to Fatah in Gaza, leaving Hamas in almost total control.
"The President is determined to go back to the people as soon as the situation on the ground allows him to do so," Abdel Rahim said. The next parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2010, and Presidential elections are set for 2009.
The Abrams Plan
The central role of Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams, a close ally of Dick Cheney, has been identified by EIR over recent months and years. On May 17, EIR reported that Abrams was working covertly to provoke armed confrontation between Hamas and Fatah. According to well-placed Washington and Egyptian sources, EIR wrote, Abrams is running a covert fund under the guise of "democracy promotion," that is providing arms to Palestinian factions, to provoke Hamas-Fatah fighting.
The sources also told EIR that the same pattern of Abrams-directed outside interference had been uncovered in January 2007, when civil war nearly erupted in Gaza. At that time, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah intervened by sponsoring unity government talks in Mecca, that led to the formation of a Palestinian Authority Coalition government, including Hamas, Fatah, and independent ministers. Abrams' objective is to collapse this government, and get early elections to try to "diminish" the Hamas factor.
In reality, such a plan was a recipe for a civil war, and ran directly contrary to the widely recognized reality, including by the December 2006 Baker-Hamilton Report, that any successful diplomacy for peace in Southwest Asia required a just solution to the Palestinian crisis. With a civil war raging in the occupied Palestinian territories, the Israelis can continue to stonewall on any peace negotiations, or, worse, prepare for the Greater Israel permanent annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, which the heirs of the fascist Vladimir Jabotinsky, and murderers of Yitzhak Rabin, in that nation have long lusted for.
UN Blows the Whistle
A confidential report issued in May 2007, by Alvaro de Soto, the outgoing United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, personal representative of the UN Secretary General to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, and envoy to the Quartet (the EU, Russia, the UN, and the United States), documents the Cheney Administration's long-term sabotage. The report was published in the London Guardian on June 13.
De Soto reports, first, that after the Hamas electoral victory in January 2006, he proposed a "common but differentiated approach" by the Quartet to the new reality; recognizing that the EU and U.S. had constraints in dealing with a movement they classified as terrorist, he said that some channel of dialogue should be encouraged, so as to further the process of evolution which had already been visible in Hamas. He also proposed that the Quartet speak out against Israel's "creation of facts on the ground" which would hinder the creation of a Palestinian state.
Instead, on Jan. 29, the Quartet acceded to a draft statement prepared by the United States, which demanded that non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements with the Road Map be conditions for any assistance to the Palestinian government. From that time forward, if not before, the Quartet became basically irrelevant to the process.
The decision to go with the de facto sanctions, meant bleeding the Palestinians dry, since, as of February 2006, Israel stopped payment of tax revenues. De Soto goes on to explain how, though Hamas was open to a unity government, "the U.S. made it known that they wanted Hamas to be left alone to form its own government. We were told that the U.S. was against any 'blurring' of the line dividing Hamas from those Palestinian political forces committed to the two-state solution. Abbas soon made clear that Fatah members would not participate in a Hamas-led government."
De Soto writes that until the Mecca Agreement which the Saudis put together in January of 2007, "the U.S. clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas—so much so that, a week before Mecca, the U.S. envoy declared twice in an envoys' meeting in Washington, how much 'I like this violence,' referring to the near-civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because 'It means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas.' "
Sykes-Picot Two?
From this history, it is more than obvious that the civil war now emerging has been instigated from outside the region, leaving the forces on the ground to play out their tragic roles. The Cheney-Abrams role is crystal clear, but in light of EIR's recent uncovering of the role of the British-Saudi partnership, as reflected in our Strategic Overview in this issue, a re-evaluation is required.
In effect, the process of civil wars in Southwest Asia is playing out as a new version of the Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1916, by which Britain and France staked out their geopolitical claims to the region, including instigating the future conflicts. Today, once again, the British financier oligarchy is determining the environment, and calling the shots. And it will be the LaRouche-led war against this oligarchy, centered on the BAE exposé, that holds the promise of stopping the bloodshed.
