Just Foreign Policy News
March 15, 2011
Washington Smackdown: Petraeus vs. "Substantial Drawdown"
A substantial drawdown of U.S. forces from Afghanistan would save many American and Afghan lives and tens of billions of dollars. It would open political space in Afghanistan for a negotiated political resolution that ends the civil war.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/washington-smackdown-petr_b_836207.html
*Action: Urge your Rep. to Vote Yes on Kucinich-Jones Afghanistan withdrawal resolution
On Thursday, the House is expected to vote on a resolution introduced by Dennis Kucinich and Walter Jones that would require the president to withdraw all U.S. military troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year. An amendment last month to the same effect narrowly missed getting a majority of House Democrats.
FCNL has provided a toll free number: 800-530-1748. If you use this number to call the Capitol Switchboard, FCNL will be able to say, "X number of people called." When talking to your Rep’s office, you can also ask them to sign Rep. Lee’s "substantial drawdown" letter.
*Action: Write your Rep. to sign the bipartisan "significant July drawdown" letter
54 Reps. have signed a letter being circulated by Barbara Lee’s office, urging President Obama to follow through on his promise of a July drawdown of troops from Afghanistan with a significant withdrawal. Many Reps. who recently voted to cut funding for the war have yet to sign the Lee letter. Urge your Rep. to sign. The letter is expected to close Wednesday.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/leeletter
*Action: Lee bill for military withdrawal from Afghanistan
H.R.780 stipulates that funds for operations of U.S. forces in Afghanistan will be spent only for providing safe and orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces.
Check to see if your Rep. has co-sponsored; ask them to co-sponsor if they haven’t.
You can view the cosponsors here
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR00780:@@@P
You can ask your Rep. to co-sponsor here:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/hr780
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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Nearly three-quarters of Americans say Obama should withdraw a "substantial number" of combat troops from Afghanistan this summer, the Washington Post reports. Nearly two-thirds say the war is not worth fighting.
Nearly six in 10 say they would support U.S. participation in a no-fly zone over Libya, the poll found. But support dips under 50 percent when it comes to unilateral U.S. action, as Democrats and independents peel away. When told that such a mission would entail U.S. warplanes bombing Libyan antiaircraft positions and "continuous patrols," about a quarter of those initially advocating U.S. participation turn into opponents [i.e., when told what a no-fly zone would actually entail, support falls below 50 percent – JFP.]
2) The king of Bahrain declared a three-month state of emergency, the New York Times reports. Two men were killed by security forces; doctors estimated 200 had been injured. "The signs are that this is a coordinated attack," said a hospital administrator. "These were not skirmishes. This was an attack on the protesters. These are the kinds of wounds we are seeing – shotgun and head injuries."
2,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and the UAE were nowhere in evidence on Tuesday, the Times says. Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the presence of foreign troops in Bahrain was "unacceptable."
A White House spokesman called for "calm and restraint on all sides." He added: "The use of force and violence from any source will only worsen the situation. One thing is clear: there is no military solution to the problems in Bahrain. A political solution is necessary and all sides must now work to produce a dialogue that addresses the needs of all of Bahrain’s citizens."
3) Amnesty International called on the government of Bahrain to immediately restrain its security forces after an anti-government protester was shot dead in Bahrain and many others sustained gunshot injuries. "The Bahraini authorities must immediately rein in their security forces and end their use of excessive force, and the Saudi Arabian authorities should demand this too if they are not to appear complicit," Amnesty said. Amnesty said witnesses reported that Bahraini authorities blocked medical aid to the wounded.
4) Gen. Petraeus’ account to Congress of progress in the war in Afghanistan is contradicted by US intelligence assessments, the Los Angeles Times reports. Last week, Gen. Ronald Burgess, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress that the U.S.-led coalition has been killing Taliban militants by the hundreds, but there has been "no apparent degradation in their capacity to fight."
A year after the surge, insurgent attacks and civilian deaths have increased in Afghanistan, in contrast to Iraq, where they went down, the LAT says.
5) The US military has been treating Bradley Manning abusively, in a way that conjures creepy memories of how the Bush administration used to treat terror suspects, writes the New York Times in an editorial. Inexplicably, it appears to have President Obama’s support to do so.
Haiti
6) The Obama administration is taking the same positions and using the same language as its predecessor in trying to block Aristide’s return to Haiti, writes Kim Ives in the Guardian. Contrary to the State Department’s claims, Aristide has good reason to return to Haiti before the upcoming election; it might not be possible for him to return afterward. Both of the U.S.-approved candidates in Haiti’s election have links to Haiti’s violent right-wing, Ives notes. Michel Martelly supported the 1991 coup against Aristide and is close to those who led it.
Israel/Palestine
7) Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of Gaza and the West Bank on Tuesday to demand an end to the rift between Hamas and Fatah, the Washington Post reports. Fatah and Hamas leaders claimed to support the demand, but some protest organizers said the leaders were insincere.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Poll: Nearly two-thirds of Americans say Afghan war isn’t worth fighting
Scott Wilson and Jon Cohen, Washington Post, Tuesday, March 15, 12:20 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/poll-nearly-two-thirds-of-americans-say-afghan-war-isnt-worth-fighting/2011/03/14/ABRbeEW_story.html
Nearly two-thirds of Americans now say the war in Afghanistan is no longer worth fighting, the highest proportion yet opposed to the conflict, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The finding signals a growing challenge for President Obama as he decides how quickly to pull U.S. forces from the country beginning this summer. After nearly a decade of conflict, political opposition to the battle breaks sharply along partisan lines, with only 19 percent of Democratic respondents and half of Republicans surveyed saying the war continues to be worth fighting.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans say Obama should withdraw a "substantial number" of combat troops from Afghanistan this summer, the deadline he set to begin pulling out some forces. Only 39 percent of respondents, however, say they expect him to withdraw large numbers.
The Post-ABC News poll results come as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, prepares to testify before Congress on Tuesday about the course of the war. He is expected to face tough questioning about a conflict that is increasingly unpopular among a broad cross section of Americans.
[…] The number of respondents to the Post-ABC News poll who say the war is not worth fighting has risen from 44 percent in late 2009 to 64 percent in the survey conducted last week.
Two-thirds of independents hold that position, according to the poll, and nearly 80 percent said Obama should withdraw a "substantial number" of troops from Afghanistan this summer. Barely more than a quarter of independents say the war is worth its costs, and for the first time a majority feel "strongly" that it is not.
[…] Nearly six in 10 Americans say they would support U.S. participation in a no-fly zone over Libya, the poll found, despite recent warnings from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that doing so would be a "major operation."
But the survey found that American support dips under 50 percent when it comes to unilateral U.S. action, as Democrats and independents peel away.
When told that such a mission would entail U.S. warplanes bombing Libyan antiaircraft positions and "continuous patrols," about a quarter of those initially advocating U.S. participation turn into opponents.
[…]
2) Two Protesters Dead as Bahrain Declares State of Emergency
Ethan Bronner, New York Times, March 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/middleeast/16bahrain.html
Manama, Bahrain – The battle for control of this strategic island kingdom intensified on Tuesday as Iran lashed out at the arrival of Saudi troops brought in to help retake the streets from antigovernment protesters, and the king declared a three-month state of emergency. Two men were killed by security forces in a growing wave of unrest.
A senior American diplomat arrived on an unplanned visit and sought ways to calm the chaos while pressing the government to exercise restraint. Long-simmering popular anger at the autocratic government and Sunni Muslim domination over a Shiite majority has been ratcheted up by recent revolts across the Arab world.
"We are not an exact copy of what happened in Egypt, but we have been inspired by it," said Redha Hayat, a petroleum technician manning a protester checkpoint in the village of Sanabis.
Since Sunday, much of Manama, the capital, and many surrounding villages have taken on the quality of a war zone with overturned trash hauling bins and piles of rubble blocking empty streets lined with shuttered malls. Protesters and the police have set up competing checkpoints, schools are closed, gasoline stations have no fuel, cash machines are empty and there are daily encounters between tear-gas-lobbing police officers and demonstrators.
Doctors at Salmaniya Hospital in Manama estimated that 200 people had been injured on Tuesday and said two had been killed in the village of Sitra in clashes with the riot police. One man, Ahmed Farhan, 24, had dozens of shotgun pellet wounds in his back and a gaping head injury. The second man, a foreign worker from Bangladesh, had tire marks from having been run over by security forces, the doctors said.
"The signs are that this is a coordinated attack," said Dr. Ali al-Aradi, a hospital administrator. "These were not skirmishes. This was an attack on the protesters. These are the kinds of wounds we are seeing – shotgun and head injuries."
The government meanwhile accused the protesters of running over and killing a member of the security forces and directing automatic weapons fire at others. It was impossible to verify such claims, but there was little doubt that the mood on the streets had hardened in the month since peaceful protests began in Pearl Square, the capital’s center. The demonstrators still chant "peaceful, peaceful" but some now also carry sticks of wood and steel.
While the 2,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were shown on television arriving on Monday across the causeway linking this island to Saudi Arabia, they were nowhere in evidence on Tuesday and seemed to have remained garrisoned in military barracks near the royal palace.
Iran, the center of Shiite Islam which has sometimes called Bahrain one of its own provinces, objected angrily to the troops’ arrival. The state media called it an invasion and the Foreign Ministry spokesman told a news conference in Tehran that the presence of foreign troops in Bahrain was "unacceptable."
[…] But the Obama administration has been urging the royal family to step up long-promised political reforms. Last Saturday, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates stopped here to tell King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa that "baby steps" toward change were not enough. Jeffrey D. Feltman, an assistant secretary of state, was in Manama on Tuesday seeking solutions to what an American Embassy statement called "rising tensions and increased incidents of violence in Bahrain."
A White House spokesman called for "calm and restraint on all sides." He added: "We are particularly concerned by the increasing reports of provocative acts and sectarian violence by all groups. The use of force and violence from any source will only worsen the situation. One thing is clear: there is no military solution to the problems in Bahrain. A political solution is necessary and all sides must now work to produce a dialogue that addresses the needs of all of Bahrain’s citizens."
Shortly after arriving in Cairo on Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton telephoned Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, to express concern about the intervention in Bahrain. At a news conference, she said, "The use of force and violence from any source will only worsen the situation." And she repeated the American call for a negotiated resolution between protesters and Bahrain’s government that seems more remote than ever after a declaration of a national emergency.
Although she declined to characterize the Saudi action, she said she told Prince Saud that "the security challenges cannot be a substitute for a political resolution."
On Tuesday afternoon, about 10,000 people marched from Pearl Square to the Saudi Embassy to urge the Saudis to take their troops back. It was peaceful and flowers were placed at the embassy’s gate.
[…] In another activist village, Sanabis, Ghada Nasser, an English teacher at the local primary girls’ school, said armed gangs that she believed were sponsored by the security services had been entering the village and causing trouble. She said no one had been sleeping since Sunday because of the turmoil. "I wish the Americans would help us," she said. "But the day after your defense minister came here, the Saudi troops came in. What is the United States doing to end this situation?"
3) Violent Crackdown in Bahrain Condemned
Amnesty International, 15 March 2011
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/violent-crackdown-bahrain-condemned-2011-03-15
Amnesty International has called on the governments of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to immediately restrain their security forces after an anti-government protester was shot dead in Bahrain today and many others sustained gunshot injuries.
Eye-witnesses told Amnesty International that Bahraini riot police and plain-clothed security forces used shotguns, rubber bullets and teargas against demonstrators in Sitra and Ma’ameer. Several ambulance drivers were attacked by riot police with batons as they tried to reach the wounded.
An eyewitness told Amnesty International that riot police blocked access to the Sitra Health Centre where many of the injured were taken, while leaving other injured people lying unassisted in the streets. The electricity supply to the centre was cut.
"The Bahraini authorities must immediately rein in their security forces and end their use of excessive force, and the Saudi Arabian authorities should demand this too if they are not to appear complicit," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Director. "All those involved must act with restraint to prevent further loss of life."
The shootings came as the King of Bahrain declared a three-month state of emergency, as anti-government protesters continue to demand reform.
"Today’s shootings and the reports we are receiving about denial of medical care to the injured are a desperately worrying development and indicate a truly alarming escalation following the police killings of protesters in February and the influx yesterday of Saudi Arabian troops and Emirati police to buttress the Bahraini government," said Malcolm Smart.
[…]
4) Petraeus to face Congress as Afghanistan war doubts grow
Gen. David Petraeus will report progress, but top intelligence analysts say the U.S. troop surge has failed to fundamentally undermine the Taliban.
Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times, 5:28 PM PDT, March 14, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-petraeus-20110315,0,33454.story
Washington – When Gen. David H. Petraeus appears before Congress on Tuesday to tout progress in Afghanistan, he will face a series of pessimistic assessments about the state of the war, including the intelligence community’s conclusion that tactical gains achieved by a U.S. troop surge have failed to fundamentally weaken the Taliban.
A year after the launch of a revamped counterinsurgency strategy, several major obstacles persist: The government of President Hamid Karzai is viewed as corrupt and ineffective, the Taliban exhibits a fierce will to fight, and the enemy enjoys safe havens in the tribal areas of Pakistan that drone strikes can disrupt but not eliminate, according to public U.S. intelligence assessments.
[…] "I don’t think there’s any question about the tactical successes that the … forces led by Gen. Petraeus have enjoyed, particularly in light of the surge," National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper told Congress last week. "I think the issue, the concern that the intelligence community has, is after that, and the ability of the Afghan government to pick up their responsibility for governance."
At the same hearing, Gen. Ronald Burgess, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, offered a sobering view – one that is shared by the CIA, U.S. officials say – that contrasted sharply with the optimism expressed in recent days by Petraeus, who will appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
"The Taliban in the south has shown resilience and still influences much of the population, particularly outside urban areas," Burgess said, speaking of a region where the U.S. has been focusing many of its resources.
The U.S.-led coalition has been killing Taliban militants by the hundreds, he said, but there has been "no apparent degradation in their capacity to fight…. We have enjoyed tactical defeats and operational successes against the Taliban. However, the Taliban does remain resilient and will be able to threaten U.S. and international goals in Afghanistan through 2011."
[…] Burgess did not lay out the basis for his analysis, but there is no shortage of data to buttress it. For example, while U.S. troops have become more successful at avoiding roadside bombs, the total number of bombs discovered or detonated in January was 1,344, about the same as the number in June 2010, according to the Pentagon, even though winter usually marks a lull in the fighting.
A comparison can be made to Iraq, where one year after a troop surge in early 2007, Gen. Ray T. Odierno was able to point to a dramatic reduction in insurgent attacks and civilian deaths.
But a year after the troop surge was launched in Afghanistan – 100,000 U.S. troops are in the country – both numbers are up, and 2010 was the deadliest year of the war for U.S. personnel and Afghan civilians. The United Nations reported last week that 2,777 civilians were killed in 2010, 75% of them by the Taliban and other insurgents.
A report March 2 by the British Parliament’s foreign affairs committee concluded that despite the "optimistic progress appraisals we heard from some military and official sources … the security situation across Afghanistan as a whole is deteriorating." Counterinsurgency efforts in the south and east have "allowed the Taliban to expand its presence and control in other previously relatively stable areas in Afghanistan."
"The Taliban have the momentum, especially in the east and north," analyst Gilles Dorronsoro of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told the committee. "There is no change in the overall balance of power, and the Taliban are still making problems."
The British report argued that the coalition should focus on negotiating with the Taliban, reflecting a view among some analysts that a peace deal is the key to extricating NATO forces from a bleak military situation. Another camp argues that even without reconciliation, the U.S. can achieve its primary goal in Afghanistan – preventing Al Qaeda from planning attacks from there – with far fewer troops.
[…]
5) The Abuse Of Private Manning
Editorial, New York Times, March 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/opinion/15tue3.html
Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been imprisoned for nine months on charges of handing government files to WikiLeaks, has not even been tried let alone convicted. Yet the military has been treating him abusively, in a way that conjures creepy memories of how the Bush administration used to treat terror suspects. Inexplicably, it appears to have President Obama’s support to do so.
Private Manning is in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. For one hour a day, he is allowed to walk around a room in shackles. He is forced to remove all his clothes every night. And every morning he is required to stand outside his cell, naked, until he passes inspection and is given his clothes back.
Military officials say, without explanation, that these precautions are necessary to prevent Private Manning from injuring himself. They have put him on "prevention of injury" watch, yet his lawyers say there is no indication that he is suicidal and the military has not placed him on a suicide watch.
[…] Far more troubling is why President Obama, who has forcefully denounced prisoner abuse, is condoning this treatment. Last week, at a news conference, he said the Pentagon had assured him that the terms of the private’s confinement "are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards." He said he could not go into details, but details are precisely what is needed to explain and correct an abuse that should never have begun.
Haiti
6) Haiti wants Aristide: let him go
Even now, to prop up a fatally flawed election, Washington is trying to sabotage the return of Haiti’s ousted former president
Kim Ives, Guardian, Tuesday 15 March 2011 20.30 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/15/haiti-jean-bertrand-aristide
The arrogance of Washington’s renewed efforts to thwart former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s return to Haiti from a seven-year exile in South Africa is mind-boggling.
[…] During the US-appointed post-coup de facto government of Prime Minister Gérard Latortue (2004-2006), Haitian police and United Nations occupation troops regularly gunned down the demonstrators and carried out murderous assaults on Aristide strongholds in popular neighborhoods like Cité Soleil and Belair, killing dozens of residents, including women and children. When in late March 2004, US Congresswoman Maxine Waters and a team of other VIPs rescued the Aristides from virtual house arrest in CAR and flew them in a private jet to Jamaica, the Bush administration was livid. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice spent an hour on the phone threatening then Prime Minister PJ Patterson to get Aristide out of there.
"We think it’s a bad idea," she later told the press, while Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that "the hope is that he will not come back into the hemisphere and complicate [the] situation." Three months later, Aristide was flown to South Africa.
Now, once again, the Obama administration is taking the same positions and using the same language as its predecessor, which candidate Obama once vowed never to do.
Last month, Aristide finally received his long-denied passport. Later this week, the South African government is planning to fly him back to Haiti in a government jet. But now we have the US state department’s new spokesperson, Mark Toner, sanctimoniously telling Aristide "to delay his return until after the electoral process has concluded, to permit the Haitian people to cast their ballots in a peaceful atmosphere", and that his "return prior to the election may potentially be destabilising to the political process."
And what "political process" is this?
A runoff between two neo-Duvalierist candidates: former First Lady Mirlande Manigat and former konpa musician Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly. The problem? The election is illegal. Only four of the eight-member Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) have voted to proceed with the second round, one short of the five necessary. Furthermore, the first round results have not been published in the journal of record, Le Moniteur, and President René Préval has not officially convoked Haitians to vote – both constitutional requirements.
"In this election, it is the United Nations and Organisation of American States [OAS], both acting on Washington’s behalf, who are convoking the people to vote for the candidates whom they have designated," a grassroots organiser told Haïti Liberté. (Last month, the OAS forced the CEP – constitutionally, the "final arbiter" of Haitian elections – to replace Jude Célestin, the candidate of Préval’s party, with Martelly in the runoff.)
Why might Aristide be anxious to return to Haiti before 20 March? First, President Préval has already exceeded his mandate, which ended on 7 February. This makes his position weak and contested. Add to this the reality that, in Haiti, a president-elect becomes the de facto power even before his inauguration. Therefore, after 20 March, it might be impossible for Aristide to safely return to Haiti.
Aristide first came to power 20 years ago as the champion of the people’s uprising against the Duvalier dictatorship and the neo-Duvalierist juntas that followed its 7 February 1986 fall. Seven months after his inauguration, President Aristide was overthrown by a US-backed neo-Duvalierist military putsch on 30 September 1991. "Sweet Micky" was one of the principal cheerleaders of this three-year coup, which claimed some 5,000 lives, according to Amnesty International.
In the years following Aristide’s restoration to power in 1994, Martelly became obsessed with hatred for the man. In a video from not too long ago, which can be seen on YouTube, the candidate threatens a patron in a bar where he has performed. "All those shits were Aristide’s faggots," he says. "I would kill Aristide to stick a dick up your ass."
[The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPM9f3YxVsk ]
Martelly is close to Col Michel François, perhaps the 1991 coup’s principal mastermind and executioner. François led soldiers who machine-gunned hundreds of demonstrators in front of the National Palace on 30 September, as a fact-finding delegation led by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark learned three months after the coup.
Manigat is not much better. She is the wife, and many say the proxy, of former Haitian President Leslie Manigat. He was a perennial rightwing candidate who came to power in a 1988 election that was run and rigged by a neo-Duvalierist military junta. The rest of Haiti boycotted that election because the junta and its death squads had shot and macheted would-be voters in an aborted contest two months earlier. But Manigat and his wife had no scruples about climbing over the corpses of the November 1987 election massacre to go take up residence in the national palace. Four months later, the junta evicted them when he got too big for his britches. Mirlande Manigat has also declared her opposition to Aristide’s return "before the election".
Let’s imagine that the US succeeds in ramming this bogus election (Haitians call it a "selection") down the people’s throats and that Aristide tries to return after 20 March. He would likely be met by policemen upon landing in Port-au-Prince. But the cops would not escort him to a luxury hotel, as they did former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier when he returned, without a squeak of US or French protest, from 25 years of exile on 16 January. Instead, Martelly’s or Manigat’s police would likely take Aristide directly to jail, or worse.
As his lawyer, Ira Kurzban, said, Aristide "is genuinely concerned that a change in the Haitian government may result in his remaining in South Africa". But if Aristide does arrive as planned, later this week, before the election, his mere presence in the country will eclipse the contrived hoopla of the Manigat/Martelly contest. Although they may not be able to stop the US/OAS gambit, the Haitian people may be able to mount a successful boycott, as Haitian voters did in the April and June 2009 elections, where turnout was less than 5%.
Many grassroots groups are calling for another massive boycott now to discredit the "mascarade", as they refer to it. Already, only 23% of the Haitian electorate took part in the first round (the lowest turnout for a presidential election in Haiti, or anywhere in Latin America, in the past 60 years) – in large part because Aristide’s party, the Lavalas Family, was arbitrarily and unjustly excluded.
"The department of state has previously said that [Aristide’s return] is a decision for the Haitian government," Kurzban said. "They should leave that decision to the democratically elected government instead of seeking to dictate the terms under which a Haitian citizen may return to his country."
[…]
Israel/Palestine
7) Palestinians rally for unity in Gaza, West Bank
Joel Greenberg, Washington Post, Tuesday, March 15, 6:53 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/palestinians-rally-for-unity-in-gaza-west-bank/2011/03/15/AB72yFZ_story.html
Ramallah, West Bank – Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on Tuesday to demand an end to the rift between the Hamas and Fatah factions that has left the two Palestinian territories in the control of rival governments. "The people want an end to the division!" the demonstrators chanted in the largest such push to date. "National unity!"
The demonstrations were organized by young Palestinians who used Facebook to mobilize protesters, saying they were inspired by recent uprisings in neighboring Arab countries. But the rallies were quickly commandeered by Hamas in Gaza and by Fatah in the West Bank, with both groups dispatching supporters and sound trucks to voice their own calls for unity.
[…] The largest rally was in Gaza City, at the Square of the Unknown Soldier, where throngs gathered under a sea of Palestinian flags. Hamas sent its supporters, waving the movement’s green banners, which drove hundreds of people to a breakaway protest in another square.
Riding the wave of popular sentiment, Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the Hamas government, invited Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to Gaza for immediate unity talks. A Fatah spokesman in the West Bank promptly dismissed the call as "not serious."
In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, the rally at Manara Square was dominated by young Fatah supporters and government employees who were given time off to participate. No factional banners could be seen, only the red, white, black and green of the Palestinian flag.
Addressing the crowd, Mahmoud al-Aloul, a senior Fatah official, threw his arm around Hussein Abu Kweik, a Hamas leader, in a show of brotherhood. "We are one people," Abu Kweik said, calling for a "sincere national dialogue" that he said should lead to new parliamentary elections.
"Our enemy is the occupation," Aloul said, referring to the Israeli military presence in the West Bank. "We want unity so we can confront the occupation together."
Some younger protesters in Ramallah complained that the rally, planned by youth activists who say they have no political affiliation, had been hijacked by Fatah.
"Unfortunately, the persons responsible for this division are planning to attend this demonstration," said Mahmoud Kuhail, 26. "We’re fed up with the speeches. If they want to end the division, Abbas can go to Gaza and shake hands with Haniyeh as a first step. They can take actual steps on the ground if they really want it."
–
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