BOOK OF THE DAY: RICHARD CROWLEYreviews Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for PalestineBy Jonathan Schanzer, Palgrave Macmillan pp256; £16.99
THIS BOOK bills itself as a “gripping history that challenges the myth of Palestinian unity”. What myth? Anyone with the slightest interest in the Middle East has been aware of the split within Palestinian nationalism that resulted in Hamas ruling Gaza and Fatah in control of the West Bank.
The author claims the story of the split has been “downplayed” because journalists find it easier to report on “purported Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights throughout the disputed territories”. This amounts to complaining that we are missing the smaller picture. And why use the word “purported” when many claims of Israeli abuses have been proven by organisations such as the Israeli human-rights group B’Tselem. The author, Jonathan Schanzer, does quote this group’s statistics, but only when writing about internal Palestinian violence.
He provides a somewhat sketchy background to the larger conflict. He tells us that, in 1947, through the UN, the Palestinians were offered “half of what is now Israel”, which, he points out, is significantly more than what is now the West Bank and Gaza.
What he fails to relate is that the Palestinians rejected the deal because they, the majority population, were to receive less than half the territory they had lived on for hundreds of years.
His grasp of recent history is no better. According to Schanzer, the infamous West Bank “wall” or “barrier” is built “roughly along the green line”. He accepts that the wall includes “some recently erected Jewish settlements”, but he fails to say how much land is involved, how many water wells are included, or how it has divided the West Bank into cantons.
The author makes some sweeping and alarmist claims. He links Hamas to the wider Islamist movement and asserts that worldwide “some 150 million people seek a world dominated by a radical interpretation of the faith and harbour a deep hated for the principles upon which the West was built, including capitalism, egalitarianism, individualism and democracy”.
Schanzer is director of policy at the Jewish Policy Centre in Washington. He is a former counter-terrorism analyst at the US treasury and has links to right-wing think tanks including the wonderfully named Committee on the Present Danger.
The book provides much interesting detail of the conflict between Hamas and Fatah but it is marred by dodgy background information such as: “The post-World War Two era was marked by several refugee problems. With the exception of the Palestinians, who refused to be repatriated, all have been settled.” Palestinians refusing to be repatriated? Where? In their homes and on their lands? What is he talking about? And why no mention of the Jewish refugees who fled to Palestine after 1945?
Schanzer’s account of the bigger picture is so distorted that you have to question his accuracy and his agenda in writing about the Fatah/Hamas conflict. The book sleeve tells us Schanzer will reveal how the internal rivalries “have ultimately stymied American efforts to promote Middle East peace and even the Palestinian quest for a homeland”.
In other words, the internal fighting is the cause of the continuing Israeli military occupation. He does not even countenance the idea that it might be the other way around or that 60 years of a brutal occupation have caused the Palestinian people to turn on each other.
Schanzer is correct in saying that unless the Palestinian factions agree a truce among themselves, there will be no Palestinian state.
The extent of the division in Palestinian society is an important component of the conflict, which US envoy George Mitchell will need to know all about. Let’s hope he doesn’t read this book.
Richard Crowley reports on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for RTÉ. His book No Man's Land(Liberties Press) was published last year