Is Hamas-Fatah Civil War Another Scam?

It is universally reported that Hamas and Fatah have been engaged in violence and have been massing arms in preparation for battle with each other. This is expected by most analysts to flare into a civil war.

Of course it is possible that this is true, but there is little truth reported about the Palestinians, so it is prudent to be skeptical. Abbas has been following his long-time mentor (Arafat) in a Fatah good cop / Hamas bad cop ruse, which has succeeded in frightening the US, Europe and even Israel to fund, arm and train Fatah's terrorist forces, lest Hamas gain the upper hand. It has been reported about Arafat that he okayed the murder of Palestinians purely for propaganda benefits (for the source, see this absolute must-read on Arafat).

Some of the alleged Hamas-Fatah skirmishes have been reminiscent of the obviously fraud of Moussa Arafat's bodyguards in pretending to protect him. Ten of his bodyguards fired guns for forty minutes against his assassins and did not hit a single person. Although Moussa Arafat was shot dead when his bodyguards ran out of ammunition, none of them were subsequently harmed. Of course all this had occurred a stone's throw from Abbas' office, but none of the ubiquitous Palestinian security forces seemed aware of the battle.

The attack on Haniyeh's convoy similarly smells fishy. His convoy came under attack, one of his cars was torched, gunfire was exchanged, yet no one was injured.

It is completely possible that this is all a ruse. Certainly it has been very successful for Abbas, gaining him enormous quantities of money and arms from those he demonizes with the media he controls.

Of course the upshot of Abbas' recent threats to fire the entire Hamas-led cabinet has been to form a unity government in the end. Abbas has promised to ban Hamas numerous times. Most ludicrously, he promised to ban Hamas' participation in the elections in which Hamas won a landslide. Later when pressed by the US to implement his commitment, he promised to ban Hamas just after the election.

Here are some recent stories which highlight the benefits of this strategy:

U.S. Expects Israel to Agree to Gaza Deployment of PLO Brigade from Jordan

Israel Okays Transfer of 5,000 Rifles to Abbas

U.S. Hopes to Strengthen Abbas

U.S. emissaries David Welch and Elliott Abrams arrived with an ambitious plan formulated by Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, who is coordinating security vis-a-vis the Palestinians for the U.S. administration. The U.S. wants to push Abbas into a military confrontation in Gaza which will topple the Hamas government. Dayton drew up an outline for training and equipping the forces loyal to Abbas with rifles from Jordan and Egypt, and British and Egyptian instructors. There has been less enthusiasm in Israel, but it is hard to refuse the Americans; and the solution was to affirm the Dayton plan in principle, without committing to its details.