Gaza by Jean-Pierre Filiu;

Author:Jean-Pierre Filiu;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781805261506
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 1)

The Road to Madrid

On 2 August 1990 the news of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait reached the Palestinian population. To a large section of Arab public opinion, Saddam Hussein appeared to be a new Salah ad-Din, passionate to restore Arab national rights, or even a modern-day Robin Hood, set to distribute the wealth of the Gulf to the Arab world’s poorest. This fateful blindness to the cynical reality of the Iraqi dictator’s objectives brought cheering crowds into the streets across the Middle East, from Amman to Sanaa. In the Gaza Strip the effect was if anything even more pronounced owing to the distress of the people. Arafat decided that a trade-off between Kuwait and the occupied territories was the only way to unblock the Palestinian stalemate. He declared his support for Baghdad, despite warnings from his faithful lieutenant, Abu Iyad, the second-in-command in both the PLO and Fatah, who had limited confidence in Saddam Hussein.

In Gaza, UNCU took an unreservedly pro-Iraqi line, matching the popular feeling in the territory. Hamas adopted a more balanced view, condemning both the invasion of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia’s appeal for American forces to come to its aid. On 8 October 1990, the Israeli police ruthlessly put down a demonstration on the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem (the Temple Mount), causing the deaths of twenty-two Muslims, which was followed by bloody clashes throughout the occupied territories. While the PLO continued to call for its supporters to refrain from the use of arms, Hamas made no secret of its determination to exact vengeance for Palestinian victims. On 14 December two Hamas militants from Gaza stabbed three Israeli workmen to death in Jaffa. The two assassins went underground, where they joined hundreds of other mutaradun (fugitives), a term denoting respect for the most resolute activists.33

On 14 January 1991, Abu Iyad was murdered in Tunis by a mole who had been infiltrated into the Palestinian security services, possibly at the instigation of Iraq. Arafat subsequently lost his ability to control the consequences for the PLO of his support for Saddam Hussein. Abu Iyad’s death left Arafat as the sole survivor of the original group who had founded the PLO, all of them fedayin originally from Gaza. Kamal Adwan and Yusuf al-Najjar had been killed by Israeli agents in Beirut in April 1973, and in 1988 an equally brazen operation had resulted in Abu Jihad’s death in Tunis. Arafat had never been so isolated, and this was at a juncture when the PLO was suffering one disaster after another.

Arafat’s financial supporters in the Gulf, with Saudi Arabia at their head, were the first to punish him for his support of Saddam Hussein by suspending their payments to the PLO. Hamas, which had never supported Saddam Hussein, also saw its budget curtailed, albeit to a lesser extent. In September 1990, Khaled Meshal returned permanently from Kuwait to Jordan, while Musa Abu Marzouk was allowed by the Jordanians to remain in Amman, which had now become the seat of Hamas’s Political Bureau.34 From

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