RAMALLAH, West Bank: The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, swore in an emergency government Sunday, reasserting his authority over the West Bank days after the rival group Hamas routed his forces in Gaza and seized power there.
Adding to the general sense of turbulence, two Katyusha rockets fired from Lebanon landed in the Israeli northern border town of Kiryat Shmona on Sunday evening. They caused some damage but no casualties, an Israeli Army spokesman said.
The rockets shattered 10 months of quiet on Israel's northern border since a cease-fire came into effect ending the war last summer against Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite militia. Hezbollah broadcast an announcement on its television station, Al-Manar, denying any connection with the rocket attacks.
A security source in Lebanon said Palestinian fighters were suspected of firing the rockets, according to Reuters.
The attack came as the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, began a visit to the United States, where he will meet with President George W. Bush. It also came amid a changeover in the Israeli Defense Ministry, with the outgoing minister, Amir Peretz, about to hand over to Ehud Barak, a former prime minister and army chief of staff.
Under the circumstances, the Palestinian swearing-in ceremony in Ramallah was a somber affair. Salam Fayyad, an internationally respected economist, will serve as prime minister, finance minister and foreign minister in the 12-member cabinet. Most of the ministers are political independents and technocrats, with the exception of the interior minister, Abd al-Razaq al-Yihya, a veteran Fatah figure and retired general with a reputation for toughness, who will now be responsible for the Palestinian Authority security forces. Yihya held the same post under the late Yasser Arafat.
In an assertive mood, Abbas issued decrees outlawing the armed militias of Hamas and suspending clauses in Palestinian Basic Law that call for parliamentary approval of the new government. Hamas has a firm majority in the 132-seat Palestinian Parliament, though 40 of its legislators are currently imprisoned in Israeli jails.
Hamas has dismissed the emergency government as illegitimate, insisting that the Hamas-dominated unity government, which Abbas dissolved, is still in charge. A Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, said the new government was a "conspiracy against the Palestinian people" that "serves Israel and the United States."
Saeb Erekat, a close aide of Abbas, said after the swearing-in ceremony, "In reality, Gaza is no longer under the control of the Palestinian Authority." Gaza had been taken over by "a group of gangsters" and "separatists," he said.
But he pledged that the leadership loyal to Abbas would "not abandon Gaza." Erekat said he had been instructed to maintain contact with international agencies and Israel to ensure that food, fuel and other vital supplies continued to reach the 1.5 million Palestinians there.
"If what happened in Gaza represents chaos and mutiny, the West Bank represents law and order," said Erekat, accentuating the growing chasm between the two Palestinian territories. The West Bank, he said, will be ruled by "one authority and one gun," while Gaza will soon have "a new morning."
Another Abbas aide, Nabil Abu Rudeina, said he was "sure" that the United States would support the new government and that America and Israel would agree to lift the economic siege imposed on the previous governments led by Hamas, which is defined as a terrorist organization by Israel and much of the West.
But Gaza's future looked uncertain. Dor Alon, a private Israeli energy company that supplies all of Gaza's gasoline, said it was stopping its deliveries to Gaza. Israel Radio said Dor Alon was awaiting instructions from the Israeli Infrastructure Ministry, which oversees fuel supplies, but that the company would continue to supply fuel for Gaza's electric power station.
The Israeli infrastructure minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, told Army Radio: "We should simply increase the isolation of Gaza. I want to stop everything until we understand what is going on there."
According to other reports, Dor Alon did not deliver the gasoline Sunday because its trucks found nobody to receive it on the Palestinian side of the commercial crossing into Gaza. Gaza is believed to have about two weeks' supply of gasoline left.
At the Erez passenger crossing on the Gaza-Israel border, as many as 1,000 people, most of them loyal to Fatah, remained in limbo, prevented by the Israelis from fleeing Gaza but afraid of the Hamas gunmen who had set up checkpoints not far away.
Some have been living inside the metal and concrete tunnel leading from Gaza to Israel for three days, since Hamas overran the last Fatah positions. Many were young men, in their teens or early 20s, who said they had been trained recently as armed Fatah security forces to confront Hamas.
"We are the boys of Fatah," said Muhammad Sharatha, 19. "Now Fatah is destroyed; we are afraid of execution."
These young men's weapons ended up in the hands of Hamas, as did machine guns, personnel carriers and other weaponry that had belonged to the American-trained Presidential Guard.
Dozens of senior Fatah leaders have been allowed to flee to the West Bank through Israel, but foot soldiers like Sharatha were trapped. Hamas declared an amnesty after the fighting, and urged the men to go home, but many said they did not trust Hamas to keep its word.
"We cannot live in Gaza," said Abu Ibrahim, 37, a Fatah security officer, waiting at the border with his wife and young children. "Even if I have to sleep here for a year, I will. In the end I want to get to Ramallah," he said.
Israel's deputy defense minister, Ephraim Sneh, told Israel Radio that those whose lives were deemed to be in danger would be taken out through Israel. But he added of the others: "No one knows for sure who these people are. We can assume they are people who don't want to be in Gaza. Pretty soon there will be 1.5 million people who don't want to be in Gaza."
In the lobby of Ramallah's Grand Park Hotel, many of the Fatah refugees from Gaza, mostly middle-aged men, sat around coffee tables, smoking nervously and waiting for news. A Fatah legislator from Gaza, Alaa Yaghi, said he had arrived two days ago. He was hoping that his family would be able to join him in the West Bank soon.
There was cautious optimism in Ramallah. "A lot of money will come in because of Salam Fayyad's relations with the West," said Mustafa Abu Salah, a 24-year-old lawyer. "Things will be very good in the West Bank and very bad in Gaza," he said.
Isabel Kershner reported in Ramallah and Taghreed El-Khodary at the Erez crossing. Ian Fisher contributed from Jerusalem.
Source : www.iht.com
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