Just what are the differences between Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah..?
Fatah, Hezbollah and Hamas are groups routinely referenced in reports coming out of the Middle-East. Sorting out the differences can be difficult, because the generally antagonistic views of each group toward Israel can make them seem interchangeable, evoking the same imagery of chanting nationalist crowds, handshakes in shaky accords, militants with shemaghs wrapped around their faces, and spokespeople on cable-networks. The picture is further complicated by the myriad links to countries across the whole region: the competing interests of patron-states, the ethnic and religious context, and the turmoil of the Arab Spring.
Fatah emerged in the 1950s, espousing a Palestinian Nationalist ideology, and became the dominant force in Palestinian politics after the Six Day War in 1967. It has remained the main faction in the Palestinian Liberation Organization ever since.
As a result of the 1993 Oslo Accords signed by Israel and the Fatah-dominated PLO, the Palestinian Authority became the officially recognized administrative body that governed Palestinian population centres in the West bank, while Israel maintained control of the airspace, territorial waters and border crossings. Fatah renounced armed resistance against Israel, gaining in return Israel's recognition of it as a legitimate entity. In 2005, under their unilateral disengagement plan, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, a territory they'd taken from Egypt during the 1967 war, and occupied in the same way they'd occupied the West Bank.
With the death in 2004 of Fatah's founder, Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority was left without a strong leader heading into the Palestinian parliamentary elections, prompted in large part by the Bush Administration, in 2006. The big victor in that election was a faction called Hamas.
Founded in 1987 during the First Intifada, when the principles of Islamism were gaining momentum throughout the Arab world, Hamas sought to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation and establish an Islamic State in the area that is now Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. A Sunni Islamic organization with an associated military wing, Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by Israel and most of the West.
After the signing of the Oslo Accords, Fatah and Hamas went their separate ways. While Fatah renounced armed resistance against Israel, Hamas opposed the agreements, refused to recognise Israel, and initiated a long campaign of suicide bombings and other attacks on Israelis.
A power struggle led to a short military conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the Gaza Strip a year after the Palestinian elections. After of month in which factional fighting left 33 people dead, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, removed Fatah officials and has functioned as the de facto ruler there, forming an alternative Hamas government, while Fatah retains control of the West Bank. Ever since, the Palestinian Authority has been split into two polities, each seeing itself as the true representative of the Palestinian people.
Israel has maintained a blockade of Gaza ever since Hamas' takeover. The blockade restricts access to food, water, electricity, gas, construction materials, and other necessities. The stated goal of the blockade is to prevent Hamas from getting what it needs to build rockets and mortars that could hit Israel. Another key purpose of the blockade is to weaken Hamas politically. Limiting access to goods, the theory goes, should either cause Palestinians to shift their support to a more moderate faction or force Hamas itself to moderate. The situation on the West bank is grim, but in the Gaza strip it is dire. Unemployment is at 37 percent; 10 percent of children have acute malnutrition. Only 10 percent of the water is drinkable because of aquifer depletion and seawater seepage. The latest UN report states that by 2020 Gaza will be “uninhabitable.”
Since Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip, numerous reconciliation attempts have been made between Hamas and Fatah. Elections in Gaza and the West Bank are supposedly planned for later in the year.
Fatah and Hamas are both predominately Sunni Muslim. Hezbollah, based to the North of Israel in Lebanon, is a major political party, with a militant wing, representing Shiite Muslims.
Hezbollah emerged in the early 1980s, as a consolidation of Shia militias. It follows a distinct version of Islamic Shi'a ideology developed by Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the "Islamic Revolution" in Iran. Although Hezbollah originally aimed to transform Lebanon into a formal Islamic republic, this goal has been abandoned.
From the inception of Hezbollah to the present, the elimination of the State of Israel has been a primary goal. The Supreme Leader of Iran is the ultimate clerical authority, and Hezbollah receives substantial amounts of financial, training, weapons, explosives, political, diplomatic, and organizational aid from Tehran.
Hezbollah's early focus was ending Israel's eighteen year occupation of Southern Lebanon. In the 1990s, it transformed from a revolutionary group into a political one, and In 1992, it decided to participate in elections.
In 2006, a 34-day military conflict erupted between Hezbollah paramilitary forces and the Israeli military. The conflict was precipitated by a cross-border raid by Hezbollah during which they kidnapped and killed Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah was responsible for thousands of rocket attacks against Israeli civilian towns and cities in northern Israel.
Since that conflict, Iran has restructured Hezbollah to limit the power of it local Lebanese leaders. It has invested billions of dollars in this "rehabilitation”.
Hezbollah has long been an ally of the Ba'ath government of Syria, led by the Al-Assad family, and has helped the Syrian Government during the Syrian Civil War, which Hezbollah has described as a Zionist plot to destroy its alliance with al-Assad against Israel. Hezbollah is essentially fighting inside Syria with orders from Iran.
This is where things get complicated, because Iran is also the most important international patron of Hamas. For many years, Iran supplied Hamas with cash and advanced rockets, but in 2012, Hamas and Iran had a clash of interests over the war in Syria. Iran backs Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite Shia, against the popular Sunni rebellion, which the mostly-Sunni Palestinians largely support. Hamas refused to take Assad's side, so Iran cut off aid in late 2012.
Things get more complicated still, because Hamas, which considers itself the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, had to contend with the setbacks suffered across the region by its Muslim Brotherhood allies, most significantly in Egypt, where a recent coup saw President Mohammad Morsi deposed by General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Under Morsi, Egypt had been an ally. The new government labelled Hamas a terrorist offshoot of the newly outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and went about systematically destroying the economic lifelines that connected the Hamas-ruled Gaza strip to the outside world — the network of tunnels leading from Egypt into Gaza. Hamas’ ability to govern had also been crippled by a drying up of funds from another regional benefactor, Qatar.
By late April, the Hamas leadership had recognized the severity of its situation, and agreed to a reconciliation agreement with Fatah. The reconciliation agreement, which might have ended years of bitter infighting, offered Hamas a lifeline out of its political crisis, in exchange for renouncing its right to govern Gaza separately from the Palestinian Authority.
Just as the reconciliation was under way, however, a fresh cycle of violence swept through the West Bank. By then, Hamas and Iran seemed to have restored relations: Israel intercepted a shipment of long-range rockets bound for Gaza from an Iranian port, and in May, Iran resumed cash shipments to Hamas. Shortly after, three Israeli teenagers went missing, and shortly after that, rockets started launching from the Gaza Strip into Israel, initiating the forth conflict between Israel and Hamas since Israel's 2005 disengagement from Gaza.
Given the complexities of the region, the history of mistrust and intractable animosity between the various states, and the competing interests of their patrons and allies, there is every reason to expect there will be a fifth such conflict within a year of two of this one ending.
Cross posted from http://sheppardpost.com/