THE Palestinians refer to the creation of Israel as “Nakba” or catastrophe. But this word can convey only inadequately the scale of their suffering. To the Palestinians, who are living in the midst of violence, poverty and squalor, the horrendous suffering of the Jews for centuries at the hands of the Europeans is a matter of academic interest only. They do not understand why they should be made to pay for the crimes of the Europeans whose hatred for the Jews culminated in the Holocaust.

Nor are they impressed by Israel’s claim of wishing to live in peace with its Arab neighbours. Israel’s track record in this regard lends little credence to its assertion. In fact, the Palestinians have been losing more and more of their territory, and increasing numbers are becoming refugees in their own land.

To make matters worse, they are now engaged in a fratricidal struggle. To understand the genesis of the current crisis, one must recall that during an election recognised as free and fair, the Palestinians voted for Hamas and not Fatah, the party of the discredited Mahmoud Abbas.

This was not on account of the Islamic leanings of Hamas, but simply because Fatah, owing to its corrupt and inefficient governance, had lost all credibility. Hamas, on the other hand, had developed an efficient and effective local government machinery to meet the people’s basic needs.

However, instead of entering into a dialogue with the newly elected representatives, Israel, with US support and encouragement, initiated a campaign to discredit Hamas by depicting it as an organisation of terrorists, akin to Al Qaeda. Tel Aviv also refused to release funds from border taxes due to the Palestinian Authority and prevailed upon the European Union and others to suspend their assistance to the Authority as well.

Thus Hamas was never given the opportunity to implement its economic or political programme. In this sordid game, President Mahmoud Abbas became a willing participant. Even after the Saudi monarch had pressured the two factions to join hands in the formation of a “unity government”, neither Israel nor the US showed any inclination to acknowledge the legitimacy of the new setup.

Not surprisingly, the current struggle between Fatah and Hamas has been welcomed by Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. While travelling to the United States, Olmert told the media that the fighting was “a reality created in recent days which we have not had in a long time. We need to work with all our strength to realise this opportunity as much as we can.” Notwithstanding our reservations about the Israeli leader, his frankness and candour must be admired!

Olmert also held out the hope of normalising ties with the new Palestinian government, provided Hamas was not included in it. In the meanwhile, the US announced that it was welcoming the dissolution of the unity government and the appointment of a new cabinet under Salam Fayyad, while giving the assurance that it would renew financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. Even Tel Aviv suddenly decided to become generous, indicating that it would release Palestinian tax money estimated at 600 million dollars.

More revealing was the enthusiasm with which both Olmert and George Bush confirmed that their first priority would be to strengthen President Abbas’s control over the West Bank where Fatah militants were permitted to unleash their guns on Hamas supporters.

The combined efforts of Israel and the US will certainly strengthen the hands of the Palestinian president, but to what end? What the Bush administration fails to appreciate is that by trying to ostracise Hamas and isolate Gaza (Hamas’s stronghold), the US will neither enhance Fatah’s credibility nor reduce that of Hamas. The game is too obvious to fool any one. But by adopting this strategy, the US is definitely reducing its options, making the idea of a two-state solution even more remote, because gradually the Palestinians are going to be split between the Fatah-led West Bank and the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip.

Middle East expert Jon Alterman confirmed this view when he expressed the fear that “after the dust settles, I think the US policy would be to hold up the West Bank as an example of what happens to people who cooperate, and to hold up Gaza as an example of what happens to those who do not cooperate. But this is a risk-fraught policy because Fatah, given its reputation for corruption and inefficiency, is not likely to take advantage of US assistance to provide economic benefits in the West Bank.”

Alterman further warned: “We could see Gaza become the font of a much more militant radicalism than we have seen in the Palestinian community. We have not seen Al Qaeda in the Palestinian community so far but a Gaza that has imploded would create the medium that could really grow.”

Similar fears were expressed by Aaron Miller, a former State Department official, who warned that “Walling Gaza up to bring Hamas to heel is not going to work. That only will increase the desperation and sense of helplessness and open the door to groups with more extremist ideologies.”

Regrettably, the Bush administration is not registering these apprehensions. It believes that even if the current policy is wrong, it is important to demonstrate to Hamas that it has to pay a price for its refusal to recognise Israel. In the process, the US is ignoring, at its own peril, the fact that most people in the occupied territories are not wedded to the ideology of either of the two factions. Their primary interest lies in an end to violence and in the restoration of peace.

In a recent poll conducted by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Research, 63 per cent supported full recognition of Israel in return for a proper Palestinian state. This included a large number of Hamas supporters, proving that the pro-peace constituency in Palestine may even be bigger than that in Israel where polls show that 58 per cent of Israelis now reject the idea of trading land for peace.

What then explains the militancy in Gaza? Suffice it to state that the situation in Gaza has been so abysmal for so long, that even Jewish scholars have acknowledged that it is a time bomb, ready to explode. It is simply not possible to lock in one and a half million people in a 40km strip, with all schools, hospitals and administrative centres in ruins. As Palestinian Foreign Minister Ziad Abu Amr put it when he pointed out: “if you have two brothers put into a cage and deprived of the basic essential needs of life, they will fight.”

That Israel has never been interested in a two-state solution was made clear when it spurned Mahmoud Abbas’s many offers of concessions made after his election in 2003. The message to the Palestinians was: ‘if you elect the moderates, you will get nothing’.

It was this sense of desperation that led the Palestinians to elect Hamas, whose party manifesto was provocative but whose performance was marked by pragmatism. There was no effort to introduce the Sharia or deny women their rights. Hamas, in fact, offered “hudna” i.e. a ceasefire to Israel that would last a generation. They also abandoned suicide attacks against Israeli citizens and gave the assurance that they would respect previous agreements signed by the Palestinian leadership. All this amounted to a de facto recognition of Israel.

These “failed to impress Israel or the US who announced that they would have nothing to do with the Hamas government. The US began arming the military wing of Fatah to provoke Hamas and induce it to abandon its conciliatory policies.

Israeli scholar Uri Avnery had explained it thus: “There has always been a tendency in Israel to prefer expansion and settlements to compromise and dialogue. Our government has worked for years to destroy Fatah in order to avoid the need to negotiate an agreement that would inevitably lead to the withdrawal of the settlements from Palestinian land. Now when it seems that this aim has been achieved, they have no idea what to do about the Hamas victory.” The last UN coordinator for the Middle East, Peruvian diplomat Alvaro de Soto, in his report to the UN, warned that the “erroneous treatment” of Hamas could have serious repercussions “far beyond Palestine, because its millions of supporters might conclude that peace and democratic means are not the way to go.”

The US, at the behest of Israel and with the support of the Europeans, has given the assurance that it will now extend its full support and assistance to Mahmoud Abbas to strengthen his effectiveness. But US support is not likely to enhance his credibility and will erode his legitimacy.

Nor can newly-appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad be expected to establish a credible government. As a former long-time employee of the World Bank and the IMF, he has been a favourite of the Americans. The Americans will be expecting further concessions from Fayyad. But the more he gives in, the more he will be viewed as a quisling.

The dispatch of arms to President Abbas’s faction is even more dangerous. Who exactly is he preparing to fight? Certainly not Israel, for he has been signalling for years his willingness to give in to Israeli demands. The bloodshed between Fatah and Hamas has only promoted the interests of the occupation forces and the US, and, as in Iraq, created civil war conditions that are likely to result in a split of the occupied territories.

Even at this late stage, one hopes that the Bush administration will recognise the dangers inherent in its current policy. The division of the West Bank and Gaza into separate political entities is a major calamity, but Israel should refrain from gloating over it. It should, instead, recognise that its policies have created on both its northern and southern borders, two militant Arab movements, Hezbollah and Hamas. These are not only effective, but legitimate having won elections, something that none of America’s friends in the region can claim.

It is, therefore, incumbent on Washington to use its influence with Tel Aviv to restrain it from launching a military strike in Gaza as hinted by the Israeli defence minister. At the same time, efforts need to be made to resurrect the Makkah agreement and to bring the Palestinian parties onto a common platform. Washington should also work to convene a genuine international peace conference, a recommendation contained in the Baker-Hamilton report.

There is little time to waste. What is at stake is not only the lives of the Palestinians, but prospects of peace and security in the region for decades, and this includes those in Israel.

The writer is a former ambassador.