By IPS Correspondents
GAZA CITY, Apr 20 2004 (IPS)

Israel’s killing of Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi in short succession seems aimed at nudging Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority to re-establish control over the Gaza strip.

Despite Israel’s claims that it is fighting terror, the actions take place in the heavily political context of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s announced plan to withdraw from Gaza.

Among Palestinians in Gaza there is very little doubt that the killings are meant to weaken Hamas ahead of an Israeli withdrawal and that they are meant to work in favour of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The head of Israel’s military intelligence (Aman), Major-General Aharon Zeevi-Farkas on Tuesday gave his own slightly euphoric assessment to the foreign affairs and defence committee of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. The deaths of Yassin and Rantisi, he said, had led to “shock and anarchy” inside Hamas.

In the run-up to an Israeli withdrawal, said Zeevi-Farkas, the powerful Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan is taking steps to take over the Gaza strip. Dahlan is doing that “with the full blessing of Arafat,” said the intelligence chief.

PA officials in Gaza express their impatience to take control of the strip back from armed gangs and radical Islamist movements, Hamas in particular.

While Rantisi was being buried in Gaza’s martyrs’ cemetery, several blocks away in his heavily guarded office the PA’s security chief in the northern Gaza strip, Major-General Saeb Ajes showed very little regret over the loss of the Hamas leader.

Ajes approached the issue more as a security development. “The security situation is very bad,” he said. “It became even worse after the killing of Yassin, and the death of Rantisi makes it worse still.” Hamas, he said, will in the short term get a lot of sympathy which will make it very difficult for his organisation to act against the movement if so ordered.

On the whole, though, the PA is still the biggest force in Gaza in terms of men, arms, equipment and organisation. If they have to take on Hamas, Ajes hinted, he is confident they will win.

Hamas has been flexing its political muscle in the strip lately. After the death of Yassin, long lines of masked and armed supporters marched through the streets of Gaza, emphasising that Hamas can field armed men who are useless in a confrontation with Israeli tanks and helicopters but who are crucial for the internal balance of power.

Under Rantisi the movement had entered into intensive talks with the PA to find a way to share power after an Israeli withdrawal. This was very much against the wishes of Israel, the United States and possibly also neighbouring Egypt, which is wary about fundamentalists’ influence in Gaza.

Rantisi’s funeral, despite slogans calling for revenge against Israel, and emotional scenes near the leader’s body, was a lot more low key than Yassin’s three weeks ago. Very few shots were fired into the air, the crowds were much smaller, and they did not carry large portraits of the slain leader with them.

But among those attending there seemed to be a consensus that Hamas should rule the Gaza strip instead of the weakened PA.

“Hamas should govern Gaza,” said Zahra, a 20-year-old accounting student at Gaza’s Islamic University who was watching the funeral procession go by. “Hamas follows Islam and the Shariya (Islamic law) and Hamas will not talk to make peace with Israel.”

Rantisi had before his death called for a “unified leadership” in the strip. This was after Arafat had called on Hamas to take part in governing the strip under his leadership after Israeli withdrawal, if it were to take place.

The talks between the two seem designed more to ease tensions between Hamas and the PA than to lead to any real cooperation. The PA is nominally already in control of the strip since the Israeli army withdrew from all the population centres in 1994. An Israeli withdrawal now would only mean that they will also leave the settlements and army bases.

Ghazi Hammad, editor of the weekly Islamic newspaper in Gaza Al-Risala does not believe Hamas will eventually join a PA government. “Their credibility is very important to them,” he says. “To the Palestinian street and to people outside they are the leaders of the Intifadah. They will not give that up by joining the PA.” Hammad is close to Hamas but broke officially with the movement in the 1990s.

Hammad, pointing at headlines in his own newspaper, is convinced that the killings of Rantisi and Yassin were purely political acts. “They are trying to weaken Hamas and help the PA,” he says.

But killing the movement’s top leaders will not work, he says, because Hamas has a collective leadership, the ‘Shura council’. The movement has already appointed a new leader in Gaza, though his name is being kept secret as a security measure.

Ajes is clear about the PA’s refusal to actually share power with Hamas, despite the talks. “We are the only ones who can represent the Palestinian people internationally, we are the national authority, not a bunch of factions,” he said. “Can you see the international community wanting to deal with factions, especially Hamas?”

The PA, he said, is committed to negotiations under the roadmap peace plan. Hamas is in favour of continuing the violence, but “the PA will never accept that.”

The talks between the PA and Hamas were merely meant, he said, “to agree on the security arrangements after an Israeli withdrawal and to avoid inter- Palestinian shooting.”

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