Strategic Assessment

The upheavals of recent weeks in the Palestinian arena have been rapid and dramatic, even for the dizzying pace of the Middle East. Hamas’s violent military coup in Gaza reshuffled the Palestinian cards and dealt a new hand to replace what many had assumed were permanent Palestinian cards. The bloodshed caused by Hamas’s takeover of Gaza added a new dimension to the idea of a fitna (civil war). Until then the prevailing opinion was that despite local flare-ups and confrontations between Fatah and Hamas, antagonism would not reach the level of a civil war, both due to the religious prohibition and to the declared interests of the two sides that the situation not deteriorate to that point. The ensuing violent reality, however, escalated the confrontation and spurred the division of political control in Palestinian society between Hamas and Fatah in separate geographic regions. Today Hamas alone controls Gaza, and Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are dominant in the West Bank.