Rebel Fatah factions thorn in Palestinian leader's side
AFP
Date: 08-24-05
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AFP) - Abu Alaa, dressed in khaki and brown leather work boots, reviews his private army, busy marching in a football stadium in the wild Gaza Strip border town of Rafah.
Alaa, who heads Rafah's branch of the Abu Rish brigades, a subset of the ruling Fatah party, vows to rebel against Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas's calls for peace.
"I disagree with Abu Mazen's agenda," Alaa says, using Abbas' nickname.
"We will take any chance to strike the Israeli army. The Israeli army doesn't make any distinction between Palestinian militants and civilians. We will do the same," says the 33-year-old, with a trim black beard and owlish glasses.
Everything goes in Rafah where every armed band is a law unto itself and a challenge to the rule of Abbas's Palestinian Authority, seeking to reassert its command after five years of chaotic war with Israel.
Men like Abu Alaa, survivors of both Palestinian uprisings, the first one in 1987, are loathe to give up their power carved out in the recent fighting.
"We don't work under the Palestinian Authority. We work under our own agenda."
Far from Gaza City, he basks in his power, clapping his hands and shouting encouragement to his drill sergeants who order recruits to crawl on the ground.
"We are the soldiers of Abu Rish," his men shout as they load up on four buses and head to sprawling farm fields where other wayward Fatah factions and the religious extremists Islamic Jihad conduct further military exercises despite Abbas's appeals for calm.
The Palestinian leader, already caught in fierce political competition from popular-based religious hardliners Hamas, is struggling to patch up the divisions within his own Fatah movement.
Without a unified Fatah, marching firmly behind Abbas, it is hard to imagine the Palestinian president fending off Hamas and establishing an independent state through peaceful negotiations.
But the men around Abbas are resolute they will rein in the militants, including Fatah's wayward sons.
"If Israel completes its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, there is no reason for any gunmen in the street. If you want to struggle go to the West Bank, we have to keep the peace in Gaza," says Colonel Jamal Kayed, head of Palestinian security forces in the southern Gaza Strip.
"Our citizens and politicians will not give them a chance to ruin this opportunity. There should only be one authority."
Kayed, a mustachioed man in a green beret, insists the Palestinian security forces have enough men to reassert control, even as he concedes his troops were lacking for weapons, vehicles and infrastructure due to the heavy fighting with Israel during the intifada.
A study released last month by a Washington think-tank on the Palestinian security forces warned that the militant factions might be better armed than the government.
For the moment, Abbas retains the nominal support of one of the larger Fatah military factions, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. But its leader in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis warns their support is strictly provisional and they reserved their right to use guns when they saw fit.
"We trust Abu Mazen. He is our president. He was elected to make peace but Abu Mazen does not have magic powers to make Israel give us our rights," says 33-year-old Abu Sayef.
"We do not trust Israel. The prophets teach us this. They provoke the wrath of Allah's prophets."
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