Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

[David Rose, The Gaza Bombshell, Vanity Fair, April 2008]

Ein paar Ausschnitte:

“Everyone was against the elections,” Dahlan says. Everyone except Bush. “Bush decided, ‘I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.’ Everyone is following him in the American administration, and everyone is nagging Abbas, telling him, ‘The president wants elections.’ Fine. For what purpose?”

The elections went forward as scheduled. On January 25, Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Legislative Council.

Few inside the U.S. administration had predicted the result, and there was no contingency plan to deal with it. “I’ve asked why nobody saw it coming,” Condoleezza Rice told reporters. “I don’t know anyone who wasn’t caught off guard by Hamas’s strong showing.”

Das Spezifikum des amerikanischen Imperiums ist nicht, dass der Präsident beschließt, was in einem Land auf der anderen Seite der Erdkugel passieren oder nicht passieren muss, und das dann auch passiert oder nicht passiert, sondern es ist das Spezifikum des amerikanischen Imperiums, dass die Beteiligten offensichtlich zu blöd zum Scheißen sind und/oder so sehr in ihre eigene imperiale Sicht der Dinge eingegraben sind, dass sie gar nichts mehr auf die Reihe kriegen. /Und beunruhigend viele Leute scheint auch eher diese außergewöhnliche Unfähigkeit zu stören als diese ganze Imperiumsgeschichte an sich; wohl wahrscheinlich deshalb, weil sie sich nicht nur glauben, dass sie es besser könnten, sondern sich auch sicher sind, bald die Gelegenheit dazu zu haben./

The first step, taken by the Middle East diplomatic “Quartet”—the U.S., the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations—was to demand that the new Hamas government renounce violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and accept the terms of all previous agreements. When Hamas refused, the Quartet shut off the faucet of aid to the Palestinian Authority, depriving it of the means to pay salaries and meet its annual budget of roughly $2 billion.

Israel clamped down on Palestinians’ freedom of movement, especially into and out of the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip. Israel also detained 64 Hamas officials, including Legislative Council members and ministers, and even launched a military campaign into Gaza after one of its soldiers was kidnapped. Through it all, Hamas and its new government, led by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, proved surprisingly resilient.

Washington reacted with dismay when Abbas began holding talks with Hamas in the hope of establishing a “unity government.” On October 4, 2006, Rice traveled to Ramallah to see Abbas. They met at the Muqata, the new presidential headquarters that rose from the ruins of Arafat’s compound, which Israel had destroyed in 2002.

America’s leverage in Palestinian affairs was much stronger than it had been in Arafat’s time. Abbas had never had a strong, independent base, and he desperately needed to restore the flow of foreign aid—and, with it, his power of patronage. He also knew that he could not stand up to Hamas without Washington’s help.

At their joint press conference, Rice smiled as she expressed her nation’s “great admiration” for Abbas’s leadership. Behind closed doors, however, Rice’s tone was sharper, say officials who witnessed their meeting. Isolating Hamas just wasn’t working, she reportedly told Abbas, and America expected him to dissolve the Haniyeh government as soon as possible and hold fresh elections.

Abbas, one official says, agreed to take action within two weeks. It happened to be Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast during daylight hours. With dusk approaching, Abbas asked Rice to join him for iftar—a snack to break the fast.

Afterward, according to the official, Rice underlined her position: “So we’re agreed? You’ll dissolve the government within two weeks?”

So funktioniert es, so hat es immer funktioniert und so wird es auch noch eine ganze Weile funktionieren: das Imperium erwählt sich einen möglichst schwachen Statthalter, der für sein weiteres (politisches und physisches) Überleben ständig auf das Imperium angewiesen sein wird - das ist in Afghanistan und im Irak nicht anders, und war es auch im Britischen Empire nicht. Jedes Aufkommen einer vom Imperium unabhängigen politischen Macht (egal ob sie wirklich unabhängig ist oder nur von einem anderen Imperium abhängig), muss bekämpft werden - So we’re agreed? You’ll dissolve the government within two weeks? Nicht vergessen werden soll hier aber, dass auch die sogenannte internationale Gemeinschaft ihren Teil zu alldem beigetragen hat, als sie der rechtmäßig gewählten palästinensischen Regierung die (für das Funktionieren des Staatsapparates notwendigen) Hilfsgelder gestrichen hat, mit dem ausdrücklichen Ziel, die Regierung dadurch zu schwächen bzw. wenn möglich zu Fall zu bringen, und sich dann bei der Wiederherstellung der Hilfeleistungen ausdrücklich darum bemüht hat, diese an der (ich wiederhole: rechtmäßigen) Regierung vorbei direkt an den Präsidenten (ich wiederhole: den Statthalter) zu leiten.

A State Department official adds, “Those in charge of implementing the policy were saying, ‘Do whatever it takes. We have to be in a position for Fatah to defeat Hamas militarily, and only Muhammad Dahlan has the guile and the muscle to do this.’ The expectation was that this was where it would end up—with a military showdown.” There were, this official says, two “parallel programs”—the overt one, which the administration took to Congress, “and a covert one, not only to buy arms but to pay the salaries of security personnel.”

In essence, the program was simple. According to State Department officials, beginning in the latter part of 2006, Rice initiated several rounds of phone calls and personal meetings with leaders of four Arab nations—Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. She asked them to bolster Fatah by providing military training and by pledging funds to buy its forces lethal weapons. The money was to be paid directly into accounts controlled by President Abbas.

The scheme bore some resemblance to the Iran-contra scandal, in which members of Ronald Reagan’s administration sold arms to Iran, an enemy of the U.S. The money was used to fund the contra rebels in Nicaragua, in violation of a congressional ban. Some of the money for the contras, like that for Fatah, was furnished by Arab allies as a result of U.S. lobbying.

But there are also important differences—starting with the fact that Congress never passed a measure expressly prohibiting the supply of aid to Fatah and Dahlan. “It was close to the margins,” says a former intelligence official with experience in covert programs. “But it probably wasn’t illegal.”

Legal or not, arms shipments soon began to take place. In late December 2006, four Egyptian trucks passed through an Israeli-controlled crossing into Gaza, where their contents were handed over to Fatah. These included 2,000 Egyptian-made automatic rifles, 20,000 ammunition clips, and two million bullets. News of the shipment leaked, and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, an Israeli Cabinet member, said on Israeli radio that the guns and ammunition would give Abbas “the ability to cope with those organizations which are trying to ruin everything”—namely, Hamas.

Avi Dichter points out that all weapons shipments had to be approved by Israel, which was understandably hesitant to allow state-of-the-art arms into Gaza. “One thing’s for sure, we weren’t talking about heavy weapons,” says a State Department official. “It was small arms, light machine guns, ammunition.”

Auch ein Imperium braucht Freunde, denn es kann passieren, dass es zu Hause in seiner Handlungsfreiheit durch die Launen von ansonsten eher freundlich gesinnten Insititutionen eingeschränkt ist. Damals ging auch das Gerücht um, dass Israel selbst Geld und Waffen bereitgestellt hat. Ob dem so war, oder nicht, ist aber eigentlich unwichtig, denn so oder so haben die Ereignisse der israelischen Politik sehr genützt, die sich ihrerseits sehr um die weitere Verschlechterung der Lebensbedinungen der Palästinenser bemüht hat, und das alte Spiel von der Verhandlungsbereitschaft unter der Bedingung, dass die palästinensische Seite alle ihre Forderungen von vorneherein aufgibt, weiterspielt. Das in letzter Zeit jedoch mit dem zusätzlichen Bonus, dass die wackelige Regierung ihre Existenz dadurch sichern kann, dass sie beteuert, sich ganz und gar für den Friedensprozess einzusetzen; denn das ist anscheinend alles, was sie tun muss, um die treuherzigen traurigen Überreste der israelischen Linken davon zu überzeugen, allfällige Mißtrauensanträge gegen die Regierung nicht zu unterstützen.

Unwilling to preside over a Palestinian civil war, Abbas blinked. For weeks, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had been trying to persuade him to meet with Hamas in Mecca and formally establish a national unity government. On February 6, Abbas went, taking Dahlan with him. Two days later, with Hamas no closer to recognizing Israel, a deal was struck.

Under its terms, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas would remain prime minister while allowing Fatah members to occupy several important posts. When the news hit the streets that the Saudis had promised to pay the Palestinian Authority’s salary bills, Fatah and Hamas members in Gaza celebrated together by firing their Kalashnikovs into the air.

Once again, the Bush administration had been taken by surprise. According to a State Department official, “Condi was apoplectic.” A remarkable documentary record, revealed here for the first time, shows that the U.S. responded by redoubling the pressure on its Palestinian allies.

The State Department quickly drew up an alternative to the new unity government. Known as “Plan B,” its objective, according to a State Department memo that has been authenticated by an official who knew of it at the time, was to “enable [Abbas] and his supporters to reach a defined endgame by the end of 2007 The endgame should produce a [Palestinian Authority] government through democratic means that accepts Quartet principles.”

Like the Walles ultimatum of late 2006, Plan B called for Abbas to “collapse the government” if Hamas refused to alter its attitude toward Israel. From there, Abbas could call early elections or impose an emergency government. It is unclear whether, as president, Abbas had the constitutional authority to dissolve an elected government led by a rival party, but the Americans swept that concern aside.

Dennoch sollte das Imperium immer im Hinterkopf behalten, dass auch die Freunde des Imperiums gelegentlich andere Interessen verfolgen als die des Imperiums. Aber solange man die Statthalter unter Kontrolle hat, ist alles in Ordnung. Und wenn der Statthalter Gesetzte brechen und einen Staatsstreich anzetteln muss? Auch kein Problem für das mediengewandte Imperium von heute: man dreht den Sachverhalt einfach um - aus dem fehlgeschlagenen Coup der Fatah gegen die gewählte Hamas-Regierung wird ein Putsch der bösen bösen islamistischen Extremisten gegen den guten guten Präsidenten, der doch nur den Frieden will. An so obskure Details wie die Bombardierung von Ministerien und die Verhaftung von Ministern und Parlamentsabgeordneten und andere Details der "Sicherheitsoperationen" Israels im Gazastreifen, ganz zu schweigen von irgendwelchen geheimen Waffenlieferungen, die von irgendwelchen Zeitungen aufgedeckt worden sind, und die sich auch kaum zu einem Bild zusammenfügen würden (Denn es wissen doch alle, dass Abbas der Gute ist, und wieso sollte der sowas schlimmes tun?), kann sich eine Woche danach sowieso niemand mehr erinnern, und falls doch, auch egal.