You may have thought all those appalling accounts you're hearing from Gaza of Hamas and Fatah gunmen doing things like hurling each other off roofs, shooting up hospital patients with rocket-propelled grenades and murdering each other's families were evidence of some sort of low intensity civil war in progress.
But, thanks to Tuesday night's BBC Radio 4 "The World Tonight", we now know that what they are really doing is "negotiating the power-sharing arrangements" between Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian Authority.
Yes, those are the exact words used by Dr Khalil Shikaki, presented to us as a "pollster and academic" based in Ramallah. He added. "We are still pretty much in the signalling phase."
You can listen in for yourself online by clicking on the "World Tonight" link, and clicking the "Listen Again" link for Tuesday's edition. The coverage of the Gaza situation starts about 7 and a half minutes into the clip, and includes some good comprehensive coverage of the shennanigans going on on the streets and in the hospitals. The interview with Dr Shikaki starts about 19 minutes 15 seconds in to the clip. It should be available till at least 10:00pm London time on Monday 18th June.
Dr Shikaki explained how, no, Hamas wasn't quite happy with the security arrangements as they were and they wanted to send a signal to Fatah. In fact both groups were actually sending signals to each other.
I suppose it's all much the same as those sort of signals the mafia send out when they come round and burn your house down. But his analysis is not too far away from that offered by in Haaretz' report on Tuesday night by Sami Abu Zuri, a Hamas spokesman who said that Hamas was simply trying to restore law and order.
Dr Shikaki is a curiously ambiguous and Janus-like figure, but you wouldn't know that if you just heard him as presented by "The World Tonight". According to Campus Watch, he has a track record of being associat with the radical Islamist terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, though he has always vigorously denied this. And the respected commentator Martin Kramer agrees that he's no terrorist or terrorist sympathizer, but it's the reliability of his polls that he takes issue with. It was after all, he reminds us, Shakaki's polls which failed to predict the substantial Hamas victory in the 2006 Palestinian Authority elections, and perhaps lulled the US and Britain into supporting the election process even though Hamas were standing for office, something of course a terror-supporting group with its own private army would never be allowed to do in either country.
However you read Shikaki, the most interesting thing I draw from his polls (and I doubt they could all be faked) is the consistent evidence they present that Palestinians admire Israeli democracy and they even admire it more than any other democracy.
So given that, what price those hundreds of exactly identical resolutions from dozens of PalestinianNGOS which call for a complete cultural, social, political and economic boycott of Israel and which the pro-boycott activists of UCU cite in justification of their boycott proposals?
It couldn't be, could it, that they have no more relationship to the real views of the Palestinian public than the pro-boycott resolutions of UCU and UNISON have to those of their ordinary members?
Enjoyed reading this. I'd love to send a few "signals" through the ranks of the BBC, especially those responsible for its Middle East "coverage" of the last 50 years.
Posted by: John Gentle | June 14, 2007 at 01:19 AM
Reading the latest on the Gaza mess in the Daily Telegraph this morning, I was amused to see a Palestinian quoted as saying, "The Jews never did to us what our own people are now doing to us."
Well, it would be amusing - if people weren't dying...
Posted by: JJM | June 14, 2007 at 11:26 AM
As the real nature of this 'renegotiation of security' takes place in Gaza, three cheers for Julian Manyon of ITN who's the only elephant-in-the-room spotter in UK TV so far. At the end of his report yesterday lunch time he finished by observing that the current troubles in Gaza simply couldn't be blamed on the Israelis.
The Palestinians have destroyed hopes for a Palestinian state all by themselves.
Posted by: Huldah | June 16, 2007 at 03:56 AM
"The Palestinians have destroyed hopes for a Palestinian state all by themselves".
The ultimate in shooting yourself in the foot!
Posted by: Jeremy Jacobs | June 16, 2007 at 02:22 PM
"The Palestinians have destroyed hopes for a Palestinian state all by themselves".
This cliche is getting old; every few months Palestinians do something to 'destroy hopes' and within a week or two everybody sings with one voice again: 'Long live the future Palestinian state'. Palestinians don't measure success in how close they are to independence but in how unpleasant they make life for Israelis. A Hamastan on Israeli border is the Jewish state's nightmare come true.
Posted by: szeni | June 19, 2007 at 01:22 PM