Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has accused Hamas of undermining the reconciliation agreement the Islamists signed with Fatah last April. In 2007 Fatah, angered at Hamas’ victory in the previous year’s elections, attempted to defeat the Islamists militarily with the support of the US and Israel. Gaza and the West Bank became divided with the former under Hamas and the latter under Fatah.
Last April they began a process of reconciliation and attempted to form a national unity government. In the wake of Israel’s recent attack on Gaza they have continued this process but Abbas claims Hamas is running a “shadow government” in the Gaza Strip and that there must be “one authority, one gun, one law.”
With the prospect of renewed tensions between the two groups, I thought it would be a good idea to share a review I wrote for We Left Marks back in 2010. It looks at a particularly gloating and ideological account of the Hamas-Fatah divide written by Jonathan Schanzer.
The writing of national history is problematic at the best of times. The writing of recent national history, particularly when it is related to an ongoing conflict, must be a truly daunting task. It is generally a brave scholar who picks their way through the ideological minefield of this difficult area. However, there are also those who set aside the complexities of this field of enquiry and settle for ill-conceived and ideologically motivated polemics. Jonathan Schanzer fits very much into this latter category.
Continue reading here.
Notes on the Interregnum 