Bad for the PA, good for Israel

Mahmoud Abbas isn’t going to the UN this month. He’s staying home to deal with the nascent civil war that is brewing.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has cancelled a visit to New York, where he was scheduled to attend the UN General Assembly, ahead of Israel’s Gaza pullout and after the killing of a former security chief by militants.

“Due to the handover of Gaza in the next few days and the
security situation, the president decided to remain in Gaza and not to go to New York,” Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Wednesday.

There are wheels within wheels within wheels here:

A militant coalition, the Popular Resistance Committees, claimed responsibility for Arafat’s death and for kidnapping his son, Manhal, a senior Palestinian security official.

A spokesman for the PRC said that the organization was “questioning Moussa’s son, Manhal, over his father’s crimes and he will be sentenced according to Allah’s law.”

However, in a statement issued hours later, the PRC denied any connection to the incidents.

The retraction of the claim followed hours of talks between Egyptian and Palestinian negotiators and PRC leaders, signaling apparent differences within the group.

Hamas had a part in the murder, seemingly:

Sources: Hamas played role in killing
Israeli security officials said Wednesday they believe Hamas took an active roll in the assassination of Arafat. They said the PRC took responsibility for the killing, but that Hamas had a clear interest in the elimination of Musa Arafat. The Islamic organization chose for the assassination to be carried out around the time of the IDF?s withdrawal from Gaza.

A senior IDF source said the assassination operation was led by members of the Randour family, a large Gaza clan that has been involved in a series of attacks against Israeli targets. Including among these is the January attack on the Karni crossing in which six Israeli civilians were killed.

The source said the killing of Arafat was also “criminally-motivated account settling.”

I don’t really care who’s responsible. I’m glad he’s dead, and looking forward to seeing more terrorists meet Arafat’s doom. But this article in Ha’aretz says that Arafat’s killing serves the moderates in the PA. (Huh?)

The only question that can be answered now is who gains the most from the assassination. And the answer is Palestinian Minister for Civilian Affairs Mohammed Dahlan, the patron of the Preventative Security apparatus, and its head, Rashid Abu-Shabak, who for the past two years
have been waging a sophisticated war to the death against Moussa Arafat and his late patron, Yasser Arafat.

The “death squads” of Preventative Security official Nabil Tamus and other mercenaries in the Gaza Strip have clashed consistently over the past two years with the “hell squads” of Moussa Arafat’s son, who was abducted Wednesday when his father was killed. At least three previous
attempts have been made on Moussa Arafat’s life, and the sides have been involved in numerous confrontations and street battles in the Strip during this time.

But the matter is not merely a personal one between Dahlan and Abu-Shabak, and Moussa Arafat. Wednesday’s killing joins a series of blows suffered by the “revolutionary” camp associated with Yasser Arafat, which refused to accept the option of an end to the intifada. The most
prominent individuals from this camp began to disappear from the arena even before Yasser Arafat’s death. These included Ghazi Jabali, the Gaza Strip police chief who was abducted by Dahlan’s people and subsequently dismissed, as well as dozens of officers loyal to Arafat who were ousted following Mahmoud Abbas’ rise to power.

The killing is also another stage in the consolidation and strengthening of the central stream in the PA that recognizes the importance of putting an end to the intifada, embarking on a political struggle and implementing the reforms in the PA in an effort to make progress on the
road map peace plan.

I don’t see how this killing could strengthen the moderates. Hamas is right there ready to fill any gaps that might occur in former Arafat strongmen. But we shall see.