Who's in charge?

From The Economist print edition. GAZA, NABLUS AND RAMALLAH. 19/07/07. At the al-Awda sweet factory in central Gaza, the owner, Manal Hassan, says he is employing only a third of his usual staff of 370, and for less than half the week. But frequent border closures in the past few years have taught him to keep three months of stock; he is happy that Hamas has taken control. “Before, when I went to the bank, I needed to be surrounded by gunmen,” he says. “Now it is safer. I would rather have no money and be safe than have money and be in danger.” Down in Gaza, Hamas has its own problems. Only a few hundred of the 17,000 police are showing up for work, under orders from the government in the West Bank, which pays their salaries. Hamas militiamen are filling the gaps, and there have been cases of torture of Fatah men and attacks on journalists. Raji Sourani, a respected human-rights lawyer, condemns such attacks but says the Hamas leadership seems keen to avoid such “mistakes” and pins much of the blame on Mr Abbas. “How can you tell these people not to turn up for work? They are destroying an existing civil system.”

FOR years they have fought Israel; now it wants to pardon them. Israeli right-wingers were predictably furious at their government's decision to take 180 members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the militias loyal to the Palestinians' secular Fatah party, off its most wanted list last week. If they lay down their guns and behave for three months, it will let them move freely in the West Bank for the first time in years.

Most have signed up, though some, like Nasser Abu Aziz, a beefy militant from Nablus, the West Bank's biggest city, who sports a neatly trimmed beard, a commando-style woollen cap and a new-looking M16 rifle, are holding out for something more—possibly promises of jobs from the Palestinian Authority (PA), where many of them once worked in the security services. Fayez Tirawi, a comrade of Abu Aziz who is not on the amnesty list, is more pragmatic. He doubts that Israel will abide by the deal, but is convinced that it is the only way to give Mahmoud Abbas, the PA's president and Fatah boss (pictured above), a chance to prove his claim that he can bring order to the West Bank.

Mr Abbas is not doing this just for Israel. Some self-styled “wanted militants” are, says Shawan Jabareen, director of the al-Haq human-rights centre in Ramallah, “mafiosi” who use patriotism as a cover for crime and extortion. If Mr Abbas can use the amnesty as a first step to bringing these and other gunmen to heel, it will cement his authority in the West Bank. After last month's showdown between Fatah and Hamas left Fatah running the West Bank and the Islamists of Hamas in control of the Gaza Strip, he must convince Palestinians that Fatah can do a better job than Hamas. But these are fragile times. Israel's army still makes near-nightly raids in Nablus and other towns, killing and arresting suspects. If it accidentally kills someone on the list, all bets will be off.

Fragile times, but also strange times. Men like Mr Tirawi are now readier to co-operate with Israel, which has occupied the West Bank for 40 years, than with Hamas, many of whose men they once counted as brothers-in-arms. When he accuses the Islamists of “collaborating with Syria and Iran” and “destroying the national project”, he sounds more like George Bush, who in a speech this week said Hamas was more “devoted to extremism and murder than to serving the Palestinian people”.

Mr Bush says he wants to “boost” Mr Abbas. In his speech, originally scheduled to commemorate the much-trumpeted “vision of two states” he announced five years ago, he promised Mr Abbas $270m in aid, a loans programme for Palestinian businesses and an “international meeting” on the conflict which may well be just a special session of an already-existing foreign donors' forum. Its time and place have yet to be announced.

But that boosting does not include what even the most moderate Palestinians insist is necessary to make Mr Abbas credible at home: some prior commitments by Israel towards the creation of a Palestinian state. The goals that Mr Bush set each side are similar to those of the long-dormant “road map” towards peace, which leaves those issues to the end. Noticeably, the Palestinian obligations (such as rounding up terrorists) were “musts”, while Israeli ones (such as stopping settlement-building on the West Bank) were “shoulds”, prompting Israeli pundits to comment that Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, need fear no pressure from the Americans.

Mr Abbas, however, is feeling it intensely. The interim government he appointed after the Fatah-Hamas showdown is trying to impose order on the streets and bring the PA's institutions back to life after a year-long aid boycott during Hamas's reign, all while it is in a legal limbo. Parliament must ratify the government but more than half of Hamas's MPs are in Israeli jails and the rest refuse to turn up to vote, so there is no quorum. Early elections, which Mr Abbas has called for, are impossible without Hamas's consent.

Mr Abbas may be trying to manoeuvre the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the worldwide umbrella body (of which he is also chairman), into holding elections for its own representative council for the first time in a decade, perhaps in an attempt to override parliament. He has also signed decrees extending military courts' power and giving the interior ministry the right to close down non-governmental organisations without a court order, measures that Mr Jabareen compares to other, more repressive Arab regimes. It all adds up to a slow dismantling of institutions on which foreign donors have spent billions—with the donors' acquiescence.

Down in Gaza, Hamas has its own problems. Only a few hundred of the 17,000 police are showing up for work, under orders from the government in the West Bank, which pays their salaries. Hamas militiamen are filling the gaps, and there have been cases of torture of Fatah men and attacks on journalists. Raji Sourani, a respected human-rights lawyer, condemns such attacks but says the Hamas leadership seems keen to avoid such “mistakes” and pins much of the blame on Mr Abbas. “How can you tell these people not to turn up for work? They are destroying an existing civil system.”

Still suffocating

Meanwhile, Gaza's border crossings with Israel have stayed shut to all but humanitarian aid since the Hamas takeover. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has given warning that Gaza will become “near totally aid-dependent” unless commercial trade resumes. A telephone poll in Gaza by Near East Consulting, a firm based in Ramallah, the Palestinian capital, found that Mr Abbas now enjoys nearly double the trust rating of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas man who was prime minister until Mr Abbas brought in the emergency government, and that if an election were held, Fatah would get double the Hamas vote. Some Fatah and other politicians in the West Bank say they see signs that Hamas is beginning to buckle, and may agree to early elections under public pressure.

At the al-Awda sweet factory in central Gaza, the owner, Manal Hassan, says he is employing only a third of his usual staff of 370, and for less than half the week. But frequent border closures in the past few years have taught him to keep three months of stock; he is happy that Hamas has taken control. “Before, when I went to the bank, I needed to be surrounded by gunmen,” he says. “Now it is safer. I would rather have no money and be safe than have money and be in danger.”