Slaying in Gaza highlights lawlessness

By Ravi Nessman
The Associated Press

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Some fear the situation in Gaza is spinning out of control, and the territory could descend into chaos and even civil war.

"There is violence against everybody," said Marwan Kanafani, a Palestinian legislator. "You don't know who is killing whom or why it is happening."

Israel gets some of the blame, for destroying police installations during more than three years of violence. This may have left the security forces too weak to take on the armed gangs increasingly controlling Gaza's streets, including gunmen with ties to Arafat's Fatah movement.

But the Palestinian Authority's tangled web of competing security services and Arafat's hands-off policy toward gunmen are seen as the main factors in the chaos. As part of his leadership style, Arafat has encouraged rivalries to keep in line possible challengers and has condoned corruption as a perk for loyalists.

"There are those who want to take the law into their own hands, and most of them are in the higher ranks of the security forces," said Hafez Barghouti, editor in chief of the Palestinian daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida.

Israel's army chief, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, told a committee of the Israeli parliament yesterday that Palestinian society "is rife with internal power struggles, maybe we can even call it anarchy."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been talking in recent weeks about a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and some West Bank areas if peace efforts remain stalled.

There is concern Islamic militant groups, the main opposition to Arafat, could try to seize power after such a withdrawal. However, recent vigilante attacks on government offices and journalists in Gaza were blamed on gunmen with ties to Fatah, not on militants from Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

Despite the unrest, many Gazans were stunned when Khalil al-Zaben, 59, was riddled by a dozen bullets early yesterday as he left his Gaza City office.

Arafat denounced the killing as a "dirty assassination" and convened his Cabinet and national-security council to discuss what was seen as one of the most serious challenges to the Palestinian Authority.
 
"This chaos will not be tolerated. I believe the Palestinian government and security forces must take all action to end this chaos," Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said.

Many Palestinian officials and scores of officers from three different security services attended al-Zaben's official funeral yesterday. Members of Arafat's bodyguard acted as pallbearers.

There was no claim of responsibility, but one official said privately he suspected the assailants had ties to Fatah. Al-Zaben made enemies in Gaza by filing detailed reports to Arafat about various factions' activities, the official said.

Last week, al-Zaben distributed a leaflet denouncing "gangs of professional killers and assassins" whom he held responsible for a recent attack that wounded a Fatah politician. Al-Zaben, a local publisher, also headed a Palestinian Authority-backed human-rights group that monitored the fate of Palestinians imprisoned in other countries.

Even before al-Zaben's killing, internal violence was running high in Gaza.

In the past month, the offices of a weekly news magazine that criticized corruption were ransacked and a newspaper journalist had his car firebombed. Rival security forces opened fire at each other at Gaza police headquarters, killing a police officer.

About 15 masked Palestinians burst into a Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation office, demanding jobs at gunpoint on Saturday, three days after 20 masked men with assault rifles and hand grenades raided the Gaza City office of the Palestinian Land Authority, demanding land deeds be transferred to them.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company