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2 Document details 'US' plan
to sink Hamas By Mark Perry and
Paul Woodward
On April 30, the Jordanian
weekly newspaper Al-Majd published a story about a
16-page secret document, an "Action Plan for the
Palestinian Presidency" that called for
undermining and replacing the Palestinian
national-unity government.
The document
outlined steps that would strengthen Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas, build up Palestinian
security forces under his command, lead to the
dissolution of the Palestinian
Parliament, and strengthen US
allies in Fatah in a lead-up to parliamentary
elections that Abbas would call for early this
autumn.
The Majd document is based on a
Jordanian government translation of a reputed US
intelligence document that was obtained by the
newspaper from a Jordanian government official.
The document, an official at the newspaper said,
was drawn up by "Arab and American parties" and
"presented to Palestinian President Abbas by the
head of an Arab intelligence agency". The document
is explosive.
Should Abbas give his
agreement to the plan - which is not yet certain -
he would be complicit in a program to undermine
his own government.
Understanding the
implications of the document, Jordanian government
officials ordered that the publisher's printing
house stop the presses while that edition's plates
were confiscated. "The Jordanian security
services, which censor newspapers in advance,
intervened during the night to stop our
print-run," confirmed Fahd Al Rimawi, an editor at
Al-Majd.
On May 1, the Jordanian
government explained its decision in a statement
issued by the president of the Jordanian Press
Association, Tareq al-Moumani. The statement
claimed that Al-Majd had repeatedly published
reports "based on information taken from
intelligence sources and offends the country's
security and interests".
Moumani explained
that the printing house of the Jordanian Press
Foundation had refused to print the April 30
edition because it included news reports that were
harmful to Jordan "and offended a sisterly state".
The "sisterly state" referred to is the
Palestinian Authority (PA), according to published
sources.
On May 2, the Jordanian
government and Moumani gave further background on
the Majd case. Moumani claimed that Al-Majd's
report was "totally false" and not based on
reliable sources. Nevertheless, two days later,
Moumani was again being quoted in news reports,
this time saying that the press association
demanded "the lifting of the ban and insisted on
abolishing any censorship".
(Al-Majd,
which describes its editorial position as "Arab
nationalist", has been in several scrapes with the
Jordanian security services - including one
incident when the newspaper was banned for two
months over an editorial on Saudi Arabia.)
The Jordanian government's action brought
swift condemnation from the international
Committee to Protect Journalists. "This flagrant
act of censorship is further evidence of the poor
state of press freedom in Jordan," CPJ executive
director Joel Simon said. "Officials should allow
Al-Majd to be printed immediately."
The
pressure seems to have worked. By the end of last
week, Moumani announced that Jordanian authorities
had lifted the ban and that the April 30 edition
of Al-Majd would be reprinted.
Even so,
Al-Majd's publication of the "Action Plan for the
Palestinian Presidency" might have faded into
obscurity were it not for a May 4 article by the
Israeli newspaper Haaretz detailing a US-sponsored
"Benchmarks for Agreement on Movement and Access".
The "Acceleration Benchmarks" document detailed a
series of deadlines for Israel to begin
dismantling a large number of its security
obstacles and checkpoints in the West Bank -
allowing increased access in the occupied
territories.
The appearance of the
"Benchmarks" document within days of the
disclosure of the Majd document suggests a
connection, though despite appearances, the former
may not in fact be a component of the latter. On
the contrary, the disclosure of the two plans in
quick succession may reflect competing agendas
coming from the US State Department and the White
House.
Not surprisingly, the US press has
failed to pick up on either the Majd or Haaretz
story and has ignored the existence of the White
House program aimed at undermining the Hamas
government (see No-goodniks and the Palestinian
shootout, Asia Times Online, January
9). The Majd document came to the attention of a
wider audience when the Amman incident was
reported in the weblog Missing
Links, which translated sections of the
document from Arabic and provided analysis on the
proposed plan.
The details of the Majd
incident, the publication of the "Action Plan for
the Palestinian Presidency", the commentary
provided by Missing Links, and the subsequent
publication of the additional US document in
Haaretz have now made it possible to detail how
the United States (or at least one faction of
policymakers inside the administration) intends to
implement its program to implement a "soft coup"
against the Palestinian unity government.
America's 'action plan' In the
wake of the February Mecca Agreement, which called
for the formation of a Palestinian unity
government, White House officials scrambled to
recast their anti-Hamas program. The resulting
"action plan" relies heavily on the disbursement
of US funds to build President Abbas' security
forces at the same time that it escalates the
delivery of money to specific development projects
affiliated with his office.
The plan as
delivered to Abbas, according to a Fatah official,
is quite detailed - salaries would be provided to
those parts of the Palestinian government closely
affiliated with Fatah and supported by Abbas. The
plan envisages delivering "a strong blow to Hamas
by supplying the Palestinian people with their
immediate economic needs through the presidency
and Fatah". At the same time, the international
boycott of Hamas would stay in place and
Hamas-affiliated programs would be starved of
funds.
Senior Fatah officials who oppose
the program confirm the Majd claim that the action
plan was drawn up between the White House and Arab
intelligence officials. "You can see the hand of
[Egyptian intelligence chief] Omar Sulieman in
this," a Fatah official said. "It is no secret
that he has been working with the Americans to
strengthen Fatah."
But this Fatah official
refused to implicate anyone in the Jordanian
government, who he claimed "would be much more
skeptical of this kind of thing - which may be why
the document was leaked in the first place". And
while this Fatah official could not say for
certain who in the White House would author such a
program, the document reflects the long-held views
of White House Middle East adviser Elliott Abrams
- known as the major impetus behind the rearming
of Abbas' security force.
US worries over
the increasingly weak position of Abbas are made
clear in the action plan's language: "In the
absence of strong efforts by Abbas to protect the
position of the presidency as the center of
gravity of the Palestinian leadership, it can be
expected that international support for him will
diminish and there won't be enthusiastic
cooperation with him," the plan says.
"And
a growing number of countries, including the
European Union and the G8 [Group of Eight], will
start to look for Palestinian partners that are
more acceptable and more credible, and more able
to make advances in security and governance. And
this would strengthen the position of Hamas within
Palestinian society, and would further weaken
Fatah and the Palestinian presidency. And it would
also diminish the chances for early elections."
The plan re-emphasizes the US commitment
to building Abbas' security service, a program now
funded by some US$59 million in direct
congressionally approved security assistance. The
money "will deter Hamas or any other faction from
any attempt at
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