The split in Palestinian ranks between Hamas-run Gaza and Fatah-controlled West Bank has led to the total isolation of Gaza by the international community.

Right after President Mahmoud Abbas unilaterally sacked the Hamas-led and democratically elected government, the Quartet of the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia issued a statement voicing support for the new Palestinian cabinet, led by new Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. "The Quartet recognized the necessity and legitimacy of [Abbas] decisions, taken under Palestinian law", it said.

Since then, the United States has announced that it would end its 15-month-old economic and political embargo of the Palestinian Authority. The European Union also promised to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in crucial aid to the Western-backed emergency cabinet in the occupied West Bank. Israel too said it would tighten its financial clampdown on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, whose 1.5 million residents are aid-dependent. "No financial assistance can go to any entity or person with connections to the Hamas-run administration in Gaza,” a senior Israeli official told Reuters on Tuesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is in Washington for talks with President George W. Bush on Tuesday, said the tax revenues Israel owes to the Palestinians would be released. Israeli officials estimated that $300 million to $400 million in Palestinian tax revenues would be transferred to Fayyad’s government, short of the $700 million sought by Abbas. Israeli sources say the rest of the money has been frozen by court order. "We will do it (transfers) in steps," said the senior Israeli official, adding that the plan is to bar Palestinian tax funds transferred to Abbas from reaching Gaza to run Hamas-led agencies and pay workers.

To further cripple Hamas, Israel is also considering banning private transfers to individuals in Gaza through Western Union and other financial institutions, a top Israeli official said.

Hamas, the first Arab Islamic party that came to power through the ballot box in January 2006, has been boycotted by Israel, the U.S. and EU because it refuses to meet their conditions; recognition of Israel, renunciation of resistance and acceptance of past peace deals. Israel’s continued occupation and the inability of Hamas to implement a power-sharing agreement with its rival Fatah party, led by Abbas, has further complicated the situation, leading to the disastrous consequences Palestinians witnessed over the past week.

By opening the funding taps to the emergency government in the occupied West Bank, Israel and the United States showed their determination to completely isolate Hamas financially, diplomatically and militarily in the Gaza Strip, which the resistance group seized last week. The aim is to boost President Abbas and Fatah (the main element in the PLO and once the arch-enemy of Israel but now seen as its negotiating partner) and push Hamas into a corner.

Hamas, which slammed Abbas’ formation of a new government as “illegitimate”, called the continued financial sanctions a "failed policy" and part of a "Zionist-American plot.”

“Any siege on the Gaza Strip will beget an explosion in the faces of all of those who took part in imposing the siege,” said Hamas’ spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.

According to an editorial on the BBC, the problem of the Western plan is that it’s been tried before and has failed because it hasn’t delivered the state the Palestinians desire. Fatah has been rejected by Palestinian voters in January 2006 as corrupt and inefficient. The logical outcome of the Western approach is that the West Bank would be favored at the expense of Gaza.

"My suspicion is that Gaza is going to come under an even stronger siege than before,” Mouin Rabbani, senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, told Reuters. “What the international community will try and do now is turn Gaza into hell while helping the West Bank, to show what you get when you elect people we like."

Israel, which controls Gaza's airspace, its seacoast and a land border that runs for 32 miles, claims that it won't let a humanitarian crisis develop in the coastal strip, but it only allows some food and some fuel to reach Gazans, nothing more. If Gaza was labeled the world's biggest prison, the rules now amount to a lockdown.

Palestinians who want to leave Gaza are now trapped on the Gaza-Israel border, where Israeli occupation forces are pushing them back. Things got worse on Monday when Israeli soldiers killed one Palestinian and wounded dozens others near the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza. The Palestinians who succeeded to escape Gaza on Monday got out by ambulance, correspondents say.

Another problem is that the resumption of financial aid to those in the occupied West Bank won't solve all their problems. The Palestinian emergency cabinet wants more than direct cash aid. Abbas wants greater freedom of movement on the West Bank, the release of Palestinian detainees, especially the leading Fatah figure Marwan Baghouti, and beyond that, a new effort to resume peace talks with the Israelis.

Israel’s readiness to meet these demands remains to be seen.

Internationally, there seems to be a policy divergence between the EU and the U.S., which seized this chance to crush Hamas, and through this, diminish the influence of one of the party’s major supporters, Iran. So far, it’s unclear whether the EU will go along with the U.S. and Israeli efforts to totally isolate Gaza.

A European Union aid program known as the Temporary International Mechanism plans to resume paying monthly "allowances" -- approximately $360 each -- directly to the Palestinian Authority's non-security work force, including those in Hamas-run Gaza, EU officials told Reuters.

But an Israeli official said Israel wants to scale back the European program to only pay allowances to workers in Gaza's health sector.

Both the Gaza cabinet, led by Prime Minister Ismael Haniya, and the Fayyad government say that they’re representing the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza. At some point, there will have to be new elections and this will indicate whether the Western plan worked.

By Amina Anderson

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinian children look out of their house window after Israeli army imposed a curfew (archive)