By: Yaakov Katz – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com
All withdrawals in this part of the world end the same, with the vacuum being filled by hostile and radical terrorist elements.
It wasn’t even really a battle. On June 10, 2007, clashes erupted between Hamas and Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip. Israel had withdrawn from the coastal enclave two years earlier, and after Hamas came to power in the January 2006 election, the two sides were constantly fighting over how to jointly rule over the Palestinian people.
At the time, an American general was stationed in Israel responsible for helping to train Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, US security coordinator as he was called, explained his mission in late 2006. Iran, he said, was helping arm Hamas, and the US wanted to prevent “moderate forces” from being eliminated.
What happened over five days in the summer of 2007 cannot be blamed solely on the Americans. Fatah – the movement and security force that had received support from the West – fell apart in a matter of days. Years later, Fatah members still recall with trauma the way Hamas threw their friends off the roof or tied them up to motorcycles and dragged them through Gaza’s pothole-laden streets.