{"id":1512,"date":"2018-03-13T17:56:30","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T17:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/?p=1512"},"modified":"2018-03-13T17:56:30","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T17:56:30","slug":"blast-hits-palestinian-prime-ministers-convoy-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/2018\/03\/13\/blast-hits-palestinian-prime-ministers-convoy-in-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Blast Hits Palestinian Prime Minister\u2019s Convoy in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"
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JERUSALEM \u2014 A roadside bomb blast in Gaza Tuesday morning damaged several vehicles in the convoy of the Palestinian Authority\u2019s prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, in what the authority called a failed assassination attempt. But the incident quickly raised questions about the motives of those responsible, and whether a successful assassination might not have been their real aim.<\/p>\n

No group immediately claimed responsibility, and Mr. Hamdallah was unharmed, but the attack came amid a tense standoff between his Ramallah-based government, dominated by the Fatah political faction, and the Islamist militant group Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since routing Fatah in the coastal enclave in\u00a0a civil war a decade ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Israel, with help from Egypt, has kept\u00a0Gaza under a strict blockade<\/a>\u00a0for years, and conditions in Gaza have grown increasingly dire. The\u00a0Palestinian Authority compounded those problems<\/a>\u00a0last year with financial pressures that included mass layoffs and crippling daily power outages.<\/p>\n

In October, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority\u00a0began reconciliation talks<\/a>, but those have bogged down, even as shortages of clean water, medicine and other necessities have fueled concerns that the dispute could boil over into violence.<\/p>\n

Adding to the intrigue was the explosion\u2019s timing: It came hours before the start of a White House meeting being billed as a \u201cbrainstorming session\u201d on how to solve the Gaza crisis. The Palestinian Authority \u2014 furious over the Trump administration\u2019s actions in\u00a0recognizing Jerusalem<\/a>\u00a0as Israel\u2019s capital, moving its embassy there from Tel Aviv, and cutting aid for Palestinian refugees \u2014 refused to attend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Hamdallah continued on to a scheduled appearance in Beit Lahia, at the opening of a long-awaited water-treatment project. \u201cThey blew up three cars in my convoy near Beit Hanoun,\u201d he told reporters at the event.<\/p>\n

Fatah officials immediately pointed fingers at Hamas. The office of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority\u2019s president and the leader of Fatah, said it \u201cholds Hamas responsible\u201d for the \u201ccowardly attack,\u201d and Hussein al-Sheikh, a member of Fatah\u2019s Central Committee who is the authority\u2019s minister of civil affairs, called Hamas \u201cfully responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Majid Faraj, the Palestinian Authority\u2019s intelligence chief, who was with Mr. Hamdallah, stopped short of blaming Hamas but noted that the group and its security forces continued to bear \u201cfull responsibility for ensuring the safety of the land.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay E. Mladenov, also stressed that Hamas was responsible for enabling the Palestinian government to work \u201cwithout fear of intimidation, harassment and violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said, however, that Hamas had no role in the attack. He called the blast an attempt to \u201ctamper with the security of the Gaza Strip\u201d and to \u201cstrike any efforts to achieve unity and reconciliation,\u201d and demanded an investigation.\u00a0<\/span>Mr. Barhoum instead sought to blame Israel: He suggested those responsible were \u201cthe same hands\u201d who had gunned down Mazen Fakha, a Hamas official responsible for a number of terror attacks, in March 2017, and tried to kill Tawfiq Abu Naim, the head of Hamas\u2019s security forces in Gaza, in October.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hamas has accused Israel of being behind the attacks on both men, who were freed from Israeli prisons in 2011 in a controversial prisoner swap for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit<\/p>\n

Mr. Abu Naim, inspecting the scene on Tuesday, similarly said the perpetrators had \u201cexecuted what the Israeli occupation demands,\u201d but added: \u201cWe are sorry for what happened to our brothers in the delegation, including the prime minister.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Hamdallah, seemingly undaunted by the attack, said he remained determined to heal the Fatah-Hamas rift in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will never prevent us from getting rid of the bitter division,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cI say in spite of the explosion today, this won\u2019t stop us carrying on with our mission to achieve unity and end the split.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roadside bombs in Gaza are a sensitive subject for the Palestinian Authority and particularly for Mr. Abbas, its president, said Grant Rumley, co-author of a biography of Mr. Abbas, \u201cThe Last Palestinian.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2007, several large bombs were planted along the route Mr. Abbas was about to use to attend a meeting with a Hamas leader in Gaza. The\u00a0bombs were discovered<\/a>, Mr. Abbas aborted the meeting, and he has not returned to Gaza since, Mr. Rumley said.<\/p>\n

The relatively limiteddamage caused by the bomb on Tuesday gave rise to considerable speculation among analysts and officials in Gaza and beyond about who, beside Hamas, might have had reason to set off the device \u2014 either as an authentic assassination attempt or, perhaps, to send a message.<\/p>\n

In Gaza\u2019s complex political and factional thicket there were no shortage of other potential suspects: Salafi jihadists, who of late have attacked Hamas about as much as they have attacked Israel; allies of Muhammad Dahlan, the exiled Fatah leader who is reviled by Mr. Abbas but widely seen as a potential successor to him; and the Palestinian Authority itself \u2014 an embarrassing security lapse could bolster its case that Hamas ought to turn over security control in Gaza to the authority.<\/p>\n

Indeed, within hours of the attack and Mr. Hamdallah\u2019s return to the West Bank, Palestinian Authority officials were making precisely that argument in local media coverage.<\/p>\n

Later, in Washington, Jason Greenblatt, the president\u2019s Middle East envoy, drew a similar conclusion in opening remarks at the White House meeting: \u201cThis attack, once again, demonstrates that Hamas is profoundly unfit to govern Gaza,\u201d Mr. Greenblatt said.<\/p>\n

At the blast site in Beit Hanoun, a few hundred yards from the Erez crossing from Israel, windows were shattered in nearby buildings and witnesses reported that a security officer in Mr. Hamdallah\u2019s motorcade had been lightly wounded in the face. Investigators at the scene said the explosive device was planted next to a streetlight, and that a second bomb, powered by 9-volt batteries, was found nearby, less than a foot underground.<\/p>\n

Police said that security personnel escorting Mr. Hamdallah had shot at four men on two motorcycles who were seen in the area before the blast, and then arrested them as suspects.<\/p>\n

The event Mr. Hamdallah attended on Tuesday was the opening of a long-delayed wastewater treatment plant in Beit Lahia that is intended to serve 400,000 Gaza residents. A temporary arrangement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel is supplying power for the plant, but officials are seeking a dedicated electrical line from Israel as a reliable power source.<\/p>\n

Power shortages have routinely caused water treatment to cease, allowing raw sewage to seep into the groundwater and flow into the sea, polluting the local water supply and fouling beaches throughout Gaza and along much of the southern Israeli seashore.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM \u2014 A roadside bomb blast in Gaza Tuesday morning damaged several vehicles in the convoy of the Palestinian Authority\u2019s prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, in what the authority called a failed assassination attempt. But the incident quickly raised questions about the motives of those responsible, and whether a successful assassination might not have been their real aim. No group immediately… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1513,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512\/revisions\/1513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}