Conflict Blotter

I spoke with a new minister in Abbas’ emergency government of technocrats yesterday. Transportation Minister Mashhour Abu Daka is a balding and bespectacled mechanical engineer with a PhD from the Imperial College in London. Like most of the newly appointed government in Ramallah he is apolitical and little known to most Palestinians.

The thrust of his comments was that Fatah’s leaders must eventually cave in and resume contacts with Hamas in Gaza or else basic services, from schools, to hospitals, to issuing drivers licenses and passports, will simply cease to function properly. Several Hamas leaders have called for talks with Fatah, but so far few from Fatah have voiced such opinions.

As for Abbas’ strident speech yesterday in which he vowed no contacts with the “murderous terrorists,” it was perhaps a bit excessive, conceded Abu Daka.

“Maybe some of the tough talk we can do without,” he said.

Abu Daka faces an impossible task, and he freely admits it. The cabinet has ordered the ministers to make reestablishing control over Gaza a priority. Even though there is a parallel Hamas government in Gaza, Ramallah ministers are expected to continue trying to run their ministries in Gaza and continue supplying services to Gaza’s residents. Abu Daka said his transportation ministry employees had been told they must remain loyal to the Fatah government in Ramallah… BUT, if they feel they are in danger then they are free to follow the Hamas minister’s orders instead without losing their paycheck. How can anyone in Ramallah possibly know if a Gaza public servant truly feels threatened? Abu Daka shrugged.

“You can imagine what a difficult situation I am in,” he said.

A Gaza public servant who plays his cards right could theoretically collect two pay checks, one from the Hamas run ministry and one from the ministry in Ramallah. Gaza’s security officers have similarly been told not to report for duty, but have been assured they will continue to get paychecks. Not a bad deal.
Abu Daka, a candid pragmatist who seemed to have little taste for politics and a sincere sense of national duty, expressed his dismay at Palestinians’ current woes:

We are the only people in the world with no control over our own nation and yet we have two governments who are fighting over a non-exsistent authority.