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Editor's Note:
The mainstream media knew about this story, but failed to
report. Why? Is there a conspiracy of silence?
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Video Clip Of The Week
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US Coup Backfires, But Most Media Outlets Unwilling to
Investigate, Cover Story
by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO - A recent article in Vanity Fair magazine "exposing"
a U.S.-planned coup attempt against Palestinian resistance
movement Hamas last year has ignited a storm of debate
about Washington's Middle East policies. Yet for more than
nine months, details of the plot were reported in the
independent Arabic press — and elsewhere — leading some
observers to ask: Where was the mainstream media?
"From the very beginning, Hamas has publicly insisted that
what happened in Gaza last year came in reaction to plans
being hatched against it," Tarek Abd al-Gaber, former news
correspondent for Egyptian state television covering Israel
and the Palestinian territories, told IPS.
Hamas has been widely blamed in much of the mainstream
media for carrying out a "violent coup" against the
Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Gaza Strip last summer.
After six days of heavy fighting, Hamas wrested control
of the territory from the government of PA President
Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the U.S.-backed Fatah movement,
in mid-June.
Hamas fighters quickly seized all official institutions
and symbols of governance in the Gaza Strip, including the
presidential residence in Gaza city.
Declaring a state of emergency from the Fatah-ruled West
Bank, Abbas announced the dissolution of the previous
national unity government, led by Hamas-affiliated Prime
Minister Ismael Haniyeh. Hamas leaders in Gaza, however,
refused to recognise the declaration, and have remained
in control of the territory.
Most western capitals, led by Washington, quickly condemned
the takeover, placing blame for the dangerous turn of
events squarely on Hamas. The refrain was taken up by much
of the western media, which consistently portrayed the
dispute as one between "extremist" Hamas in the Gaza Strip
and "moderate" Fatah in the West Bank.
Many Arab capitals, too, denounced Hamas's seizure of the
volatile territory. The day after the upset, Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak was quoted in the state press as
describing what happened as "the overthrow of Palestinian
legitimacy."
"What happened in the Gaza Strip was nothing less than a
military coup d'etat," Mohamed Basyouni, former Egyptian
ambassador to Israel and current head of the Shura (upper
parliamentary) Council's committee for Arab affairs, told
IPS at the time. "It was totally illegitimate."
Yet in its April issue, the U.S. leisure magazine Vanity
Fair makes a startling claim: that Hamas's takeover of
the territory was prompted by a secret U.S. plan aimed at
extirpating the Islamist group's leadership in Gaza.
In an article entitled 'The Gaza Bombshell', the magazine
purports to "lay bare a covert initiative" approved by the
White House and implemented by the U.S. State Department
"to provoke a Palestinian civil war."
Relying on confidential documents and former administration
officials, author David Rose writes that after Hamas's
unexpected victory in the 2006 Palestinian legislative
elections, the U.S. administration drew up a plan to arm
Fatah cadres with the aim of forcefully removing Hamas
from power in Gaza. Under the terms of the arrangement,
Rose writes, Fatah received arms and financing through a
handful of Washington's Arab allies, including Egypt and
Jordan.
According to sources cited in the article, the plan was to
be jointly coordinated by U.S. Lieutenant-General Keith
Dayton and long-time Fatah strongman Mohamed Dahlan.
But the conspiracy was stillborn. After a Jordanian
newspaper leaked details of the plot, Hamas pre-emptively
seized control of Gaza on Jun. 14 and arrested much of
Fatah's leadership throughout the territory.
Instead of driving the Islamist group from power, Vanity
Fair writes, "U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently
provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza."
White House and State Department officials have strenuously
denied the article's claims. Nevertheless, the Gaza
"bombshell" has received wide coverage in the western news
media, with several commentators comparing the magazine's
"revelations" to the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s,
which also involved the covert — and illegal — supply of
arms to the Middle East.
Yet according to many local observers, the existence of
the so-called "Dayton Plan" has been fairly well known
since the upset in Gaza more than nine months ago.
"Hamas has consistently and publicly stated that what
happened in June came in reaction to the Dayton Plan,
which aimed at the group's destruction," said Ibrahim
Eissa, editor-in-chief of independent daily al-Dustour,
which published Hamas's allegations last summer.
"But the group's claims received little coverage in the
mainstream Arab media — even (Arabic language news channel)
al-Jazeera didn't give the issue much attention," Eissa
told IPS. "The plot allegations were only covered in a
handful of independent newspapers and on websites
sympathetic to Hamas."
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Abd al-Gaber agreed that Egyptian state media wholly
neglected to convey Hamas's point of view regarding the
reasons for the Gaza seizure.
"The official press took the U.S. line and simply blamed
Hamas for everything," he said. "The White House insisted
on calling Hamas's actions a 'coup' regardless of the
circumstances, and official media — in the west and in
the Arab world — repeated this mantra."
One notable exception to this was the Egyptian English-
language state broadsheet al-Ahram Weekly. In its Jun. 21
edition, only one week after the Gaza upset, the newspaper
quoted Hamas leader Yehia Moussa at length about the failed
plot.
"[U.S.-backed Fatah fighters] were planning to carry out a
bloody coup against Hamas involving the murder of hundreds
of people, including Hamas's political and religious
leaders," Moussa was quoted as saying. "But we managed to
thwart their plans before they could carry them out."
Nor did IPS miss the story. In August of last year, in an
article devoted to Fatah's declining popularity ('Bush
Could Have Given Fatah That Kiss of Death'), IPS explicitly
cited the Dayton Plan as a chief reason for Fatah's
deteriorating image on the Arab Street.
"Fatah's image has also been tarnished by revelations that
emerged in the immediate wake of the Gaza upset regarding
a failed plan to extirpate the Hamas leadership," IPS
reported from Cairo on Aug. 21. "According to Hamas
officials, the 'Dayton Plan' — named after U.S. General
Keith Dayton — had been scheduled to take place on
Jul. 13."
Citing Hamas spokesmen, the article noted that that the
operation "was to be led by Fatah-affiliated strongman
Mohamed Dahlan with logistical support from the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency."
The article went on to quote Essam al-Arian, a leading
member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood movement — which
controls a fifth of the Egyptian parliament and is
ideologically close to Hamas — as saying: "The so-called
Dayton Plan aimed to manipulate the Palestinians into
waging war against each other."
So why, then — if details of the U.S. plan were so readily
accessible for the last nine months — are Vanity Fair's
disclosures being treated by the mainstream media as new
information?
Mohamed Mansour, professor of media at Cairo University,
says the belated reporting proves the overwhelming bias
against Hamas in much, if not all, of the western media.
"Western media institutions do everything in their power
to tarnish the image of the Palestinian quest for state-
hood," Mansour told IPS. "This can only be attributed to
the Zionist influence on western, particularly American,
media — a fact that can no longer be debated."
Although the Vanity Fair article serves to vindicate
Hamas's Gaza takeover, Mansour went on to question the
timing of its publication.
"Why did the media take so long to break the story?" he
asked. "I suspect the article was only published now to
further aggravate the rift between Hamas and Fatah and
divert attention from developments elsewhere."
According to Eissa, Egypt's official press has yet to
mention the contentious Vanity Fair report.
"Even now, the state press hasn't reported on the Vanity
Fair story," he said, noting that al-Dustour, by contrast,
had published translated selections from the article in
the first week of March.
Eissa added: "Like much of the western media, the official
Arab press would rather ignore Hamas than publish stories
that might serve to justify the resistance group's
actions."
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