Vanity Fair has what could potentially be a bombshell up. According to VF, the United States provoked a civil war in Palestine, thinking that Fatah would win it.

The subject of the article: the Palestinian territories. The main characters: President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams. The plot: a Hamas coup.

Here’s VF’s introduction:

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

David Rose:

A clue comes toward the end of the video, which was found in a Fatah security building by Hamas fighters last June. Still bound and blindfolded, the prisoners are made to echo a rhythmic chant yelled by one of their captors: “By blood, by soul, we sacrifice ourselves for Muhammad Dahlan! Long live Muhammad Dahlan!”

There is no one more hated among Hamas members than Muhammad Dahlan, long Fatah’s resident strongman in Gaza. Dahlan, who most recently served as Abbas’s national-security adviser, has spent more than a decade battling Hamas. Dahlan insists that abu Dan was tortured without his knowledge, but the video is proof that his followers’ methods can be brutal.

Bush has met Dahlan on at least three occasions. After talks at the White House in July 2003, Bush publicly praised Dahlan as “a good, solid leader.” In private, say multiple Israeli and American officials, the U.S. president described him as “our guy.”

Our guy?

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

Rose goes on to report that some insiders call it “Iran-contra 2.0.”

David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007 - which is a month after Hamas’ coup - accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He told Rose that Hamas didn’t want to take over, but that they were, purposefully, pushed by Fatah. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” he said.

Wurmser’s anger isn’t just caused by the failure (of the plan). He angry with Bush because he believes that Bush is a hypocrite. “There is a stunning disconnect between the president’s call for Middle East democracy and this policy,” he told Vanity Fair. “It directly contradicts it.”

Which sounds about right. If Rose’s story is accurate that is.

So how did this all happen? How did they come up with such a failure of a plan? Rose:

In a speech in the White House Rose Garden on June 24, 2002, President Bush announced that American policy in the Middle East was turning in a fundamentally new direction.

Arafat died, Abbas took over, and elections were “originally set for July 2005, but later postponed by Abbas until January 2006.”

Dahlan, however, told “his friends in the Bush administration that Fatah still wasn’t ready for elections in January.” He explained to them that “[d]ecades of self-preservationist rule by Arafat had turned the party into a symbol of corruption and inefficiency—a perception Hamas found it easy to exploit. Splits within Fatah weakened its position further.”

He told Rose: “Everyone was against the elections.” Except, as Rose puts it, for Bush. “Bush decided, ‘I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.’ Everyone is following him in the American administration, and everyone is nagging Abbas, telling him, ‘The president wants elections.’ Fine. For what purpose?”

So they had elections. The result: Hamas won big.

The result: panic within the Bush administration. They thought that elections would result in a major victory for Fatah. They didn’t have a back-up plan. They didn’t know what to do.

An official with the Department of Defense said: “Everyone blamed everyone else. We sat there in the Pentagon and said, ‘Who the fuck recommended this?’”

Well, they had to deal with it of course, so the US decided to work with Russia, the EU and the UN. The quartet demanded “that the new Hamas government renounce violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and accept the terms of all previous agreements. When Hamas refused, the Quartet shut off the faucet of aid to the Palestinian Authority, depriving it of the means to pay salaries and meet its annual budget of roughly $2 billion.”

When the US learned that Abbas wanted to work with Hamas - to establish a unity government - Rice headed over to Palestine to talk to him. Bush et al. weren’t pleased. As Rose explains, “America’s leverage in Palestinian affairs was much stronger than it had been in Arafat’s time. Abbas had never had a strong, independent base, and he desperately needed to restore the flow of foreign aid—and, with it, his power of patronage. He also knew that he could not stand up to Hamas without Washington’s help.”

This meant that he was willing to give in to American demands. He promised Rice that he would “dissolve the government.” Rice reportedly asked him: “So we’re agreed? You’ll dissolve the government within two weeks?” To which Abbas replied: “Maybe not two weeks. Give me a month. Let’s wait until after the Eid” (the fest after Ramadan). When Rice went into the SUV she, according to an official Rose spoke to, said “That damned iftar has cost us another two weeks of Hamas government.”

In case you’re wondering whether the story can become more dramatic, and whether Rose had any facts to work with, there’s this:

Weeks passed with no sign that Abbas was ready to do America’s bidding. Finally, another official was sent to Ramallah. Jake Walles, the consul general in Jerusalem, is a career foreign-service officer with many years’ experience in the Middle East. His purpose was to deliver a barely varnished ultimatum to the Palestinian president.

We know what Walles said because a copy was left behind, apparently by accident, of the “talking points” memo prepared for him by the State Department. The document has been authenticated by U.S. and Palestinian officials.

“We need to understand your plans regarding a new [Palestinian Authority] government,” Walles’s script said. “You told Secretary Rice you would be prepared to move ahead within two to four weeks of your meeting. We believe that the time has come for you to move forward quickly and decisively.”

The memo reads:

Hamas should be given a clear choice, with a clear deadline: … they either accept a new government that meets the Quartet principles, or they reject it The consequences of Hamas’ decision should also be clear: If Hamas does not agree within the prescribed time, you should make clear your intention to declare a state of emergency and form an emergency government explicitly committed to that platform.

It seems that all involved knew that this approach would result in “rebellion and bloodshed.” That’s why… “If you act along these lines, we will support you both materially and politically. We will be there to support you.”

In other words, the US agreed to arm Fatah.

Furthermore, the US ’suggested’ to Abbas that he should “strengthen [his] team.” The Americans even suggested some potential key players: Muhammad Dahlan was one of them.

Fatah appeared stronger, Rose explains. It had more soldiers and more weapons. But there was a gigantic problem - which the US seemingly didn’t notice: “The irony of the blockade on foreign aid after Hamas’s legislative victory, meanwhile, was that it prevented only Fatah from paying its soldiers.”

Dahlan told Rose that he knew that Fatah was weak. “I made a lot of activities to give Hamas the impression that we were still strong and we had the capacity to face them,” he said. “But,” he went on to say, “I knew in my heart it wasn’t true.”

That’s why he decided that Fatah had to wage “very clever warfare.”

According to those who suffered, “very clever” meant that he kidnapped and tortured members of Hamas’s Executive Force. Rose quotes some of Dahlan’s victims. I suggest you all read it, suffice to say that this particular person wasn’t treated according to the Geneva Convention.

Hamas wasn’t willing to take it, of course, and fought back. And so, for months, the two terrorist organizations - basically - waged a dirty war on each other. “Dozens died every month,” Rose writes.

This dirty little man, Dahlan, was supported by the US. And very actively at that. Three US officials told Rose that Bush said: “He’s our guy.”

Bush wasn’t the only one who was very positive about Dahlan. Rice and her Assistant Secretary David Welch, the man in charge of Middle East policy at the State Department were so as well. One of Welch’s colleagues told Rose: “David Welch didn’t fundamentally care about Fatah. He cared about results, and [he supported] whatever son of a bitch you had to support. Dahlan was the son of a bitch we happened to know best. He was a can-do kind of person. Dahlan was our guy.”

To cut a long story short: the US tried to help Dahlan wherever it could. Meetings were held, agreements were reached. The US would help Fatah become stronger, it would help reorganize Fatah’s security forces, and so on, all in an attempt to push Hamas out of power.

“To push Hamas out of power,” meant, of course, civil war.

Both the US and Fatah were willing to fight. The US thought that Fatah would win, Fatah agreed (mostly) and… Abbas et al. needed the support of the US. Without the US they were nowhere.

So, the US tried to help Fatah arm itself, but Congress wasn’t cooperating. This is why Bush et al. searched for other means to help their allies. At the same time, however, the Bush administration tried to get Congress to agree to send at least some money to Palestine. Aide money. Money that would be used to buy weapons and to fight Hamas.

An official told Rose in that regard that there were two “parallel programs.” An overt one, “and a covert one, not only to buy arms but to pay the salaries of security personnel.”

To read more about the details of the program see the article at VF.

One former intelligence official said, about the legality of the program: “It was close to the margins. But it probably wasn’t illegal.”

Doesn’t matter of course, or it does, but it didn’t matter to Bush et al. Soon the US started shipping money and weapons to Fatah. “2,000 Egyptian-made automatic rifles, 20,000 ammunition clips, and two million bullets,” arrived in Palestine in late December 2006.

Not much later, the “very clever warfare” between Hamas and Fatah, initiated by Dahlan in cooperation with the US, escalated. “Fatah forces under his control stormed the Islamic University of Gaza, a Hamas stronghold, and set several buildings on fire. Hamas retaliated the next day with a wave of attacks on police stations.”

Abbas was seemingly impressed by Hamas’ strength. He “blinked.” He reached an agreement with Hamas. “Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas would remain prime minister while allowing Fatah members to occupy several important posts. When the news hit the streets that the Saudis had promised to pay the Palestinian Authority’s salary bills, Fatah and Hamas members in Gaza celebrated together by firing their Kalashnikovs into the air.”

That’s nice, but the US wasn’t happy. Rice is described as being “apoplectic” about it.

They thought of a Plan B.

The State Department quickly drew up an alternative to the new unity government. Known as “Plan B,” its objective, according to a State Department memo that has been authenticated by an official who knew of it at the time, was to “enable [Abbas] and his supporters to reach a defined endgame by the end of 2007 The endgame should produce a [Palestinian Authority] government through democratic means that accepts Quartet principles.”

Like the Walles ultimatum of late 2006, Plan B called for Abbas to “collapse the government” if Hamas refused to alter its attitude toward Israel. From there, Abbas could call early elections or impose an emergency government. It is unclear whether, as president, Abbas had the constitutional authority to dissolve an elected government led by a rival party, but the Americans swept that concern aside…

In a clear reference to the covert aid expected from the Arabs, the memo made this recommendation for the next six to nine months: “Dahlan oversees effort in coordination with General Dayton and Arab [nations] to train and equip 15,000-man force under President Abbas’s control to establish internal law and order, stop terrorism and deter extralegal forces.”

In a document called “An Action Plan for the Palestinian Presidency” the Bush administration’s goals for Plan B were elaborated. ”

The early drafts stressed the need for bolstering Fatah’s forces in order to “deter” Hamas. The “desired outcome” was to give Abbas “the capability to take the required strategic political decisions … such as dismissing the cabinet, establishing an emergency cabinet.”

The drafts called for increasing the “level and capacity” of 15,000 of Fatah’s existing security personnel while adding 4,700 troops in seven new “highly trained battalions on strong policing.” The plan also promised to arrange “specialized training abroad,” in Jordan and Egypt, and pledged to “provide the security personnel with the necessary equipment and arms to carry out their missions.”

A detailed budget put the total cost for salaries, training, and “the needed security equipment, lethal and non-lethal,” at $1.27 billion over five years. The plan states: “The costs and overall budget were developed jointly with General Dayton’s team and the Palestinian technical team for reform”—a unit established by Dahlan and led by his friend and policy aide Bassil Jaber. Jaber confirms that the document is an accurate summary of the work he and his colleagues did with Dayton. “The plan was to create a security establishment that could protect and strengthen a peaceful Palestinian state living side by side with Israel,” he says.

And so a civil war was ignited. Hamas wasn’t willing to take it any longer. Their members were persecuted and killed. And tortured. Hundreds of Hamas members had already died. Enough was enough. It didn’t want to take over, but now Hamas considered it the only way to, basically, survive.

So they fought back. Gaza exploded. The two sides had a terrific go at each other, but Fatah was much weaker than Hamas. The party that had caused the civil war in the first place, Fatah, lost. Hamas took over control of Gaza. The big losers: the Palestinian people, Fatah, the US and, of course, Israel.

And all of that because, this is at least what Rose says, the US thought of a stupid plan. A plan that was focused on democracy, which resulted in a nightmare (a victory for Hamas). That’s how it all started. Bringing democracy to a people not ready for it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the US continued to make mistake after mistake, secret deal, after secret deal, resulting in an even worse nightmare: a civil war won by Hamas.

For what? Is Israel safer? Are Palestinians more prosperous? Is Hamas weaker?

No.

No.

No.