Palestinian children play on the rubble of the destroyed building of the labour syndicate during a protest in Gaza City. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

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.

Related stories Rice misses the obvious in peace-making Untold stories: Saadat Hassouneh The great lake of Gaza: a new crisis in the making

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.

To read the full article please visit Inter Press Service.