Last update - 00:00 12/06/2007
ANALYSIS: Shattered cease-fire sends Gaza spiraling back into bloodshed
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent
The Gaza Strip was once more a scene of brutal fighting Monday. Hamas militants turned Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and Beit Hanun in the northern Strip, into barricaded military positions, while members of two clans, Bakar and al-Masri, who arrived at the scene mostly to avenge the deaths of their Fatah-affiliated family members, targeted the hospital with gunfire and mortars and went as far as to execute the wounded.
The renewed clashes between Fatah and Hamas can be blamed on the Israeli media, according to an editorial published last week in the East Jerusalem daily Al-Quds. The Israeli government, the editorial asserted, is trying to fuel the internecine fighting by leaking dubious reports in the Israeli media about the factions arming. The editorial was hinting at Haaretz, which a day earlier had published that Fatah asked Israel for permission to transfer weapons and ammunition in anticipation of further clashes with Hamas.
Whatever the claims of the Al-Quds editorial, the Hamas militants who on Sunday threw Mohammed al-Swirki, a member of the Presidential Guard, from the top floor of a Gaza high rise, did so because he belonged to Fatah, and did not appear to have been motivated by the inciting articles in Haaretz. Neither did Fatah, which described the Hamas action as Nazi-like, a term usually reserved in Palestinian nomenclature to describe IDF operations. The mutual hatred and lack of trust are the reasons members of both organizations are breaking new records of violence on a daily basis.
The fighting, which has still not peaked, resumed precisely as the analysts had predicted, following the relative calm between Hamas and Israel. However, continued fighting between Fatah and Hamas will have an immediate effect on the residents of Sderot, since Hamas has perfected the sure way of calming the situation inside the Gaza Strip: massive rocket attacks against Israeli targets, resulting in a sharp IDF response, and a cessation of fighting between Fatah and Hamas, until the next round of internecine strife.
In the early hours of Monday, the Gaza streets were still calm. But the cease-fire organized by the Egyptians so that matriculation exams would go on was shattered, and the pupils took their exams with heavy exchanges of gunfire in the background. Once more, the cease-fire had lasted only a few hours. By the afternoon, the exams were over, and there was no longer any excuse for the cease-fire.
The unity government is not functioning and even the Egyptians have shown exasperation in their decision to postpone, for now, the meeting between representatives of the Palestinian factions in Cairo, in view of the continued disputes between them.