Several dozen released prisoners, members of the various Palestinian factions, gathered at Manara Square in the center of Ramallah on Tuesday afternoon. They addressed an emotional call to their brethren in the Gaza Strip to stop the battles. One of the speakers shouted into the microphone slogans about Palestinian unity and the heroic shaheeds (martyrs), Yasser Arafat and Ahmad Yassin. He asked the participants to repeat after him: "I swear in the name of Allah that I will not participate and I will not fight in wars against members of my Palestinian people."

The event, reminiscent of a ceremony for swearing in rookie soldiers, did not make any particular impression on the brethren in Gaza. On that same day, six Palestinians were killed there in battles between the Fatah and the Hamas. The inhabitants of Gaza City this week were drawn willy-nilly into a civil war.

Roadblocks were set up in the neighborhoods, and at every corner armed activists could be seen building improvised fortifications of sandbags. Residents related that every few minutes, bursts of gunfire were heard from a different direction. Ambulances evacuated casualties to Shifa Hospital, but the fighting reached there as well. Activists from both the camps infiltrated the hospital to ensure that the rival's wounded were killed. S., a journalist from Gaza, says that he decided to forbid his children to go to school. "Who is going to promise me that they will return home? What if two armed men start shooting at one another and my daughters have to run between the bullets? I preferred that they remain with us. I also worked from home."

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Faher Abu Awad, a chemistry lecturer at the Islamic University in Gaza, sent his children to school only during part of the week. "Since the three children of a man from the security apparatus were killed last week, parents in Gaza have been very afraid for their children's safety. For the past few days armed men have taken up positions on the roofs of the tall buildings and have been shooting from there into the streets."

Abu Awad, 43 and the father of five, says that in the past he was identified with Hamas. "But for three years now I have been totally independent, not connected to any organization. I've bought a cell phone for each of my children so that we know what is happening with them. We give them money for taxis, so they won't roam the streets." On Monday he went out to work, but the rest of the week he preferred to remain at home in front of the television screen, the radio and the frequency scanner.

"I'm a heavy consumer of news and I wanted to have a full picture of the events. I bought a scanner by means of which I hear the security apparatuses' communications systems," he says. He heard about the battle at Shifa over the scanner. "That's also how I understood that in Hamas they are interested in stopping the fighting. I heard a report over the communications system of one of the soldiers in Fatah who related that Hamas activists were going up on the roof of the Foreign Ministry building. When Fatah demanded that they come down off the roof, Hamas agreed. This shows that the organization is not interested in escalation."

Nevertheless, the next day six people were killed. "But if the Hamas wanted it, it would have ended with 600 killed, instead of six. Before the recent events, Hamas felt like a superpower in Gaza - that no one could challenge its strength. But now the senior Hamas people and the people of the operational force are afraid to walk in the street alone. If at the beginning of the fighting they were talking about a day of victory over the heretics, today they are aware of Fatah's strength and the need for unity. This is a fundamental change in the political culture of Hamas."

According to him, the surprising unity in the ranks that Fatah demonstrated this week in Gaza and the speech by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), undermined the confidence of Hamas. "Minutes after the speech on Saturday, there were thousands of Fatah supporters in the streets. They weren't hiding behind stocking caps. Many of us in Gaza thought that Fatah already had one foot in the grave. But after years when the Fatah didn't have any presence in the streets, they have come back."

Abu Awad relates that one of his 13-year-old daughter's teachers explained to his students that Mahmoud Dahlan is responsible for the internal war. "She came home and asked whether this is true. I explained that the picture is more complicated. It is necessary to understand: In Gaza now a balance of terror between the camps has developed. In fact, right now the chance for the establishment of a unity government is greater than ever. The sides have relearned th limits of force. Even your Shin Bet security service can't talk about Hamastan in the Gaza Strip any more."

S., the journalist, is more pessimistic. "The war is far from ending. The height of it is still ahead of us. On the military plane, there is no doubt that Hamas will win. It has had a total of just two killed, as opposed to nine for Fatah. But Hamas is now perceived as just another gang that is seeing to its political future and not to the security of the inhabitants. On the propaganda plane, both sides have lost. Among the inhabitants of Gaza there is a feeling of disgust with both of them."

Abbas' speech

Abbas' announcement that he would declare early elections in his speech on Saturday was greeted with surprise in Hamas, which saw him as a leader who does not want confrontation. This was a speech that was belligerent in character, and was also not acceptable to many senior people in the PA. Yasser Abed Rabbo, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization steering committee, sat beside Abbas during the speech and expressed support for the chairman's line.

When Abed Rabbo is asked whether too great a gamble isn't being taken here, he replies decisively, almost tauntingly. "Why not? If the Hamas people want to shoot, they should shoot. Public opinion needs to understand that there are other options. In recent months Hamas has built up military, economic and social capability, whereas the chairman has been perceived as a weak and disappointing leader. Abbas surprised them with his announcement of early elections. If we do not offer a democratic alternative, a civil war will break out."

But you are there already.

Abed Rabbo: "We have already experienced civil wars in the past, and we aren't there yet. At the moment, it is a matter of a Hamas attempt to take over the PA. The real danger will be if we wait for answers from Hamas. They are convinced that they will bring about the lifting of the international siege on the government, because people like Alistair Crook (the British former intelligence man who had been in contact with the organization) sell them promises.

"But in actuality, only Iran, Syria, Sudan and Qatar have agreed to accept a visit by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. The Egyptians have hosted him only because of the affair of the kidnapped soldier, Gilad Schalit. Haniyeh himself declares that Iran is the Palestinians' strategic depth. It's not that I'm against that money, but why hasn't Iran ever transferred money to Abbas?"

When he is reminded that the public opinion polls are dubious about a Fatah victory, Abed Rabbo bangs on the table angrily.

"Forget the public opinion polls. The Americans built a whole conception on the basis of surveys that said that Fatah would win in the elections last January and therefore they argued that it was necessary to let the Hamas participate in the elections. There aren't any perfect solutions. The question is which option is worse and more dangerous. Hamas has tried to frighten us, to subvert us. The entire world wants to advance the diplomatic process with Israel. We cannot wait for an Iranian takeover in the territories."

The internal tangle in the territories is confronting Israel with a challenge: how not to slide into direct involvement in the conflict and avoid accusations of fanning it. It appears that for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who at this stage is not enthusiastic about progress with the Palestinians, the Fatah-Hamas conflict is quite convenient. The mutual killing in Gaza ostensibly confirms the claim that Israel does not have a real partner at the moment.

But the situation contains two sub-complications: One is that the formulators of the deal to release Schalit have linked it to the establishment of a Palestinian unity government, thus decreasing the chances for the soldier's return in the near future. The second is the strength of habit: The violence in the Gaza Strip sometimes spills over into the shooting of Qassam rockets, in violation of the truce that was declared four weeks ago.

On Wednesday, Olmert's policy of restraint faced its first serious test, when Islamic Jihad launched eight rockets into the Negev. In a discussion yesterday the prime minister decided in favor of restraint, despite recommendations from the Israeli Defense Forces to allow them to strike at Qassam cells that are identified at the time of launching. But this approach, notes a military source, will hold up "exactly until the first person is killed in Sderot."

North of the border

Tuesday was the northern day for the defense establishment. The top brass went north, to light candles with IDF soldiers near the border. The defense minister and his deputy, and the chief of staff and his deputy awakened exhausted soldiers from their torpor and got photographed together at military ceremonies that to the chance visitor looked as though nothing had changed in the past 20 years. The same speeches about the heroic tradition of the Jewish people, the same doughnuts dripping fat, the same disharmony of reservists from the rabbinate.

In the conference room of the 91st Division, Defense Minister Amir Peretz heard surveys from the officers about the situation north of the border. The Hezbollah is again getting arms from Syria, although in circuitous ways along bypass routes and not along the King's Road from Damascus to Beirut. The people of the organization, though at the moment without uniforms and weapons, are gradually filtering into the south.

UNIFIL, and especially the soldiers from the European battalions, are evincing relative firmness and are dismantling Hezbollah weapons and ammunition stores. It is important for the officers that there be an Israeli response policy if Hezbollah should choose to re-escalate the conflict. This, in their opinion, must be strong and disproportionate in order to disabuse the organization of the desire for a new war. The basic assumption is that we are being tested along the border. The soldiers' response to any provocation, from stones thrown at a patrol to the hanging of flags, is noted down on the other side and analyzed in advance of the next provocation.

Peretz, who is now sunk in the renewed political struggle in his party, is trying to rehabilitate his standing as defense minister, which was mortally injured in the war. He is far more up to date about issues on the agenda and he has adopted some of the military jargon for himself, but he is still lacking some of the nuances. Thus, he was surprised to discover that the division commander, Brigadier General Yossi Bachar, is a neighbor who lives in a kibbutz near Sderot.

At the meeting with the soldiers, he found it hard to believe that only a few, out of the hundreds in the dining hall, had participated in the war (the artillerymen were serving in Gaza and the new inductees of the Golani Brigade were still in the training stage during the summer).

When the company commander from Golani tells the minister that he was new in the position when the war started and "I couldn't tell my left from my right," it is hard not to wonder whether Peretz recognized something of himself in those words.

The investigations

Peretz is not impressed by the reports in the media on the start of the race for the position of chief of staff and is very cautious about expressing any opinion. It appears that if it were up to him, the director general of his ministry, Gabi Ashkenazi, would be the next chief of staff, but the question is whether the minister will have the final word in the appointment. Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, who is enjoying the reports about his legacy even less than Peretz, is determined to complete the process of the investigations in full.

According to his inner circles, the chief of staff has not yet decided whether and when to resign. The summaries of the investigations, relate generals who are taking part in them, are turning into a quarrel between Halutz and the leaders of the investigation about the extent of his responsibility for the failures.

In the immediate security reality, Halutz appears to be less involved. The brigade commanders in the territories hardly feel his presence. As far as they are concerned, he is the man who wasn't there. Some of them see this as a hint of an approaching resignation. The shadow of the investigation is accompanying Halutz. One must look at the photos of him exuding confidence from the days of the disengagement in 2005 to see the change. He is the first chief of staff since Raful (Rafel Eitan) in 1992 and Dado (David Elazar) in 1973 whose activity has had to stand the test of an investigative commission. Halutz's participation as a reserve pilot in the heroic battles of Wing 201 in the Yom Kippur War was a formative experience for him, and what his happening now is undoubtedly not a simple process. The coming weeks will be critical for his future.

It seems that on January 5, with the completion of the investigations, the picture will become somewhat clearer. This week, in an interview with the NRG site, he launched a barb at his self-designated replacements when he said that in Israel "there are five million chiefs of staff."

Halutz, like Peretz, is bothered by the damage that has been caused by the war and the investigations to the army's standing among the public. Peretz has promised the officers "full backing" and has called for distinguishing between relevant criticism and venomous attacks. Our main trouble, says a person who in his work capacity has been in close contact with the IDF in recent years, is that in the public arena at the moment, the media appear to wield more power than the army.

"Your complaints are justified," he says. "The IDF is having a hard time providing answers to them, but the citizen also needs to ask what all this is doing to the officers' motivation, or to the recruits' willingness to continue to volunteer for the combat units."