The checkpoint was manned by Force 17, Mazen and his friends immediately noticed, having taken the risk on Monday of going out in Gaza's Rimal neighborhood to take the pulse of the first cease-fire - declared the night before and broken in the morning. Two armed men stood next to the checkpoint and prevented people from continuing south from there. People said that one of them, who was masked, was actually from Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and not from Force 17.

"No passage allowed," he said. We're journalists, Mazen lied. We need to get around, and anyway, why isn't it allowed? Things have calmed down. The masked man answered: "We still don't believe the Hamas people. They harbor a lot of hostility toward us and so we have to stay here." But why block the road, like the Jews do? And why is your face masked? Mazen kept asking.

This time, the masked man didn't answer directly, though he didn't get annoyed either, and in a friendly, calm tone that contrasted with his menacing appearance, continued explaining that Hamas still couldn't be trusted.

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The checkpoint, said Mazen, a Gaza resident, was erected "next to the house of Haider Abdel Shafai, on the way to Ansar." The streets have names, but no one remembers them or uses them as milestones. The house of Abdel Shafi, an elderly leader known for his moral charisma, is much better known. And just as well known is the area where, during the first intifada, the Israeli army erected a mass detention facility that was called Ansar Two.

Now the Gazans have found a new name for the area that stretches from Abdel Shafi's house to the southernmost villa, that of President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), and which also includes several government buildings: "The Green Zone." It's a typical imitation (with the opposite meaning) of the region of the same name in Baghdad, where, Mazen explains, the offices of the Iraqi government and the American army are located, and to which entry is restricted. In Baghdad, the Green Zone is protected from gunfire, while in Gaza the Green Zone has become the scene of gunfire exchanges between Force 17 or the presidential guard, and Hamas' "operational forces" - the security mechanism established by interior minister Said al-Siam.

Contrary to the impression created by the television images, the gun battles haven't spread throughout the city; they have taken place in isolated geographical pockets. The area to the south of Abu Mazen's house, Tel al-Hawa, a distance of several dozen meters from the Green Zone, was perfectly quiet. That is where the main headquarters of the Preventive Security Service, considered a Fatah stronghold, is located. The quiet there only served to highlight the intensity of the gunfire in the neighborhood next door.

It was so intense that Kamiliya, Mazen's wife, asked: "What's that? Have the Jews come in?" Mazen explained that the quiet was the result of cooperation obtained in recent months between Hamas' Operational Forces and the Preventive Security Service and the police, who are commanded by Rashid Abu Shbak, a friend of Mohammed Dahlan (who is so despised by Hamas).

The police and the Preventive Security Service are subordinate to the Interior Ministry, and together with Hamas' Operational Forces have notched a number of achievements in exposing cases of crime and in arresting suspects. In the recent fighting, people from the preventive security and the police did not participate in the gun battles or abductions.

Tensions in Jabalya

Another pocket of gunfire and abductions was in the large Jabalya refugee camp, where tensions have flared in recent weeks between activists from Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and the Iz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas. "Don't ask me how it started," says Basel, 40, who has lived all his life there. He only knows that three Al Aqsa Brigades men are "wanted" by Hamas and are in hiding. In the last few days, both groups have put up checkpoints in the refugee camp, with each side checking the identity cards of people passing through, and each side a potential site for new gunfire to be ignited.

Khan Yunis and Rafah, where the Fatah movement is especially strong, have been quieter than ever. One reason for this is that activists from the Popular Resistance Committees, whose base is in Rafah, are in conflict with their Gaza branch, which operates on instructions from Hamas. There have been several clashes, though "not that serious," say some who have had experience with such things, in the refugee camps in the center of the Gaza Strip. This geographical concentration of the fighting, even at its peak on Tuesday, gave rise to a little hope that eventually the efforts to contain it would succeed, even if the political tensions that ignited it remained.

Waiting for the fighting to be quashed, people have been keeping off the streets, even the ones where things have been quiet. There have been occasional suggestions of taking to the streets and demonstrating against the "security chaos," to call on both sides to get the armed men off the streets. But even without what happened in Jabalya on Sunday, when armed men fired at a local protest demonstration, such plans are being shelved.

"The people from Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Democratic Front ran from one side to the other, they didn't sleep at night, and they obtained Fatah's consent and then they ran to Hamas and got their consent, too, they formulated a cease-fire agreement - and in the end no one listens to them," Basel complained.

On Sunday and Monday, most parents sent their kids to school, but then school was interrupted. Either when action-hungry youths burst into the schools and exhorted the children to come out to all sorts of demonstrations, or when the gunfire got too close and parents rushed to bring their kids home. On the local radio stations, each of which has its own political affinity, the announcers temporarily stopped smearing the rival groups and instead urged the armed men to stop shooting in a certain area so parents could go to pick up their children.

"At seven in the morning the only ones in the streets were children and armed men," said Basel, who accompanied his daughters to kindergarten and school. The parents scolded the militants who stood near the school entrances. "You want to die? Go die somewhere else, far from the school, far from the hospital," Basel said to one of the armed men.

On Tuesday, many parents decided not to send their kids to school. The cease-fire hadn't held for more than a night, and the curious kids, when they see a group of armed men, sometimes follow what appears to them to be a live-action computer game. That same day, the Education Ministry announced that school would be closed the next day. The two universities - Fatah's Al-Azhar and Hamas' Islamic University - had already closed. They're too close to the Green Zone.

And so people stay shut up in their homes. Each home becomes an isolated island of worried sanity and of frustration. At first, people still tried to follow the reports about the clashes, abductions and killings, and to take a stand as to "who started it" and "who's responsible." Pretty soon they gave up, both because of the multiplicity of accounts and because they simply grew tried of the scenes of masked men going around with RPGs.

'I'm for Allah'

The adults frequently curse both sides. But they try not to talk too much about the situation in front of the children, and insist that the kids keep doing their homework and try to ensure that they watch nothing but children's shows on TV. They don't send them to the corner store to buy anything. The adults do that now when necessary, as quickly as they can, without lingering at all.

On Sunday, on the morning when the battles first burst into the Green Zone, a number of excited phone calls were exchanged between Jabalya, Gaza and Rafah. The callers wanted to talk about how their favorite Egyptian soccer team, Al-Ahl al-Masri, had just won a game in Japan. Four-year-old Karmel happily climbed onto the back of her father, Basel, who had returned home early from work. Mazen helped his 12-year-old son Ahmed to memorize a poem by Mahmoud Darwish. Ahmed made a few remarks about how the paunch of Ismail Haniyeh has grown since he became prime minister. He also told about how, at school, the kids are split into two camps, with Hamas clearly having the upper hand.

Nabil is a devout Muslim and a veteran Hamas activist, even though he is critical of certain things in the organization. His 10-year-old son, Salah, is also a fervent Hamas supporter. Maybe that's why his 6-year-old son, Amjad, in a show of defiance and independence, refuses to affiliate himself with Hamas. When asked who he supports, he says "I'm for Allah." But on Sunday, when some kids at school asked him the same question, he didn't give that answer. "If I'd said that I'm for Allah, they would have thought that I'm with Hamas," he explained.

Indeed, in the past months, a new tension has arisen in light of the tendency of Hamas spokesmen to portray their government as God's choice and themselves as God's representatives on earth. In Gaza, the vast majority of people are faithful Muslims and the appropriation of Islam by Hamas is angering Fatah people, many of whom are starting to display more signs of piety. "It won't be long before we start calling ourselves Islamic Fatah," commented one person in the movement that used to be considered secular-democratic.

Majd, a devout Muslim who is close to Hamas, is also highly critical of the movement that has dashed his high expectations: "In everything they see the hand of God," he says mockingly. "Sharon had a stroke and left the scene - they say it was the hand of God, because it brought in Olmert who allowed what Sharon would not have permitted - elections in Jerusalem. If there weren't elections in Jerusalem, there wouldn't have been any elections at all and Hamas would not have won. Isn't it clear that Allah wanted a Hamas victory, they say. The implication being that anyone who now acts against the Hamas government is going against the word of Allah."

Majd considers this line of thinking an example of the arrogance that, in his view, quickly wrecked the Hamas government - the kind of factional arrogance that he hoped that the Islamic Movement, unlike Fatah, would stay away from. The arrogance is also evident in the political appointments made for public positions, just as happened with Fatah. It's evident in all the money that has flowed to Hamas in the last year from abroad, which still hasn't deigned to pay the salaries of public workers, most of whom are identified with Fatah.

"There is money to immediately pay for most of the mourning tents that were erected for the people killed after the abduction of soldier Gilad Shalit, but there's no money for salaries," says Majd. He confirms what Fatah people say: That Hamas finds ways to reward its supporters. That it is motivated by party interests, and not national interests.

One Hamas activist told Mazen that Hamas has learned from the mistake it made in the municipalities, where it put its funds to use for the public good. As a government, despite the promises that were given, it has refrained from doing this. Mazen, who often visits the refugee camps, has noticed that the terrible economic crisis that almost everyone is experiencing due to the closure and the nonpayment of salaries, is somehow not affecting Hamas families.

But Mazen has also noticed that this sort of criticism still hasn't found its way to the Gazan street, where support for Hamas is still widespread. Abu Mazen's announcement proved to them once again that Fatah loyalists continue to live in denial, are refusing to accept their electoral defeat, and that there is some truth to what Hamas says about how Fatah from the start decided to bring about the fall of the elected government.

This accusation and the arguments made to support it are a constant source of tension in relations between the two rival movements. The support expressed by Bush and Blair for Abu Mazen, and the reports in the Israeli press about additional funds to strengthen the security forces loyal to Abu Mazen, don't end up strengthening Fatah in the eyes of the public, says Mazen. On the contrary, they bolster his image as the West's puppet.

Along with the gun battles, each side has been engaged in slandering the other. Unlike the gunfire, this has been happening throughout the Gaza Strip. The Fatah people, relying on media reports, talked about the massive destruction caused by the Hamas Operational Force at the Rafah crossing point on Friday. It's true that, after they invaded the place, because Ismail Haniyeh wasn't being permitted to pass through the terminal, a few small things disappeared from the warehouse, including about 350 Viagra pills, as one of the workers there told Mazen. But the descriptions of the destruction wreaked there were greatly exaggerated, he assured him.

Dahlan the coward, said the Hamas people, fled to the West Bank to the warm embrace of the Muqata and Zakariya Zbeidi. Nonsense, says Majd. At Abu Mazen's request, Dahlan remained in the West Bank and returned to Gaza on Monday, when the first cease-fire was already broken.

Hamas' concerted attempt to put down Dahlan, which included openly accusing him of responsibility for "the assassination attempt on Haniyeh," on Friday, succeeded in uniting the Fatah ranks, and thus really did the rival movement a great service, say people in Gaza. "A week ago I wouldn't have believed that Fatah could get so many of its people on the streets and that its armed men would openly attack the armed Hamas men," says Majd. They even dared to erect their own checkpoints in the Sabra neighborhood, which is known as a Hamas area. Mazen expects that the balance of fear that has been created will eventually lead the two sides to agree on a unity government.

"Now we're on cease-fire number two, which was achieved with the mediation of the Egyptians. We'll go through a few more cease-fires like this, and in the end there will be a unity government."