On the eve of his meeting with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak could not have imagined a worse scenario.

He was forced to face the press following the meeting, knowing that the Egyptian efforts to bring about renewed talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and at the same time achieve a cease-fire between Hamas and Fatah, look ludicrous.

This, in view of the incident in Ramallah, in which Israeli troops killed four Palestinians, and the ongoing fighting raging between Fatah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

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The meeting at the Sinai beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh proved futile and lacked any practical results. There were barely any talks.

No dramatic statements were made regarding a breakthrough in negotiations for abducted soldier Gilad Shalit's release, nor the possibility of an upcoming summit that would also include Jordan's King Abdullah and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

"Civil war" is an apt description for what is now taking place in the Gaza Strip.

For a number of days now, in the northern Gaza Strip but also in other places, battles have been waged between Hamas and Fatah civilians.

However, on Thursday a new record was broken in the Gaza Strip: Hamas gunmen surrounded the home of a senior Fatah man in the Jabalya refugee camp, and assaulted the home of Colonel Mohammed Gharib, leader of the Preventive Security in the northern Gaza Strip.

Using automatic weapons, missiles and grenade launchers, the Hamas attackers killed everyone in the house.

Hamas gunmen also raided the home of Sufian Abu Zeida, a senior Fatah official and former minister for prisoner affairs, but he and his family were not at home.

No longer sporadic incidents

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who returned to the Gaza Strip on Thursday following a pilgrimage to the holy sites in Saudi Arabia, can no longer claim that these are sporadic incidents between small groups of minor Hamas and Fatah figures.

This time, the attackers were members of Hamas' Executive Force, which answers to Hamas Interior Minister Saeed Sayam.

The head of the Executive Force, Yusef al-Zahar, is the brother of Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar.

During a short hiatus in the fighting earlier in the week, Haaretz interviewed a member of Fatah and asked him to explain the calm.

"The Israelis have no need to worry," he said sadly, "We are just at the start of the war."