Hamas’s Gaza and Fatah’s West Bank:
Whatever decision Abbas and his Fatah lieutenants take, it will be hard to change the new reality that has been created on the ground, especially in the Gaza Strip. As of today, the Palestinians can boast that they have two entities - one in the Gaza Strip run by Muslim fundamentalists and another one in the West Bank under the control of secular Fatah leaders.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=2&cid=1181570259399&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Tom Gross reports: Civil War In Gaza
Since Monday’s dispatch, titled “The Doctor was blindfolded,
handcuffed, shot six times and then tossed into the street,”
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000863.html, the international media have
started reporting on the renewed savagery in Gaza, some days after it
began.

However, most media are continuing to fail to report in anything like
the detail they would were Israel involved.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH ACCUSES BOTH FATAH AND HAMAS OF “WAR CRIMES”

Among the violence since Monday’s dispatch:

* Over 60 Palestinians have been reported killed in Gaza. The true
numbers are likely to be much higher because access to medical workers and
journalists is severely limited in many parts of Gaza.

* For the first time in several weeks, the fighting has spread to the
West Bank: Fatah gunmen attacked a Hamas television studio in Ramallah
and kidnapped a Hamas deputy cabinet minister from the city.
Unidentified gunmen opened fire at a Hamas school in Ramallah. No one was injured.
In the last hour Fatah kidnapped Hamas members in Nablus after a
shootout.

* The New York-based group Human Rights Watch has accused both Fatah
and Hamas of “war crimes,” following summary executions inside hospitals.

* Three Palestinians were shot dead in Beit Hanoun Hospital in northern
Gaza. These include Fatah leader Jamal Abu al-Jedian who was shot 41
times in his hospital bed.

* At Gaza’s largest hospital, Shifa in Gaza City, combatants fired
mortars, grenades and assault rifles.

* Executions, kneecappings and tossing handcuffed prisoners off tall
apartment towers have continued.

* A gunbattle in the town of Khan Yunis led to fifteen children,
attending a kindergarten in the line of fire, being taken to hospital.

RANTISSI TARGETED

* In a bloody battle, hundreds of Hamas gunmen, firing rockets and
mortar shells, have captured Fatah’s national security headquarters in
northern Gaza.

* Fatah fired rocket-propelled grenades at the house of Prime Minister
Ismail Haniya, of Hamas.

* Hamas have fired mortar shells at the Gaza presidential office
compound of Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah. (Abbas himself is presently in the West
Bank.)

* Fatah militants abducted and killed the nephew of Abdel Aziz
Rantissi, the Hamas leader assassinated by Israel in April 2004.

* Hamas gunmen attacked the home of a Fatah security official with
mortars and grenades, and not finding him at home, instead executed his
14-year-old son and three women inside.

* Fatah gunmen stormed the house of a Hamas lawmaker and burned it
down.

* Hamas yesterday seized control of a Fatah munitions storeroom and
seized two million bullets belonging to Fatah.

UN WORKERS KILLED

* Fierce battles have spread today to central Gaza, with Hamas trying
to seize control of the coastal strip’s main north-south road and cut
off Fatah’s supply lines.

* Hamas leaders issued a statement blaming the Gaza fighting on
President Mahmoud Abbas, saying his security forces were “corrupt and riddled
with criminals.”

* Abbas claimed the “madness” was being orchestrated by Hamas’ exiled
leader, Khaled Meshal, who lives under the protection of the Assad
regime in Damascus.

* Two Palestinians who worked for a UN agency in Gaza have been
executed, a UN spokesman said.

* AP reports that both sides have been arming themselves by smuggling
weapons through tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border, tunnels which
westerners such as Rachel Corrie did so much to protect.

* Arab press commentators write today that no one will ever trust Hamas
or Fatah again when they say they will abide by a ceasefire.

EUROPEAN UNION RESUMES AID

* Even though numerically less, Hamas appears to be winning. Fatah
commanders have complained that they have no central command. Fatah’s
strongman in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, has spent the last few weeks in Cairo
for treatment of a knee injury. Other leading Fatah officials have fled
to the West Bank.

* The U.S. State Department has advised journalists not to travel to
Gaza and urged U.S. journalists there to leave. Sources tell me that
despite this, several Western journalists had entered Gaza in recent days
and are now in hiding, for fear of being kidnapped.

* Hamas’ website has accused Fatah of executing an Imam, Sheik Mohammed
Al Rafati, in a mosque and say they will “burn” Fatah men in revenge.

* Many houses have been torched in western Gaza City.

* And in Lebanon, two Red Cross Workers were killed and a third wounded
by Islamic militants at the Nahr Al-Barid Palestinian refugee camp.

* And most amazingly of all, in the midst of the fighting on Monday
afternoon, the European Union announced it was resuming aid to the
Hamas-controlled Palestinian ministry of finance (just in time for Hamas to
stock up on weapons).

* Wondering how a whole generation of young men came to be so
proficient with firearms? See this webpage prepared several years ago: Arafat’s
Education System, http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArafatEducation.htm.

* This cartoon is over a year old, but it could represent the “two
state solution” which will exist a few days from now: http://
drybonesblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/palestinian-solution.html.