Safa watches the troops roll into Gaza

The grandmother of 29-year-old wounded Palestinian Hana Mabhoh cares for her as she lies in the bed in the Kamal Adwan hospital, December 31, 2008, in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip. Mabhoh was injured when an Israeli shell struck a government building where she was working in Gaza city. (Photo by Abid Katib/Getty Images for CARE International)

Once again, precious fuel is spared to crank up the family's mini-generator, Safa is able to send dispatches from Gaza City to Israelity Bites and other friends. There's a vile sense of deja vu about this invasion, recalling the military campaigns in 2006. One crucial difference is that international journalists are no longer allowed to enter the Strip, as they could back then, so witnesses are fewer. Without brave writers like Safa, all of us would be "Eyeless in Gaza". Already, we see that most Palestinian residents there have "No Exit." While researching psychological treatment programs for child victims of post-traumantic stress syndrome last year, Izzy spoke to many north Gazan families who had been herded into one room by Israeli army tank crews and snipers who took over their homes during incursions. Tearful women told me how soldiers had advanced across the neighbourhood, using teenage Gazan boys as shields. And for survivors, the ultimate indignity was having to pick up the squalid waste after the Israeli soldiers left. These IDF snipers in diapers were so vigilant that they did not abandon their rifle scopes long enough to take a dump. War is shit.

Safa tells us:

Last night (January 3rd), we realized that if there is any truth to Israeli WAR minister, Ehud Barak's words, it's that this invasion will be a long one. At approximately 9:15 pm local time Israeli Forces entered the strip from 3 Locations. From the east of Gaza city and the northern town of Jabalia and Beit Lahia, tanks rolled into the Palestinian residential areas while Israeli F16 created a cover from the sky. At the same time, Israeli tanks and infantry troops entered Rafah from the south east, while tanks shelling and artillery fire rained on the Mintar area of Gaza city. Israeli warships were simultaneously barraging Gaza city from the sea. The entire strip was surrounded and being heavily pounded by Israeli missiles and artillery fire.

Many people were not even aware that the invasion had begun, thinking the whole time that Israel had intensified its air raids. The city of Gaza has been without power for a few days now and radio batteries were running out. Almost all the residents of Gaza city have been confined to their homes for over a week and all of the stores have been closed. People rely mostly on word of mouth to get the news, a very small few are lucky enough to have generators and leftover fuel.

These attacks, this war is being waged against an unarmed civilian population at the most desperate and bleak time of times. Israel has been systematically and indiscriminately using its most advanced of military capabilities against a defenseless population, 3 quarters of which is women and children for 8 days prior to the invasion. People are weak, physically and morally, and dealing with a great amount of loss and frustration. This is to speak nothing of the 18 month siege that Gaza is currently barely able to hold up under.

For the past few days we have seen over ten mosques, holy places of worship, bombed, frequently while people were praying inside. We have seen children being pulled out from under the rubble looking like there was not a single bone unbroken in their small bodies. We have seen hospitals overflowing with bloody corpses and people taking their last breaths. We have seen friends on television being resuscitated at sites of Israeli air raids. We have seen entire families swept of the face of the earth in one blow, and we have seen our streets, homes, neighborhoods become unrecognizable ruins from the amount of destruction.

And yet Israel continues to blatantly and insistently affirm that the offensive is not aimed at the civilians and that its war is against political and military wings of Hamas. Meanwhile we, the people of Gaza, are collectively experiencing a kind of terror and violence no human being should ever endure One almost begins to suspect that the Israeli WAR forces are acting on a delusion that they created and that they have come to believe. Otherwise, they would have expected what would happen during their invasion of the Strip. Then again, it came as a surprise (a pleasant one) even to us, and that, should we have been in a right state of mind, we would have undoubtedly anticipated

Israel has come into our homes, is fighting us in our streets and is expressing its brutality against us in full force. How do we react?

All Palestinian factions have united and are out facing the enemy, using all the military capabilities that they collectively have. Although these capabilities are incomparable to the military strength exerted by Israel, yet it has made us more certain than ever that Palestinians will fight to the very end to protect their own. It has shown us that resistance, courage and love are an integral part of the Palestinian identity that will never change despite all the hardships we endure. It has given us a moral boost, which comes at a time when we need it most.

The Abu Ali Mustafa brigades, of The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Alquds brigades of the Islamic Jihad movement. The Al qassam brigades of the Hamas movement. The Salah el Din Brigades of the Popular Resistance Committees, Al Aqsa Martyrs brigades of Fatah, all have come together as one united front and at a high, almost affirmed risk of peril are out protecting our streets and our homes, all ready to die if that means preventing the death of one more helpless child. We are united and we have accepted our fate recurrently, but Gaza's almost 80% refugees will NOT be massacred and displaced yet again by people from the outside guided by tyranny and greed.

There are estimations out there as to the collective count of the united military resistance fighters from the Palestinian factions, the number is thought to be a few thousand. The Israeli troops within and around Gaza at this moment are approximately 33 thousand, with more reservists being called in within the next day. The disparity is not only in troop numbers however. The Israeli forces are supported by the Israeli Navy and the Israeli air force. The ground forces include artillery, tanks, engineering forces and intelligence agency support. The Israeli soldiers are equipped with the most modern weaponry and intelligence devices.
Palestinian fighters, on the other hand, have to make do with their home made projectiles and a bare minimum of basic weaponry in order to defend themselves and their people against the Israeli military might.

At the moment, and in the midst of the aggression it is hard to make sense of the current situation or make future predictions. It's hard to come to grips with the numbers and the extent of our losses. It's hard even to remember a time when basic necessities such as food, water, warmth and daylight weren't a luxury. At this point, bare human instinct is at work, the need to protect your loved ones, the need to ensure shelter and the instinct of fight or flight. We have fled for too long, Gaza is our last refuge and our home after we were displaced from what is now called Israel. All this happened but 60 years ago. What more could they want? We have nowhere left to go. Now is a time when all forms of resistance are legitimate. They have disregarded every single international law there is. So now is the time to fight.

Palestinian football players stuck in Gaza ahead of historic match

Reviving 'footie' in the occupied territories is fraught with problems, reports James Hider in today's London Times. After years of matches hosted by other Arab states, the Palestinian national football team will play its first-ever international home game on Sunday. But excitement is not exactly fever pitch. With nearly 50 per cent of their soccer players still marooned in Gaza, this West Bank match is likely to underscore the bitter divisions in the territories. Coming up up with a Gaza strip for football-- even though so many neighbors profess that Palestine is not a real country, but a name from the colonial past and a figment of the victimised imagination-- is unlikely to become a reality any time soon. Bishara, a Palestinian player from abroad, complained that as he tried to cross into the West Bank, Israeli security forces mocked him and demanded "how can you be playing for the Palestinian national team when there is no Palestine?"

So tomorrow's match is expected to be mainly a Fifa-Fatah extravaganza, and may inflame intra-team rivalries unless some travel permits are issued soon by the Israelis.

The match against Jordan will be attended by Sepp Blatter, head of Fifa, which paid for the 6,000-seat stadium close to the boundary between Ramallah and Jerusalem as part of an effort to revive the sport in the occupied territories, impoverished by years of conflict, corruption and political instability.

But amid all the fanfare, it is possible that half the national team may be missing, unable to make the journey from the Gaza Strip across Israel to the West Bank.

“It is easier for us to travel to the Far East, which is thousands of kilometres away, than to get to the West Bank, which is only dozens of kilometres away,” said Mohammed Baroud, 26, a Gaza member of the national team.

It is not only Israel that divides the Gaza Strip on the Mediterranean Coast from the West Bank and which has enforced a strict limit on all movement in and out of the coastal enclave, controlled since last year by the Islamist movement Hamas.

The West Bank is dominated by the mainstream Palestinian movement Fatah, which called Hamas’s armed takeover of the Gaza Strip a “coup” and has cracked down on the Islamist group in the area it still controls. It has closed Hamas-linked charities, and arrested preachers and journalists linked to the group.

“The Palestinian soccer union in the West Bank did not call their branch in Gaza to get the team ready,” said Mr Baroud, one of 13 players on the national team who are trapped in Gaza. “They are not giving us the proper attention and all we get from them is promises.”

“It is the dream of any Palestinian player to play in such an historic event,” he said. In the past, Palestinian matches have been hosted by neighbouring Jordan or Qatar in the Gulf.

Gaza team members are angry to be left out of such an event. “We are totally frustrated, and we only train so to keep in shape,” said Mr Baroud.

Naiem El-Swairky, head coach for the national team in Gaza, said the West Bank sports authorities had applied for Israeli travel permits for seven players and one coach but had received no word on whether they would be provided.

“I think the union in the West Bank are not pushing hard for the participation of Gaza players. It usually takes us seven to ten days to get ready and the game is on Sunday, and no one contacted us yet. I don’t know whether to think it is deliberate or if they couldn’t get us permits,” he said, wary that his players may fall foul of the bitter dispute between Fatah, which favours a peace deal with Israel, and Hamas, which is staunchly opposed to the very existence of the Jewish state.

“I will give the union the benefit of the doubt since the Israelis are not even giving sick Palestinians permits to go to hospitals and many of them are dying in Gaza, so I would like to think it is the Israelis’ fault,” said the head coach.

Mr El-Swairky said that with the borders closed and living standards plummeting, Gaza had become a “cemetery of ambition” for Palestinian athletes. “Palestinian sport is paying a heavy price,” he said. “Now it is in clinical death, and if the situation continues like this, Palestinian sport eventually will die.”

Some 630 checkpoints, barriers and earth mounds block movement across the West Bank. Reuters notes that the venerable Palestine FA was formed in 1928 and joined FIFA in 1929 but at the time the association was made up of Arab clubs, Jewish clubs (including the venerable Maccabe Tel Aviv) plus clubs representing British policemen or soldiers serving in the region during the British Mandate rule between World War One and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

An Arab club represented the Palestinian FA in an attempt to qualify for the World Cup in 1930. The qualification matches for the 1934 World Cup were contested by a Palestine team made up exclusively of Jewish and British players.

As hostilities between Jews and Arabs worsened in the early 1940s, domestic league soccer was abandoned. After 1948, the Palestine FA was reformed as the Israeli Football Association.

The day when Middle East rivalries can be taken out on the football pitch seems very far off indeed.Israeli-Arab players have been insulted on the pitch at Tel-Aviv and right wing fans booed and cat-called last year during a minute's silence for the slain leader Yitzhak Rabin prior to a match.

Addendum: The coach says all player s have got permission to come to the west bank! See, it can be arranged.

Dimona suicide bombers - from West Bank or Gaza?

The A-plant in Dimona (above) is secure.
A suicide bomber on Monday morning blew himself up in the southern town that houses Israel's secretive nuclear reactor, killing an Israeli woman and wounding seven other people, Israeli authorities said. Police said they killed a second attacker before he had a chance to detonate his explosives belt. Both of the perpetrators were killed and there was no damage to the reactor, which was miles from the blast.
It was the first suicide attack in Israel in a year, and officials were investigating whether the attackers came in through Egypt after Palestinian militants breached the Gaza-Egypt border last month, according to the Associated Press.

An offshoot of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement claimed responsibility, complicating recently renewed peace efforts. The attackers, they said, came from the West Bank, though the claim could not immediately be verified.
Hours after the suicide bombing, Israeli aircraft struck a car in the northern Gaza Strip, killing a top wanted man.
Israeli government officials dismissed the notion that the heavily guarded Dimona nuclear reactor was the suicide attackers' target. The explosion took place in a shopping area about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the reactor site.
«We heard a large explosion and people started to run. I saw pieces of flesh flying in the air,» a witness identified only by her first name, Revital, told Army Radio.
Ambulances and a large contingent of soldiers, rescue workers and police rushed to the scene of the bombing, the first in the working class town of 37,000.
Police said one attacker managed to detonate his explosives belt, but the second was shot dead by police before he could set off his bomb. A police bomb squad was on the scene defusing the explosives.
Dr. Baruch Mandelzweig said he was at his clinic nearby when he heard the blast. He and his nurses rushed out to the street to see what had happened, and saw body parts «strewn around everywhere.
They spotted a critically injured man whose head was moving, and began to treat him before realizing he was the second attacker.
«We saw an explosive belt,» he said. «We ran away,» and later we heard he had been shot, Mandelzweig said.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said, «the terror organizations have shown again who they are and what they are.
«Their goal was and continues to be to kill Israeli citizens in their homes and their schools and in their shopping centers,» he added. «Israel will continue to fight against this murderous terror.
Shortly after the attack, Israeli aircraft killed a senior commander in the Hamas-affiliated Popular Resistance Committees in the Gaza Strip, the group said. The military confirmed an attack against a PRC activist in Beit Lahiya, a town Palestinian militants frequently use to fire rockets into southern Israel.
At Sunday's Cabinet meeting, Israeli security chiefs warned that because of the anarchy on the Gaza-Egypt frontier, Palestinian militants might enter Israel through Gaza's Sinai desert to attack a civilian Israeli target, a government official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the Cabinet meeting was closed.
Southern Israel has been on alert against militant attacks since the Gaza Strip's Islamic Hamas rulers breached the border with Egypt on Jan. 23. Egypt managed to reseal the border only on Sunday.
The breach made Israel's Negev desert, where Dimona is located, more vulnerable to penetration by Palestinian militants who could enter through Egypt's porous border. Dimona is about 60 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of Egypt.
In an e-mail to The Associated Press, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a Fatah offshoot, said it sent attackers from the West Bank town of Ramallah, Abbas' base, to carry out the «heroic martyrdom bombing in Dimona.
The faction said it carried out the attack with the small Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Although Abbas' government has claimed to have dismantled Al Aqsa forces in the West Bank, a group spokesman, Abu Fouad, said Monday that «nobody has given up weapons.
The bombing came at a critical juncture. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators relaunched peace talks after a seven-year break just two months ago, and Israel has made it clear it won't implement any accord until militant groups in the West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza are disarmed.

Abbas' office denounced the attack. But it denied Al Aqsa was involved and linked the bombing to an Israeli raid in the West Bank that killed two Islamic Jihad militants before dawn Monday.
«The Palestinian Authority expresses its full condemnation of the Israeli operation in the northern West Bank and it condemns the attack in the commercial center in the city of Dimona, which targeted Israeli civilians,» his office said.
«Fatah has confirmed that the Al Aqsa Brigades has nothing to do with this attack,» it added, saying that a «well known group opposed to the peace process» was responsible. It did not elaborate.
In the southern Gaza town of Rafah, gunmen fired their weapons into the air to celebrate the bombing.
Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha said he did not know whether his group was involved, but praised the attack. He also rejected suggestions that the bombing would hurt Hamas' chances of reopening the border with Egypt.
«The suicide bombings were there before the closures and the resistance used every opportunity to make these glorious acts,» he said. «They show the Palestinians can respond to the enemy and their crimes.
The previous suicide bombing in Israel occurred on Jan. 29, 2007, when a Palestinian attacker entered Israel from Egypt, killing three Israelis at a bakery in the southern Israeli city of Eilat.
After Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down in 2000, Palestinian militants killed hundreds of people in dozens of suicide bombings.
Dimona is home to Israel's nuclear research center, and it is widely believed that atomic weapons were developed at the plant. Israel neither admits nor denies having nuclear arms.

There were only two such attacks between April 2006 and now, the last being in January 2007 when a bomber blew himself up in a bakery in Eilat, killing three people.

The Dimona suicide bomb attack is also the first since renewed efforts to come to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal were launched with US support late in November.

Israel argues that its blockade of about four million Palestinians in Gaza and large parts of the occupied West Bank prevents such attacks. Intelligence officers suspect that the breach of the Rafah border between the Gaza strip and Egpt, which was resealed only yesterday after a dozen days without regulation, is likely to have played a role in this incident.

Hamas gunmen kill 6 as Gaza rally erupts

During Fatah's biggest show of strength since they were run out of Gaza in June, their rally to mark the 3rd death anniversary of Yasser Arafat erupted in violence as Hamas triggermen supposedly maintaining security fired into the crowd of a quarter million, killing six people and wounding dozens. The festering hatred between these factions obviously has not abated. No one seems to knows how to fix this situation. Any hint of unity has been quickly shattered, as are hopes for a peaceful coexistence. Here comes the spiral of bloodshed and revenge. (Image by Getty)

Hamas and Fatah back Palestinian Headcount

Amid the big brouhaha over Condoleezza Rice's seventh visit to the region this year, while expectations for the Bush administration's legacy-polishing Middle East summit planned in Annapolis next month are plummeting fast, there is a cooperative effort by Palestinians to get some "facts on the ground" of their own. Hence an official new census is underway. Oddly enough, officials are starting off by tallying buildings and only later doing a headcount. According to the Associated Press, the results should count for something:

Rapid Palestinian growth would bolster Palestinian territorial demands, while Israelis' fear of being outnumbered in areas they now control might make them more willing to consider a West Bank withdrawal.

Later this week, some 5,000 census-takers will fan out across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, first to count buildings, and, in December, to count people. Results are expected by February.

"We hope we can use these statistics in the negotiations," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, a supporter of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Ramallah-based administration. "It's not only important for the political process, but also for building the institutions of the state."

The militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has also said the census results are important and that it will cooperate.

Present guesstimates suggest around 3.9 million Palestinians inhabit the occupied territories. Last December, government statistics revealed that the Israeli population comprises 5.4 million Jews, 1.4 million Arabs and 310,000 others (Christians and miscellaneous) Most of the million plus Russians emigres are tallied in with the Jews. The stumbling block is East Jerusalem. It is still unclear whether Israel will allow Palestinians to take a census in just a portion of Jerusalem when they are busy promoting a P.R. campaign that hails "40 years of Reunification." Israelity bites.

Oops- Palestinian Authority pays salaries of rival gunmen who ran them out of Gaza

Talk about check, mate! Demands for back wages have been insistent and shrill inside the West Bank and Gaza, as this photo of a bureaucrat's daughter shows. Critics have berated the leadership for buying guns instead of butter. When Palestinian rivals inadvertently paid thousands of the Hamas executive security forces by mistake, there must have been some very harsh words inside Ramallah. The BBC reports:

The Palestinian Authority has accidentally paid the salaries of 3,000 members of Hamas's main security force. According to the Fatah-run Palestinian information ministry, 3,000 members of its rival's Executive Force were paid before the mistake was noticed.

The payments were halted and most were reversed, Fatah officials say. But reports say hundreds of Hamas men were able to cash their salary cheques.
Hamas took over Gaza in mid-June, its Executive Force routing Fatah's forces.

This has left the Palestinian territories split and under the control of the rival factions - Hamas in Gaza, and Fatah in the parts of the West Bank not controlled by Israel.

To their surprise, [members of the Executive Force] got phone calls telling them to collect their salaries. They rushed to the bank, an official said.
The checks were part of a general payment approved in July after taxes were releaased by Israel.
Israelis and the international community have backed Palestinian Authority President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, while increasing the isolation of Hamas and completely cutting off Gaza and its 1.5 million residents.

Mr Abbas is refusing to engage in any kind of talks with Hamas.
Hamas is considered a terrorist organisation by much of the international community which refuses to deal with it directly until it recognises Israel and renounces violence.

Civil servants in Gaza and the West Bank has also been receiving partial back payments for salaries that went unpaid after the Western aid embargo was imposed after Hamas came to power in 2006.

Salam Fayyad, the new prime minister in Mr Abbas's government in the West Bank, resumed paying wages last month to 133,000 Palestinian civil servants, but excluded 19,000 Hamas appointees.

Hamas battles Fatah via the airwaves

Better a ratings war on television than firefights with live ammo out on Palestine's mean streets. But if the latest battle on the airwaves between Hamas and Fatah is to have any impact at all, reliable electrical power is crucial, and Israel can pull the plug whenever it chooses. For now, the rival factions are slugging it out on the air. (Meanwhile, the IDF conducts airstrikes against rocket positions and tanks rumble into Gaza.)
In last month's spasm of streetfighting inside the Strip, Hamas gunmen stormed the torture chambers of the Fatah-controlled Preventative Security Service and also claim they seized incriminating videos from the Palestinian Authority headquarters, which presumably were on file for use in extortion or blackmail.

Hamas sources gloat that it's proof of "corruption, collaboration with Israel and a total lack of morals, including homosexual relations between officials."

Video can be an effective and subversive enforcement tool: in Peru, the spymaster Vladimir Montesinos used to keep thousands of such grainy and incriminating tapes filed away in order to exert pressure on government officials to do his bidding. When Vlad the Impaler fled six years ago, his sleazy stash was found, and it provided hours of reality programming for national broadcasts, far more gripping than the usual telenovelas. The compromised officials were humiliated.
Now Fatah, from its West Bank stronghold, is desperately trying to counter similar "dark smears" from Islamist opponents.

One slight victory for Fatah is the sudden announcement that Farfour, the infamous Martyr Mouse, will get no sequel. They had officially condemned Hamas's educational programming for promoting hatred. Predictably, the blatant Al Aqsa kiddie propaganda show scripted the demise of their squeaky-voiced Mickey-clone so the children would hiss at an Israeli villain. No surprise there. The cuddly rodent was beaten to death in a skit by an actor playing a land-grabbing Israeli, a "killer of children", as the comely teenage compere put it. I wonder if the real reason that they killed poor Farfour off is that the omnipotent Disney Corp, no Mickey Mouse outfit, was about to sue them for breach of copyright.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss?

Er, despite appearances, these masked men are not exactly mirror images of one another.

Still, even after Palestine's worst in-fighting for years, it seems premature and utterly simplistic for the west to believe that the Palestinians have split themselves into two easy pieces. Sure there's seaside Gaza Strip, cheekily dubbed "Hamastan" after its seizure by the fundamentalist Muslims, and the larger, more moderate "Fatahland", which US and Israeli policy makers want to inject with belated foreign cash as a deterrent to creeping Islamofacism. Say what?
Both enclaves still are rife with feuding factions and gangs armed with smuggled weapons.


Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu-Mazen) succeeded Yasser Arafat and was elected in January 2005 to head the Palestinian Authority. He promised to reform the security apparatus and to enforce law and order. To avoid confrontation, Abbas incorporated elements of the militias into his official security organs. But he dithered and failed to consolidate the security services or to appoint new and loyal officers who could control them. Abbas also blew a chance to impose law and order in Gaza after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in the summer of 2005. That's why he gets scant respect inside Palestine.

In contrast to the Fatah-led PA, Hamas doled out welfare and education services to the people, and earned a reputation for comparative honesty. Being deprived of funds to govern, Hamas's political wing was crippled and after 18 months, the militant extremists prevailed.

Now several million Palestinian civilians must try to eke out ordinary lives in the turmoil of kidnaps, targeted killings, honor killings, revenge killings, assorted atrocities and depravity. They're desperate for calm to return, however fleeting. The West Bank's population is 75% Muslim (mostly Sunni), plus 17% Jewish,and 8% Christian; overwhelmingly Islamic Gaza has less diversity. Only 0.7% are Christian, and 0.6% Jewish, and these minorities are fearful of what the future might hold under tightened blockades.

Israeli's new Defence Minister Ehud Barak has just instructed officials to give temporary asylum to Gazans needing urgent medical care. Up to 600 Gazans were sheltering Wednesday inside a tunnel on the south side of the Erez border crossing. Many incapacitated people lay on the bare concrete amid their own filth. If they managed to crawl into the Israeli-controlled area of the tunnel, tear gas would hiss into the confined space, so a spiral of razor wire was hung up as a reminder.

Israeli Physicians for Human Rights petitioned the Supreme Court to force the authorities to offer immediate medical treatment. IDF tanks had blocked all movement after a militant hurled a grenade at the checkpoint and exchanged gunfire with Israeli soldiers.

In the lull after the heavy conflict, Hamas has been aping the Americans' PR tactics familiar from the War on Terror. Witness this poster,
which, unlike the Americans' Iraqi deck, shows a royal flush of Fatah fighters. The defunct Ace is a much-feared hit man called Sameech Almadhoun, nicknamed “Almaleoun” (the cursed one). Hamas systematically executed his cohorts and finally Sameech himself in the Northern Gaza Strip and issued the new poster as both boast and a threat. It does not look as if Hamas is ready to fold and shuffle off anytime soon.

Palestine: state of emergency

At an East Jerusalem party last night, a tipsy aid worker stood up to toast to the release of Alan Johnston, the BBC captive. He'd just read the news wires on his Blackberry, and so we all whooped with relief and launched some fireworks. It was a hint of good news in a very dire week. Hours later, poor Alan still is not free. (Nor is Gaza, although now ordinary people at least are able to walk the streets.)

We all have been concerned about Alan's safety and state of mind the past few days, held prisoner inside a tower block for three months in Gaza City, now listening to bombs, rocket-fired grenades and gunfire all around, smelling the blood and the smoke and not being able to find out the cause. Journalistic hell---being on the spot but effectively deaf and mute. Three other western journalists (from McClatchey, NPR, and Britain's Sunday Telegraph) were reporting from the strip when the most vicious fighting of the year broke out, and all were with local fixers and the Fatah factions. None were able to board the clandestine fishing boat to Egypt with the fleeing Fatah warriors after Hamas declared the place "an islamic republic." Bloody chaos.

After the score-settling and summary executions in the street, granting amnesty for Fatah fighters is a welcome gesture from Hamas. But will they be able to control the other militant factions, like Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa brigades, so they'll refrain from provoking Israel with rhetoric and rocket fire?

In Gaza, this week's coup d'état by Hamas-- the elected government,if you recall-- has thrown the west for a loop. About 1.5 million people still live there amidst gun-toting masked men, so is it fair to write the place off as ungoverned and ungovernable? Some 18 months ago, the majority of Palestinians turned their noses up at corrupt Fatah politicians and their graft, and voted in what Israel and the West consider "the wrong guys." Many outsiders do not distinguish between the militant wing and the political leaders, who were not given the means to govern. (Both wings are attached to the same venal bird of prey, they complain.) Even the Arab League condemns the savagery of the Gaza feud, and branded some actions as war crimes. After the abandoned house of Yasser Arafat was looted, Hamas ordered gunmen to demask and show their faces, except when shooting at Israelis. In the West Bank, where the parliament was overrun by gunmen bent on vengeance, Fatah militants still hide behind the skimasks. Guess it's all downhill from here.

Both the US and Israel balk at dealing with a Hamas government until and unless it formally recognized Israel's right to exist. This will be a long wait. Pragmatic politicians must deal with the world as it is, not an idealized version. (When the US for years refused to recognize Red China, over Taiwan, the Sino-powerhouse did not magically vanish.)

Fatah took its cue from Jerusalem and Washington and has refused to relinquish its power. The "unity" government that was belatedly agreed on in Mecca four months ago never obtained the Western backing it needed. Now, Hamas has taken by force the victory it won 18 months ago at the ballot box. Their brutal tactics wrenched apart many lives and have created political dead-ends for any humanitarian progress. And to re-label Gaza as "Hamastan" is as erroneous as it is to gloat at the two-state solution the Palestinans now have lumbered themselves with; Hamas has staunch supporters in the West Bank as well, and a civil war there will not enhance Israel.
Israelis are expected to ease some restrictions on the West Bank and to further squeeze the Gazans in their narrow seaside enclave, which on the map is shaped like a crude Kalashnikov.

Jan Egeland, who advises the UN Secretary General, said: "This is a product of failed Palestinian policies, failed Israeli policies, failed international policies." It is also the fallout from the catastrophic blunders in Iraq, which have distracted and discredited America and inspired Islamic militancy the world over. Bloodshed is likely to spill over into the West Bank and there will be limited tolerance for stooge politicians. Hebron, especially, is a potential flashpoint.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert travels to Washington soon, and the talk show diva Oprah Winfrey, tagging along with Elie Wiesel, is expected to generate some star power back in the blighted Holy Land. The small screen star-cum-Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson will head here this summer, too. There is no indication that these celebrities plan to venture into the West Bank towns or to Gaza, where there's definitely a lack of Law and Order. Da-dum.
Israelity bites.

IDF takes aim at Gaza while the Strip self-destructs and blood flows

How can cooler heads possibly prevail when the blood-soaked region is on the verge of all-out war?

According to a UN envoy the entire Middle East is set to flare into pitched combat on at least four fronts and get engulfed in war. All the usual suspects, alas. Already in Gaza, the bodycount increases daily, even though analysts say that fighting has yet to peak. The BBC reports today that Hamas are countering an assassination attempt against Prime Minister Ismail Haniya with an assault on Fatah bases. They may try a power grab, fears the weak Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas; so far 19 Gazans have been killed in the past 24 hours. Gunbattles inside Gaza's hospital wards, where rival factions executed the wounded, are a new low point. Elsewhere in the brutalized Gaza Strip, militants have resorted to hurling handcuffed prisoners to their deaths from high rise buildings. Lately, the internecine bloodletting tends to lull as soon as militants rocket Israeli towns in the Negev and provoke a military response from the IDF. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has pledged that airstrikes will continue until the Qassam rocket barrages stop and infiltrators are thwarted. Outrage over a report that Palestinian militants posed as journalists and attempted an attack on Israelis at a checkpoint by using a white jeep labelled with "TV" markings has been met with cynicism. Senior correspondents point out that journalists never are waived through without credentials being scrutinized; it is just as likely that the shot-up jeep was taped up as a TV vehicle after the fact in order to make the point that journos should lie low. Meanwhile, Gaza implodes.
Nasty.

Busted while Bonking near Arafat's Grave

It's not every day that a wanted terrorist is arrested en flagrante delicto while parked in his jeep near Arafat's graveside, making love and not war. He had been on the run for seven years.
Israeli forces in Ramallah countered little resistance when they approached the jeep of Khaled Shawish, a top Fatah militant caught in a compromising position, Aaron Klein reports on WorldNetDaily.

Israelis arrested the elusive militant in the West Bank, just a couple hundred feet from PLO leader Yasser Arafat's grave. Khaled Shawish, currently an officer in the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' presidential guard unit, was hauled off by the undercover cops and charged for involvement in the murders of at least 8 Israelis. Shawish happens to be the Ramallah chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and is thought to be behind the West Bank ambush in December 2000 that killed Israeli ultra-nationalist leader Benjamin Kahane and Kahane's wife, Talya, and injured their five daughters, the grandchildren of Rabbi Meir Kahane. He also is charged with helping implement several suicide bomb attacks inside Jerusalem, and, despite his injuries, is believed to be one of the top tacticians for The Brigades-- the "military wing" of Abbas's Fatah party.

Several years ago Shawish was struck by a bullet during a faceoff with the Israel Defense Forces and, although he escaped, he has been confined to a wheelchair. But he is still able to get behind a steering wheel and apparently has maintained his sex drive, too.

Klein writes piquantly:

According to Israeli security officials and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades sources in Ramallah, Shawish was arrested after the Israeli police stormed his jeep, which was parked in a lot outside the Muqata, about 200 feet from Arafat's grave. The sources said at the time of his arrest, Shawish was having intercourse in the back seat of his jeep with a Palestinian woman, who...was not his wife.

The Brigades, founded by Arafat, largely considers the late PLO leader's resting place to be a sacred site.

...

Getting laid where the PLO's leader was laid to rest was hardly in the best possible taste. But ultimately it was the IDF who scored. No bumper sticker warned "If this jeep's a'rockin, don't come a'knockin'", so they did, to Shawish's surprise.

Airstrikes in Gaza

Here we go again. Hamas and Fatah, trying to draw Israel into their internecine bloodfest, let loose a big barrage of Qassam rockets and hit a high school in the Negev. Now the IDF has responded, and according to the latest news reports, airstrikes are underway inside the Gaza strip. Hamas has vowed to send new suicide squads across the border to wreak vengeance. Israelity bites.