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Subject: For everyone else, we call it civil war. For the favored few, some simply call it Infighting
Panther    6/11/2007 7:58:35 AM
By DIAA HADID, Associated Press Writer 46 minutes ago GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Gunmen fired at the house of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and attacked the offices of the Hamas-run Culture Ministry on Monday, jeopardizing renewed efforts at halting the latest round of Palestinian infighting. The new fighting between the Fatah and Hamas movements, which broke out during the weekend, has been especially brutal. The attack on Haniyeh's home came shortly after two rivals were dragged onto the roofs of Gaza high-rises and thrown to their deaths. There were no reports of casualties in the pre-dawn attack on Haniyeh's house in the Shati refugee camp next to Gaza City. His office wouldn't say whether he was inside. But his wife, children and grandchildren were home, his family said. It was the first time in a month of infighting that Haniyeh was an apparent target. Shortly after the shooting, Fatah and Hamas leaders called for calm — in large part to allow thousands of high school seniors to take their matriculation exams in peace. "This is shameful for our people," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said during a trip to a school in the West Bank. "I call on everyone to stop this immediately, not only because of the examinations, but also for our people to live a normal life." About 24,000 high-school seniors in Gaza were beginning two weeks of final exams Monday, along with more than 40,000 others in the West Bank. Daliya Naji, a 16-year-old student in Gaza City, said the fighting had kept her awake all night, and said she was having trouble concentrating. "I am a good student, but I feel my brain is empty," she said ahead of her exams. "I can't think any more and I don't know what to do." She said she hoped she would pass her exams in order to be accepted to a university in Egypt. "At least it will be my ticket out of Gaza," she said. Early Monday, Hamas and Fatah-linked gunmen began pulling back from points of friction. But several such cease-fires in recent weeks have been short-lived, and sporadic shooting could be heard in Gaza City throughout the day. At midday, gunmen attacked the Sports and Culture Ministry in Gaza City. "It was the Fatah gangs. There was no justification. We were at work, and the ministry came under fire," a ministry official, identified only as Ahmed, told the Hamas-affiliated Aqsa Radio. Culture Minister Bassem Naim, was inside the building at the time, said his sister, Huda. There were no injuries, she said, accusing Fatah of trying to kill her brother. Fatah spokesman Maher Mekdad said the gunfire erupted after Hamas snipers on the roof fired at a security convoy. The security men returned fire, he said. The two sides have been locked in a violent power struggle since Hamas defeated Fatah in January 2006 legislative elections, ending four decades of Fatah rule. Hamas brought Fatah into its government in March in an effort to quell the internal strife, but the fighting reignited in mid-May over an unresolved dispute over who controls the powerful security forces. Fifty-five people have been killed in the latest outbreak of violence, most of them militants. The fighting took a grisly turn on Sunday, when Hamas militants kidnapped a member of Abbas' elite presidential guard, took him to the roof of a 15-story apartment building and threw him to his death. That set off skirmishes throughout the city, including gun battles and shelling. Fatah militants surrounded the house of a Hamas mosque preacher, fired rocket-propelled grenades at the four-story building and then entered, firing at the preacher, and taking him away. Later, his body was brought to a hospital. Hamas pledged revenge. And just before midnight, a Hamas activist was thrown off the 12th floor of a building and killed, security officials said. Four other Hamas men in the building were shot and wounded, bringing the day's toll to three dead and 36 wounded, medical officials said. A Hamas militant wounded Friday in southern Gaza infighting also died on Sunday. The deadly infighting has overlapped with new clashes between Israel and Palestinian militants who have been firing rockets at southern Israeli communities bordering Gaza. Early Monday, Palestinian militants fired five rockets into southern Israel, the army said. There were no injuries, but the Education Ministry said high-school students in the border town of Sderot were moved to towns out of rocket range in order to take their final exams. On Sunday, Israeli political and military leaders pledged to keep up the pressure on Gaza after Palestinian militants infiltrated Israel a day earlier in a failed attempt to capture a soldier. (This is ridiculous, it's a civil war... plain and simple! With a healthy dose of a sadistic streak of mafiaism thrown in. Hhhmmm.... somebody has been watching too many episodes of the Soprano's lately!)
 
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swhitebull       6/11/2007 8:33:36 AM
I call it Malthus' Theories on Rats proven right.
 
 
swhitebull
 
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swhitebull    Rats Consume Each Other   6/12/2007 12:16:44 PM
From Debka et al:
 
Gaza in flames. Palestinian Hamas storms Fatah positions in Gaza as brutal civil strife breaks up fragile Hamas-Fatah unity government

June 12, 2007, 6:50 PM (GMT+02:00)

http://debka.com/images/spacer.gif" width=3 border=0> Hamas PM Haniya's home attackedhttp://debka.com/photos/s_4298.jpg" width=100 vspace=4 border=0> http://debka.com/images/spacer.gif" width=3 border=0>

Hamas PM Haniya's home attacked

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Senior Palestinian politician Saab Erikat warns “Mogadishu syndrome” is overtaking Palestinian Gaza. “If war and lawlessness are not extinguished, the fire will burn us all”

The outcome unfolding after at least 20 deaths in 24 hours is the separation of Palestinian rule between Hamas-controlled Gaza and the Fatah-led West Bank. Hamas gave Fatah’s two hours to vacate its Gaza command posts or face death.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Hamas threw its entire 15,000-strong Executive Force armed with mortars, RPGs, heavy machine guns and grenades into the final bid to conquer the Gaza Strip, whereas Fatah commanders’ desperate appeals to Mahmoud Abbas for reinforcements drew nothing but a futile call for a ceasefire.

His Fatah earlielr mounted an RPG attack on the Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya’s home in Gaza. No one was hurt. Hamas gunmen then shot dead the top Fatah commander in northern Gaza, his brother and cousin. Monday, they bound a Fatah fighter hand and foot and hurled him from a 15-story building in Gaza to his death.

For two days, Hamas gunmen have been targeting injured Fatah fighters, killing them in ambulances and Beit Hanoun hospital beds. Fatah has retaliated with mortar and RPG attacks on the Hamas-controlled Shifa hospital.

Several attempts by the Egyptian mission in Gaza to arrange a ceasefire have been short-lived. In Cairo Tuesday, President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah discussed the Palestinian crisis.
 
 
 

DEBKAfile’s Military sources: Iran and Syria are the winners of Hamas’ military coup against Fatah in Gaza Strip

June 12, 2007, 6:46 PM (GMT+02:00)

http://debka.com/images/spacer.gif" width=3 border=0> Hamas burns Fatah command post in Gazahttp://debka.com/photos/s_4299.jpg" width=100 vspace=4 border=0> http://debka.com/images/spacer.gif" width=3 border=0>

Hamas burns Fatah command post in Gaza

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It was the second triumph in a week for a Palestinian force backed by Iran and Syria, after the Lebanese army failed in four weeks’ combat to crush the pro-Syrian factions’ barricaded in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian camp near Tripoli in four weeks of combat.

Tuesday, Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Palestinian Authority forces faced disaster. Their inevitable ejection from the Gaza Strip effectively severs Palestinian rule between Ramallah, where Fatah will have to fight to retain control of the West Bank and Gaza, dominated now by an Islamist Palestinian force manipulated from Tehran and Damascus.

The Iran-Syrian alliance has acquired by brute force two Mediterranean coastal enclaves in northern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

Its momentum, launched a month ago in both sectors was unchecked. The Fouad Siniora

 
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swhitebull    Who Brought the Stinky Cheese to the Rat-Trap?    6/12/2007 2:08:17 PM
more on the Civil War:
 
 

Gaza Collapsing

The latest cease-fire between Palestinian factions has collapsed almost before it got announced as Gaza slides into an all-out civil war. Refugees have begun to flee to Egypt, and Hamas-controlled mosques now serve as broadcast stations for war announcements:

Palestinian infighting, almost daily Israeli air strikes, and a steadily worsening economic situation triggered by an international aid boycott has made life unbearable for many Palestinians. Those who can are leaving.

European Union monitors at the Rafah border crossing from the Gaza Strip to Egypt say that more than 14,000 Palestinians have fled Gaza since Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers in 2005 and the rise to power of the Islamist Hamas five months later. In the past year alone, the average number of people leaving Gaza per day has doubled from 15 to 30.

The rising number of Palestinians seeking to emigrate has prompted Jerusalem's Mufti, Mohammad Ahmed Hussein, to issue a fatwa prohibiting Palestinians from leaving Palestinian territories.

"Immigration from this blessed land is not permissible according to Islamic law," said the religious edict. "People who live in this land should not leave it for the invaders and occupiers."

 

That's a sure sign of desperation. Imams now forbid movement of Palestinians even to other "blessed" lands, such as Muslim Egypt. Why? They know that if the Palestinians leave Gaza in droves, it will leave terrorist groups like Hamas, Fatah, and Islamic Jihad much more exposed to Israeli strikes.

The imams want their congregations to continue their roles as human shields so that terrorists can conduct holy wars. Isn't that special? No wonder they call Islam the Religion of Peace.

It won't matter. Palestinians in Gaza have seen their one opportunity to create a protostate, free from occupation, utterly collapse. They won't stick around to starve or to get killed in the crossfire. Those with means will leave, to Egypt first and perhaps later to Jordan.

And if the imams haven't covered themselves in enough blood already, now they're announcing attacks from the minarets:

Militants from the armed wing of Hamas have threatened attacks on security positions in Gaza belonging to Palestinian rivals Fatah, reports say.

Hamas-run mosques in Gaza City gave Fatah fighters two hours to leave their positions.

 

The civil war is already on. Both sides have attacked each other's leadership. Every round of diplomacy creates another cease-fire, which lasts as long as it takes to restock the ammunition. Ordinary Palestinians, who created this situation by supporting Hamas in their last elections, have no way to put an end to the fighting themselves, and the Israelis have learned not to do anything other than target terrorists who target Israel.

Let Gaza collapse. We can't stop it anyway, and our efforts to intercede will by definition leave terrorists stronger in the region. Only when Palestinians tire of bloodshed will it end.
 
 
swhitebull
 
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PlatypusMaximus       6/12/2007 4:59:50 PM
Are those wacky youths and activists up to their shenanigans again? What's it been? A week? Don't tell me, let me guess...this is threatening the Pali government and could plunge the whole area into chaos...Their misery is beginning to annoy me...I'm trying to find out if we caught Bin Laden while i was sleeping.
 
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Rasputin       6/14/2007 8:10:16 AM
If the Fatah farters can loose to those hamas clowns with masks spraying AK fire from a rooftop, I guess the fatah people
really are useless clowns. So someone dug a tunnel under their base, they took only 3 casualties, yet they go, without tanks I am supprised of the speed of the advance of hamas.

Now it is not racial but in the religious mentality, when push comes to shove it looks like the sunni will always run, surrender or call for help and the shite will come in for a few years until bombed out of town.

In the middle of it, there is another bunch of insane jihadist that want to launch rockets into Israel, but to the best of what I have seen their DIY rockets of disasters was pointed and launched in one direction, but it went up and turned into the opposite direction of its launch. Like some kind of cartoon.



 
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swhitebull    A Little Prescient Article from 2003   6/14/2007 3:21:24 PM
From Middle East Quarterly:
 
 
 
 
 
swhitebull - Rats, Mr Rico.  Millions of Rats!!  [paraphrased, of course]. Shoot them all.
 
 
 
 
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swhitebull    Welcome the Hamastan - Bring Your own Rat-Poison   6/14/2007 3:40:36 PM
For all you idiots (elsewhere and on these boards)  that STILL think that the PALI's deserve their own state, and that Israel is to blame, as usual, a little dose of political reality, applied with a 2 x 4:
 
From CaptainsQuartersBlog.com:
 

Welcome To Hamastan (Update: Fatah Wants A Dunkirk)

Hamas has overrun a critical and strategic security center in Gaza today, bringing them closer to their goal of controlling the entire region. Mahmoud Abbas has finally ordered retaliatory strikes, but he may not have many to respond to the call, as Hamas has begun executing Fatah militants in front of their wives and children:

Hamas fighters overran one of the rival Fatah movement's most important security installations in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, and witnesses said the victors dragged vanquished gunmen from the building and killed them in the street.

The capture of the Preventive Security headquarters was a major step forward in Hamas' attempts to complete its takeover of all of Gaza. Hamas later called on Fatah fighters to surrender the National Security compound within the hour.

The moderate President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, for the first time in five days of fierce fighting, ordered his elite presidential guard to strike back. But his forces were crumbling fast under the onslaught by the better-armed and better-disciplined Islamic fighters.

Fatah officials said seven of their fighters were shot to death in the street outside Preventive Security. A witness, Jihad Abu Ayad, said the men were being killed in front of their wives and children.

 

Hamas certainly feels that it has the upper hand. They don't fear any retribution for these executions, and certainly have no qualms about killing their fellow Palestinians without any sort of due process or any thought of reconciliation. Hamas Radio announced that "the past era has ended and will not return ... The era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived."

Still, the Palestinians have not taken responsibility for their own depravity. After decades of terrorism and mayhem, they still want to blame everyone else but themselves for their own misery. The AP quotes one Palestinian blaming the rest of the world for not interceding to stop the fighting. "The world is watching us dying and doing nothing to help," he complains. Isn't this the same people who demanded an end to "foreign" occupation? Isn't that what Ariel Sharon gave them? And look what they have done with the opportunity.

Abbas, meanwhile, seems to be moving in slow motion. He reportedly has started talking about ending the partnership with Hamas -- five days after his partners started killing his own people. Abbas has asked Israel to allow transfer of arms and materiel from the West Bank to Gaza in order to bolster Fatah security forces, but Israel knows that the weapons will fall into the hands of Hamas, and has refused. He finally gave orders for his men to go on the offensive, but the momentum has passed to Hamas and isn't likely to reverse itself.

Ban Ki-moon has gone to the Security Council to test the waters for an international peacekeeping force deployment to Gaza. It's not likely to get much traction, and for good reason. UN forces have a bad habit of running away from gunfire, and with radical Islamists like Hamas involved, they will get put to flight within days of their arrival. The only possible way to defeat Hamas on the ground is to conduct an all-out war on Gaza -- for which the UN has absolutely no stomach. For that strategy to work, it would take either Egypt or Israel to roll tanks and thousands of troops across Gaza and commit to an occupation.

If the UN wants to endorse that, then we can take their interventionist notions seriously. Until then, the Palestinians have to deal with the terror they have seen fit to visit upon themselves now, and the terrorism that they have seen fit to visit upon others for the last 40 years.

UPDATE: Via Power Line, the Telegraph captures the moment perfectly:

Among yesterday's dead was a 14-year-old boy and three women, all killed in a Hamas attack on a Fatah security officer's home.

"They're firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We're not Jews," the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station.

Minutes later both men were dragged into the streets and

 
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Bob       6/14/2007 8:08:48 PM
/buys six pack
/grabs popcorn




 
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swhitebull    Don't Shoot - We're Not Jews   6/14/2007 11:19:04 PM
From keshertalk.com:
 
 

June 13, 2007

In Fact, You ARE a Jew

The atrocities and statements coming out of Gaza are stomach-turning, but not surprising. Even those whose celebrate suicide bombings (by others) have no desire to die. At the last moment, they act like rational beings who want to prolong life. However, some of them combine the will to exist with poisonous hatred of Jews. That hatred breaks through even as they struggle to keep alive -- they can't stop thinking about Jews.

I thought about this when I read the account of one more death in Gaza, from the London Telegraph:


Among yesterday's dead was a 14-year-old boy and three women, all killed in a Hamas attack on a Fatah security officer's home.

 

"They're firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We're not Jews," the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station.

Minutes later both men were dragged into the streets and riddled with bullets.

 

You're wrong. You ARE a Jew. Tell me, from whatever version of the World to Come you now inhabit, what does it feel like?

After all, you were hunted, hated, and destroyed, just like the forebears of the Israelis whose hands of friendship you slapped away and killed. You and women and children were murdered just like Jews have been murdered. And what happened? You pleaded for life. Just like Jews, you wanted to live. Why didn't you go down fighting? Why didn't Saddam Hussein? Could the death cult only appeal when others are dying?

You got the very same treatment meted out to Jews. Interesting, isn't it, that at the fatal moment you were talking about "the Jews" and not "the Israelis." I thought your circles distinguished between the two. I guess subtleties go out the window when you're about to die.

I'm reminded of the hard-core Stalinists of the 1930s. When the NKVD was about to execute them in the cellars of the Lyubanka, their last shriek, in a Satanic version of the Sh'ma, was, "Long live Stalin! Long live the Party!" To the very end they licked the hand they slayed them. Your maniacal Jew-hatred springs from the same spiritual deformation.

As Hamas aimed their rifles at you and your brother, I wonder if you thought, "The Jews aren't doing this to me -- my own people are. They're treating me the way they want to treat Jews."

It didn't have to be this way. You could have had a state, you could have integrated your economy with Israel's, as was happening before the Intifada. But instead you opted for slaughter of the Jews. And that tactic boomeranged, so now the Jews (Israelis, to be precise, to you they're just Jews) are watching as Hamas and Fatah dole out the treatment given to Jews. I'm sorry your life ended the way it did, Jamal, and that you never, in the words of John Lennon, tried to "give peace a chance."

I will not be saying Kaddish for you.
 
 
swhitebull
 
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jastayme3       6/22/2007 1:14:18 AM
I'd stick with "infighting"-civil war sounds to dignified
 
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