JERUSALEM, April 2 (UPI) -- In the past weekend unidentified gunmen killed a sheik, fired at Palestinian security officers and bombed an Internet café in the Gaza Strip. "Gaza is becoming a Palestinian Somalia," observed a Haaretz reporter, and former Palestinian Minister Sufian Abu Zaida agreed.
In every corner with three people, two are armed, he told foreign correspondents at a briefing in Jerusalem. "You see masked people and you don't know whether they are your friends or your enemies. ... People have been killed, kidnapped (and) injured in Gaza every single day."
One of the victims was Arafat Nofal, a preventive security officer whose bullet-riddled body was found hanging. His car was stolen several months ago. When he found it, an argument with the driver deteriorated into a gun battle in which he killed one of the passengers, a Hamas activist. Then, it seems, someone avenged the death, Haaretz reported.
Extremist Muslims are believed to be responsible for bombing Internet cafés, pharmacies because they sell contraceptives and Viagra, and video-game shops. Attackers left a message at one of the latter: Children had better spend their time in mosques than with video games, Abu Zaida related.
Recent public-opinion polls show Palestinians' prime concern is the deteriorating security situation. Their new government's prime task is to restore law and order, they tell pollsters.
Criticism of the nationalist Fatah and the Islamic Hamas' responsibility for street battles, and fears that they would deteriorate to civil war, pressured the parties' leaders to conclude February's Mecca Agreement in which they resolved to form a national unity government, and last month to form such a government.
However, the political setup remains a source of instability.
In an analysis in the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies' Strategic Assessment, senior research associate Anat Kurz noted that Fatah and Hamas are the principle parties. However, each has branches outside the Palestinian territories that compete with the parties' leaders in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The leaders abroad have "local elements that challenge the 'inside' leadership," she added.
Moreover, because the central system has weakened, various groups "assembled independent operational capabilities and political agendas." Fatah has become "a loose network of cells and camps." Elements in Hamas' military wing, under instructions from their leaders in Damascus, "are conducting an aggressive policy that opposes the moderate course that Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is trying to steer," Kurz wrote.
Moderate Arab governments tried to get the Palestinian factions to put an end to these clashes. Concern that internal Palestinian tension could spill over to their territories motivated Egypt and Jordan. A desire to prevent Iran from getting a stronger foothold in the Arab world prompted Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The Saudis reportedly promised to support the new national unity government with $500 million, Kurz noted.
The government was formed, but Hamas' militia of some 6,000 men is still determined to gain control of Gaza's streets. Fatah's armed forces outnumber Hamas' but seem less determined to risk their lives.
Fatah is now recruiting more men for a future showdown. According to Haaretz, it enlisted 1,400 men for a "Special Force" and hundreds of them are being trained in Egypt. The force's commander, Sami Abu Samhadana, denied the report, saying Fatah is trying to maintain national unity, Haaretz added.
Kurz noted that Mohammad Dahlan, former head of the Palestinian Authority's Preventive Security Service in the Gaza Strip and now the president's national security adviser, is leading Fatah's militant approach.
"The popular army that he is trying to assemble and organize is intended as a counter force to the Hamas militia," she wrote.
The national unity government is unlikely to stop the Fatah-Hamas power struggle in one fell swoop. "The tension between the two movements, the limitations of their authority in the field, and the unauthorized possession of arms in the territories all act as a hindrance to enforcement," Kurz said.
She doubted the understandings that Fatah and Hamas leaders have reached would indeed prevent activists from trying to rekindle the struggle. "Without a concentrated effort at enforcement by the leading camps in the PA (Palestinian Authority), the day is not far off when the cease-fire agreement between Israel and (Palestinian President Mahmoud) Abbas will become an empty commitment," Kurz predicted.
She recommended Israel seek to coordinate principles of the cease-fire with "an extended Palestinian representative body, which also includes Hamas representation."
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government refuses to negotiate with Hamas or even talk to Cabinet ministers who are Hamas members. However, Kurz noted that an indirect and clandestine dialogue between Israel and Hamas did take place to secure the release of kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Hamas undertook to maintain calm, she added.
"A positive government experience, which would be facilitated by a substantial easing of the Israeli siege on the territories in return for a systematic Palestinian effort to enforce security and calm, would possibly bolster the pragmatic approach within Hamas that was recently reflected in its willingness to relax the struggle against Israel," Kurz suggested.
"Alongside (Hamas') calls for the destruction of Israel, there have over the years been repeated calls for a hudna (cease-fire)," she noted. Their demand for a complete Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders is not always mentioned as a precondition for a cease-fire, she added.
The new government's platform avoids recognizing Israel and does not commit the new government to abide by agreements the Palestine Liberation Organization signed with Israel. Abbas wanted such a recognition and an undertaking. Hamas refused to provide it but compromised for a commitment "to honor" those agreements.
They have come a long way, argued Abu Zaida. It took Fatah and the PLO 30 years to accept Israel, while Hamas has changed considerably after one year in power, he maintained. Asher Susser, who heads Tel Aviv University's Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African studies, suggested Friday the Arab countries might "legitimize" an interim Israel-Hamas deal.
