Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh threatened last week to resign together with his cabinet if Khaled Meshal, head of the Hamas political wing in Damascus, did not retract the harshly critical statements about Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah he made last week. Meshal's statements last week at a rally in memory of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in the Syrian capital's Yarmuk refugee camp generated the worst internal violence to date in the PA, beginning with stone-throwing by students of rival Hamas and Fatah groups and rapidly deteriorating into exchanges of gunfire and firebombs Saturday between rival groups, resulting in dozens of injured and raising the specter of civil war.
| "Yer faddah!" "Yer mudder!" "His mustache!" "Her mustache!" |
Meshal subsequently issued "clarifications" in which he argued that his statements "had not been properly understood," and that he did not intend to describe Fatah and its leaders as traitors. The clarifications were seen as an apology and cleared the air between Haniyeh and Abbas.
The incident was further proof of strained relations between Hamas in the territories and the organization abroad, to which was added this week the revelation that weapons had been smuggled from Damascus to Hamas warehouses in Jordan - a step Haniyeh reportedly did not know about.
| Or at least says he didn't. |