| The Snocaps are for Robert; everyone else hands off. |
by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton
JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip—
| "Doc! Doc!" "What is it, Festus!" "It's a fifth bleeding body! Down t' the emergency doors!" "Is there an angry mob in its wake?" "Yeah, Doc! How'd yew know?" "Another Saturday night in Dodge City!" |
| "Go fer yer guns, Mahfooz! [BLAMMO! KERBLAMMO!]... Ow. Y'got me!" |
| "Awright. It's a deal then? No more shootin' as of 5 p.m. today! Soon's they put their guns down they're toast! We'll murderlize 'em! Heh heh! They won't know what hit 'em!" "What's that you're muttering in your beard?" "Nothing. Just a prayer." |
| "Yeah! Rat bastards!" "Swinehounds!" "Ugly puds!" "Get a rope!" |
But Hamas had paid already, with the legs of Mohammad Hassan Rajab, 30, who was ambushed earlier in the nearby town of Beit Lahiya by gunmen. | "Let 'im have it, boyz!" [BANG! BANG! BANGETY BANG!] |
| "Aaaaaiiiieeee! My upper thighs!" |
| "I will?" |
| "Maybe you should think about getting a desk job?" |
The doctors at Kamal Adwan Hospital are accustomed to removing bullets from the people of destitute Jabaliya, the largest of the Palestinian refugee camps. But until now it was always Israeli bullets. "Believe me, I don't know what is going on. All we see are wounded patients. Why? We don't know. Who's responsible? We don't know. It is not normal," said nursing director Mishal Abu Raya.| "We just can't figure it. Paleostine is usually so peaceful!" |
| "It's not like any of us Paleos ever did anything to make 'em shoot the place up!" |
| "I mean, what'd Hamas ever do to us?... Except win that election... Oh." |
| "Artillery! Artillery! Call radiology! Code blue!" |
| "Nurse! This man's got a subdural haematoma! We'll have to operate, stat!" "This man's got a sucking head wound, Doc!" "Whoa! Look at that sucker squirt! Give him a bandaid and send him over to Khan Younis Memorial!" |
| "Y'll never make me talk, Mahmoud!" "Ugh! Turn fork-tongue Hamas over to women!" "Are those... barbecue forks?... Why are they ululating?" |
Many Palestinian observers sense deliberate provocation on the part of certain factions within the fragmented Fatah movement. It has not gone unnoticed that many of the gunmen behind the Khan Younis violence are known to be loyal to former Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan, whose status has fallen to simply opposition parliamentarian in the wake of Hamas' political breakthrough. "Some people in Fatah just want their power again, so they are creating problems," said Asad Abu Shark, a political analyst in Gaza. The intention, said Abu Shark, is to further undermine a fledgling Hamas government already burdened by financial meltdown by showing it is unable to maintain any semblance of law and order.| "Pete! Take a half dozen boyz over to create problems in the Tataglia territory!" "Sonny, if we do that...!" "Just do it, Pete! Pop would want it that way! I'll send Luca to soften them up!" |
Though some commentators have been quick to throw up the prospect of civil war, Abu Shark said the phenomenon of Palestinians turning on themselves is likely to be contained — neither boiling over, nor blowing over — in the foreseeable future. "Nobody wants to see a coup d'état. If the Hamas government fails to do any good, let us decide things in another four years with an election," he said.| "I mean, this ain't that different from a year ago, is it?... Duck!" |