 | The Snocaps are for Robert; everyone else hands off. |
Factional feuding rages in Gaza camp
by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton
JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza StripIt was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly A vengeful dread fell upon Kamal Adwan Hospital last night as a fifth bleeding body was rushed through its emergency doors, an angry mob in its wake.
"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!" |
Another Palestinian gunman. Shot through the right arm by another Palestinian gunman.
 | "Go fer yer guns, Mahfooz! [BLAMMO! KERBLAMMO!]... Ow. Y'got me!" |
Another day of factional infighting lighting up the northern Gaza Strip mere hours after leaders from all sides declared an end to self-inflicted pain.
"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." |
This night's victim, Mohammed Tana, 25, belonged to an armed wing of Fatah, the movement displaced to opposition status in the January electoral earthquake that placed Palestinians' future in the hands of militant Islam. "Hamas shot my brother," a voice in the crowd cried out. "Those sons of bitches will pay."
"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!] |
No mere bystander, Palestinian witnesses and doctors said Rajab was the target of clear intent to maim. The gunmen sprayed more than a dozen rounds into his upper thighs at close range.
| "Aaaaaiiiieeee! My upper thighs!" |
He will survive.
It remains unclear if he will walk again.
| "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!" |
"In the attacks before, from Israel, we received patients from Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, all peoples. It is better to treat people injured by the Jewish, not by us, because the Jewish are our enemies.
| "It's not like any of us Paleos ever did anything to make 'em shoot the place up!" |
"But we are not enemies. We have to be relatives and friends. We have to work together."
| "I mean, what'd Hamas ever do to us?... Except win that election... Oh." |
Medical workers, who remain among the 165,000 civil service staff going on three months without pay from the bankrupt and internationally boycotted Palestinian government, are operating under the assumption the battle may yet spill inside the hospital doors. "We have to be afraid," Abu Raya said.
 | "Artillery! Artillery! Call radiology! Code blue!" |
To avoid such confrontations, doctors now are processing patients according to faction. One side's casualties get the briefest of triage at Kamal Adwan before being moved to other hospitals, the rest are admitted for full treatment. None appear interested in playing politics with a scalpel. They simply don't know what else to do.
"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!" |
There is a tribal undercurrent to the latest round of factional violence, which has left three dead and at least 15 wounded since a clash of Palestinian regional clans erupted one week ago near the volatile southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. But as the violence fanned north to Gaza City, and further still yesterday to Beit Lahiya, the tit-for-tat revenge attacks now are driven by factional momentum.
"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!" |
The pre-eminent Palestinian leaders President Mahmoud Abbas, representing Fatah, and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, representing Hamas remain the two most trusted Palestinian political figures, according to recent polls in the territories. Though they stand as philosophical rivals, Abbas and Haniyeh have found common cause in their call for unity above all. The question now is whether that call will take hold not only with everyday Palestinians, but also the gunmen in their midst. 
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