The Real Middle East Civil War

This report (full text below) is either out of the Gaza Strip, or Beyond Thunderdome.

In the American Civil War, half of the Army’s officer corps resigned their commissions. A rival government was established, and a rival army loyal to that government was raised. For all the talk of a civil war in Iraq, lots of low-level sectarian violence ala Bosnia/Kosovo does not lend itself readily to the definition of a full fledged civil war.

In Gaza, however, we DO have rival governments jockeying for power. These rival governments each have their own army, and are preparing to violently do battle for control of the Palestinian quasi-state and -just like in Highlander- there can be only one.

I think an actual civil war within the Palestinian territories is very close. As for Hamas not responding to Israeli shelling –its because they are now in charge and will be held responsible for the attack, whereas Fatah now can claim minority status and attack Israel like Hamas used to –which just shows that neither of these groups are really committed to the peace process.

I think it is great that the Palestinians had an election, but democracy is a process, not an event. For anyone that thought a simple election would lead the Palestinian territories into a flowering spring of peace and Jeffersonian democracy, its time to wake up and smell the cordite.

Amid a yawning vacuum of power despite Hamas’s victory over Fatah in January’s election, Gaza’s mosaic of militias are expanding a network of improvised bases on empty land – much of it in the abandoned Jewish settlement – in the name of the Palestinian uprising against Israel

But as Mr. Abbas and the new Hamas-led Palestinian cabinet jockey for control of a government gripped by financial insolvency, the encampments are seen as yet another troubling sign that Gaza may be headed for a civil war.

Highlighting the growing tension, Palestinian gunmen from Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades briefly took over the Palestinian cabinet building in Ramallah Thursday, protesting the Hamas government’s refusal to meet their demands for perks and new promotions, the Associated Press reported.

“People are scared that this power struggle between Fatah and Hamas could turn into a violent struggle between the two,” says Eyad Saraj, a human rights activist who heads the Gaza Community Mental Health Program. He says the political rivalry is liable to devolve into a free-for-all among rival militias and regionally based Gaza clans.

“If everyone is taking a piece of land and making it his base, we fear that Gaza will be turned into a feudal system in which these military leaders will take an area and declare it their own territory.”

The Gaza encampments function as part recruitment center and part training ground for firing weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. The Abu Reesh commander says his camp “raises the hope” of teenagers recruited fresh out of high school so they can be prepared for the “military life.”

Along a beach-front strip on the northern outskirts of Gaza City, the camps have been set up side by side in a succession of yellow, green, black, and red flags that advertise Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, respectively.

Although the new Hamas government has pledged to bring order to growing lawlessness in the

West Bank and Gaza, militants see Hamas’s support for continued violence against Israel as a green light to set up more camps, even if they haven’t gotten authorization.

The sites are also a launch pad for the rocket attacks into Israel that have spurred a week-long barrage of retaliatory shelling that killed 17 Palestinians and stirred frustration with the new government.

Some see an ironic role reversal in the fact that Hamas militants have remained silent in the face of Israeli shelling while Fatah gunmen have taken the lead along with Islamic Jihad in launching the homemade rockets into Israel.

If Hamas suicide bombers once played spoiler to the Fatah-run government that sought to calm tensions with Israel and resume peace talks, now it is the Fatah-allied brigades that have turned up the heat on the Islamic militants as they try to grapple with diplomatic isolation.

The thud of artillery shells has become an unnerving background noise of daily life in Gaza over the past week, and the simmering hostilities have stoked public criticism of Hamas’s neophyte government for failing to rein in the rocket launchers.

At an empty base belonging to Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades just outside the entrance of the former settlement of Neve Dekalim, spray-painted graffiti welcomes visitors to “The Camp of the Martyrs.”

A young sentry calling himself Abu Hassan says that the gunmen at the camp had gone into hiding because of the Israeli shelling. When the PA decides to develop the land, the militia would go elsewhere, he says.

But, when pressed whether the Aqsa group would be willing to evacuate the outpost at the request of the Hamas Interior Minister Said Siyam, the young guard demurred. “It’s not the responsibility of Said Siyam. It’s the responsibility of my leadership.”