Gaza Seethes

Hamas supporters shout slogans as Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of the Islamic group Hamas, not seen, delivers a speech during a rally at a soccer stadium in Gaza City, Friday, Oct. 6, 2006. Tens of thousands gathered on Friday in a massive show of support for the ruling Hamas group and its beleaguered government. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

Gaza seethes ... with what? Terrorists? Factional violence?

No, no, no. According to Tim McGirk of TIME Magazine, "Gaza seethes with Palestinian informers."

The Palestinians in Gaza have come to dread the phone ringing at midnight. Too often a stranger's voice, in flawless Arabic, will say, "I'm from the Israel Defense Forces. This is a warning. We're going to bomb your house in 15 minutes. Leave and tell your neighbors." Usually the Israeli intelligence is accurate—Gaza seethes with Palestinian informers—and the bombs, dropped by an F-16 fighter circling this narrow coastal strip on the Mediterranean, will destroy a hideout, weapons cache or hidden tunnel.

Waiting for the other shop to drop? Here it is...

But often those warnings aren't enough to save the innocent. One day last month, the Israelis dropped two enormous charges on a house in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, where smugglers were trying to tunnel into Egypt under a 25-ft.-high concrete wall built by the Israelis. There had been the usual telephone heads-up, but the blasts were so fierce that flying debris injured 50 neighbors. A spear of shrapnel flew more than 500 yds. away and killed a 14-year-old girl, Damilaz Hamad. According to the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Damilaz is among 60 women and children killed in air strikes since June, when Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip in response to the abduction of an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit. At Damilaz's funeral, militants in black T shirts fired AK-47s in the air. On a white wall, someone had sprayed the words congratulations to the family for the martyrdom of damilaz hamad. The only genuine grief was from the girl's paraplegic mother, who lay crumpled on a mattress on a dirty floor, wailing for her lost daughter. I listened to friends trying to convince the family that Allah had singled out Damilaz, instead of all the ruffians and murderers in this blighted stretch of Gaza, for an early death because her suffering was sure to be rewarded in paradise. Otherwise, my interpreter explained to me, "her death will seem pointless, and her family will grieve more."

For the Palestinians, sorrow has become routine....

This report just gets worse and worse.

.... Here's how a civil war could start. Islamic preachers under Hamas' influence begin denouncing Abbas in mosques as a stooge of the U.S. and Israel, undercutting his credibility. Hamas would then use its majority in the legislative body to try to oust Abbas as President.

If that were to fail, Hamas' fighters would take to the streets in Gaza and the West Bank territories. Such an internecine conflict would devastate the Palestinians, since many families have fathers who support Abbas and sons who belong to Hamas. And the consequences for Israel could be just as dire. A senior Hamas commander says the rift with Abbas is unmendable. Although Hamas has agreed to halt its campaign of suicide bombings in Israel, the commander says, "I'm afraid that [pressures from the] Americans and Israelis are pushing radicals inside Hamas to resume such attacks." And if that happens...

Get ready... If "radicals inside Hamas" resume suicide bombings in Israel...

Israel's wrath against the Palestinians would surely be even more terrible.

Never mind any dead Jews.

Comments

[Mariana, Argentina]

Ok, just let me tell you that I am really really and endlessly really shocked by the way you speak about Palestinians. You speak and think as if this is all perfect and they must keep suffering. Why must they keep suffering? why must they be punished? Why ? Palestinians are humiliated, most of them live in the most unhuman conditions, their rights are violated every single day by the Israeli-occupation forces. Oh come on, what should they do? Oh I know, sit at home and do not react, Israel also wants to take the right of self-defence from Palestinians. Yes, that's it !!! Go to Gaza (if you dare) or try to really see what is going on there and maybe in that way you will understand a little better the reason for their anger, for their hate. They do not hate just because.

[Lisa]

"Such an internecine conflict would devastate the Palestinians, since many families have fathers who support Abbas and sons who belong to Hamas..." A telling statement. The older they are, the more likely Palestinians are to favor the more moderate Fatah over Hamas. The younger generation has known only incitement to kill Israelis, and has no memory of the Oslo years when there was less incitement and Palestinians could accordingly still work in Israel, to the immense benefit of the Palestinian economy. Arafat's intransigence and Hamas's outright belligerence radicalized young Palestinians into thinking that only violence is the answer. But it didn't have to be this way.

[Belstaff Leather Jackets]

I'm interested in such offer,The sound quality in these podcasts is really poor. I feel bad about complaining about something that is free, but I think it is important.