If Israel weren't there to hold these factions off, they would still have suicide bombers.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas is reported to have killed or imprisoned many Fatah loyalists over the past three years. Human rights organizations recently expressed concern over the Hamas government’s intention to start executing “collaborators” - many of whom are believed to be Fatah men. via hudsonny.org
Fatah spokesman Osama Qawasmi slammed the Islamic movement, saying that the Hamas government was the worst government in Palestinian history. He then went for the jugular, saying that Hamas has clamped down on the resistance in service to the Zionist entity, accusing Hamas of having a secret agreement with Israel to maintain security for the Zionists and of helping Israel maintain a 400-meter buffer zone inside Gaza. He also mentioned Hamas' forcing Islamic Jihad terrorists to sign a pledge not to attack Israel and the recent cooperation between Gaza water waste treatment officials and Israel.
He didn't stop there, also accusing Hamas of limiting goods that are smuggled to Gaza, of doing the United States' bidding by suppressing Islamic Jihad, and of killing scores of people in a mosque in Rafah last year.
Qawasmi said that Hamas "looted institutions, stole from the banks, and imposed a tax in violation of the law, and divided the national territory, and suppressed the violent traditions of the community, and violated civil liberties and [citizen] privacy, and made of the resistance just a slogan, with talk of rockets only via satellite channels."
Finally, Qawasmi cited Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood as having urged Hamas to abandon governing Gaza, using this as proof that even Hamas' parent organization recognizes its failure as a governing body.
Ouch!
...of course Hamas lashed out at Fatah, but this time Fatah fought back and cleared up some things that I always suspected. Cooperation with Israel is always a matter of proportion. Both groups are violent and are at war. There is no difference between the two. The Two State solution is only Hamas and Fatah and they are one and the same.
Were it not for Israel’s presence between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Fatah and Hamas would most likely be dispatching suicide bombers and rockets at each other.And they would perhaps still be throwing each other’s supporters from the fifteenth and sixteenth floors of tall buildings had not Israel, in the summer of 2007, helped Fatah members and their families run away from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.This is not a conflict over which side will bring democracy and good government to the Palestinians so much as it is a power struggle over money and power.The fight between Hamas and Fatah is not a power struggle between good guys and bad guys: it is a rivalry between bad guys and bad guys.
