By Stan Goodenough
May 17, 2007
Inter-Arab violence is spiraling in the Gaza Strip as Hamas and Fatah members clash in increasingly bloody confrontations.
More than a dozen “Palestinians” have been killed in raging gun-battles during the past 72 hours.
Plans by Palestinian Authority chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas to visit Gaza Thursday in an effort to calm the situation fell through, apparently out of fear he would fail.
Tension between Fatah and Hamas – which holds the majority in the PA – has been simmering constantly, and periodically erupting, since Israel abandoned the area in 2005 in accordance with Arab and international demands.
Because they will only put aside their differences when they can join forces to terrorize Israel, some of Gaza’s Arabs have been firing salvo after salvo of Kassam rockets at Jewish towns in the Negev.
Analysts believe the “Palestinians” want to provoke an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip so that Hamas and Fatah supporters will be pulled into opposing the IDF, thereby driving them together and helping end – for now at lest – the Arab-on-Arab violence.