Friday, June 22, 2007
Avi Issacharoff, one of the best writers on what's gone on in Gaza:
...Hamas was not using a random hit list. Every Hamas patrol carried with it a laptop containing a list of Fatah operatives in Gaza, and an identity number and a star appeared next to each name. A red star meant the operative was to be executed and a blue one meant he was to be shot in the legs - a special, cruel tactic developed by Hamas, in which the shot is fired from the back of the knee so that the kneecap is shattered when the bullet exits the other side. A black star signaled arrest, and no star meant that the Fatah member was to be beaten and released. Hamas patrols took the list with them to hospitals, where they searched for wounded Fatah officials, some of whom they beat up and some of whom they abducted.
Aside from assassinating Fatah officials, Hamas also killed innocent Palestinians, with the intention of deterring the large clans from confronting the organization. Thus it was that 10 days ago, after an hours-long gun battle that ended with Hamas overpowering the Bakr clan from the Shati refugee camp - known as a large, well-armed and dangerous family that supports Fatah - the Hamas military wing removed all the family members from their compound and lined them up against a wall. Militants selected a 14-year-old girl, two women aged 19 and 75, and two elderly men, and shot them to death in cold blood to send a message to all the armed clans of Gaza.
...a special, cruel tactic developed by Hamas...
C'mon, give the IRA its due credit for that innovation!
That whole article was really interesting. At this point it's in Hamas' interest to consolidate their win and not rock the boat, so the border is probably going to calm down for a couple of years. What happens next won't be good, though.
Those clans were always an obscure footnote to reporting on the PA, and fighting involving them was always played down as "factional". But as Issacharoff says, they're the remaining opposition in Gaza nowadays.
Funny, NBC news had an exclusive yesterday from Gaza (guess how he got it) showing how peaceful and orderly everything was. It's pathetic how little integrity some national news outlets seem to have these days.
CNN showed something similar. Ben Wederman was happily filming Hamas, sans facemasks, enforcing traffic laws and keeping the little donkey carts in line.
Oy.