The Beast Eats Itself Again...

Just when it seemed like the mob bosses who run Fatah and Hamas were all set for a cozy sitdown to resolve their turf wars and get on with the important business of killing Jews, their inner nature got in the way and they turned on each other.

It started with a breakdown of talks mediated by the Egyptians between Hamas and Fatah,with the principles and their various spokesmouths calling each nasty and perfectly accurate names. Then it escalated with arrests and crackdowns in both Gaza and the Palestinian occupied areas of Judea and Samaria (AKA The West Bank)with Fatah and Hamas rounding up members of the opposition in their respective gang territories and subjecting them to a little Palestinian-style 'justice'...nothing too terminal Mohammed, just a quiet little chat between you and me and my pals in a quiet little cell with baseball bats, electrodes and a few lit cigarettes to keep the party fun and interesting.

The real fireworks started at the end of last week when a bombing took out five Hamas members in the Gaza Strip.

It's fascinating observe how Hamas reacted to a terrorist bombing as opposed to the way Israel does...Chicago rules all the way. The Green Hat boys went berserk and started arresting and questioning everyone associated with Fatah they could lay their greasy hands on and soon fingered the Fatah allied Hilles clan. They then attacked the clan's stronghold in Al-Shuja'iyah district in eastern Gaza, killing nine people and wounding more than one hundred,including the clan's leader, Ahmed Hilles.

Over 180 members of the Hilles clan and their assorted allies, including the wounded clan leader fled to - get this - Israel, of all places. And believe it or not, once the Israelis disarmed them and searched everybody and made sure no one was carrying a bomb under their clothing, the hated Jews actually allowed them in and hospitalized the wounded Fatah fighters!

In a bizarre twist, when the Israelis attempted to repatriate the non-hospitalized Fatah clansmen, Mahmoud Abbas refused to accept them into the Palestinian occupied territory in the West Bank and told the Israelis to return them to the tender mercies of Hamas in Gaza...where they were all promptly arrested.Abbas' rationale for this was that he didn't want to eliminate a powerful group of Fatah loyalists from Gaza,but there was apparently something else involved, since that makes no sense whatever, even to a Palestinian. I have a feeling that the real reason Abbas didn't want them in the West Bank is because he was nervous about importing yet another group of fighters into the area whom weren't under his complete control.

It's important to remember that the Palestinians are not a nation as we think of it, but a feudal collection of frequently warring clans.

Meanwhile,Fatah continued its own clean up of the rival mob's gangsters. In Nablus, Fatah gunmen seized the senior Hamas operative on the West Bank Muhammad Ghazal and his family and threatened to execute them all unless Hamas ends the crackdown on their followers in Gaza and releases the Fatah goons Hamas has in its jails.

And in Gaza, Hamas arrested Fatah operatives Ibrahim Abu an-Naja and Zakaria al-Agha, who were put in charge of Fatah's people in Gaza by Abbas with the same rationale..to put pressure on Abbas to release Hamas prisoners he's holding on the West Bank.

This will probably end up with another mob sitdown and a return to the status quo,believe it or not. Abbas isn't strong enough to oust Hamas from the West Bank,and Hamas needs Fatah to continue forwarding to Gaza The Green Hat Mob's share of the aid money doled out by gullible infidels like the US State Department.

UPDATE: The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh agrees with me onWhy Abbas doesn't want Fatah 'refugees' in the West Bank.