Posted on 01/05/2007 6:23:31 PM PST by blam
Gaza on brink of civil war as cleric is killed
By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem
Last Updated: 2:00am GMT 06/01/2007
An unarmed Muslim cleric was shot dead as he drove home from leading prayers yesterday, the latest victim of the Gaza Strip violence that is threatening to spiral into all-out civil war.
The funeral of Col Ghayeb saw a huge display of Fatah firepower on the streets of Gaza City
Witnesses said Adel Nassar, 50, was murdered because, during his sermon, he dared criticise the killers of a Fatah security chief and seven of his bodyguards. That attack, on Thursday, was widely blamed on Hamas.
The killing of a cleric represents a new low in the internecine fighting between Hamas and Fatah which has already claimed dozens of lives and defied attempts by the parties' leaderships to agree peace terms.
The latest call for a ceasefire by the leaders of both groups ended in the co-ordinated attack on the home of Col Mohammed Ghayeb on Thursday night, the bloodiest single recent battle.
Col Ghayeb made a phone call to Palestinian television describing how men fired a rocket-propelled grenade into his fortified home in the Jabalya refugee camp.
Moments later the colonel was killed. When the battle eventually subsided six of his men were dead and a seventh died in hospital yesterday.
The fighting came as it emerged that the United States is secretly preparing to give £50 million to support forces loyal to the Fatah leader and president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, who is locked in a power struggle with Hamas over control of the government.
The plan involves the US administration asking Congress for the money in the next few months, although the scheme is so sensitive that the state department declined to comment yesterday.
While the US will present the funding as a measure to improve overall security in the occupied territories, many on the ground will see it as backing one of the two sides engaged in a near civil war.
Mushir al-Masri, a senior Hamas official, accused Washington of trying to promote a coup against the democratically-elected Hamas government. "We demand Abbas postpones this US policy, which is tearing the Palestinian people apart," he said.
The funeral yesterday of Col Ghayeb and his men saw a huge display of Fatah firepower on the streets of Gaza City, with mourners impervious to heavy winter rains.
The marchers fired in the air and called for vengeance against Hamas.
It's a quagmire! Pull out of the Palestinian territories!
Hopefully they will kill each other to the point of where only 20 or so of them will be left on either side.
Hehehehe. I love it. Red on Red.
Just a matter of time until idiocy kills off idiocy and only idiocy will be left.
Is this the same internecine that is going on in Iraq? It's all about power and the almighty $. Lots of money to be made from those stupid enough to think they can win against US and the greatest military men and women in the world. But as the saying goes "a fool and his money...."
maybe they will manage to wipe each other out....
damned neanderthals...
too bad global warming can't make them an extinct species.
The U.S. may be making a mistake. I think Hamas will win. Fatah may be marginally better armed, but unless the U.S. or Israel provides air support (politically impossible) Hamas' better trained, more motivated militia will waltz right over them.
On the verge? They seem to be in civil war every third day, from the news accounts...
No, the tribal nonsense in Iraq and the Fatah/Hamas dispute have really nothing in common.
give 'em cash they kill each other, don't give 'em cash they kill each other. I vote for the no cash scenario, and free popcorn for us to munch on while we watch! :-)
I hope the new congress has enough smarts to shoot this one down. No nore money for terrorists, regardless of what side they are on. Let them all kill each other and swim in their own crap until they get sick enough of it to stop. If the rest of the world or the other countries in the mid east think it is such a problem, let them do something about it.
The more they kill each other the less the IDF has to deal with.
The more they kill each other the less the IDF has to deal with.
LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR.
Are they takin' Friday off ?...(meldt.com has news),99,,;0)
Now that is really being practical. Anyone who says this White House is too ideological to deal with anyone we don't like needs to check this out. $50 million to folks like that is hard to swallow, but probably necessary.
I believe that was Bush-41 and Clinton's policy w/regard to Afghanistan in the 1990s. How well did that turn out for US interests?
It isn't $50 million. It's over $100,000,000. The figure listed in the article was in pounds, not dollars (a pound is worth much more than a dollar) but it is still low.
That's what I was thinking. It's a win/win for everyone.
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