Yonivore
06-13-2007, 10:01 AM
...talking about the civil war in "Palestine?"
Where are the Joooos? (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181570259399&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)
Jamal Abu Jadian, a top Fatah commander, fled his home in the northern Gaza Strip Tuesday evening dressed as a woman to avoid dozens of Hamas militiamen who had attacked it. He and several members of his family and bodyguards were lightly wounded.
But when Abu Jadian arrived at a hospital a few hundred meters away from his house, he was discovered by a group of Hamas gunmen, who took turns shooting him in the head with automatic rifles.
"They literally blew his head off with more than 40 bullets," said a doctor at Kamal Udwan Hospital.
Human Rights Watch (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/4a7fd32c19f417eb23b19e71fd4d7492.htm) accuses Palestinian armed groups of "grave crimes" in Gaza. (Their words so, I assume no pun intended.) This includes throwing people from high-rise buildings, attacking hospitals, impersonating media men, etc. Here's a small sample:
On Sunday, Hamas military forces captured 28-year-old Muhammad Swairki, a cook for President Mahmoud Abbas's presidential guard, and executed him by throwing him to his death, with his hands and legs tied, from a 15-story apartment building in Gaza City. Later that night, Fatah military forces shot and captured Muhammad al-Ra'fati, a Hamas supporter and mosque preacher, and threw him from a Gaza City high-rise apartment building. ...
After Hamas fighters killed Fatah intelligence officer Yasir Bakar, Fatah gunmen began firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, drawing Hamas fire from inside the building, killing one Hamas and one Fatah fighter. At a hospital in Beit Hanun, three family members with ties to Fatah, 'Id al-Masri and his sons, Farij and Ibrahim, were killed, and others wounded....
In the June 9 incident, four armed Palestinians drove a white jeep bearing "TV" insignias to a fence on the Gaza-Israel border and fired at Israeli soldiers. ...
Etc, etc, etc. At least Hamas and Fatah haven't issued a torture manual like al-Qaeda. But if they did, would it change the political positions the various sides of the ideological spectrum have taken? Probably not.
This is the downside to Fourth Generation warfare when any entrepreneur can start up his own terror business. The problem with a distributed insurgency is that, in substituting a unifying narrative for positive command and control, you have really unleashed a glorified form of chaos. So far this has been confined to Jihadi-type groups which have consciously adopted this model, thinking it advantageous. But eventually it will be copied by those whom they attack. The battles between the Sunni and the Shi'a in Iraq show that what starts as a contest between armed groups may eventually become a general purpose brawl.
Der Spiegel's version of how the Sunni insurgency in Iraq fragemented is here (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,487882,00.html). The bottom line is that the splits weren't created by diplomatic genius. The terror gangs fell out over control. That's not surprising because terror produces nothing. It doesn't bring a single goober out of the ground. Terror groups are inevitably in a zero-sum competition for the available protection racket, foreign funding and media attention.
Thus, the battle between Fatah and Hamas strikes me as a bit like the Iran-Iraq war. It is a shame that they both can't lose. The only thing I'm left wondering is how the U.N. and the Left will make this all Israel's fault.
Where are the Joooos? (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181570259399&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)
Jamal Abu Jadian, a top Fatah commander, fled his home in the northern Gaza Strip Tuesday evening dressed as a woman to avoid dozens of Hamas militiamen who had attacked it. He and several members of his family and bodyguards were lightly wounded.
But when Abu Jadian arrived at a hospital a few hundred meters away from his house, he was discovered by a group of Hamas gunmen, who took turns shooting him in the head with automatic rifles.
"They literally blew his head off with more than 40 bullets," said a doctor at Kamal Udwan Hospital.
Human Rights Watch (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/4a7fd32c19f417eb23b19e71fd4d7492.htm) accuses Palestinian armed groups of "grave crimes" in Gaza. (Their words so, I assume no pun intended.) This includes throwing people from high-rise buildings, attacking hospitals, impersonating media men, etc. Here's a small sample:
On Sunday, Hamas military forces captured 28-year-old Muhammad Swairki, a cook for President Mahmoud Abbas's presidential guard, and executed him by throwing him to his death, with his hands and legs tied, from a 15-story apartment building in Gaza City. Later that night, Fatah military forces shot and captured Muhammad al-Ra'fati, a Hamas supporter and mosque preacher, and threw him from a Gaza City high-rise apartment building. ...
After Hamas fighters killed Fatah intelligence officer Yasir Bakar, Fatah gunmen began firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, drawing Hamas fire from inside the building, killing one Hamas and one Fatah fighter. At a hospital in Beit Hanun, three family members with ties to Fatah, 'Id al-Masri and his sons, Farij and Ibrahim, were killed, and others wounded....
In the June 9 incident, four armed Palestinians drove a white jeep bearing "TV" insignias to a fence on the Gaza-Israel border and fired at Israeli soldiers. ...
Etc, etc, etc. At least Hamas and Fatah haven't issued a torture manual like al-Qaeda. But if they did, would it change the political positions the various sides of the ideological spectrum have taken? Probably not.
This is the downside to Fourth Generation warfare when any entrepreneur can start up his own terror business. The problem with a distributed insurgency is that, in substituting a unifying narrative for positive command and control, you have really unleashed a glorified form of chaos. So far this has been confined to Jihadi-type groups which have consciously adopted this model, thinking it advantageous. But eventually it will be copied by those whom they attack. The battles between the Sunni and the Shi'a in Iraq show that what starts as a contest between armed groups may eventually become a general purpose brawl.
Der Spiegel's version of how the Sunni insurgency in Iraq fragemented is here (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,487882,00.html). The bottom line is that the splits weren't created by diplomatic genius. The terror gangs fell out over control. That's not surprising because terror produces nothing. It doesn't bring a single goober out of the ground. Terror groups are inevitably in a zero-sum competition for the available protection racket, foreign funding and media attention.
Thus, the battle between Fatah and Hamas strikes me as a bit like the Iran-Iraq war. It is a shame that they both can't lose. The only thing I'm left wondering is how the U.N. and the Left will make this all Israel's fault.