The Seeds of Civil War

The graffiti that covered the white concrete walls of Gaza City during the Israeli occupation are back. Freshly scrawled slogans denounce and threaten in language as bloodcurdling as that used during the intifadeh -- only this time Palestinians are cursing one another, not Israel. RATS, RETURN TO YOUR HOLES, OR ELSE, the Fatah faction warns the more militant Hamas group, which replies, A TRAITOR IS HE WHO FIRED AT OUR PEOPLE. On another wall is the vow FATAH ZEALOTS WILL CHOP OFF THE HEADS OF CONSPIRATORS. Hamas' counterwarning: THE RETRIBUTION WILL COME WITHOUT YOU EVEN HEARING IT.

So much for the notion of Palestinian unity. Bloody Friday took care of that the day two weeks ago when the security forces of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority opened fire on Hamas supporters and the Islamic Jihad rioting outside the Palestine Mosque in Gaza City and provoked street battles that killed 13 people and left 200 wounded. A few days later, in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, Arafat loyalists were fighting other opponents of the peace deal with Israel, this time dissidents within Fatah. While infighting in Lebanon is an old phenomenon, in the Gaza Strip, it was something new. "All the factions had sworn that they would never resort to violence," said Ziad Abu-Amr, an expert on Islamic fundamentalism at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. "Now taboos have been broken. The glass has been shattered. So we are waiting for another round. Are the conditions of the + first round still present? Yes, and more."

Round 2 threatened to come quickly when Hamas, which is struggling with Arafat for the soul of the Palestinians, held a mass rally last Saturday afternoon that attracted 20,000 people. The demonstration, however, passed peaceably. By agreement, Arafat's security forces stayed away, while Hamas refrained from public displays of weaponry and sent supporters directly home. Still, negotiations to achieve anything beyond a temporary cease-fire between Arafat and his opposition were foundering. "Our task is worse than very difficult," said Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab working to bring about a reconciliation between the two factions. At one point the truce talks broke down over the Palestinian Authority's refusal to accept responsibility for the mayhem outside the mosque. Arafat and his aides blamed the bloodshed on third parties: Israel, Palestinians collaborating with Israel, and Iran, a patron of Hamas.

Arafat's spirits were temporarily buoyed when 10,000 Gazans rallied for him last week. Among them were several hundred Fatah Hawks, a military branch of Arafat's Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Hawks, who had been ignored of late by Arafat, swore, in chanted slogans, to defend him and the Authority. The militiamen then drove around the Gaza Strip, brandishing their guns and shouting slogans such as, "We shall shave the beards ((of the Islamists)) with our shoes."