Word: dinfully
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...quandary is how to deal with militia leaders like Abu Samhadana, who nominally belong to Abbas' Fatah party but operate outside anyone's control. U.S. officials estimate that there are 3,000 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank who consider themselves leaders of militias like the Salah ed-Din Brigades, although most are much less powerful than Abu Samhadana. The Palestinian Authority's 30,000 police and soldiers in the Gaza Strip say they lack the capacity to disarm such groups. In an open show of their frustration, 50 police officers fired guns in the air and interrupted...
Among the brawniest is Abu Samhadana, whose shifting network of allegiances illustrates the difficulties Abbas faces in trying to restore order. During the intifadeh, the Salah ed-Din Brigades gained the respect of Gazans by confronting Israeli soldiers when the official Palestinian military fled. But the group ran its refugee camps, towns and villages as gangster fiefs. With the Israelis gone, locals say it has increasingly turned to racketeering and extortion. Despite Abbas' ban on the public display of weapons, members of the gang can still be seen on Gaza's streets, openly toting their...
...Samhadana's men have become more brazen in going after their enemies. Early last month, gunmen besieged the house of Moussa Arafat, a top security adviser to Abbas, dragged him into the street and shot him 23 times. Members of the Salah ed-Din Brigades claimed responsibility for the killing in a statement released through a website, saying it killed Arafat because he was a "collaborator and corrupt." Senior Palestinian security officials say they believe the gunmen were persuaded to carry out the hit by Arafat's rivals within Fatah. Over the summer, branches of the Salah ed-Din Brigades...
...violence seems likely to escalate. Arafat's family will no doubt eventually take revenge. And armed Fatah factions, including the Salah ed-Din Brigades, have compiled a hit list, according to senior Fatah officials, that includes party officials and cabinet ministers suspected of corruption. Fearing for their lives, several senior Fatah officials fled last month to Jordan. In Nablus, a former Interior Minister narrowly escaped being assassinated Sept. 20 by a group of masked men. Meanwhile, the leader of the Fatah militia in the West Bank town of Jenin said two weeks ago that he no longer considers himself bound...
Defusing groups like the Salah ed-Din Brigades won't be easy. Unlike Hamas, they have no political program that Abbas can negotiate over. Abu Samhadana says his "main priority" is to gain sinecures for his men in the Palestinian Authority's security forces. So far, he has been offered jobs for 500. That's not enough, he says, and complains that the remaining 1,500 "will be like the rest of the Palestinian people--unemployed." The town of Rafah is particularly desperate: it has a 66% unemployment rate, compared with 25% among Palestinians in general...