Word: fatah
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...suicide bombers. Yet Palestinians believe that Israel would risk its troops two miles inside enemy territory only to rescue its valuable operatives. Without collaborators, Palestinians say, how would the Israelis have such stunning success targeting and killing activists in Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's own Fatah Party...
...Reining in the militants" in Hebron is something of a tall order for Arafat. The leading force in the intifada on the ground today, in Hebron and everywhere else, is not Islamic Jihad or Hamas, but his own Fatah organization. That may make it sound simple enough: Just order the boys to stop firing at Israelis, and go out and arrest a few Islamists, and we'll have a cease-fire. But it's no longer that simple. The Palestinian street shows little enthusiasm for a cease-fire; opinion polls find that two out of three Palestinians support suicide bombings...
...structured affinity, at that: Fatah militants on the ground have created "Popular Resistance Committees" in which they've forged a common front with the major Islamist groups and leftist factions. This grassroots "government of national unity" has no truck with internationally-brokered cease-fires; its objective is to wage war on the occupation. And that gives Arafat precious little room to maneuver. In July, when Gaza PA security operative Mousa Arafat had some local Hamas militants arrested, he found his home surrounded by armed men from Fatah, and Islamist and leftist groups - the standoff ended only after he agreed...
...that Arafat is unable to rein in the violence unless he's rewarded with political concessions. But that may be a moot point, right now, because the current sentiment on the Palestinian street severely limits his ability to act against the militants, even if he chooses to. His own Fatah organization has formally abandoned the cease-fire and resumed its grassroots alliance with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in order to fight the Israelis. As much as they're intended to force Arafat to act against Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the most recent Israeli actions may have only succeeded in making...
...Israel's latest attack follows Monday's air strike on Palestinian police headquarters in Gaza and an explosion that killed six militants of Yasser Arafat's own Fatah organization - a blast Palestinians blame on Israel, but Israelis and some Western reporters suggest may have been the result of the detonation of a bomb they had been building. On a day that saw a number of shooting incidents in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel also tightened its blockade of Palestinian territories in what it called a preemptive action against terror attacks. The latest Israeli actions follow two attempted bombing attacks...