Word: fatah
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...hotel room and watched live coverage from Ramallah, where Hamas supporters in green hats were dancing in the streets, and from Gaza City, where members of the rival Fatah party were firing guns into the air and calling for Fatah loyalist Mahmoud Abbas to resign as president of the Palestinian Authority, I remember saying aloud, “This is not good.” I was thinking about Israel when I said it; I didn’t know how bad the Hamas victory would be for the Palestinians...
...infrastructure, paralyzing its economy and leaving what's left of the Palestinian government in chaos. As Israeli warplanes attack from the air--all told, their bombs have destroyed 43 buildings and killed more than 220 people, most of them suspected militants--the two rival Palestinian political factions, the Fatah movement of President Mahmoud Abbas and the Islamic militants of Hamas who back Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, have engaged in daily gun battles that left more than a dozen dead in three days of fighting last week. At this point, Palestinians seem to think they are closer to seeing civil...
...back to the Palestinians once the Israeli corporal is freed and the President dissolves the Hamas government. But Abbas, despite being the Bush Administration's favorite, could end up the loser. Many Palestinians see him as weak and fickle. Hamas' gunmen are more numerous and better disciplined than Abbas' Fatah fighters, who have splintered into rival militias whose main activity in Gaza these days is stealing cars and kidnapping. "Our image in the streets is very bad," concedes a senior Fatah official. "We are seen as self-interested and collaborators [with Israel], not fighters for Palestine. And this is what...
...Palestinian territories ungovernable, not only by Hamas but by anyone. Government is barely existent in much of the West Bank and Gaza, with salaries unpaid and security in the hands of rival bands of gunmen loyal to factions rather than any central authority. Last weekend's deadly clashes between Fatah and Hamas gunmen may simply have been the opening volleys of a Palestinian civil war. Hamas will certainly not go quietly, and retains the support of close to half of mainstream Palestinian society...
...Israelis will be the first to tell Rice that, nice fellow and peacenik though he may be, President Abbas has negligible power on the Palestinian street, even over his own Fatah movement. He's never been a particularly decisive leader, and Rice's efforts to bolster him through public praise and symbolic photo opportunities may have the reverse effect - given the crisis in the Palestinian territories right now and the anti-American sentiment it has engendered, the demonstrative but empty-handed U.S. support for Abbas may be a political kiss of death...