Word: jihadization
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...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...
...potential for fratricide has always loomed in the background as the Palestine Liberation Organization sought to impose its authority, especially in the heavily fundamentalist Gaza Strip. Until recently, Arafat's self-rule administration had maintained a compact with the militant Muslim groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which adamantly oppose his peace accord with Israel and are trying to sabotage it with violence. The extremists focused their attacks on Israel and areas of the West Bank still under Israeli control. Arafat, for the most part, left them alone within his jurisdiction in the Gaza Strip and Jericho, despite Israeli pressure...
...hands-off policy has broken down. Earlier this month, Islamic Jihad for the first time publicly threatened to attack Arafat's security personnel. Then the group struck hard within the Strip itself, when a suicide bomber bicycled into an Israeli army position, killing three soldiers. At the same time, Islamic Jihad activists were holding a provocative rally in Gaza City, brandishing rifles and promising more mayhem. Palestinian Justice Minister Freih Abu Middain declared that the militants had "crossed the red line." The Palestinian Authority banned unlicensed demonstrations and rounded up some 200 Islamic Jihad members...
Skirmishes quickly spread to other parts of Gaza City. Officials ordered a curfew, to no avail. Hamas and Islamic Jihad supporters filled the streets, chanting anti-Arafat slogans and menacing the authorities. One mob descended on Arafat's military headquarters and tried to pull down the surrounding fence. The radicals denounced Arafat and his followers as stooges for Israel and vowed revenge. During a funeral procession for one of the fallen, a mourner took up an increasingly popular chant, "O Arafat, O Arafat, the Jihad killed Sadat," a reference to the Egyptian leader assassinated by fundamentalists...
...violent street fighting that shook Yasser Arafat's fragile government. The clashes, in which 15 people were killed and some 200 were wounded, broke out after police and soldiers turned up in force at the mosque in an attempt to prevent members of the fundamentalist group Hamas and Islamic Jihad from marching to protest the arrest of some 200 fellow activists detained after a suicide bomber had killed three Israeli soldiers earlier this month...