Word: palestinians
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...spark for the most recent flare-up was last week's tragedy on a Gaza beach, where a number of members of a Palestinian family were killed by what is suspected to have been a stray Israeli shell. Soon after Hamas declared an end to its unilateral cease-fire. Though Israeli officials might scoff at that statement - given the involvement of Hamas leaders in many previous rocket attacks against Israel from inside Gaza - the prospect of Hamas resuming terror attacks and Israeli plans for a broad offensive in northern Gaza suggest that a new wave of violence and political instability...
...source of the looming chaos is not just the usual Israeli-Palestinian antagonism. Monday's attacks on the Palestinian parliament and government offices by gunmen of the Fatah movement of President Mahmoud Abbas are a reminder that tensions between the Palestinian factions are escalating into low-intensity civil war - one in which the U.S. could suffer, as in Somalia, as a result of aligning itself too closely with factions viewed with hostility by many of those on the sidelines...
...Violence and political quarreling, of course, are nothing new to the Middle East, but this time is dangerously different. Previously, cool heads on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide could look to mediators from the U.S. and Europe to help them choreograph their way out of such a crisis. The Western powers left a diplomatic vacuum when the gave up their traditional mediation role following the election of the Hamas government in January. And the usual mechanism for restraining violence between rival Palestinian groups on the ground - a consensus at the top over the need to maintain national unity...
...coexistence with Israel - not to mention warned that permitting ongoing rocket fire from Gaza was a road to disaster - are now being drowned out by those calling for a resumption of violence. The images of the family destroyed by the Gaza beach explosion have darkened the mood on the Palestinian street, where there is a growing appetite for revenge for Hamas to tap into. And as long as the financial stranglehold over the Palestinian territories persists, the prospects for the more pragmatic element winning the day will become even more remote...
...After failing to convince Hamas to embrace a document drawn up by Palestinian prisoners calling for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, Abbas has declared a referendum on the matter next month, a proposal promptly rejected by Hamas. In calling for a boycott of what it calls nothing more than a power play by Abbas, Hamas is arguing that there is no reason for a Palestinian showdown over a negotiating position that has already been flatly rejected by Israel...