04 October 2005 Blog Home : October 2005 : Permalink
Hamas is defying Abbas in a power struggle whose stakes have risen since Israelis departed Gaza after 38 years of occupation.
Abbas wants to talk peace with Israel, while Hamas refuses to disarm and vows to destroy Israel.
(My emphasis)A security source said the clashes began when Mohammed Rantissi, the son of an assassinated Hamas leader, became embroiled in a dispute with another Palestinian who wanted to use a cash machine before him.
Hamas called the official version of events "lies" and accused the Palestinian Authority of inciting Hamas "even at the price of civil war".
Tensions between the two were only likely to be exacerbated by an official report that concluded sole blame for a deadly blast at a Hamas rally in the Gaza Strip last month lay with the fundamentalist faction.
Straws in the wind and maybe just something that impresses only the incurable optimist in me but just possible that Sharon's Gaza move is going to be seen as tactical genius in that it forces the world's media, hitherto uncritical supporters of anything Palestinian, to actually look at what they are supporting. Further evidence is that the France 2 scam about Muhammed al-Dura, the so-called "martyr", has received considerable critical coverage recently with French journalists questioning the official story from France 2 and the Palestinians.Hamas normally adopts the most hostile possible tone towards Israel. It talks not only of confronting the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but also of being determined - one day - to march on to Jaffa and Tel Aviv.
[... T]here are some signs that Hamas's recent tactics have failed to impress the wider Arab world - a constituency that matters to the movement.
"The bitter truth is that armed parades and failed rockets are really a weapon in Israel's hands," wrote a commentator in the Saudi daily, Asharq al-Awsat.
And one writer in a Jordanian paper was also critical.
"Hamas is placing obstacles in the way of its own participation in the political process," he said.
Hamas has clearly decided that it has nothing to gain by pushing this crisis further. But it is Israel that will decide when it comes to an end. Within hours of Hamas's announcement that it was halting its attacks, the Israeli air force had struck again.
And so if Hamas is to stick by its pledge to rein itself in, it will have to sit and absorb punishment until Israel calls off its offensive.
It is not a comfortable position for a movement that portrays itself as the iron fist of the Palestinian resistance.
Nowhere in this piece is there any sign that the BBC consider's that Hamas' "hostile (...) tone towards Israel" is anything other than a negotiable ploy and/or publicity play. To the BBC it would seem that when someone (other than a US president) talks about streets running with the blood of infidels then they are speaking metaphorically and that really all they want to do is get a few minor grievences sorted out around tea and sandwiches. With luck