Fatah and Hamas are shooting indiscriminately around children, wounding five, and the mainstream media yawns and moves along to the next story.
Renewed clashes Tuesday between Hamas and Fatah militants wounded nine Palestinians, including five children, raising fears that Palestinian territories could erupt in a much wider conflagration.
Friction between the two sides has been heating up since the Islamic militant Hamas ended Fatah’s four-decade control of Palestinian politics with a victory in January parliament elections. The fighting Tuesday broke out just hours before international mediators were to meet in New York to discuss whether to ease the financial siege on Hamas over its violent anti-Israel ideology.
The rival factions offered conflicting versions of what set off the pre-dawn violence in downtown Gaza City, just a day after three people were killed in fighting between the two sides.
Fatah said Hamas gunmen opened fire at seven bodyguards protecting a house where a top Fatah activist, Samir Masharawi, was staying. The bodyguards fired back, and Fatah said at least one Hamas gunman was wounded.
Dozens of Hamas and Fatah gunmen then streamed to the scene, and eight more people were wounded in the sporadic gunbattles that followed, including five children between the ages of 8 and 14 who were on their way to school, Fatah said.
None of the injuries was serious, Palestinian hospital officials said.
Checklist of what is missing from this story: Names of children. Quotes from “witnesses” and “medics” and oh yeah, Israel-bashing. No, wait. Here it is:
The Hamas government is broke because of a Western and Israeli cash cutoff, and has been unable for the past two months to pay salaries that provide for one-third of the people in Gaza and West Bank.
[…] The World Bank, which will attend the meeting, has warned that a humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and Gaza is looming.
And the final paragraph of the story, which most often gets cut from newspaper stories (and which the AP knows very well):
At the rally, Haniyeh also called on negotiators to lift the sanctions, but added defiantly, “We are not going to surrender, cave in to this siege, compromise the rights of our people or recognize the legitimacy of the occupiers on our land.”
Translation: No negotiations, no recognition of Israel, no peace. The three no’s, again.
Hamas is determined not to give up its principled stand in favor of genocide and terrorism just for a mess of pottage, for a little bit of filthy lucre.
Fine by me. I just hope everybody keeps them cut off. If the Iranians and the Wahhabis want to send them money, well that’s just some money that did not go to some terrorists elsewhere. It’s not like the Arabs or Iranians would have used it constructively otherwise.
The Palis can kill each other over an empty treasury and starve to death for all I care. They have sown the wind with their terrorism and treachery, now let them reap the whirlwind.
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