Since he came into office this time last year, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been urged by Israel and the United States to move agressively against militants and terrorist groups, but he has failed to do so. The prospect of him taking such action has been greeted in Palestinian circles as something that Abbas would be doing merely as a concession to the U.S. and Israel. But as the recent flare up in violence in Gaza demonstrates, disarming militant groups is something that needs to happen if Palestinians are ever to have a viable state.
From the NY Times:
GAZA, Jan. 8 – Virtually sealed off from the outside world, residents of this violence-riddled strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea liken it to a giant, deteriorating prison, and at its worst it feels like the film “Escape From New York,” where inmates ran the show.
The economy beats feebly, filling the streets with armed men and markets and chaotic traffic during the day and emptying them but for scattered police patrols and idle young men at night. The Palestinian Authority, charged with governing the territory together with the West Bank, maintains tenuous control.
“The intifada has ended, but the violent energy is still there,” said Eyad Sarraj, a psychiatrist and human rights activist living here.
In Gaza City on Saturday night, one man was killed during a gun battle between armed militants and the police, while elsewhere in town another armed group threatened to destroy the local offices of the satellite television station Al Arabiya, which is based in Dubai. The men were angry at the station for broadcasting a documentary that suggested that female Palestinian suicide bombers had been put under pressure by male relatives.
Farther south that same day, gunmen cordoned off a neighborhood in Khan Yunis, Gaza’s second largest city, while members of a well-known drug-smuggling family battled with the Palestinian police. Eleven policemen were reported wounded.
And in Rafah, along the Egyptian border, armed men from the Abu Taha family stopped cars on Sunday, checking identification papers in hopes of catching members of Al Masri, the rival family with which they have been waging a deadly feud.
While the world is watching Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s fight for life and wondering who will govern Israel in his absence, people in Gaza are far more preoccupied with growing lawlessness and tension between armed factions since Israel’s withdrawal.
Read the whole thing here.