PALESTINIAN CIVIL WAR

Hamas and Fatah Are Preparing for War - Avi Issacharoff
Hamas and Fatah are preparing for war. Militants are gathering intelligence ahead of an operation against each other, rather than Israel. Both sides are monitoring the movements of rival senior officials with roadblocks on the routes taken by military commanders. The recruitment, training, and arming of more than 4,000 Palestinians in forces associated with Fatah are meant to send a message to Hamas. "For every one of our men who is hit by Hamas fire, we will hit two of yours," a senior Fatah official told Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh last week. The Hamas leadership abroad and the Hamas government in Gaza are not on the same page. Hamas' Damascus-based political bureau leader Khaled Mashal, his Gaza spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, Mushir al-Masri, Adnan Asfour, and most of the Hamas foreign leadership are not interested in the survival of the Hamas-led government. They believe the government is at the end of the line and that it will be easier for Hamas to return to terror if it is not in power. (Ha'aretz)

See also Palestinian Chaos Spreads.
A Palestinian arms dealer in Ramallah, who wished to remain anonymous as he offered to sell NEWSWEEK an unsolicited MP5 submachine gun, says that the price of a U.S.-made M-16 on the black market has doubled, from $5,000 to $10,000, since Hamas took power. “Hamas is buying like crazy,” the dealer says.

See also Hamas Death Squads Target Senior Fatah Men - Avi Issacharoff
Last Wednesday, Rifat al-Kulab, commander of the Preventive Security forces in Khan Yunis, in the Gaza Strip, was ambushed and shot in the leg on his way to work. Al-Kulab, 41, is now at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, where he gave an insight into the daily fighting between Preventive Security and Hamas members. "While I lay in hospital, Hamas men went to my house, threw my wife and daughters out and burned it down. They wouldn't allow anyone to go near the house to put out the fire," he says. (Ha'aretz)