Tom Friedman always said that Ariel Sharon played by Arab rules, so I guess Arik must have had a notion of what would happen if he pulled out of Gaza. Let the Palestinians kill each other off...less overhead for Israel.

Although Mitchell obviously tried his hardest.

The thought of some idiot reporter dodging bullets between groups of violent Islamic thugs and still trying to find some way to pin it on Israel would be laughable if he wasn't actually getting his nonsense published.

"Never mind Hamas and their call for the destruction of Israel...", indeed. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. It's all Israel's fault. It's always Israel's fault.

Have fun in the camps, Mitchell. Keep fighting the good fight alongside those Islamic militants and their famous hospitality.

It's one thing to start chanting an Arabic mantra during a battle; it's quite another to start empathizing with the "militants", aka terrorists. This final bit from the article brings the rest of the piece into focus.

Here are three choice quotes from the article that wrankled me:

"But it's not just cynical and calculating; they're Arabs and that stuff about Arabs' respect for guests is very real and sincere." It's true that the Arabs have a longstanding and deeply ingrained belief in respecting guests. I'd suggest the writer, if he's feeling suicidal, mention that he's Jewish and see how far their respect for his status as a guest goes.

"It was a targeted assassination of a top Islamic Jihad militant in charge of shooting half-assed-looking rockets out of Gaza into neighboring farms in what appears to be a symbolic jihad on Israeli lettuce production." The last "half-assed" rocket that they fired last week fell on a classroom in Sederot while the children were just outside praying. The fact that the rockets that the Arabs keep firing inside a sovereign country don't kill more people is a miracle. Some of these rockets have landed on people's homes and either killed them outright, burned them, severely damaged their property, or malfunctioned. What precisely are the crimes of these Jews? Are these people who are living well-within the 1967 border occupiers? No, they're children and families living on farms trying to live their lives. The Arabs keep sending them rockets at all hours of the day or night in attempt to burn up their lettuce and blow them to pieces. I'd suggest the reporter leave Gaza and report from Sederot for awhile. Maybe it will help him regain perspective as shells are raining down on him from the sky.

And here's the final straw:

"But they [Hamas] have more or less -- outside the mostly ineffectual rockets -- honored a cease-fire for over a year."

In one sentence he puts forward a positive statement about Hamas, playing off their military prowess and religious devotion about which he speaks both before and after the quote in question, and props up the myth that they are the good guys who've lived up to their self-imposed public-relations stunt of not killing Jews for awhile. But wait... doesn't he say that they are still firing lots and lots and lots of those so-called "ineffectual rockets"? Now this implies, I believe, that Hamas keeps firing these rockets to piss off the Jews and do no real damage. It also implies that they wouldn't fire more accurate rockets if they had them because they would only be in violation of their PR stunt if they became more lethal. Has this guy lost all his marbles or has he become another Jew-hating reporter married to his Arab benefactors? I'm not sure of the answer.

What I am sure of is that this poor reporter is lost in a war-zone and believing what the Arabs want him to believe. He's only seeing one perspective and is starting to sympathize with it without any cultural or historical context. He needs to leave Gaza and report from Israel for awhile and then state, after seeing a bloodbath in Tel Aviv or visiting a child in Sederot still being treated for shock, that the ineffectual rockets fired by his gratious hosts are both moral and warranted.

We rarely see actually reporting from the ground in Palestine. That was fascinating.

I hadn't really heard about worsening situation between fatah and hamas, so i was interested to know more. So he's showing some bias - i didn't really detract for me from the core message: Chaos is increasing and palestinian- on-palestinian violence is likely to get worse.

It is amazing to read such a refreshing piece of unvarnished reporting - giving us a glimmer of the situation on the ground in Gaza - and a real glimpse of culture that has infected the area.

1) You have the legacy of Arafat in the current condition of Fatah - divided into many small militias so that none could be too powerful – now unsuccessfully fighting against a larger organized group - Hamas.

2) You have the corruption of groups fighting over the spoils of government - which there translates into who controls the cash "donated" from the outside world.

3) You have militias - the "arm" of the political party - or more likely a family - each with it's own agenda (at this point - just to get paid)

4) You have tribalism - in the sense that no one seems to care about cooperation - just how I can maximize my pile of money and power.

5) You have the raw emotionalism that seems to rule out common sense and calculated behavior to build instead of to shoot off a gun at every occasion.

Anywhere else in the world you would call this for what it is – Warlords in action. For a people so dedicated to having their own state, their ability to wreck their dreams is breathtaking. It is said that the Palestinians "never miss a chance to miss a chance." They were given Gaza lock stock and barrel with the potential to show the world what they could accomplish by themselves. They are - and it is not pretty.

If the most educated peoples in the Middle East can't govern themselves without a strong man - what hope is there for the rest of the area?