Just because Hama HONESTLY want to destroy Israel doesn't make them partners for peace.

This is the most convoluted liberal apologist thinking I think I've ever encountered.

Oh, and by the way please advise the people who haven't lost complete control of their higher mental facvulties how Hama's can be said to have MOSTLY honoured a truce but still reserve the right to routinely fire MOSTLY ineffective rockets into Israel.

By the way, the MOSTLY ineffective rockets have recently included Katyushas which are MOSTLY quite capable of killing people.

Idiot.

S

I found the tone of this article quite off-putting. I have no idea of the author's experience or credentials, but his immature and slang-ridden style of writing does no justice whatsoever to the fear and terror induced by shots fired in anger, or the gravity of the political situation he attempts to cover. I would not have been surprised if he described the explosion of an rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) as "fucking groovy."

It brings to mind the Dennis Hopper "photo journalist" character in "Apocalypse Now," wandering around the surreal hell of Colonel Kurtz's camp, babbling as if describing a rock concert through a drug-induced haze. And all the while, he is a willing participant in the insanity.

If I agree to stop shooting at someone, but I still occasionally fire a bullet in their direction, I'm breaking the terms of my cease fire. A cease fire, if you will, is a little like virginity; either you have it or you don't.

Personally, I don't have a lot of sympathy for any of the myriad sides in this conflict, Palestinian or Israeli. To me, they all seem like a people hurting themselves to get attention for their plight.

Wow. What a great article! This is why I subscribe to Salon - great reporting with a local's angle and a few inside scoops, all written in a gripping, engaging style.

I'd suspected that the Palestinians were descending into civil war, but no one has been doing real reporting on it...until now.

Thank you!

A cease fire is just ordering the soldiers to stop shooting. If they don't follow orders, if they choose to shoot anyway for any number of reasons, that translates into 'occasional shooting' but does not equal Hamas breaking the agreement from the top down.

Looking forward to Juan Cole's next Salon piece, in which he will explicitly blame all of the chaos and bloodshed on Israel. You know it's coming.

i repeat, who cares?

I enjoyed this article a lot, and I think this helps realize that blanket sanctions against Palestine are ineffective, and worst, destabilizing. Instead of promoting moderation, Western sanctions have choked away medical supplies, food, and salaries, basically making life unliveable for many in the region. Unfortunately, this has had the opposite effect on the extremism America was hoping to stiffle -- Fatah and Hamas have both shown a vigilence to militarize in an environment where they are fighting for scraps. It is unfortunate that in the politics of the Middle East, our actions are harming the average Palestinian and reenforcing the extremist beliefs we seek to defeat.

This infighting is the direct result of the PLOs refusal to disarm the militant groups. They refused to disarm militants because it allowed attacks on Israel. Now they are suffering from their own decisions.

This civil war is inevitable and unfortunately necessary. The Palestineans can never negotiate with Israel for peace unless there is one governing authority that can impose order. This is a prerequisite to them having a country.

As usual, the main cause of Palestinean suffering is other Palestineans.

I think this is one of the best pieces of writing I've read on Salon in recent memory.

Great article about the Palestinian's decent into chaos. It is nice to see an article in Salon about the Middle East that isn't exclusively Juan Cole blaming Israel. One of the letters best described the situation in Gaza (and the West Bank) as Warlords. I think this fits well. The Warlord model in Africa grows out of the unnatural colonial boundries which brought several warring tribes together in an unnatural country. The European colonial administrators weren't very good at designing countries, whether in Africa or the middle east (see Iraq).

The Arabs have also proven themselves rather poor at this game. They tried to fashion an Arab Palestinian country out of the remants of the Ottoman/British Palestine (there never was an Arab Palestine). This hasn't worked very well, and it won't be getting any better. Perhaps it is time to realize that not everyone gets their own country. Just as the Basqes of Spain, or the Kurds of Turkey might be worthy of their own land, perhaps autonomy is the best option available. The poor, violent land of Gaza should instead be reattached to Egypt from whence it came, it was never part of the British ruled territories which became Israel/Jordon and the Palestinian authority. They have proven themselves ungovernable. The people there are refuges a wars which Egypt started and lost (1948 and 1967).

A similar approach should be considered for the West bank before it too decends into total chaos. It should be reatached to Jordan, with the fence going up to keep Palestinian terrorists out of Israel, Palestinians should be allowed full access to the east. Sorry, but the Palestinians have proven themselves unworthy of an independent state.

CNN trots out its Palestinian suits to complain about Olmert's Washington visit and how any unilateral action or inaction or anything else is impossible and unacceptable and violates something or other etcetera etcetera and so forth. But clearly they are nervous that the rest of the world is rapidly arriving at a consensus that any workable solution has to circumvent Palestinian 'participation' altogether. They will get whatever the powers that be thrust upon them and they can use it or not to shoot and bomb each other into some kind of internal political stalemate. In the meantime Palestine will increasingly become a backwater of chronic dysfunction. In an ironic way that's almost Biblical, the biggest Nabka of all to ever befall them will be to get exactly and only what they've been demanding.