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Evidently, the fighting has now spread to the Gaza area...
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Fearful Palestinians 'see separation coming'
Ptched battles between Hamas and Fatah spread to West Bank
MARK MACKINNON
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
June 14, 2007 at 2:08 AM EDT
RAMALLAH, WEST BANK — Pulling the cap off her red marker, Wafa Abdel Rahman highlighted the words she had just written in bold black ink. “Who are you shooting at?” the poster read when she was done. “You are my brothers.”
With at least 60 of her fellow Palestinians dead after four days of violence between Hamas and Fatah in the Gaza Strip – internecine warfare that spread Wednesday to the West Bank – Ms. Abdel Rahman was despondent as she and two other women prepared to stage a lonely peace protest in Ramallah, a city many worry could also soon be a battlefield.
The 37-year-old said she was mourning not only the victims of the fighting, which many are now calling a civil war, but also the looming death of an idea she has cherished her entire life: the dream of a single Palestinian state, based on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“It's not just about Gaza,” she said. “It's about what it is to be a Palestinian. It's about the whole national cause.”
Hamas looked well on its way to routing the remaining Fatah forces in Gaza Wednesday, overrunning Fatah bases and taking control of the vital north-south road as street battles raged on in Gaza City. Calls by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, a Fatah member, for an end to the “madness” fell on deaf ears as fighting continued unabated.
With the Islamist Hamas rapidly tightening its military control on the coastal territory, and the secular Fatah still very much dominant in the West Bank, many Palestinians are starting to speak aloud about a topic that was taboo until now: whether there will be – if and when the Israeli occupation of the territories ends – one Palestinian state or two. That is, a “Hamasistan” in Gaza and a “Fatahland” in the West Bank.
“I see separation coming,” Fatah legislator Muheeb Awwad sighed as he sat in his Ramallah office chain-smoking cigarettes under a portrait of the late Yasser Arafat. “Hamas is keen on establishing a mini-state in the Gaza Strip. What I'm worried about is that this idea is accepted by many sides.”
The two halves of would-be Palestine are already very different places.
Even before the recent fighting, Gaza was poor, violent and conservative, a place where gunmen rule the streets and women only go outside in strict Islamic dress.
By contrast, the West Bank is relatively affluent and laid back. Ramallah and other cities have far more in common with Jordan, which made peace with Israel in 1994, than with Gaza, which for years has been ravaged by a near-constant state of warfare involving internal and external enemies.
The recent fighting has deepened those divisions, perhaps beyond the point that they can ever be patched over.
“All red lines have been crossed,” Mr. Awwad said.
He said that intellectuals were mulling over the possibility that the West Bank could enter some sort of confederation with neighbouring Jordan, leaving a Hamas-run Gaza to go its own way.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Wednesday that a Hamas takeover in Gaza would complicate peace talks by making it even more unclear who spoke for Palestinians. Many observers, however, believe Israel would be happy to deal separately with a malleable West Bank leadership, while isolating a Hamas-run Gaza.
Witnesses said that Hamas, which was already in control of much of the northern half of Gaza, seized the central city of Khan Younis Wednesday and was beginning a co-ordinated assault on the southern city of Rafah. Hamas men controlled the north-south road that is the territory's main transportation corridor. They gave the remaining Fatah fighters in Gaza until sundown Friday to hand over their weapons or be forcibly disarmed.
“There are Hamas checkpoints everywhere right now. They control the streets,” taxi driver Ashraf al-Masri said in a telephone interview. He said he had only gone outside of his home in the northern town of Beit Hanoun once in the past three days, and that was to bury relatives killed in the fighting.
Some 200 Fatah fighters were seen surrendering en masse Wednesday afternoon and being led away at gunpoint to a nearby mosque, while at least 40 more fled across the border into Egypt and handed themselves over to Egyptian authorities.
About 1,000 civilians briefly took to the streets in Gaza City Wednesday, chanting “stop the killing.” However, the protest was quickly dispersed as masked gunmen fired on the crowd, sending veiled women screaming and running for cover.
The two sides agreed to a truce late last night, but Gaza residents said the fighting continued unabated.
Hamas and Fatah have fought sporadically since Hamas won legislative elections last year. After the vote, Mr. Abbas brought the various security services under direct presidential control, prompting Hamas to deploy its own militia in the streets. Some 260 people have died in clashes between the two groups since last May.
Earlier this year, the two sides agreed to a national unity government that included both parties and was supposed to put an end to the fighting. Mr. Awwad said that the latest outbreak makes the peace pact worthless and Fatah has threatened to pull out of the cabinet if the fighting doesn't stop.
Fears that the fighting could spread to the West Bank worsened Wednesday when Hamas and Fatah gunmen exchanged fire in Nablus after Fatah tried to storm the offices of a Hamas-run television station. At least 12 people were wounded, and there were reports that several Hamas members were kidnapped. Three Hamas members were also shot and injured outside a mosque in Ramallah.
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Question is, who do we want to win? 
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