Gaza conflicts gain deadly momentum

Hours after the Israeli military announced Tuesday that it was not responsible for the deadly explosion on a Gaza beach Friday, two more Israeli army missiles struck a van near Gaza's Jabalya Refugee Camp Tuesday, killing 11 people, including two children and two paramedics who arrived after the first strike.

Israeli military officials say the car was carrying Islamic Jihad militants who were on the way to launch Kassam rockets into southern Israel, which has come under a shower of rockets in recent days.

The cross-border arms volley – as well as worsening strife among Palestinians – has gained a deadly momentum since late last week, setting up a dynamic that may put prospects for dialogue among all the parties further out of reach.

Late Monday night, Palestinians loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party set fire to the parliament building and other West Bank cabinet offices – many of them unused by Hamas cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, because most are barred by Israel from leaving Gaza. On the same night in Gaza, Hamas gunmen tried to storm a compound run by the Preventive Security Service, which is closely affiliated with Fatah.

Some Palestinians eyeing the spiraling violence blame Fatah, the mainstream faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), previously led by the late Yasser Arafat, for refusing to accept the ascent of Hamas.

"It never entered the mind of Fatah that they should accept the Hamas success in elections, so they will do whatever they want to topple the Hamas government," says Abdel Sattar Qassem, a political scientist at An-Najah University in the West Bank city of Nablus. "We have the additional, internal factor that the US and Israel are pressuring Fatah to topple Hamas," he charges. "Every day, Fatah is doing something to create chaos in the street, so things will deteriorate as long as Hamas is in power. Israel, the US, and also Fatah have an interest in that."

Of course, it is Hamas – not Fatah – that is lobbing Kassam rockets over the border, something Israeli leaders hoped would be less justifiable once Israel pulled troops and settlers out of Gaza, as it did last August. Since the beach attack Friday, which killed seven members of the Ghaliya family, more than 80 Palestinian rockets have fallen on Israel, causing two serious injuries.

After an investigation, the Israel army said Friday's bloodshed was not the result of a misfired shell, as previously reported, but of explosives laid by Hamas with the intention of attacking the Israeli navy, which patrols the coast. Palestinian officials said such an explanation was highly unlikely.

Who is actually at fault may never be entirely clear, and may matter little now: Palestinians blame Israel and say their "farms have been turned into graveyards" in the words of Ghassan Ghabil, who sat at the mourning tent for his uncle and cousins killed in Friday's bloodshed on the beach.

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