Life in the Gaza Strip

A man his in mid-20s who sports a full beard – unseen on Palestinian policemen in the past but rapidly becoming part of the uniform – says he's also traded in his all-black militants' attire for the blue uniform that Hamas superiors issued him.

"We are here to protect our people. Abbas used to say that we're the 'black militias,' but we are much purer than them," he says. "We haven't killed any of our people. We killed only the corrupt people who hole the peoples' resources and put them in their own bank accounts."

Seeing a reporter, a small group of civilians gather to eavesdrop. One of them shakes his head and interrupts.

"Yeah, but you killed innocent people," charges the young man, yelling at Mr. Suhayid. "People who had nothing to do with Fatah or Hamas." The rest of the crowd looks at him with surprise, but Suhayid brushes it off with a smile and a religious benediction.

"God bless them," he says. "They were not targets, but they were stuck in the crossfire. God keep them," he repeats, in an oft-said praise for the departed, referring to the afterlife.

For Fatah, different routes out of Gaza

In this life, however, some Palestinians don't find this attitude acceptable. That's why Raed Shami, who lives on the seventh floor of one of the higher-quality high-rise buildings in the newer Tel il-Hawa neighborhood, is busy moving out. He and his brothers are helping him salvage what furniture and appliances they can from their apartment, where bullets ricocheted around the room for days as he cowered on the floor with his wife and children.

"We spent 48 hours lying on the ground, hoping we'd be safe, and I almost got shot. Now we're moving somewhere safer," he says, watching his refrigerator and washing machine being lifted into a small truck.

"I am pessimistic now. I think that these clashes might take place again at anytime." Mr. Shami says. "One day soon someone will restart this, and they don't care about us, they care about their own agendas."

In this sea of uncertainty, people who were affiliated with Fatah are taking several different approaches. Some are trying to get to the West Bank, to join others who escaped to there, though Israel has kept the borders closed. Some are declaring themselves breakaway factions of Fatah, such as Abu Hillal, who invited all of the media last week to a press conference to say that he was establishing the Al Yasser wing of Fatah. Many from both Fatah and Hamas insist that the fight was not about factional fighting, but a revolt against Fatah security czar Mohammed Dahlan.

Others are simply staying home, for fear that there will be more "purges" of Fatah people. Abu Mahmoud, who worked for the preventive security force that was headed by Mr. Dahlan, says that he doesn't believe Hamas's promises that it won't persecute anyone else from Fatah.

"I wish I had gotten out to the West Bank," Mr. Mahmoud says. He spends most of his time on the phone with his friends there, getting updates from them.

"Despite this Hamas pardon, I don't trust them. They might come anytime for their revenge. I thought of escaping even now to Ramallah, but how can I do that and leave my family here?" he says, pointing to his children playing in the street.

At prayer services, however, a different message is heard. Whether or not one attends the central Abu Hadra mosque, the speech permeates the air over Gaza City, blasting over loudspeakers. Here, Ahmed Bahar, who is known as the speaker of the Palestinian parliament – the same one that was dissolved by Abbas after the coup and replaced by an emergency government – occasionally serves at imam. He uses the pulpit to lob criticism at the summit this week in Sharm el-Sheikh,  Egypt in which Abbas and Israeli leader Ehud Olmert vowed to move the peace process forward.

"Abbas is ready to meet with the enemy who is killing our people," intones Mr. Bahar, "but he doesn't have time to meet his brothers."

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