Nuke's

Two years after Israel’s exit, Gaza has devolved into a murderous hell hole. Arafish’s handpicked successor, the so-called “moderate” Abbas has seen to it that the Roadmap to statehood will never happen.

It’s hard to point to a single incident that set off the violence. Fatah members took to the streets immediately following Hamas’ election victory. Sporadic bloodshed followed. In the old school Arab world that is the Gaza Strip, a drop of blood requires a pint of blood as revenge, particularly if the blood is spilled in your family. The situation degraded like the Hatfields and the McCoys. Family avenged family and clan avenged clan. Fighters lost sight of the greater Palestinian interest and they paid no respect to the dozens of cease fires brokered and scrapped. Both Hamas and Fatah were determined to prove that they are the dominant force on the chaotic street.

The fighting became as savage as anything we’ve ever seen in the Gaza Strip. A Fatah Presidential Guard member was kidnapped, hauled to the top of a 15-story building, shot in the leg, then thrown to his death. Fatah responded by throwing a Hamas gunman off a building. A relative of a Hamas leader had his hands and legs bound and was shot at point blank range in the head. Bullets ricochet off the streets; at night, civilians hid in their homes and gunmen died in droves. Each of the dead left behind a family of survivors, hell bent on revenge. With all the madness, hatred and bloodshed, only one ingredient was missing to qualify this feud as a war: a goal. No one was trying to secede from a government, take one over or grab a piece of real estate.

That changed on Tuesday as Hamas gunman began systematically overtaking the positions of the Fatah security forces. As I write this, Hamas has taken over the Northern one third of the Gaza Strip. They are pounding the three security force headquarters in Gaza with mortars stating that their goal is to take them over. They are also attacking the headquarters of President Abbas. If they take them, they’ll dominate the Gaza Strip. That’s a clear objective which moves this conflict up a notch and qualifies it as a civil war.

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