Hamas “didn’t expect to win”

For confirmation of our assertion that Fatah collapsed in the Gaza Strip, check out Khaled Abu Toameh’s article in today’s Jerusalem Post. Abu Toameh quotes a Hamas official describing the movement’s swift capture of the entire strip as shocking even to themselves.

There is some spin from the official about the validity of the Palestinian security forces in their Fatah-dominated makeup… and he also points out that Fatah’s fighters were demoralized by the fact that their leaders had fled the area, leaving them totally adrift...

Even so, you would expect people to fight if they had been inculcated with a defensive spirit. That Fatah lacked this spirit became glaringly obvious during the confrontations with Hamas.

As the official in the Jerusalem Post story says:

“It was not a matter of a military victory for Hamas as much as it was a psychological defeat for Fatah.”

The groundwork for that psychological defeat was laid well before the Hamas uprising…

What is this, if not a war?

The death toll in factional violence in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the year is fast approaching 200. Over the past few days, Fatah and Hamas have taken turns throwing each other’s members off tall buildings. Gunmen from each group are shooting at each other inside hospitals, assassinating each other’s officials, killing women and children, and preachers too. They are storming each other's headquarters.

As one Fatah spokesman said, “What is this, if not a war?”

So much could be said about how utterly unsurprising these clashes are, about the culture of hatred that both Fatah and Hamas have cultivated and how it is finally consuming them, about the complete failure of the Palestinians and of anyone who has ever taken an interest in their fate to affect the development of a fruitful society amongst them... but the simplest and most salient point of all is that this is, indeed, a war. And it is gruesome.