Opinions varied as to who is to blame in the Fatah-Hamas crisis. In the end, Rasha Saad finds the two sides equally responsible For some columnists Hamas, with its seizure of Gaza, is the real perpetrator behind the week's many events in Palestine. "What Hamas has done is just the beginning of dissent that bids farewell to the cause and welcomes a war between brothers," wrote Abdul-Rahman Al-Rashed in the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat. "What is happening? Does it make sense that Hamas chooses to fight Fatah when the Israelis are a stone's throw away?" Al-Rashed asked. He says that what happened in Gaza was the biggest insult to the Palestinian nation which looked on with embarrassment and disappointment at what had happened in front of their eyes. For Ahmed Al-Rabei, also in Asharq Al-Awsat, the images of Palestinian mothers and their children fleeing at the Eretz Crossing that separates Gaza and Israel is the same as the mothers and children escaping the Lebanese Nahr Al-Bared Camp and those who were displaced from their villages and homes after the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. "And so, many thanks to Hamas in Gaza, Fatah Al-Islam in the refugee camps and the Israeli Defence Forces [IDF] for their wonderful historical achievements," Al-Rabei wrote. "What has happened in Gaza can only be described as earth-shattering," Tariq Al-Homayed also wrote in Asharq Al-Awsat. He said that instead of a Palestinian state, "we have returned to square one as now there are statelets since Gaza has been isolated from the West Bank. This means that the dream of a Palestinian state has been destroyed, not just today or this year but perhaps for an entire generation." Al-Homayed said the crisis between Fatah and Hamas indicates that we could fall into a major ideological split over the Palestinian cause. Who then should be entrusted with taking on the issue? By making the issue one about religion, as what is happening today, the next stage is guaranteed to be difficult and dangerous for the entire region. Hamad Al-Maged, while not supporting Hamas, points out in Asharq Al-Awsat that corruption is deep-rooted among Fatah members on all levels financial and administrative. "The success of Hamas in the legislative elections was actually a vote against Fatah corruption," Al-Maged said. In "The massacre of two factions" Ghassan Cherbel blamed both Hamas and Fatah for the unprecedented fighting. In a column in the pan-Arab London-based Al-Hayat daily Cherbel accused Hamas and Fatah "of doing more serious damage to the Palestinian cause than the Israeli enemy ever managed to do. "I accuse them of spilling the blood of the resistance fighters in a civil war sparked by factional bigotry. I accuse them of lacking the minimum essential level of national responsibility. It is unreasonable that a Palestinian sheds the blood of another Palestinian near or below the flying flags of the occupation." Cherbel argues that any supporter of the Palestinian cause has the right to ask the leaders of the two movements about the statements that say to the effect that between Palestinian infighting and civil war used to be red lines that are no longer there. "Where is the red line? Why did they cross it after a series of manoeuvres and intrigues? Why did they miss the opportunity provided by the Mecca Agreement to rearrange the Palestinian house and restore the red lines?" Cherbel wondered. His pen dripping sarcastic ink, Zuheir Kseibati in Al-Hayat wrote, "these are the 'knights' of the leadership of the national security forces affiliated to the president, while those are the martyrs, as seen by Ezzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades. Go ahead destroying everything and killing all Palestinians. As for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, they, too, have their share in freeing Palestine from its people and cause." Maher Othman also in Al-Hayat accuses the US, Israel and the EU of creating the situation in the Gaza Strip. "In case the situation in Gaza reaches a bloody, brutal and destructive level, it is quite easy to blame the US, Israel, and the EU which has gone along with them in imposing sanctions on the Palestinian people and blocking the horizons of political settlement that start with these parties agreeing to talks with the democratically elected government led by Hamas," Othman wrote. Othman said these parties should be blamed and held responsible for the greater part of the Gaza disaster after they rejected the results of Palestinian democratic elections and preferred to drive a wedge between the Fatah movement, chaired by the democratically and legitimately elected President Mahmoud Abbas, and the winning Hamas movement, which was shunned by Israel and the Quartet for not recognising Israel's right to exist as well as previous bilateral agreements, and for not disavowing violence. Othman believes that Hamas's response to these conditions is still correct and logical as it is Israel -- the occupation force -- that should recognise the Palestinian people's rights, especially their right to liberation, to establish their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital, not to mention the right of return. Othman contends that Israel has set impossible conditions for negotiations with the Palestinians. He quoted a secret report written by the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process Alfaro De Sotto before he retired last month as stating that the Quartet has turned "from a body negotiating as per the roadmap peace plan into an organisation working to impose sanctions on a government freely elected by an occupied people."
