In 73 BC a group of gladiator slaves led by Spartacus succeeded in escaping their training school and took refuge in Mt Vesuvius. Everyone took pity on the small band, imagining that the Roman army would swiftly crush it. What they had not anticipated was that Spartacus's cry for freedom would inspire other slaves throughout Italy and trigger a massive slave revolt. Within a short time, Spartacus managed to assemble an army of some 90,000 fugitives from oppression. Rome quickly dispatched its mighty army to teach the rebels a lesson. To Rome's great surprise and embarrassment, the slave army succeeded in outwitting and inflicting a series of stunning defeats on the imperial forces. Although the imperial forces eventually succeeded in suppressing the uprising, after which it put some 6,000 rebels to death by crucifixion, the revolt has remained a source of inspiration to people aspiring for freedom and fighting against slavery and oppression throughout the ages. Spartacus was one of those caught and executed. Before breathing his last, he famously said, "My executioners, I forgive you. Now that you are free from me, I am free from you." But the Thracian had another claim to fame. The key to his success in harnessing all that energy against the Roman armies was his exhortation that no slave should fight a fellow slave, that all must realise that they had a common enemy: the masters of Rome who took pleasure in watching the gladiators fight each other to death in famed arenas. Spartacus thus persuaded his fellow fugitives that, contrary to what the masters in Rome wanted them to believe, their lives were not contingent on their ability to kill each other. Instead he had them echoing his appeal, "Life to the slaves! Death to the enemies of freedom!" Such stirring scenes come to mind when reading Human Rights Watch's report on the horrific human right abuses committed by Fatah in Ramallah and Hamas in Gaza. According to the report, thousands of Palestinians have been victims of assassination, imprisonment and brutal torture under interrogation, which has led to the death of some at the hands of Palestinian security and intelligence agencies. The Palestinian human rights watchdog, Al-Haq, added its voice to the international human rights organisation, reporting that the security agencies of both Fatah and Hamas practise widespread torture. It further accused the two factions of unleashing a reign of tyranny in the areas under their control. Another Palestinian human rights organisation, Al-Mizan, announced that Hamas waged a massive campaign of arrests of Fatah members in the wake of the recent attack in Gaza that led to the death of five Hamas members. Hamas's response was to point its finger at the Palestinian Authority security agency and charge it with waging mass detentions of Hamas members in the West Bank. The tragedy is that the Palestinians, who live like slaves under the Israeli occupation, have yet to fathom the simple lesson that Spartacus succeeded in teaching to the persecuted and oppressed of the Roman Empire more than 2,000 years ago. Instead of assembling their forces against the common enemy who has usurped their country, the Palestinian factions continue to play the game of fighting each other unto death to the great delight of their would-be Israeli masters. These, in turn, resort to the same ruse of the Caesars of Rome, which is to promise life and power to the faction that succeeds in annihilating the other. Which brings us to the crucial question: do the Palestinians need a new Spartacus, or is the problem that any Arab or Palestinian Spartacus will merely stick to the rules of the game of slave-against-slave?
