Tuesday, June 12, 2007
BLESSED LAND GOES WILD
Jewless Gaza remains lawless, for some reason:
Muhammad Sawirki, a 24-year-old officer in the Palestinian Authority’s Force 17 “Presidential Guard,” died Sunday when he was thrown from the 18th floor of a Gaza City building.
PA security officials said Sawirki and another officer were kidnapped earlier in the day by members of Hamas’s paramilitary Executive Force.
The two were taken to the Ghafari Tower, where the Hamas militiamen handcuffed Sawirki and threw him from the highest building in Gaza City, the officials said.
No wonder ten thousand have apparently filed requests to emigrate since the beginning of 2007. That avenue of escape has now been blocked:
Alarmed by the growing number of Palestinians who are emigrating from the Palestinian territories, the Palestinian Authority’s mufti has issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims to leave ...
"We hereby declare that emigration from the blessed lands is not permitted according to religious law. The people living in these areas must remain in their homes and must not leave them to conquerors. Those who abide by this ruling will perform an honorable deed and will support the Aksa Mosque."
Those who remain may also get fine jobs as truck disguisers:
In Saturday’s attack, four gunmen drove a white jeep with press markings in English and Arabic to a fence on the Gaza-Israel border, then broke through on foot and attacked a guard tower in an attempt to capture an Israeli soldier.
The attackers, from Islamic Jihad and an offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, abandoned the jeep. Associated Press photos show a white armored vehicle bearing red markings reading “TV” and “Press."
And the fun continues:
Palestinian gunmen battled inside a hospital and fired on the prime minister’s office in factional fighting today that killed 13 people and cast fresh doubt over the future of the unity coalition.
“Fresh doubt”, you say?
"Everybody is shooting at everybody,” a doctor at the Beit Hanoun hospital in the northern Gaza Strip said as a gunbattle raged between the Islamist Hamas and secular Fatah groups, hours after the latest in a series of ceasefires collapsed ...
In separate violence in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, Jamal Abu al-Jedian, a co-founder of Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was killed in a Hamas assault on his house.
"Help us. They want to kill us,” a woman inside the house pleaded earlier in a telephone call to a radio station.
“They want to kill us.” Catchy; it could serve as the region’s official slogan. Either that or “Everybody is shooting at everybody.”