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Once again, Palestinians are dying. This time, however, they’re not actually being killed by the Israelis. No, this time, it is Fatah vs. Hamas for the control of the Gaza Strip, a tiny piece of land in the West of Israel. Fatah, often considered the more “moderate” of the two main Palestinian parties, was defeated in the 2006 elections by Hamas, the far more militant group that is now the majority party in the Palestinian Authority. After the elections, the Saudis brokered a deal in an effort to prevent exactly what is happening at the moment. Under this deal, Fatah ministers would serve in a Hamas-dominated government. The latest news it that the President of the Palestinian Government, a member of the Fatah party, has decided that Fatah ministers will no longer take part in the government if the shooting does not stop.

The fighting throughout the day could be tracked by the content on a Palestinian TV station, which, at one point, played music supporting Hamas, and, at another, played music supporting Fatah. With dozens of men already dead, the area is slipping even further towards civil war. Hamas has more men and guns, and observers generally note that it will not be long before Hamas controls Gaza completely. This could have international consequences.

The goal of this coalition government was to secure international aid/recognition and to stop the fighting between the factions. Clearly, neither goal has been accomplished. Nearly every Western nation prefers the relatively moderate Fatah to Hamas, which is widely regarded as a terrorist organization. For once, however, Israel seems reluctant to intervene and the Israeli government is facing its own stability issues at the moment. As the violence becomes more extreme, some are advocating the deployment of a multi-national peace-keeping force.

This force should not be deployed. Israel is clearly in the wrong with its imperialistic attitude toward its Arab neighbours, but if the Palestinians want a nation of their own, they must prove that they can govern it without terrorizing their citizens. Gaza, small as it is, was given to the Palestinians to run, not to blast to pieces. In the short term, refuge must be offered to Palestinians fleeing Gaza until the area is stabilized. If Fatah and Hamas really want to blast themselves to pieces, no international peace keeping force is going to stop them; they will unite long enough to terrorize the peacekeeping troops and then turn on each other as soon as they are left alone. Egypt has also offered to broker a deal between the factions, but such a deal would be ineffective, just as the Saudi agreement has been. In the long run, the only way to solve this issue will be for Israel to get serious about economic opportunities and equality for the Palestinians.

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The Unrest in Gaza Causes Potential for Civil War by New School Politics, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.