Voices: Palestinian factions - Laila

Q: How has the Fatah-Hamas violence affected your everyday life?

A: Life in Gaza comes to a standstill. Once the shooting starts, movement on the streets stops. Shops close. Parents don't send their children to school.

The tension is palpable and children get scared.

MEET THE PANEL
Name: Laila Haddad
Age: 28
Lives: Gaza
Works: Journalist

It has created a sense of unprecedented insecurity among ordinary Gazans, even among privileged Gazans who thought they were immune to this sort of thing.

Q: Who is in control of the streets?

A: It's not so much who controls what streets, as who is more reckless.

It has become a show of force that is extremely unpredictable and volatile.

Things can be calm one moment, with forces not even visible, and the next moment gunmen appear almost out of nowhere, and the fighting begins.

Once that happens, it's difficult to break the cycle. Each side puts forth a convincing narrative which they wholeheartedly believe in. So they see themselves as justified in whatever they are doing.

Ask either side why they are fighting and they simply say, almost like children: "They started it, we are just firing in self-defence."

It's a vicious cycle often involving petty clan feuds and personal vendettas more than anything else.

Q: How do you feel about the latest casualties being caused by Palestinian factional violence?

A: It's a tragedy. Palestinians killing Palestinians. But it's also not as simple as that.

While I don't exonerate those involved, I also don't discount the Israel factor.

What I mean is, Gaza has been turned into the world's largest prison. It's completely severed from the West Bank and Jerusalem, and cut off from the world through continued Israeli control of its only border passage. And somehow we are expected to go on as normal.

The Palestinians are the first occupied people to be placed under economic sanctions - particularly on this scale. And all with the blessing and complicity of world powers.

This is a methodical process that started before Hamas was elected, after the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, a determined bid to destroy an entire society.

It is simply a means to an end of a more strategic occupation.

Thus, we should not speak about the recent infighting as occurring in some sort of political vacuum.

Gaza has basically been left to the wolves, and in the absence of authority, food and job security, stability, or any meaningful intervention, the environment is ripe for factional infighting.

With plenty of weapons and Gazans left to their own devices, it is no wonder we have got to this point.

The US' funding of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party - furnishing them with weapons - has only aggravated matters. Fatah security forces and gunmen are one and the same and there is no doubt the US recognised this.

Given the conditions, I am surprised, but thankful, more fighting has not taken place and that things have not spiralled into total anarchy.

Q: What do you think of the call for early elections by the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas?

Hamas has indicated it will not participate in new, early elections, assuming they even take place.

If they do, it will likely be a dead heat.

Many of the swing voters who swayed the result in Hamas's favour last January will likely vote independent or not vote at all, based on my interviews and assessments.

It is a strategic gamble on the part of Abbas - one that may ultimately fail and steer the nation in a very different direction.

Either way, it will not be without more bloodshed.

Instead of demanding an end to the unjust international siege of the Palestinian people, Abbas blames the victims of all of this and calls for early elections, and then warms up to Olmert who just turns around and stabs him in the back, declaring a new settlement one week after their meeting.

Abbas learns nothing from history and is only solidifying his image as a puppet of the West and Israel.

He also ignores the fact that much of the chaos is happening as a direct result of his Fatah militias.

Click here to return to the front page of the panel.