In Gaza, it hasn't been quiet at all. Hamas has killed 6 people and wounded about 100 people for celebrating Yassir Arafat in the streets. I took the liberty to copy an article that was published an hour ago about the situation in Gaza. Palestinians here in Nablus are very unhappy with the situation in Gaza. They call it an open-air prison. No one is allowed in, and no one is allowed out. The worst part is, there is a mini-civil war (between Hamas and Fatah) with no chance of evacuation. Please read below:
- "Hamas kills six at Arafat rally in Gaza"
by Sakher Abu El Oun, 1 hour ago
Hamas police killed six people in Gaza City on Monday as hundreds of thousands gathered to commemorate the death of Yasser Arafat in the biggest Fatah party rally since it was ousted by the Islamists.
Another 130 people were wounded when the Hamas-run police force opened fire as crowds threw rocks and chanted "Shiite, Shiite" -- accusing them of being a proxy for Shiite Iran and its ally Syria, witnesses and medics said.
Palestinian television showed groups of protesters and armed men running through the streets and police beating a Fatah supporter with wooden batons.
The deaths added salt to the wounds of already bitter divisions among Palestinians, with the head of the secular Fatah party's parliamentary bloc ruling out talks with the Islamists.
"There will be no dialogue and no discussions with the killers and coup-makers of Hamas, no dialogue with those who do not believe in dialogue but only understand the language of blood and murder," Azzam Ahmed said.
"I am convinced that the Palestinian people will purge them from their ranks and that the blood of today's martyrs will be fuel for the resistance against them," he added in a statement from his office.
Hamas charged that Fatah gunmen fired at the demonstrators, but an AFP correspondent at the scene and several witnesses said it was the police which opened fire on the crowd.
Hours earlier the city centre had been filled with a sea of the yellow flags of the party founded by Arafat and currently led by president Mahmud Abbas, whose forces were driven from the Gaza Strip in a bloody takeover in mid-June.
People had streamed into the city from across the impoverished coastal strip, eager to pay their respects to the father of the Palestinian cause.
"I walked from my house in (the northern village of) Beit Hanun," said Um Hatem, 65, who attended in a traditional Palestinian dress. "After him our situation has become very hard... We have become orphans without a father."
The crowds waved Palestinian flags and held portraits of the iconic leader in his trademark black-and-white keffiyeh headdress as Fatah party officials called for unity over loudspeakers.
"We say to Hamas and these armed militias, stop your crimes. These crimes will not shake our determination," said Zakaria Al-Agha, chief of Fatah in Gaza, reading a statement from Abbas.
The event drew as many as half a million people, according to senior Fatah official Ahmed Hellis.
Hamas which has controlled the Gaza Strip since the takeover five months ago broke up several smaller Fatah demonstrations on Sunday, the third anniversary of Arafat's death, shooting and wounding three people.
The Executive Force, Hamas's self-style police, arrested several people on Sunday and on the day of the rally confiscated tens of thousands of portraits of Arafat and Abbas.
Palestinians across the occupied territories, more divided now than at any other point in their history, have been paying tribute to the iconic leader who died on November 11, 2004 and who remains a symbol of Palestinian unity.
But the Palestinian Authority which he set up in 1994 now controls only scattered, autonomous areas of the occupied West Bank with Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip after routing their Fatah party rivals.
"Arafat's absence is what allowed Hamas to control the Gaza Strip," said Mukhaimar Abu Saada, a professor at Gaza's Al-Azhar University, adding that the rally was "a rejection of the actions of the Executive Force".
Hamas -- which opposed Arafat's policies during his lifetime and vilifies his successor Abbas -- nevertheless praised the late leader.
"We often agreed with the president Abu Ammar (Arafat) and we often disagreed with him, but in spite of this we consider him a symbol of the Palestinian nation," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum told AFP on Sunday.
But the bitter internal divisions that Arafat always managed to hold at bay have erupted across the Palestinian territories since his death from unknown causes in a Paris hospital.
Note; my personal political opinions is not necessarily shared with those expressed in the article. The only reason I am publishing this article is for the content of incidents.
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