Are Fatah and Hamas reversing roles now? The Jerusalem Post explains why Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Brigades carried out last week’s suicide bombing in Kedumim:
While Fatah, the long dominant Palestinian party, has never completely abstained from terror activity and has been involved particularly in Kassam rocket attacks in Gaza, Thursday’s suicide attack, officials said, was the first perpetrated by a Fatah affiliate since a February 2005 Palestinian cease-fire.
Fatah and Hamas, officials warned over the weekend, seem to have switched roles. While newly-installed Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called on its gunmen to stop marching around Gaza with weapons, Samir Masharawi – a senior Gaza-based Fatah figure – rejected the call. Hamas, a security official said, was trying to at least outwardly show itself as reforming and that it has cut back its terror activity in an attempt to establish itself as a non-violent government.
But Fatah, officials warned, might have other plans. With the disengagement from the Gaza Strip this past summer hailed as the result of terrorism, Fatah terrorists might be thinking that suicide attacks are the group’s ticket back into office.
