It's looking worse and worse in the Palestinian territories right now. Rather more like a real civil war than the situation in Iraq.The Fatah faction and the Hamas people are openly battling in the streets.
Clashes were ugliest Saturday in Gaza City, where Hamas and Fatah followers traded gunfire and hurled grenades and firebombs. Hundreds of university students threw stones over the wall separating Hamas- and Fatah-run schools. Fifteen people were wounded, two seriously.
Later Saturday, hundreds of Fatah activists marched to Gaza's parliament compound, throwing stones and shattering windows in a government building.
Elsewhere across Gaza and the West Bank, tens of thousands of Fatah backers marched through the streets of cities, towns and refugee camps, denouncing Mashaal as a "dirty animal," setting tires ablaze and waving yellow party flags.
It appears that the flash point was the announcement by Hamas that they would form a shadow security force.
