Conflict Blotter

Hamas and Fatah have secured their fiefdoms for now anyways, Fatah in the West Bank, Hamas in Gaza. The two will continue their struggle for hearts and minds in the Palestinian street. The campaign will be a comparison between what Hamas has done with Gaza and what Fatah has done with the West Bank. Hamas […]

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As many of you may remember, Seymour Hersh published a story in the New Yorker about three months ago that claimed the US was funding Fatah al-Islam through the Siniora government in Beirut in a bid to undermine Hezbollah and Shiites in across the Middle East. It was a rather shocking claim, especially in light […]

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This is a bit off subject but one of my oldest, closest friends Thayer Walker convinced Outside Magazine — more like Outside Magazine convinced Thayer to let them drop him off on a deserted island with a mask, a knife and the clothes on his back to see how long he could survive. Over the […]

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Writing in the Washington Post, Hamas’ Ahmed Youssef says that blame for a failed state in Gaza will “lie at the feet of the American administration, which has chosen to isolate, rather than deal with, the elected government.”
No doubt some in Washington persist in the fiction that the United States is following a “road map” […]

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I just found this very cool interactive map of the West Bank among the Guardian’s coverage of the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War.

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Abbas came out firing today, calling Hamas, who he never referred to by name, “murderous terrorists” and cancelling all passports issued in the Gaza Strip. He gave no sign that he has any intention of deescalating the confict.
If he continues on this trajectory it’s going to spell trouble for him. He’s going to back Hamas […]

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Dion Nissenbaum’s account of Fatah’s collapse in Gaza is a must read:
Whether it was conspiracy or collapse, Fatah’s downfall in Gaza has created an unexpected opportunity for Israel, the United States and others to re-establish full relations with Abbas and the pro-Western emergency cabinet he’s installed to replace the elected, Hamas-dominated Palestinian government.
But the story […]

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The US State Department and intelligence officials are meeting in Washington today to debate whether or not the Bush administration should engage with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Eli Lake reports in today’s NY Sun. As Eli, who has lived in Cairo, points out, this story has added significance after Hamas’ takeover in Gaza. Egypt […]

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We heard a heroic story in the midst of interviewing Fatah fighters after the Gaza Strip had fallen to Hamas. We met with Hatem Iki, who I mentioned in the previous post, in his hospital room at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital. He could barely talk.
The 22-year-old presidential guardsman and 11 other soldiers had been sent […]

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We left Gaza yesterday with a Red Cross aid convoy, but I want to post some thoughts on Fatah’s collapse. We spoke with nearly a dozen Fatah fighters and soldiers from the various branches of the security services, all of whom were around in the president’s compound, the intelligence headquarters, the Preventative Security headquarters and […]

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