Last Updated: Wednesday, 13 December 2006
Despair deepens amid Gaza's strife http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6177371.stm
By Alan Johnston BBC News, Gaza
[Protesters have set up camp outside President Abbas's home]
A bullet-ridden, bloodstained white saloon car is the grim centrepiece of a permanent protest that has taken root outside President Mahmoud Abbas's residence in Gaza.
The vehicle belongs to a senior Palestinian Authority security officer, Colonel Baha Balousheh, who is linked to the Fatah party at the highest levels.
He was not in the car when gunmen opened fire at it on Monday, but his three sons - aged between six and nine - were.
All of them died on what should have been just another trip to school.
Hamas has angrily denied Fatah allegations that it was behind the attack, or has somehow colluded with the killers.
But whoever was responsible, the deaths of the little brothers has shaken this society to its core.
Demands are being made louder than ever for an end to Gaza's lawlessness. And that is the message of those who have set up the camp on the roundabout opposite President Abbas's home.
Along with the bullet-scarred white saloon there are pictures of victims of the internal Palestinian violence, and posters condemning it are rigged up around tents and chairs.
But this is by no means a broad-based search for reconciliation. The camp is a very much a Fatah party project.
Lawlessness
And there is certainly bitterness directed at Hamas.
One woman talked of how her son had been ambushed and killed by Hamas gunmen while serving in a security unit linked to Fatah.
But the tent is also attracting some of the many, many Gazans who are not interested in the party political infighting.
They simply want an end to the violence that threatens their families.
[We want to shout, 'Stop! It's enough - what's happening in Gaza.' We live in chaos and lawlessness.
Fathi Tobail Fatah member]
A woman who identified herself only as Umm Mohammad said, "My only son tells me all the time, 'I don't want to study here. There is no safety here. I don't want to go to university - I want to leave'."
She said she feared her children would die in the kind of violence that can easily erupt between the factions.
Umm Mohammad was demanding that both the Hamas government and the Fatah leader, President Abbas find a way to bring the many armed political and other groups under control.
"If there is a real government here - then it should catch these people. There is no safety, and we want the law."
A civil servant and Fatah member, Fathi Tobail summed up the mood. "Everybody feels anger and despair," he said.
"We want to shout, 'Stop! It's enough - what's happening in Gaza'. We live in chaos and lawlessness - this is the problem."
Mr Tobail said he blamed President Abbas, and he blamed himself and everybody who has not got out onto the streets before to try to make things better.
[Hamas and Fatah have maintained an uneasy peace in the past]
And you also hear Hamas people demanding more from their leaders. Hundreds of women from the party went to show their sympathy for Colonel Balousheh's family at the mourning ceremonies for his sons.
On the way they chanted their condemnation for those who Hamas says work to divide the Palestinians - those who the party says collaborate with the interests of the occupying Israelis.
But the Hamas women were also demanding that their own Hamas-run government act to impose order.
There was criticism of the failings of the Interior Minister, Saeed Seyam. But any hope that the deaths of the Balousheh children might mark some sort of turning point did not last long.
Civil war fears
Early on Wednesday a judge called Bassam al-Fara was shot on his way to his courthouse in the southern town of Khan Younis.
Mr Fara was also a commander in Hamas's military wing, which immediately said his killing was the work of a Fatah "death squad".
Fatah activists in the area have denied this, and suggested that the killing was some kind of family vendetta.
But few in Gaza will have any doubt that this was all somehow linked to the political tensions here.
[Relations between Hamas and Fatah at the highest political level could hardly be worse]
And there is every danger now that there will be more violence.
Again people start to wonder if the factional strife might degenerate into some sort of sustained conflict - even a Palestinian civil war.
But there have been many bouts of tension, and some much more serious than this.
And each time Gaza has hauled itself back from the abyss.
The leaders of Hamas and Fatah have shown a number of times that once they talk, often with the help of Egyptian mediation, they can restrain their armed men.
But they are only able to patch things over.
Their differences are too profound for any lasting peace between the factions, and the trouble always breaks out again sooner or later.
At the moment though, there is no talking going on.
Perhaps this will begin after the Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya returns to Gaza on Thursday from a foreign tour that he is cutting short on account of the crisis.
But there is absolutely no room for complacency.
Relations between Hamas and Fatah at the highest political level could hardly be worse.
Both sides have bitterly concluded that months of effort to form a new coalition government of national unity have failed.
President Abbas is mulling the possibility of fresh elections that Hamas would regard as tantamount to a coup - an attempt to usurp the mandate that it won in fair and square democratic elections in January.
This is a hardly a climate that will make it easy for the leaders to thrash out a way to calm Gaza's troubled streets.