Golda Meir once said, "Peace will come only when the Palestinians love their children more than they hate Jews." Unfortunately, Hamas has apparently decided that they hate Palestinian children almost as much as the Jews -- if the children belong to Fatah officials. Three children died in a deliberate assassination at the hands of Hamas, a murder that has shaken the territories:

Fatah supporters blamed their rivals in the Hamas movement for the murder of the three children of a senior intelligence officer.

Hamas denied responsibility and promised an investigation, but Fatah activists were unconvinced. As they attended an emotionally charged funeral for the children in Gaza City they shouted slogans blaming the Islamic movement for the killings.

Coming a day after the Hamas interior minister survived an assassination attempt, the killings are expected to prompt more tit-for-tat violence between the two main Palestinian factions. ...

In a region supposedly inured to bloodshed, the unprecedented assassination of children caused widespread shock. There can be no doubt that the children were the target as the car that was attacked was only ever used to drive them to and from the Greek Orthodox School in Gaza City and was never used to drive their father.

Although no group claimed responsibility for the attack, Mr Balousha, 34, is known to have made many Hamas enemies when he took a leading role in Fatah's attempt to crack down on the militant movement in the late 1990s. Mr Balousha, who survived two assassination attempts in recent months, said he could barely describe his feeling at losing all three of his children.

Even by Palestinian standards, the deliberate targeting of children for assassination goes beyond the pale -- well, unless we're talking about Israeli children. The Israelis have seen a number of their children murdered in attacks on school buses and on streets by Palestinian terrorists. The outrage and revulsion felt by the Palestinians at this assassination demonstrates the monstrous hypocrisy of terrorists.

That being said, this really marks a new low by either side. They have reversed Meir's well-known standard to show their contempt for their own future by murdering their own children. In this case, they have gone beyond the last-ditch, seed-corn approach of arming their children to considering them fair game for hostilities, armed or not. For a culture that has set previous records in cowardice in their repeated attacks on civilians, this represents the nadir of the Palestinian experience.

Mahmoud Abbas has tried several times over the last few months to form a unity government with Hamas. This might have two different results. Either it will shock all so badly that the civilians will force an end to internecine hostilities, or it will explode both Gaza and the West Bank into full-blown civil war. I'm predicting the latter, given the Palestinian history of missed opportunities. It looks like Golda Meir was more correct than even she could have imagined.

UPDATE: It looks like my analysis might be proven true faster than I imagined:

Hamas gunmen opened fire on demonstrators from the rival Fatah movement in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, wounding four people in the first factional violence following the fatal shooting of three children of a Fatah loyalist, officials said.

The demonstration was organized to protest the deaths of the children, whose car was riddled with bullets as they were driven to school Monday morning. Fatah officials have accused Hamas of being behind the shooting. The children's father is an intelligence officer who is considered an enemy of Hamas.

Saleh Hammad, a local Fatah leader, said the demonstration was peaceful, though he acknowledged that some children had provoked the Hamas militiamen by throwing rocks at them.

The wounded received treatment at a local hospital. The report doesn't say whether the medical facility gets its funding through that well-renowned charitable organization .... Hamas.

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» Murdering their own children for a change from rgcombs.blog-city.com
In a new twist for a sick culture, Palestinians are now murdering their own children instead of Israeli children. Captain Ed recalled Golda Meir's famous prediction and noted how it relates to this new development: Golda Meir once said, "Peace ... [Read More]

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