Internal unrest in Gaza

For a while it looked like Hamas had a pretty strong grip on security in Gaza, but recent reports indicate that things might be fraying at the edges.

PCHR (Arabic only as of this writing) reports on three separate bomb attacks since Friday. On Tuesday, a lawyer's car was damaged by a bomb after he received a threat on his phone; a bomb targeted a pickup truck outside someone's home on early Monday morning, and on Friday a bomb damaged the house of a 63 year old woman who happens to be the sister of a senior Fatah official in the West Bank.

Palestine Press Agency reports that a peaceful PFLP protest against the power shortages in Gaza were violently broken up by Hamas police with batons. Many were arrested and beaten.

Last week an Al Jazeera reporter was attacked and insulted by Hamas police, in front of his children.

There was also a major clan clash earlier this week in Gaza City, where one was killed and seven injured.

A couple of years ago, this would have been a typical week in Gaza, but things had certainly seemed to be calming down internally. More troubling is that some of these attacks were not mentioned in the daily Palestinian Arab press I monitor, so it is possible that the Arabic media is missing some of them.