It is time for our First Annual PalArab Greatest Hits awards, known affectionately as the Splodies. Here is where we honor the very best of the (soon-to-be) 600 Palestinian Arabs who died from their brethren's violent acts this year.
So, without further ado, I present the 2007 Splodie Awards, in chronological order:
January 3: A bodyguard for the PA Interior Minister decided to moonlight as a bombmaker, since that is a respectable side job for a government aide. Unfortunately his bomb blew up a bit early, and his paycheck turned into life insurance payments for his family mostly paid for by the West in either case.
January 18: At the El-Bashiti wedding in Khan Younis, Gaza, one of the happy celebrants lost control of his assault rifle. He killed the groom's brother and injured three others, including one of those ubiquitous "security officers" and two teenage boys. No word about whether he shot anyone else the next day at the funeral.
February 23: A PalArab policeman, chasing a car that didn't stop at a Palestinian Arab checkpoint (we never hear about those, do we?) fired his gun - and killed a bystander. Human rights organizations condemned the act in the strongest possible terms. (Just kidding.)
April 26: Mohammad Khalil, 27, from the An Nasser Salah Addin Brigades (PRC) blew himself up in Beit Hanoun. They had to change the sign at the entrance to Gaza back to "0 days since the last work accident."
May 10: A "beauty queen" strangled her husband in Hebron, in what became one of the few dishonor killings of the year.
May 30: Two terrorists were killed and two others wounded when the explosives in their car went off a bit early in Nablus. Since it is not in Gaza, we know that the explosives were only meant for peaceful purposes.
June 10: Hamas threw a Fatah member off of a 15-story building. Not to be outdone, Fatah threw a Hamas member off of a 12-story building.
June 13: Two Palestinian Arab UNRWA workers were murdered, thus opening up two new jobs for the starving people of Gaza.
June 14: Hamas blew up a car, killing 4 kids. No tear-jerking documentaries were produced about these children.
June 15: Some very religious Muslim freedom fighters entered a hospital in Gaza and executed one of the patients, as well as shooting two women who were with him, no doubt for honorable reasons.
October 3: A tunnel collapsed and killed one of the diggers inside. But this wasn't a Rafah arms-smuggling tunnel - this one was at Beit Hanoun, apparently meant to tunnel into Israel to kidnap Israelis. Drinks all around.
Also, an RPG accidentally got fired and killed a 20-year old Hamas terrorist. Mother always said it is impolite to point.
October 7: After ignoring numerous death threats from members of the Religion of Peace, a Christian bookstore owner in Gaza finally got murdered. Well, it isn't as if he wasn't warned.
October 27: Two women and a four year-old girl were killed when their house blew up in Khan Younis in a "work accident." They were sorely disappointed when they entered Paradise.
October 29: A (possibly Western-trained) Gaza "policeman" accidentally shot himself to martyrdom.
November 4: A man who went through an oppressive checkpoint was shot in the back and killed. But since it wasn't a Zionist checkpoint and he wasn't "humiliated," there were no screaming headlines about it.
November 7: Hamas shot and killed a man at a funeral, thus saving his family untold burial expenses.
December 4: To allay any fears of sexism in the Palestinian Arab territories, a man was executed - for family honor.
December 18: During a funeral in Gaza, the celebratory gunfire severed a power line above, resulting in a live wire falling into the crowd, killing one and injuring eight. Hamas was impressed with the precise cutting power of the machine guns and is considering using them to help manufacture Qassam rockets.
Get your nominations in early for the 2008 Splodies!