Brief Hamas/Fatah lovefest ends badly

Fatah and Hamas held a rare joint press conference on the occasion of "Prisoners Day" about the need for Israel to release some 7000 prisoners. (No one mentioned the small fact that a couple of years ago, there were 10,000 prisoners.)

For a couple of hours the PalArab press was impressed with this show of unity. Then reality set in, as the two groups traded the worst possible insults that Arabs could hurl against each other - that the other side is in cahoots with Israel.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum accused Fatah of being a US lackey in refusing to go along with Hamas demands for a unity government. He also quoted Fatah official Azzam Al Ahmad's threats to cut off all security cooperation with Israel as proof that Fatah was cooperating with the Zionist enemy "to protect the security of the occupation." He said that this vindicated Hamas' position that Fatah was "fully dependent upon the dictates of the United States and Zionism."

Not willing to take these insults sitting down, Israel's fake "peace partner" struck back at Hamas, hard.

Fatah spokesman Osama Qawasmi slammed the Islamic movement, saying that the Hamas government was the worst government in Palestinian history. He then went for the jugular, saying that Hamas has clamped down on the resistance in service to the Zionist entity, accusing Hamas of having a secret agreement with Israel to maintain security for the Zionists and of helping Israel maintain a 400-meter buffer zone inside Gaza. He also mentioned Hamas' forcing Islamic Jihad terrorists to sign a pledge not to attack Israel and the recent cooperation between Gaza water waste treatment officials and Israel.

He didn't stop there, also accusing Hamas of limiting goods that are smuggled to Gaza, of doing the United States' bidding by suppressing Islamic Jihad, and of killing scores of people in a mosque in Rafah last year.

Qawasmi said that Hamas "looted institutions, stole from the banks, and imposed a tax in violation of the law, and divided the national territory, and suppressed the violent traditions of the community, and violated civil liberties and [citizen] privacy, and made of the resistance just a slogan, with talk of rockets only via satellite channels."

Finally, Qawasmi cited Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood as having urged Hamas to abandon governing Gaza, using this as proof that even Hamas' parent organization recognizes its failure as a governing body.

Ouch!