Mere Rhetoric: Palestinian Non-Civil War Watch - Cease-Fire Collapse (Again) Edition

We obviously have no way of proving this, so you'll have to take our word for it: when we saw the headline (and especially the lede) of this article, we had to scan for the date just to make sure we hadn't accidentally loaded a two-month old page. Middle East blogging is like being caught in a perpetual deja vu - except instead of being funny like Groundhog Day, it's much closer to that X-Files episode where Mulder is trapped in the time-loop and unable to stop the suicide bomber from blowing up the bank over and over again. At the risk of overloading you with existential rumination this early in the week, here's the story. And because you've been such good sports, we've even included some semi-worthwhile commentary at the bottom:

An Egyptian-brokered truce ended within hours early Monday when shooting resumed between rival Hamas and Fatah militias, leaving two gunmen dead and 10 others wounded, Palestinian security sources said. Violence between the factions left four dead on Sunday. According to the sources, the gunbattle broke out near the Fatah intelligence headquarters in northern Gaza City. The dead were the bodyguards of a local Fatah leader.

It's always a little weird to try to trace when a cease-fire "collapses" and when it's just "strained". It can't be body count, because Palestinians have engaged in mass suicide bombings without trigger the much-dreaded cease-fire collapse. And it can't be vertical escalation, because Palestinians have moved from small arms sniping to rocket attacks on cities without doing more than "straining" an "already fragile" ceasefire. As near as we can tell, a cease-fire "collapses" if and only if a Palestinian terrorist of suitably high stature says so. We just wonder if there's like an official form or something. Maybe on Reuters or UN letterhead?

If you have time to play the always exciting "what if Israel had done this", here are some other paragraphs from deep in the CNN article. Don't get too excited. They pull this every couple of months, where they tease us about the possibility of a civil war. It'll blow over soon - if they had enough energy to have a civil war, they'd have a state by now:

Two Hamas militants were killed in a firefight with Fatah militants outside a mosque in Gaza City, Palestinian security sources said.

and

Earlier Sunday, violence between the Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah raged in Gaza, leaving four militants dead and several other people wounded, Palestinian sources said... Nine other Palestinians -- four Hamas militants and five bystanders -- were wounded in the fighting, the sources said.

and

Separately, a commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades -- Fatah's armed wing -- and his assistant were shot and killed in northern Gaza by an unknown gunman, Palestinian security sources said. Fighting then broke out at the commander's funeral in Jabalya in northern Gaza, but there were no reports of casualties.

Never has so much global good will been squandered so ruthlessly by people of such primitivism. The posting time of this post is about 5:25PST. The over/under on a statement blaming Israel by either Fatah, Hamas, or Iran is 7:30PST. Bets can be submitted through the "Donate" buttons in the top right hand corner, and the payout is a thank you and hearty congratulations from MR. If you bet and guess incorrectly, you still get the thank you. But no hearty congratulations.

References:
* Hamas-Fatah cease-fire collapses; top official resigns [CNN]

Previously:
* Palestinian Non-Civil War Watch: Lots Of Shooting
* Palestinian Non-Civil War Watch - Hamas Judge Killed
* Palestinian Non-Civil War Watch: Blah Blah Blah