Word: samhadana
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...this was the case even before the events of June 8, when an Israeli air strike killed Jamal Abu Samhadana, a leading militant in Gaza, and the next day, when seven Palestinian civilians were killed and more than 30 wounded by an explosion while they picnicked on the beach near Beit Lahiya. The aftermath of the beach explosion was filmed by a local cameraman, whose pictures of a young girl wailing for her fatally wounded relatives generated intense scrutiny. The source of the beach blast is being fiercely-debated - Palestinians say it was an incoming Israeli artillery shell...
What prompted Hamas' move? First, Jamal Abu Samhadana, head of a Gaza security force, was assassinated in an Israeli missile strike. But it was the Israeli shelling of a Gaza beach--killing eight, including five members of one family--that united the Palestinians in outrage. Israel expressed regret, but that didn't placate Hamas' military wing, which ended the cease-fire and fired at least 15 rockets into Israel. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told TIME: "Hamas cannot stand idly by while the Israeli army kills women and children...
...head of the Preventative Security Apparatus, which is charged with overseeing security in the West Bank and Gaza, enraging Hamas leaders who felt their new power was being undermined. The Hamas-led Interior Ministry responded by forming its own paramilitary force under the command of veteran militant Jamal Abu Samhadana (whom Israel wants dead). Thus was the stage set for this week's gun battles, which occurred the day after Abbas went to Gaza for meetings with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, in which they sought unsuccessfully to find ways to solve a financial crisis that stands...
Defusing groups like the Salah ed-Din Brigades won't be easy. Unlike Hamas, they have no political program that Abbas can negotiate over. Abu Samhadana says his "main priority" is to gain sinecures for his men in the Palestinian Authority's security forces. So far, he has been offered jobs for 500. That's not enough, he says, and complains that the remaining 1,500 "will be like the rest of the Palestinian people--unemployed." The town of Rafah is particularly desperate: it has a 66% unemployment rate, compared with 25% among Palestinians in general...
...bloated public payroll that eats up 62% of his budget, and World Bank officials are leaning on him to fire some of his nearly 60,000 security officers, not hire more. If economic opportunities stay bleak, the gunmen may well push Gaza deeper into lawlessness. Even Abu Samhadana is worried that his men, having realized their goal of ending the Israeli occupation of Gaza, may cause even more ruination to Palestinian society if their vigilantism remains unchecked. "We must all distinguish between weapons of resistance and weapons of chaos," he says. The question is whether it's already too late...