Four large explosive IED road bombs awaited the entourage of Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas last week, as he left Ramallah heading for the Erez crossing to Gaza. It appears that Hezbollah’s training techniques on how to build EID’s have found its way into Gazastan. This isn’t the first time Abbas has been targeted by Hamas for assassination, and something that his strongman, Muhammed Dahlan, has vowed to ensure that it will never be successful. Hamas denied a recent claim as well, but the rise in the level of violence between the two sides, that has left over 60 dead in the past few weeks, gives rise to the notion that both sides are upping the ante.
Lack luster Middle-East “experts” here in Finland have been downplaying the possibility of a civil war erupting between the Palestinian factions of the Hamas and Fattah. University of Helsinki lecturer on “third world economics”, Dosentti Pertti Multanen said in a recent Kaleva interview (16.1.07) that:
“I don’t see any other alternative (Abbas’ call for early elections).” “Both sides understand that it would be a catastrophe for the Palestinians (that Hamas and Fattah won’t allow the violence to widen into a civil war), and only serve Israeli self interests. Only this will discourage the violence from becoming a civil war.”
Yeah, right. Since Thursday, over 24 Palestinians have been killed due to the escalation of violence between the two sides, including a two year old child. Car bombings and gun battles have increased with each days passing. Just as the “other expert” here in Finland, Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, was wrong about the Danish Mohamed cartoon outrage, badly predicting that it wouldn’t evolve into anything “significant”, so to is professor Multanen. *L* KGS
