Cameras record Gaza's gruesome reality | The Australian
Font Size: Decrease Increase Print Page: Print ANALYSIS, Martin Chulov | May 19, 2008
A POPULAR pastime in Gaza is swapping gruesome footage of dead or dying victims of the Strip's incessant violence.
The images used to be almost exclusive legacies of clashes with Israeli forces but last year that changed. Now being far more keenly traded are snapshots of Palestinian fratricide, gruesome images taken by "militia-cams' that record scenes for posterity.
Spend any time near the emergency ward of Gaza's Shifa Hospital and security staff or ward workers will offer a look at their mobile phones, which they'll quickly switch to video mode to show images of victims of intra-Palestinian clashes being wheeled in agony from ambulances.
Sit in a town square for more than five minutes and you'll be quickly encircled by youths clamouring to outdo each other with images of death and mayhem.
A veritable library of the "intrafada" now exists in Gaza among militias and clans. Most were added during 2007, when the numbers of intra-Palestinian deaths jumped by 800 per cent - from 55 to 439 - almost all of the deaths in Gaza.
Last year was, by any measure, a revolutionary year in Palestinian politics. More than at any time in the previous two decades, the two most dominant political blocs were willing to bid for influence through the barrels of their Kalashnikovs.
Another factor that contributed to the violence, however, was a creeping radical Islamicisation - a small but growing number of youths in Gaza hitching themselves to an al-Qa'ida world view that pitches them against the rest of the Strip and renders, as fair game to be killed, anyone seen as acting "un-Islamicly'.
A spate of so-called honour-killings of women accounted for about 25 per cent of the body count - far higher than any of the years before.
Political tensions had steadily risen in Gaza since March 2006, when Hamas was sworn in as the elected Government of the Palestinian territories, including the West Bank. The poll win three months earlier terminated 40 years of the rule of the Fatah movement and its predecessors, and ended the patronage of many Palestine Liberation Organisation chieftains and warlords. Violence didn't erupt immediately but, by late December that year, it was in full swing.
By then, the US and Israel had hammered home their determination never to deal with Hamas, which remained committed to Israel's destruction, and to bolster the opposition forces which were struggling to regroup after the election loss.
By early 2007, both countries, together with the UN were openly training a new security force, the Presidential Guard, which was to be deployed inside the territories, ostensibly as a buffer between Israel and the Palestinians wherever either side had contact. They were to be of particular use at the passenger and goods crossings inside Gaza, the lifeblood of about 1.4 million people there, which had stayed largely closed because of militant threats and Israeli fears of attack.
When The Australian visited the Karni goods crossing in April last year, about 30 young Gazans were struggling through a training drill of chin-ups and shuttle-sprints being run by a former British soldier and a one-time Australian Federal Police agent, Phil McInerney. They were scrawny, unarmed and wide-eyed, yet they had no links to existing militia groups. They were to be the vanguard of the Presidential Guard, the new band of brothers that saved Gaza from the abyss.
Around the same time, Fatah was invited by Hamas to form a power-sharing government that it hoped would provide legitimacy in the eyes of outsiders and ease the suffering of Palestinians - but particularly Gazans.
Three months later, however, violence in Gaza reached an apex when Hamas, sensing the Presidential Guard was a Trojan horse for a US and Israeli-backed coup, deployed its fighters throughout Gaza to oust them. The training post that The Australian had visited was quickly overrun and 19 of the trainees were killed.
Writing last month in The Jerusalem Post, Bassam Eid from the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group said the events of last year had a precedent in the territories.
"Palestinians are at times encouraged and even advised by outside forces to engage in internal violence and fighting," he said.
"The American government, for example, repeatedly praised Arafat when he cracked down on his own people. As a result, Palestinians opposed to or critical of America and its policies are likely to turn away from the (Palestine National Authority) and join those groups who contest US actions."
The three days of fighting in Gaza showed a level of brutality almost without precedent there.
Limbs of Fatah men were shot to pieces, young Fatah militia conscripts were taken out on street corners by sniper rifles and men from each side were bound and gagged and thrown from the top floors of high-rise buildings.
There to record the intrafada were the militia cams. Images of men being tossed from the towers trade particularly well, as does a sequence of a Fatah youth leaping from behind a corner to shoot a rifle at entrenched Hamas men nearby. He hadn't levelled his weapon before being shot through the chest.
"Subject, oppressed, or embattled peoples throughout history have commonly turned on themselves," wrote Eid.
"Because Palestinians are accustomed to seeing weapons and are also exposed to verbal and physical abuse of the military occupation, verbal disagreements easily turn into fist fights and sometimes even escalate into gang or family feuds. Growing up in a spiral of violence means that individuals find it harder to determine the limits of aggression.
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