Truces

Just a little over an hour's walk from our house, a nasty civil war is brewing. Roughly speaking, from about early December until late January nearly 30 Palestinians were killed in Gaza in the inter-factional fighting. Last Thursday until late Monday night the fighting intensified and another 30 people were killed. A cease-fire was announced between Fatah and Hamas starting early Tuesday morning, but from that time until this morning (Friday) another 20 people were killed and 250 wounded and the cease-fire was officially in tatters. Just a few hours ago, though, a new cease-fire was announced between the two factions. Since then, at the time of writing, another four people have been killed.

Similarly, the Palestinians supposedly have a cease-fire with Israel which belatedly came into effect at the end of November. However, a recent study showed that the rate of rockets fired into Israel during this current cease-fire is greater than the rate of rockets fired when there was no cease-fire in effect.

I get the feeling that the Palestinians do not understand what "cease-fire" means.

UPDATE - Oh well, so much for that cease-fire. Didn't last until this (Saturday) morning. Maybe we'll have another...?

UPDATE II - Cease-fire back on.