A Uniter, Not A Divider

We are grateful to Sharon for two things -- he united all the Palestinian factions and he took away every option except to resist.

- Comment by a Palestinian human rights lawyer, cited by South African poet and anti-apartheid activist, Breyten Breytenbach, in An Open Letter To General Ariel Sharon

From yesterday's Washington Post:

JERUSALEM -- Three years ago, members of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah political movement created the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to compete with Hamas -- in effect, to see which organization's armed wing could send the most suicide bombers against Israel and win the most support among Palestinians.

Today the former rivals have forged alliances, a shift that is complicating Israeli efforts to thwart major attacks and blurring the ideological lines between nationalist and religious factions, according to Palestinian militants, analysts and senior Israeli military officials...

Since the start of this year, militant groups have asserted joint responsibility for three of the eight major attacks conducted against Israelis. Though the number of attacks is lower in comparison to previous years, Israeli military officials said the greater proportion of combined operations is significant and ominous.

"It's on a deep level now," said a senior Israeli military intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It's deep, and it's going to be deeper in the future."