Israeli assault from without and assassinations from within -- Palestinians in Gaza are living through the "worst kind of warfare". Graham Usher in Khan Yunis writes Early Monday morning 40 Israeli armoured vehicles and tanks -- backed by Apache attack helicopters -- ploughed through the Amal neighbourhood in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, home to around 100,000 Palestinians. The army's alleged goal was to hunt down "wanted" Palestinians in the heart of one of the strongest bastions of the Islamist Hamas movement. Most of the quarries slipped the noose. Their kin were less fortunate. Rahima Salama -- mother of Hamas leader Rafe Salah Salama -- was shot dead when Israeli soldiers poured machine- gun fire through the front door of her home. Abdel-Fattah Sallout, aged 40, was struck down when fire from a helicopter sliced through the walls of his house. And nine Palestinians -- some of them armed, four of them children -- were slain when a helicopter missile exploded outside a mosque. Dozens had gathered there on hearing that the tanks were retreating. During the four-hour incursion -- the sixteenth in Gaza in the last five weeks -- 16 Palestinians were killed and more than 80 wounded, 12 of them critically. It was the worst carnage in the occupied territories since 22 July, when a one-tonne bomb dropped on Gaza City slew 15 Palestinians, including Hamas's military leader, Salah Shehada. The international reaction was predictably muted. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Israel should "examine their actions with great care" while reaffirming the country's right to "self-defence". There were no Israeli casualties. Ariel Sharon said the operation was "important and successful", regretted the civilian deaths but promised "more operations in the Gaza Strip" in the future. On this last point, at least, Palestinians know he is sincere. They view the Khan Yunis raid -- together with other recent attacks in the strip -- as a dress rehearsal for a full-scale Israeli invasion of Gaza, that will probably take place while the world is distracted by the next war on Iraq. This is not the Palestinians' only fear. Even as the tanks were returning to their base in the Ganei Tal settlement near Khan Yunis, 20 Palestinians dressed as police abducted in Gaza City Rageh Abu Lehyia, head of the Palestinian Authority's (PA) riot police. His corpse was found later, bullet ridden and mutilated. Lehyia was widely seen as the officer who gave Palestinian police the order to open fire on Palestinian students during a demonstration outside Gaza's Islamic University on 7 October 2001. Three were killed, including Raed Akel, brother of Hamas military activist, Imad Akel. The Akel family had warned then that it would exact blood revenge unless the PA brought Lehyia to book. The PA opened an investigation but did nothing else. One year on the Akel family proved as good as its word, and pitched Hamas and the PA to the very brink of confrontation. The PA said the 20 abductors were "a group within Hamas" and set up roadblocks throughout Gaza City and outside Nuseirat refugee camp, home to the Akel clan. Hamas denied "all connection" to the Lehyia assassination. In search and arrest raids PA police forces killed four Hamas and wounded 30 people, including civilians. In retaliation, Hamas activists barricaded themselves behind homemade explosives in Nuseirat and trashed PA cars and police stations during the funerals for the four on Tuesday. Not for the first time, it was left to the political leaders of Hamas and Fatah to douse the fires that were spreading among their followers. By Tuesday tensions had abated a little but there was still no agreement on how to end the standoff. The PA demand is for Hamas to "extradite" Lehyia's killers into police custody. Hamas's spokesman Mahmoud Zahar answered in an interview on Voice of Palestine on Tuesday: "We want law in the Palestinian territories. However, the law cannot only be one-way, applied on the Palestinians alone. It should also be applied on the members of the [Palestinian] police. If those who committed crimes against the Palestinians had been brought to trial, we would not have seen such incidents". Most Palestinians in Gaza agreed with those sentiments. But still more wanted peace between the PA and its main Islamist opponent, aware that nothing will oil Sharon's plans for a reconquest of Gaza better than the spectre of a Palestinian civil war within it. And all are aware that the situation is fraught with danger. "The balance of power has changed in Gaza," said Ziad Abu Amr, a Palestinian analyst. "Arafat and the PA are weak but want to remain the dominant power. Hamas is strong and refuses to be subordinate. It also knows the old Palestinian order is falling apart". Palestinians in Khan Yunis know the old PA order fell apart long ago. They also know that with "every Palestinian death Hamas grows stronger". In such a vacuum the mood is neither one of resistance nor a desire for law and order. It is one of remorseless fatalism. "To be honest I think reoccupation would be better," said one local, who had spent Monday night ferrying the dead and wounded from the Amal quarter to Khan Yunis's Nasser hospital. "To live like this in constant fear for your life is worse. It is the most terrible kind of psychological warfare".
