October 2, 2006: Over the last few days, growing unrest in Gaza, between Hamas and Fatah gunmen, has left eight dead and dozens wounded. Fatah blames Hamas for the foreign charity cutoff, which has made it impossible to pay 168,000 Palestinian Authority civil servants. This has crippled the Palestinian authority, and most Palestinians blame Hamas for not pretending to drop their call for Israel's destruction, so that the foreign money will flow again. But Hamas believes it can remain true to its beliefs, and get the foreigners (especially the Europeans) to turn the cash spigot back on, by showcasing the suffering of the impoverished Palestinian bureaucrats (actually, half of them are armed men belonging to over a dozen security organizations.) Most of these unpaid gunmen are still loyal to Fatah, and have been going into the streets in armed mobs, and shooting it out with the Hamas gunmen.
Meanwhile, Israel keeps the pressure on Palestinian terrorist organizations, which are still trying, without much success, to launch attacks on Israel. The Palestinians are less enthusiastic about foreign media trying to focus on their inept terrorists. The Israelis have developed tactics which have rendered the Palestinian terrorists impotent, but the Palestinians keep trying. This terrorist war could turn deadly for Israelis once more if the Palestinians discover a weakness in the Israeli defenses.
October 1, 2006: Nearly all Israeli troops have pulled out of south Lebanon. There are a few Israeli soldiers still on the Lebanese side of a village that is split by the border. While Israel has complied with the ceasefire conditions, Hizbollah openly declares that it will not. Hizbollah is supposed to disarm, and it refuses to do so. The UN peacekeepers say they will not try to disarm Hizbollah, and neither will the Lebanese army troops in the south. Hizbollah could start another war with Israel, and have all those peacekeepers to hide behind.
September 28, 2006: The Palestinian Authority began making partial payments to 168,000 civil servants, who have largely been unpaid for the last six months. Money donated by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and smuggled in, allowed each civil servant to get about $350. But many actually got nothing, for they already had loans out to banks, which applied the payments to those loans. The banks did not expect to be holding those loans for this long, and are fearful of their own survival as the foreign aid cut off continues. There have been several partial payments like this, but that amounts to less than a third of the pay due all these people.
September 26, 2006: Hamas is getting what it wants from the UN. Hamas has been cut off from foreign charity because Hamas refuses to back down on its demand that Israel must be destroyed. Hamas know that the charity cutoff plunges most Palestinian civil servants, and many others, into poverty. By making sure the foreign mass media gets a good look at this, Hamas knows that the UN will eventually blame it all on Israel. Which is what the UN did today, when it called for charitable contributions to be restored, and the Hamas call for destroying Israel to be negotiated.