PUBLIC MARKS with tag hamas

Fighting between the ruling Hamas movement and its Fatah rivals escalated Sunday, with an attack launched on the foreign minister's convoy followed by shots fired at the Palestinian president's Gaza residence in apparent retaliation, witnesses said.

Why do I list the names of the dead before the usual talk about the geopolitical implications, the responses of shock and outrage from heads of state, the defiant statements by Hamas and Islamic Jihad? Because there are three things about the violence in Israel, or more to the point, media coverage of it, that have been bothering me of late, but especially since I've been reading more and more blogs from the people whose lives are most affected by it...

As the new Palestinian culture minister, he will not be ordering the dynamiting of statues nor forbidding prayers to anyone but Allah. But there are limits - and belly dancing is one of them. “Belly dancing is naked women. This is not Islamic. The Egyptians come here and do it. And there are a lot of Russian belly dancers in Egypt and they come here too. People do it indoors, in secret. There’s lots of it. If the phenomenon of belly dancing spreads our people might react against it by killing people. We don’t want our people to become like the Taliban.”

If Palestinians are going to be required to renounce violence — as they should be — shouldn’t Israel also be required to renounce violence, and to stop building settlements and walls on Palestinian territory? Rather than belittling others for allegedly failing to grasp our “democratic concepts,” we could begin by showing we grasp these concepts ourselves.

The leader of Hamas suggested Saturday that the Islamic group could create a Palestinian army that would include its militant wing - responsible for scores of deadly attacks on Israelis - in the aftermath of its crushing victory in parliamentary elections

Jolted by Hamas' stunning election victory, President Bush said Thursday the United States will not deal with the militant Palestinian group as long as it seeks Israel's destruction.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia resigned to clear the way for Hamas, an Islamic group that has thwarted Middle East peace efforts with squads of suicide bombers, to form the Palestinian Authority's next government.