TWO weeks ago Abu Khaled and Hamed were shooting at one another, sworn enemies in the struggle between rival factions of Fatah and Hamas for control of the miserable strife-torn overcrowded Gaza Strip.
Last week the two men, both in their early twenties, met in a shrapnel-peppered building in Rafah to plot together. Fear of an Israeli attack has made them staunch allies, united by the threat of a common enemy.
If Israel launches an assault on Gaza to rescue Gilad Shalit, the 19-year-old corporal who was kidnapped last Sunday — and who was reported yesterday to be wounded but alive — the southern town of Rafah is likely to be first in the firing line. Its young men are preparing for battle.
“We have reactivated the operations room,” said Abu Khaled, 24, a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder.
This grandiose claim belies the absence of wall maps or computer screens in the operation to co-ordinate Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Izzedine al-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas. Fear of Israeli attacks forces them to meet at night in cars that pull over on potholed streets or in abandoned buildings scarred by Israeli tank and artillery fire.
When Hamas won a spectacular victory in parliamentary elections six months ago the opposing groups tore at each other’s throats for influence, jobs and revenge. The militants have now combined forces to produce home-made pipe bombs, prepare booby traps and organise themselves into fighting units.
“Our spirits are high,” one fighter said. “We will not permit Israeli tanks to pass in the streets of Rafah. The Israelis should think 1,000 times before they come back here.”
The signs of people getting ready for battle are everywhere. Omar Tawil, director of funerals for the Fatah division, has even asked a businessman to rent out his garage-sized vegetable refrigerator as a makeshift morgue in which to store fallen fighters.
It would be a deeply uneven struggle. Just a 15-minute drive down Airport Road, grey Israeli Merkava tanks lie in wait behind new berms that have been bulldozed into position to protect them from Palestinian attacks. However nervous they may be, the Israeli soldiers are well dug in and well equipped with armour, helicopters and artillery.
The tension flared yesterday when Israeli troops looking for explosives skirmished with Hamas gunmen. A rocket-propelled grenade was later fired at the Israelis, prompting a second exchange of fire.
Shalit’s abduction has plunged both sides into a confrontation as unpredictable as it was unexpected.
It was triggered by men who came out of a tunnel the Palestinians must have been digging for months. Just wide enough to wriggle through, it ran for almost 1,000 yards under the heavily guarded fence that divides southern Gaza from Israel. On the far side of the fence was the militants’ target — an armoured Israeli unit.
Seven armed Palestinians crawled through the tunnel and split up into separate units. Two of them attacked the unit’s tank with a rocket-propelled grenade from about 200 yards away. An Israeli soldier in the driver’s seat was wounded and lost consciousness.
The commander then ordered his men to abandon the tank, thinking they were being attacked from the Gaza side. But as they jumped from the rear, the soldiers were surprised by the other Palestinian unit, which opened fire with automatic weapons.
The tank officer and another man were killed. Shalit was wounded, apparently in the shoulder and abdomen. Within minutes he had been abducted.
Thus began the crisis that would escalate day by day. For Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, the stakes could not be higher. When a soldier is taken hostage it touches an exceptionally raw nerve in Israel, perhaps because almost every man and woman serves in the armed forces at some point. They expect resolve and leadership.
Olmert, who has little military experience, responded by warning that Israel would not negotiate and that Hamas leaders would be held personally accountable for the soldier’s fate.
The Hamas government of Ismail Haniya, the prime minister, is under even greater pressure. Its refusal to disarm, recognise Israel and abide by past agreements has already prompted the international community to slash its funding. Now it is caught in a stand-off with Israel that it appears incapable of resolving. Meanwhile, life for Palestinian civilians is getting steadily worse.
Izzedine al-Qassam at first insisted it would release the hostage only if Israel freed all Palestinian women and youths under 18 held in its prisons. Next came a demand — swiftly dismissed by Israel — for the release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Deep divisions emerged between Khaled Meshaal, the hardline leader exiled in Damascus, who insisted that Hamas would not compromise, and the leadership in Gaza, which held to that position in public but prevaricated behind the scenes.
Release the Israeli prisoner, the Gaza leaders calculated, and they would lose political support; keep him and they could lose everything.
Any conflict could spread across the region like wildfire. Israel blames Syria for harbouring Hamas’s exiled leadership and has sent four fighter jets to buzz the summer home of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president.
Islamic organisations across the Middle East could be expected to support their fellow radicals in Hamas, which many regard as the model for an elected, militant Islamic government.
One man who knows Hamas’s techniques for guarding and concealing their prisoner is Imad Faluji, a senior figure in Hamas when Nachson Waxman, another 19-year-old Israeli corporal, was kidnapped in 1994.
“We gave our fighters holding the Israeli soldier the order that if they heard any suspicious movement outside the house, their first step must be to kill the soldier immediately, without hesitation,” he recalled last week.
Israeli commandos stormed the safe house where Waxman was held, but he died in the raid. His fate shows how difficult any Israeli rescue mission for Shalit may prove.
Faluji said his former colleagues would not back down. “They think they are the biggest power in the world,” he said as the boom of artillery shells reverberated in the background.
It is scant comfort for the family of Shalit, who was said by a Fatah official to be “stable” after being treated by a doctor for his wounds.
Observers believe the corporal is probably being held in the squalid refugee camp of Khan Yunis on the edge of Rafah, a far cry from the idyllic town of Mitzpe Hila where he was brought up.
His parents, Noam and Aviva, published a poignant letter to their son: “Mom and Dad, Yoel and Hadas (his siblings), are all worried about you very much,” it read. “We believe that whoever is holding you has a family as well, and knows what we are going through.”
In Rafah, another young man’s family kept vigil. Hamed Rantisi, 20, was one of the Palestinian gunmen killed as he laid down covering fire for Shalit’s kidnappers.
In a house off a dirt alley, his mother and brothers sat in mourning staring at a a ceiling-high portrait of the “martyr” Hamed. Stickers of martyred friends were pasted to his bedroom door.
His mother Miriam, dressed in the black hijab and chador of mourning, said the family had no regrets.
“When I first heard, like all mothers, I was heartbroken. But the Israelis are killing Palestinians every day. My son could not stand this and I know he is in paradise.”
Opinion hardened on both sides as the week wore on. In Gaza, Haniya and his foreign minister, Mahmoud Zahar, spent long hours in the office of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, seeking help.
“First and foremost, the advice we are giving them is the more you delay, the more difficult the decision gets,” said a senior Palestinian source close to the talks.
The truth of those words was borne out as Israel ratcheted up its attacks, rolling tanks into southern Gaza while airstrikes destroyed three bridges and an electricity plant that provides 60% of the Strip’s power.
Artillery barrages sent families in the north fleeing and sonic booms from fighter jets sounded every few hours.
Early this morning an Israeli helicopter gunship took the conflict to Hamas’s doorstep, firing missiles at the prime minister’s office in Gaza City. The building, gutted by fire, was empty at the time.
“The first mistake Hamas made was in kidnapping the soldier in the first place,” said the senior Palestinian source. “Once they had him, they should have returned him immediately. “They didn’t understand the basic fact — Israel will not negotiate for prisoners in the West Bank and Gaza.”
Releasing Shalit would further undermine Hamas’s popularity — one poll found that 77% believe he should only be released in return for Palestinian prisoners. However, the main obstacle lies in the looming presence of Meshaal, the exiled leader in Damascus, who became the dominant figure in Hamas after Israel assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, its founder, in 2004. Meshaal, 50, was born near Ramallah, a West Bank city, but moved to Kuwait at an early age. Never having lived under Israeli occupation, he has little sense of any need for compromise. If Shalit is freed, there will be strife among the Palestinians as Hamas struggles to retain power. Should he be killed, the Israeli retaliation would be fierce, with untold casualties, civilian and military. There remained a small glimmer of hope last night. Egypt has dispatched Omar Suleiman, a senior security official, to conduct secret negotiations around a deal that would spare Shalit. Only then, it seems, would the two young fighters, Abu Khaled and Hamed, be able to avoid a bloodbath.
