If the information regarding the affiliations of the two Palestinians being detained by the Dubai police for their involvement in the assassination of the Hamas official Mahmoud al-Bahbouh to Palestinian security services are correct, this means that we have entered a new phase of the most wretched civil war taking place in the Arab world at present. According to the reports published by Al-Hayat yesterday, Hamas is accusing two Palestinians who left the Gaza Strip following Hamas's consolidation of power there in 2009, of being involved in the logistical preparations for the Israeli assassination team. In fact, sources in Hamas are insinuating to the possibility of involvement by high ranking officials from Fatah in the assassination, and in the subsequent mediation and lobbying with the Dubai police in order to secure the release of the two suspects. The success of the Israeli intelligence services to infiltrate its rival factions and parties is not an outstanding feat per se, nor is its success in recruiting agents in the ranks of these factions, including senior officials. It is not farfetched to write the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the style of espionage, infiltration and assassination novels (with most of these being perpetrated by the Israeli side against the Arab side, save for what we see in the television series, of course). In fact, the Israeli special units - anointed with the execution of the last stage of a particular operation – often rely on the information and assistance of crews comprising of local agents. In the case of Mabhouh, the account referred to above mentions that the two Palestinian suspects had been working in Dubai for at least two years. However, the security aspect does not alone explain the wide array of the accusations being raised by Hamas against the Palestinian National Authority, Fatah and their officials. In truth, the fact that the information available shows that the suspects are among those who were forced to leave Gaza, following ‘[Hamas's] military decisive victory', gives an additional dimension to this assassination operation. Namely, this dimension revolves around the entrenchment of Palestinian civil strife, and the conversion of the latter into an established concept in the political and daily lives of the Palestinians. In other words, this strife renders collaboration with occupation – in order to strike a blow against the local foe – more important than national solidarity towards ending the occupation. Someone might say here that such a view goes too far in interpreting a limited incident to arrive at conclusions that go beyond it, and that the issue is instead nothing more than two people falling in a trap set up by the Israeli intelligence. However, a close look at the painful chapters of Arab civil wars, in Lebanon, Alegria (between the supporters of Hussein Ayat Ahmad and the National Liberation Front), Sudan, Iraq – both before and after the U.S invasion -, and most recently, Yemen, leaves no room for ignoring what seems to be a general law. This general law tempts the parties to the conflict to resort to foreign parties for support against their local foes. Thus, ‘dealing with the devil' – the devil being Israel in the usual Arab conflict's rhetoric – becomes justified and excused. The act perpetrated by the two Palestinian suspects in Dubai, if the information at hand proves once again to be reliable, is nothing but their following the paths imposed by the atmosphere of Arab strife, nay, the unwritten laws of all civil wars. Of course, the above is not aimed at playing down the enormity of what those two have committed, nor is it aimed at debating whether this type of assassinations is acceptable or not – which Israel justifies by the necessities of protecting its security and pursuing the ‘terrorists' that attack the Hebrew state. Rather, this analysis seeks to highlight an obvious matter that often escapes notice amid the noisy speeches of ‘wiping Israel off the map', the obvious matter being that the Arab societies themselves are incubators for contradictions that have no beginning nor end. These contradictions are deep and wide enough to be reproduced in many forms and aspects, with or without Israel. And I called it an obvious matter because it has been repeated so many times, even with the same details sometimes, in the same past which we are demanded to study on a daily basis. However, these lessons are not all the same. Otherwise, what good would reading history be?
