Desire for Revenge Still Strong in Gaza

Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert, left, gestures next to Britain's Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett during their meeting in his Jerusalem Office, Wednesday Feb. 7, 2007. Beckett is in Israel and the Palestinian Authority on a two-day official visit. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner) (Sebastian Scheiner - AP)

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Khamis Bakr demands revenge. The local Fatah leader's 16-year-old nephew was killed by Hamas gunmen in one of Gaza's recent street battles, and Bakr wants to even the score, despite last week's Saudi-brokered truce between the two rivals. Bakr, 35, said he'll always put the interest of his family before that of his party.

Unfinished business between Gaza's powerful clans is one of the main threats to the power-sharing agreement signed last week between the Islamic militant group Hamas and the Fatah movement of the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Despite assurances by Hamas and Fatah leaders that they are putting months of deadly factional fighting behind them, resentment and mistrust still run high. And the agreement risks unraveling even before being implemented because of Hamas's failure to accept international demands to recognize Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday he did not believe the agreement met conditions for lifting a painful international aid boycott of the Palestinian Authority, imposed after Hamas won elections, according to a participant in a weekly Cabinet meeting.

In Gaza City, graffiti on the smoke-blackened walls of Islamic University, a Hamas stronghold trashed earlier this month by Abbas-allied security forces, reflected festering anger.

"The president's people are destroyers," read one slogan on the scorched wall of the computer lab. The attackers, who caused $15 million in damage, according to Hamas, left behind messages of their own, including this spray-painted warning: "The Presidential Guard will show no mercy."

In Gaza City's beachside neighborhoods, hardest hit by the battles, life has largely returned to normal since Thursday's agreement in the Muslim holy city of Mecca.

On a recent day, streets were congested, shops opened, and members of the security forces lounged in plastic garden chairs on sidewalks, rather than standing watch behind sandbags. One motorist washed his car on the street in a show of optimism and some residents ordered glass to replace broken windows.

But no one was relaxing too much yet.

Huge metal tripods blocked roads near Abbas' compound to keep away cars. In the ocean-view Rimal neighborhood, the owners of a 14-story apartment building added three more rows of cement blocks to their garden wall and installed a large metal gate to keep out gunmen.

During the last round of fighting, Hamas militiamen took over the rooftop of the building as part of a race between rival groups for control of strategic positions. Iman Husseini, one of the residents of the building, said she had pleaded with the gunmen to leave, to no avail.

At one point, the Hamas fighters opened fire on Abbas-allied officers at a gas station across the street, killing a 16-year-old bystander, Mohammed Bakr, according to the victim's relatives.