Keystone Cops brought to you by Kaddoumi?

If the stakes weren’t so high and the consequences so dire, this situation would be hysterically funny - taken from the Israel Insider:

More than three dozen Palestinian police officers broke into the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza City on Monday, firing in the air to protest a lack of bullets and equipment in what they said was a humiliating confrontation with Hamas.

The protest came a day after the worst internal fighting in Gaza in nearly a decade and underscored Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' difficulties in taking control of the unruly coastal strip.

In clashes between police and Hamas on Sunday, Hamas gunmen attacked a local police station with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The deputy police chief of the Shati refugee camp was killed in the fighting, along with two civilians, and at least 50 people were wounded.

This has to be the only police force in the world that protests a lack of bullets by firing off what ammunitions they do possess at their employers. This also has to be one of the few police forces in the world that think that rocket propelled grenades should be regularly stocked inventory.

But deliverance is at hand and the saviour is alleged to be Kaddoumi according to this report carried by the Jerusalem Post:

After aggravated infighting in the Gaza Strip, leaders of the Palestinian factions including rivals Fatah and Hamas pledged on Tuesday to refrain from violence in settling Palestinian problems during a meeting in Damascus. Fatah leader Farouk Kaddoumi said the exiled leaders of Palestinian groups agreed that dialogue should be the only way to solve their disputes, Reuters reported. According to Kaddoumi, the battling factions' leaders concurred to "call all Palestinian powers and factions to ban the use of weapons to solve internal differences".

The leaders also agreed to "refrain from all forms political and media provocations that can harm the interests of our people and their national unity," Kaddoumi said. Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who spoke to reporters after the meeting, implicitly accused the United States and Israel of responsibility for last week's clashes between Hamas activists and Palestinian security forces in the Gaza Strip and stoutly rejected demands that the organization disarm.

I written about Kaddoumi and the threat he poses to Abbas and the old guard of the Palestinian Authority in the past. What is more disturbing is the possibility that Kaddoumi has forged a working alliance with Hamas and the other various and sundry terror organizations and the recent clashes between the PA and other groups (including Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade – the terrorist wing of Fatah) are being orchestrated by Kaddoumi.

Kaddoumi controlling the Palestinian Authority would be ever bit as ruthless as Hamas and even more uncompromising. Furthermore, Kaddoumi has never shown any affinity for the idea of personal liberty or for a constitutional democracy for the Palestinian people. Economic prosperity would be written off the agenda indefinitely for generations as Kaddoumi pursued a low level intensity war with Israel in the hopes of finally wiping the Zionists off the map.