I found an upside

One thing perqs of watching the last five days of feuding between Hamas and Fatah is watching Fatah lose every single round. It is not that I think the Hamas brand is innately superior to Fatah, but I fail to see how any reasonable informed person can look objectively at Fatah, and say, “Oh yeah right - Fatah represents the "moderate Palestinians.” And it is really grating on my nerves every time some two-bit media pundit on television refers to a man, who based his doctorial thesis denying the holocaust, as a moderate.

Furthermore, a man who also spent a good 25-30 years of his life as Yassir Arafat’s bagman can never reasonably (even in any alternative reality) be considered a moderate. As far as Fatah under the helm of Abbas goes; tell me exactly how summarily executions without trial moderates a political party or how moderate is a political party which pays pensions to the families of suicide bombers to name just two areas of “moderation”. Anyway, back to my schadenfreude moments. Egypt yesterday let 500 Fatah security forces cross over the border into Gaza reports Jerusalem Post.

After two months of training in Egypt, some 500 Palestinian security forces affiliated with the Fatah faction returned to Gaza through the Rafah border crossing point, security officials said Wednesday. The troops came to Egypt in mid-March for training at an Egyptian police camp in the northern Mediterranean city of Alexandria, an Egyptian security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The forces were trained in the use of automatic rifles, curbing riots and on tactics of street battle control, according to the official.

Hani Jabbour, a Palestinian official at the Rafah border checkpoint, said the Fatah troops drove through the checkpoint back into Gaza on Tuesday in police buses and unarmed. The Palestinians took control of Rafah in a US-brokered agreement on Gaza crossings, reached after Israel's pullout from the coastal strip in September 2005. Under the deal, the European observers were deployed to watch the Palestinian inspectors and make sure no militants or weapons are smuggled through.

Maria Telleria, spokeswoman for the European monitors, said the Fatah troops numbered 450 Palestinian members of the presidential guard. The discrepancy in the numbers could not immediately be reconciled. Telleria said the Rafah crossing was opened only for about one hour and a half around noon Tuesday for the troops to pass, with the permission of the Israelis. The Palestinians were not in uniform but their identity cards identified them as members of the presidential guard.

Not that it looks like it has done the least bit of good or given Fatah the slightest advantage in the Gaza Strip against the local Hamas boys.