Palestinian fighting

Israel has been training (along with the US) Fatah against Hamas for some time and now those seeds are bearing fruit. Story here on the intra-Palestinian violence in Gaza City. The West Bank tends to be "wealthier" (although by no means wealthy per se) than Gaza. Hence the more so-called moderate Fatah is stronger there than in the poor, more Hamas connected Gaza City.

While I can see the short term cynical Israeli view that Palestinians fighting each other is better than attacking them, in the long term this can not bode well. This is part and parcel of our policy of being anti-Iran and anti-Syria with no end of support for Arab autocrats and an open-ended commitment to a non-functioning, Iraqi government.

What is never understood, it seems to me, is for every action like this the Hezbollah-Iranian-Hamas alliance is strengthened on the Arab streets and continues to destroy the public face of Arab rulers (esp. Saudis and Egyptians).