CAIRO, Egypt - Arabs were in despair Thursday over the Gaza fighting between Palestinians, and governments that have tried to mediate between the warring factions appeared to be at a loss over how to stop the bloodshed.
The new violence strikes a blow to Arab efforts to win a resumption of the peace process with Israel. For months, Arab leaders have been trying to get the divided Palestinian factions in order to prove to Israel and the United States that now is the chance to talk peace.
"The infighting is a shame by all measures," Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor in chief of London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper wrote in a bleak editorial. "They are fighting over an illusory power, a rotten corpse."
Saudi Arabia put its political clout on the line in February when it hosted a summit between the leaders of the mainstream Fatah, faction and the militant Hamas — aimed at ending a previous bout of fighting between them.
The summit between Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, who is the Palestinian president, and Hamas' Khaled Mashaal ended with a power-sharing agreement.
But Saudi Arabia has been silent since clashes between the two sides resumed this week, in five days of fighting that has killed dozens of people.
"It is hard to see Saudis or anyone else expending political capital and sticking their neck out for the Palestinians while gunmen controlled by Hamas and Fatah turn Gaza into a homegrown killing field," Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper said in an editorial.
Other Arab leaders have been able to do little else but call for an end to the fighting.
President Hosni Mubarak, who mediated between Abbas and Mashaal during a meeting in Cairo last month, spoke by phone with Abbas on Thursday, telling him, "Palestinian blood is sacred."
Jordan's King Abdullah II also spoke to Abbas, urging him to show more resolve to end the fighting and to press Hamas to stop rocket attacks on Israel that threaten to widen the conflict.
Arab TV stations showed constant images from Gaza, which looked like a war zone, with masked gunmen in the abandoned streets and people rushing the wounded away on stretchers. Al-Jazeera broadcast live from its offices in Gaza, where journalists in flak jackets and helmets were trapped as gunfire raged outside.
Viewers in the Arab world — long loyal advocates of the Palestinian cause — were stunned. "May God curse you all," renowned Egyptian columnist Ahmed Ragab wrote, referring to the Palestinian factions.
Some blamed the Palestinian factions for a futile fight over power. Zeinab Mohammed, a 21-year-old Egyptian student, said the factions were "serving no one but their own personal interests."
"America, Israel and the whole West want to see us divided," said 47-year-old Kamal Abu-Zeid, wearing thick eyeglasses, and selling newspapers in front of Cairo University.
Gaza turmoil overshadowed Arabs' commemorating the day of al-Naqba, or "the catastrophe" — the Palestinian term for the loss of land and dispersal of refugees that occurred with Israel's independence in May 1948 and the Mideast war that ensued.
"The Palestinian people these days are living a second Naqba," Mohammed Salah, an Egyptian political analyst, wrote in the independent daily al-Masry al-Youm. "They face the tyranny of the Israelis, conspiracy from the West, neglect from the Arabs, treason and deceit from the Palestinian Authority and the mindlessness of (Hamas) leaders."Source : news.yahoo.com
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