Fatah men torture Hamas man to death

From today’s Ha’aretz:

Palestinian lawmakers probing the death in custody of a preacher from the
Islamist Hamas movement said on Thursday he had been “tortured to death” by security men loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas.

A self-appointed investigation team comprising six independent lawmakers determined that Majd al-Barghouthi died as a result of torture and said the head of the Fatah-run intelligence services, Tawfiq Tirawi, should be held to account. Another commission which Abbas appointed in late February to investigate the matter has not yet delivered its verdict, although a pathologist working on behalf of Fatah said he had not found signs of torture on Barghouthi’s body. …

Human rights groups accused Hamas of torturing to death four Palestinians in Gaza since it took control of the Strip. Both Fatah and Hamas accuse each other of arresting and torturing their supporters in the enclaves.

I hadn’t heard of these last incidents, but as far as I know, this is the first independent accusation and confirmation from Palestinians of this sort of thing happening on an intra-Palestinian level. The BBC is also reporting on this. I wonder if these incidents will bring back to light the conflict between the two different Palestinian societies: the West Bank, dominated by the old-guard, better established, (mostly) secular nationalist, and internationally acknowledged as the ‘legitimate’ representative of the Palestinian people, against the younger, militantly Islamic, and poorer Hamas in the Gaza Strip.