Pat Dollard | Young Americans

(TheAustrailian)

SHADI Bakr Ahmad gingerly eased his legless torso into two new plastic limbs and vowed they would one day walk him back to his brutal destiny in Gaza.

The Fatah man and his 14 comrades in rehabilitation have barely six legs left between them, after being mutilated by their Hamas rivals during the violent takeover of power last June. All have unfinished business: they want to get back on their makeshift feet soon to hunt down the men who maimed them.

An agreement to be announced this weekend between Israel and Egypt, acting on behalf of the rulers of Gaza, means the former soldiers may soon get their wish.

If, as expected, Israel signs off on the offer of a six-month truce, the gates of Gaza will be opened for the first time in 11 months - and Ahmad and his loyalists will be sent to man them, keeping Hamas far from the border fences.

The deal is supposed to herald better times for Gaza’s war-ravaged 1.4 million people, most of whom have been unable to leave since Hamas took outright control and have ever since craved a taste of life without death and mayhem.

But the would-be custodians of peace have a blood feud to take care of first: a vengeance that runs deeper than a broader commitment to the Palestinian cause and one that threatens to undermine any hope of detente. They have sworn vows to their families and to each other that guarantee more blood will be spilt as soon as the two sides are on the same patch of land.

“We Arabs have been like that since the day we were born,” says another victim of the violence, Abu Mohammed, as he lays paralysed in a hospital in Ramallah. “I know the man who did this to me and it is now my life’s ambition to do the same to him.”

Gaza was consumed by a seemingly endless cycle of payback last year, with 439 Palestinians killed during infighting - up from 55 the year before.

The carnage led some observers to declare the outbreak of an Intrafada, as the Intifada against Israel, launched six years earlier, was finally brought under control.

Unlike the Fatah men, Abu Mohammed is not linked to the Palestinian security forces. He was, however, a Fatah loyalist gunned down on Gaza’s day of infamy, June 14 last year.

“There was a Fatah parade coming down the street of my neighbourhood and my daughter asked if she could go outside to look,” he said.

“But soon there were gunshots coming from the cross-streets. Hamas were threatening to ambush them. I went outside to get the girls in and as I stood in the doorway, I saw a man level his rifle and shoot at me from across the street. My legs buckled immediately and here I am now.”

The story of Mr Ahmad’s maiming, and that of his friends, is more premeditated and savage.

“I explode when I look at myself like this,” he said, massaging the scars on his two stumps, which start just below his groin.

The day before the violence, Mr Ahmad was warned by Hamas that he was too familiar with a local Fatah strongman.

The following morning, as gunfire erupted around Gaza, Hamas came knocking.

They blindfolded him, took him into a room with at least six others and raked his legs with bullets. As the men lay screaming, a balaclava-clad man trampled on their wounds. “Look at this situation,” Mr Ahmad said. “We got shot for Fatah and look at us. Hamas people are treated in Iran and given money. We have no money, no family with us and very little compensation. All I got was one month in hospital.”

The Fatah men were allowed transit through Israel to West Bank rehabilitation centres in Ramallah and Bethlehem, but few have had access to their families since.

“My daughter is nine months old and I haven’t seen her yet,” Mr Ahmad said. “She cannot get a pass from Israel to visit me.”

Though committed to returning to Gaza to face up to their torturers, few of the men see a future there. “I will go,” soldier Zakaria Al Ra’i said, “but if I stay, they will kill me for sure. They blindfolded me last year and kidnapped me for 24 hours. They then said I could go, but were talking on the phone the whole time. Then they shot me in the leg and in the head. But the bullet grazed me. They wanted me killed. Gaza is going to be a hotspot for vengeance. Blood brings blood.”