January 11, 2003	Saturday	Ziqa'ad 7, 1423

AMARI REFUGEE CAMP (West Bank): His face unshaven and his clothes dishevelled, Khalid Idris deftly roams the back alleys here, sleeping in a different house each night to avoid the Israeli army patrols searching for him.

The burly 36-year-old is a member of the Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, the militant wing of the mainstream Fatah political party, and he is wanted by Israel’s security forces.

But he also finds himself increasingly at odds with Fatah, whose leaders have repeatedly called for an end to attacks inside Israel. His sister, Wafa Idris, blew herself up a year ago in downtown Jerusalem, killing one Israeli and wounding more than 100 others.

“Everyone has his own point of view,” Khalid said on Wednesday at the refugee camp’s Fatah headquarters, a crumbling three-story building that bears the scars of Israeli gun and tank fire from repeated raids over the past six months.

Khalid spoke during a break in an army curfew, carefully venturing out from a secret safe house and making his way on sandy streets while conferring by cell phone with lookouts in case of a surprise appearance by soldiers.

He is typical of the hundreds of militants the Israeli army has killed and the thousands it has arrested during raids over the past six months into cities, villages and refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“The Israelis are killing us every day,” he said. “What should we do? We would like peace. But it’s not peace for Israel and death for Palestinians.” If Israeli soldiers can target Palestinians, he argued, then Palestinians can target Israeli civilians wherever they live.

His statements strike at the heart of a dispute raging within Fatah and the Palestinian Authority over the future of a conflict now well into its third year. To a large degree, the infighting represents a power struggle between the deputies of 73-year-old Arafat and a younger generation.

Splinter factions of the Aqsa Brigades, formed under the auspices of the Fatah political movement at the onset of violence 27 months ago, are ignoring orders from Arafat for a cease-fire and are launching renegade operations. The disunity comes at an inopportune time for Fatah. Its leaders have been meeting in Cairo with other militant groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to convince them to call a cease-fire.

One breakaway Aqsa faction sent two Palestinian suicide bombers into southern Tel Aviv on Sunday evening. Standing on parallel streets, they detonated duffel bags filled with explosives, killing themselves and 22 people and breaking a six week reprieve from such attacks.

That faction, consisting of about a dozen people from the northern West Bank city of Nablus, was trained and funded by the Islamic Jihad.

Such cooperation is growing more common as Aqsa Brigade’s members grow disenfranchised from Fatah and look for alternate sources of financial and political support. Israeli military sweeps have shattered many militant cells, which are regrouping by pooling their resources.

The faction that struck Tel Aviv calls itself Kataeb al- Awdah, or Brigades of Return. In leaflets, members said they felt abandoned by Fatah leaders and called suicide bombers “the official spokesmen for the martyrs” and “the mouthpiece for the Arab character of Palestine, its holiness and liberty.”

Fatah at first vehemently disavowed any link to the twin Tel Aviv bombings, and Palestinian police detained a Gaza-based reporter for al-Jazeera television for reporting the connection.

“That Fatah was involved was embarrassing,” said Qadura Faris, a member of the Palestin-ian Legislative Council from Ra-mallah and a senior Fatah leader who opposes suicide bombings “These continued attacks are a result of administrative failure within the Fatah movement.”

But Faris defended the establishment of the brigades, which provided a way for Fatah to continue running what it calls a popular uprising while giving it political distance from Arafat and the Palestinian Authority.

“The Al Aqsa brigades should be an armed group, but under the orders of our political leadership,” Faris said.

Fatah activists ran the first Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s and early 90s, which typically consisted of stone- throwing youths facing off against Israeli soldiers. But this latest conflict involved guns, and the armed Aqsa Brigades quickly came into being.

At first, its members concentrated on targeting Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers on the West Bank, arguing that a battle to end occupation should be fought on the occupied land. But as violence escalated, the secular Palestinian militia adopted the harsher tactics of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which send suicide bombers into Israeli cities, and unlike Fatah, oppose the existence of the Jewish state.

Khalid, the Aqsa Brigades member in the Amari camp, appeared confused by the discord among his own members. During an interview, he alternated between unequivocal support for Arafat and Fatah doctrine, only then to recite the militant refrain that “as long as Israel occupies our land, we have a right to resist by all means.”

He said he felt let down when top Palestinian leaders called the armed uprising a “historic mistake.” But he said if a cease- fire is worked out in Cairo, he will abide by it.

“There are two points of view within Fatah,” said Younis Abu Reesh, 30, who runs the Fatah youth center in the Amari camp. “A few people think that suicide bombings are the way to victory. But a majority want a political solution. This is a healthy debate, like in any family.”

But like Khalid, Reesh complained that Fatah’s leaders are out of touch with what happens in the refugee camps that gave birth to the uprising and remain the epicenters of unrest.

“Israeli soldiers come into our camps and destroy our lives,” Reesh said. “Don’t expect me as a Palestinian, as a refugee, to just stand by and watch.” —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Baltimore Sun