Palestinian Truce Shaken By Fighting

Nothing hurts a truce like breaking the truce.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed on Monday to press on with early elections as a truce between his security forces and the Hamas government appeared close to collapse in the Gaza Strip.

If you stand back for a moment and try not to take sides in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, one cannot help but imagine the slim chances of Palestine ever becoming a stable country. You don't see Israelis gunning down Israelis. While I never take sides on that conflict, mainly because the line has becomed way too blurred over there as to who is right and who is wrong, one can easily determine the staggeringly different levels of civilized behavior between the two lands.

Gunmen abducted a senior official from Abbas's Fatah faction in Gaza. Fatah blamed the governing Hamas Islamist movement for the seizure of Sufian Abu Zaida, a former cabinet minister.

Kidnapping is against a truce isn't it? Maybe a truce in Palestine is different than a truce anywhere else in the world.

"This ceasefire risks being blown away in the wind," said Fatah spokesman, Tawfiq Abu Khoussa.

I'd say it's blown away already.