JERUSALEM — Because a massive and – for at least 90 minutes – peaceful commemoration in Gaza City called by the once dominant Fatah movement in memory of the late Yasser Arafat ended in bloodshed on Monday. Gunfire by the Hamas forces left seven of the demonstrators dead, shocking much of Gaza’s already beleaguered and impoverished 1.4 million population. On the face of it, the shootings serve once again to underline the depth of Palestinian political disunity; with two competing and opposed administrations. One in the West Bank is loyal to Palestine president Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, and another in Gaza, controlled by Hamas which won free and fair elections in January 2006, briefly shared power with Fatah between March and June this year under a coalition deal brokered in Saudi Arabia, and then seized full control of Gaza after a week of bloody infighting that cost more than 100 lives in June. Secondly they can hardly fail to add to the sense of frustration felt by a Gaza public facing ever-deepening poverty, isolation, and for most Gazans imprisonment within its Israeli-controlled borders without even the compensating – if still extremely vague – prospect of the ‘political horizon’ […]