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Policing the PolicemenForget the talk of unity. Gaza will be a mess until someone can control the underpaid and overarmed gunmen that wander the streets.

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Students and faculty returning to the campus of Gaza's Islamic University. Click image to expand.An hour later, back in Gaza City, more than 3,000 armed young men aligned with Fatah were marching and shooting guns in the air. My driver and I assumed the war had resumed, for who would send thousands of armed men to fire wildly in the air in front of the Islamic University of Gaza, a hotbed of Hamas support that was recently burned and looted by Fatah gunmen.

But it seems they just want jobs. After what they claimed was eight months of training—although their ability to march and handle automatic weapons makes me suspect they need another eight months—they have no jobs, only uniforms and weapons.

As they shouted and fought over whose turn it was to shoot the machine gun in the air, a local journalist leaned over and whispered in my ear. "This is about money," he said. "Fuck Fatah, and fuck Palestine. If [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert called right now and offered them each [$250] a month, they'd all become Jews and join the Israeli Defense Forces."

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Mitchell Prothero is a writer and photographer based in Beirut. He covers conflict and terrorism issues throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, and Europe.
Photographs of funeral and Gaza University by Mitchell Prothero/Polaris.
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