Dr. Nasser Eldin Alshaar, the head of Hamas in the West Bank, was on his way to a reconciliation meeting in Kfar Kalil near Nablus on Thursday. Fatah operatives who ambushed his car on the road leading to the village opened fire, injuring Alshaar. The tension between Hamas and Fatah, which led to the assassination of Alshaar, began a few days before at Najah University in Nablus. Hamas activists and Fatah activists clashed at the university. As a result of the confrontation, a Fatah man, who lives in Kfar Kalil, was injured. To calm the spirits, both sides, Fatah, and Hamas, decided to come to the village where the wounded man lives, for a meeting of reconciliation. But this meeting did not take place. On his way to the meeting, Alshaar fell into an ambush by Fatah operatives, and was shot.

At the beginning of the month, we reported here about anger in Tanzim in Fatah against Abu Mazen and the Palestinian Authority. The claim was that the PA is allowing Hamas to take control of power centers in the West Bank, in the same way that Hamas was able to take control of Bir Zeit University. The head of the new Tanzim in the West Bank, Muhammad al-Madani, managed to calm the spirits at the time, but the motives for the conflict between the movements remained.

It is not clear now if the assassination of the Hamas leader in the West Bank will develop into a large-scale conflict between Fatah and Hamas. Such an all-out conflict took place in the Gaza Strip in 2007 and ended with the victory of Hamas and its control of the Strip and all its resources, physical and political. It is possible that the two sides, Fatah, and Hamas, as part of their national control struggle over the resources of the West Bank, for example in Bir Zeit and Najah universities, will try to use Israel to settle scores with each other.