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Hamas has had help from Hizballah for years. But when the Aqsa intifadeh erupted last fall, Hizballah's leaders saw a chance to boost their prestige in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and to expand their brand of Islamic revolution to the gates of Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest city. They aren't keen to share the spotlight with Hamas. In the past few months, Hizballah canceled the training of Hamas operatives in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and in Iran. Hizballah is still training Palestinians, but when it sends them back to the Gaza Strip or West Bank, they'll be working for Hizballah, not Hamas. A source in the Hamas military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam, tells TIME that Hizballah has recruited several activists from Hamas and from the military branch of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad--people who were frustrated by their organizations' ineffectiveness and tempted by Hizballah's training and weaponry.
Just what does this tussle contribute to the sum of the violence? At the start of last week, Hizballah attacked an Israeli position on the border with Lebanon, killing an Israeli soldier. That attack prompted a jealous Hamas to step up its mortar offensive along the Israel border, firing for the first time on a town inside Israel. Desperate to demonstrate that it can still do more than put on a defiant show at the funerals of its "martyrs," Hamas fired a series of 82-mm mortars on the Israeli town of Sderot. "We have to prove ourselves," the Hamas military-wing officer tells TIME. Early in the intifadeh, Palestinian and Israeli security officials say, Arafat freed Hamas fighters from his jails and gave them a green light to bomb Israeli towns. An agent in Arafat's General Intelligence was suspended in December when he tried to arrest a Hamas cell in Gaza that was planning suicide bombings, according to Palestinian security officials close to the case. The highly mobile mortars allow Hamas to strike fear inside Israel much more easily than with suicide bombs. The mortars fired last week were manufactured by a top Palestinian Authority military officer and sold to Hamas, according to senior sources in Arafat's regime.
Soon after the Hamas attack, Israel launched its biggest incursion into Palestinian-controlled territory, taking over for a day a swath of Beit Hanoun, a town in the Gaza Strip from which the mortars had been fired. Inside his Cabinet, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faced criticism that he moved into Beit Hanoun without consulting other ministers. "No, no, we couldn't convene the Cabinet," Sharon said, brushing aside the critics. "I phoned a few ministers though." Sharon didn't phone his Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, until the operation was under way. Bypassing the elder statesman left Sharon diplomatically exposed and unable to fend off the anger of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who warned of the "risk of broader conflict" in the Middle East.