A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

Fatah activists marched to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' compound, police briefly stormed the parliament building in Gaza and security forces clashed with Hamas gunmen on Saturday as the long-ruling party lashed out in anger for its devastating election loss.

Fears over the future of the security forces under a Hamas-led government added to the chaos.

Most of the 58,000 security officers are allied with Fatah and worry that they will lose their jobs. The Islamic militant group, which won a majority in Wednesday's parliamentary vote, has its own armed force of about 5,000 gunmen in the Gaza Strip.

"The security forces will stay. Hamas has no power meddling with the security forces," Jibril Rajoub, Abbas' national security adviser, told the hundreds of Fatah activists at Abbas' compound.

First of all, it is more than a little worrisome that the current Fatah leadership might see itself replaced in favor of more militant members whose chief virtue may be that they could more effectively compete with Hamas for the votes of other militants. I hardly think that Fatah movement members are generally scions of the Enlightenment, but compared to their potential replacements--both within and without Fatah--they would seem Lockean and Burkean by comparison.

The group, which included gunmen, marched to the compound in Ramallah and peacefully prayed at Yasser Arafat's grave. "We came to you Abu Amar to forgive us for what happened," they chanting, referring to the late Palestinian leader by his nickname.

Ordinary expressions of piety are endearing but misplaced piety is irritating in the extreme. Arafat was no Gandhi. To think that his legacy of violence could not hacve spawned Hamas is to be naïve in the extreme.

Back to the issue of the security forces. Does anyone really think that now that Hamas has the capacity to form a government, they will refrain from infiltrating the security forces? Especially when one reads the following passage?

Earlier Saturday in Gaza, Hamas gunmen wounded two Palestinian policemen in what authorities said was a roadside ambush, hours after two officers and a Hamas activist were wounded in another firefight. One of the officers remained in a coma Saturday from a bullet wound to the head.

Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader in Gaza, addressed the growing fears in a mosque sermon Friday, saying there would be no purge of the security forces. However, it appeared inevitable that Hamas will want to replace many of the officers with their own loyalists.

So either Hamas will infiltrate the security forces, or it will stand back and take potshots at them through its militant factions. I trust that I am not the only one who finds all of this unappetizing.

(Cross posted on RedState.)