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“Civil War” Dynamics in Palestine Out of convenience or bias, the major international media have consistently tied the multiplication of inter-Palestinian clashes in late 2006 and early 2007 to the Hamas victory in the January 2006 legislative elections. Yet the outbreak of partisan violence was not spawned by this victory. For the past several years, corruption (fasâd), anarchy (fawda) and lawlessness (falatân) have been fueling a dynamics the outcome of which, a “civil war” (fitna), was known, feared and condemned by the population. For the voters, Fath is believed at best to have failed to combat these various ills; at worst it is allegedly behind them. Given its reputation for probity and effectiveness, the people’s trust was invested in Hamas to undertake the mission of overcoming the “civil war” logic. But by impeding Hamas from carrying out its mandate, President Mahmoud Abbas, Fath, Israel and the international community have contributed, each in its own capacity, to transforming the lack of law and order into a “civil war” of which the premises were manifest as early as summer 2006. After having analyzed the various constitutive elements of this dynamics and their interconnections, this study resituates the process underway in the recent history of the Palestinian national movement.