Here's what happened in "Palestine" on Thursday: A Fatah commander, named Muhammad Gharib, was murdered in his Jabaliya house in Gaza. It was really an execution carried out by the Executive Force, a Hamas security unit in the Interior Ministry. By day's end, eight other people who had been wounded in the attack were dead. In addition, as Steven Erlanger reported in Saturday's Times 60 other people were wounded, including 10 children. "On Friday," according to Erlanger, a local cleric and frequent critic of Hamas, was assassinated as he left his mosque. Then, hordes of Fatah supporters cried for revenge, although Jibril Rajoub, a former Fatah security chief, made his pronunicamento: "Our battle with Hamas is not a battle of assassination, kidnapping or revenge." Suddenly, Hamas called for a cease-fire. So what happened on Saturday? Avi Issacharoff reported in Ha'aretz that three Hamas militants were killed by Fatah in the Gaza Strip. "The militants, all members of the Diri family, were killed in an exchange of fire between Hamas and members of the Durmush family, some of who are affiliated with Fatah ... " Not all the violence occurred in Gaza. A Hamas-connected Al-Najah University lecturer was shot in his legs. Also in Nablus, the deputy mayor was kidnapped by Fatah and has not been heard from since. And, in Ramallah, the office manager of the Hamas-run Interior Ministry was also shot in his legs. Were they shots at the knee caps? I don't know. In any case, very nice. There's no pleasure in saying I was right all along. But the Palestinian people really does not exist as a cohesive whole. Their hysterical hatred of Israel and the Israelis masks this. But that does not make a nation. Apparently, according to a review by Clive Haberman in today's New York Times Book Review, that's what Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at (where else?) Columbia University, seems also to say in his new publication, The Iron Cage. Haberman does not much like the book, and I suppose that I wouldn't either. Still, Khalidi --aside from being a civil man--always has seemed to me to be trying to grapple with the truth.