Yesterday was Naqba Day in Gaza and the West Bank. This is the 59th year of Israel's independence, and so the Arabs of Palestine were commemorating the 59th year of their "catastrophe," which is what "naqba" means. Or that is what they were supposed to be doing. But they weren't. They were battling each other. On Naqba Day, 15 Palestinians were dead, victims of each others' bullets. Today, the body count was only 13. Six of them were Fatah men gunned down by Hamas. And five of them were Hamas men also gunned down by Hamas. Bad aim! 41 people had been murdered in four days. And, oh yes, cease-fires have been proclaimed every day...or promised. All of this is documented in the New York Times' "Fatah official's home stormed in Gaza clashes," in Ha'aretz, "At least 13 dead," and in the Jerusalem Post, "Hamas kills five." Look particularly closely at the photograph accompanying the Post story. It is of the mansion of Rashid Abu Shbak, a bit rough upped by Hamas fighters, that is, the mansion, not the man who was away when the thugs came. I know that the Gaza Palestinians are suffering but now certainly more from their own than from Israel. Still, the mansion shocks. I knew where Ben Gurion lived...actually in a bungalow on a kibbutz. I visited Golda Meir many times, both in the prime minister's residence in Jerusalem and her own private house in Tel Aviv. Maybe like a middle class house in New Rochelle. With Michael Walzer, Henry Rosovsky and David Landes (how did I fit into this eminent crew?), I visited Menahem Begin in his own apartment, also in Tel Aviv, the small and extremely spare apartment where he had hid from the British before independence and the place to which he retired after being prime minister. Yitzhak Rabin lived in a tasteful but modest apartment in North Tel Aviv. And Ehud Olmert lives in a not at all so grand house, but with a big garden. And Rashid Abu Shbak lives in a mansion. Perhaps he thinks that it will serve as motivator for the depressed people he polices.