History of Palestine January 2006 election of the Hamas government, Fatah resistance took the form of street battles that resulted in a victory for Hamas. Hamas took over the ministries of the (Fatah) Palestinian Authority and Gaza became a Hamas enclave outside PA control. As of July 2009, approximately 305,000 Israelis lived in 121 settlements in the West Bank. The 2.4 million West Bank Palestinians (according to Palestinian evaluations) live primarily in four blocs centered in Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus, and Jericho. On 23 September 2011, President Mahmoud Abbas on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organisation submitted an application for membership of Palestine in
Fatah al-Islam to the crisis. The fourth-highest-ranking member of Fatah al-Islam, Saddam el-Hajdib, and his brother Khaled Khair-Eddin el-Hajdib, were among the suspects behind failed bombings on German commuter trains on 31 July 2006. The bombs did not explode due to faulty mechanisms. Saddam el-Hajdib was killed by the Lebanese army in the 2007 conflict between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese Army. On 7 December 2006, "Le Monde" reported that a top UN official had been informed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representative in Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, of a plot by Fatah al-Islam to assassinate 36 anti-Syrian figures in Lebanon. PLO