Palestinian Split: Separate Control in West Bank, Gaza; Deal on Immigration
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Hostile takeover. This morning, an urgent meeting as Hamas tightens its grip in Gaza. Growing fears across the region.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If they fire at Israel, we're going to fire back.</s>ROBERTS: Could the U.S. ever be drawn into the fight? Plus, space oddity. NASA astronauts venture back into space today with a stapler. Can the low-tech tool fix the high-tech shuttle? On this AMERICAN MORNING.</s>ROBERTS: Got to use a little old-fashioned ingenuity there. Good morning to you. It's Friday, June the 15th. Thanks for being with us. I'm John Roberts.</s>KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Kiran Chetry. Glad you're with us.</s>CHETRY: We begin though in the Mideast this morning, in Hamas, tightening its grip over Gaza. We have new pictures now of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas at Friday prayers in the West Bank, where his Fatah party is still in power. In the last 90 minutes, Hamas announced it wants to make peace with Hamas and Fatah, granting amnesty to captured Fatah leaders. About an hour ago, the coroner in Gaza telling reporters the morgue is now overflowing with bodies, many of them Fatah loyalists who were dragged into the street and shot in the past 24 hours. And the concern this morning is that Hamas will try to extend its reach into the West Bank. CNN's Atika Shubert is in Jerusalem for us. So, we're hearing two different things -- possible talks of wanting a truce of sorts, and then talk of trying to make further ground militarily.</s>ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, at the moment, the fighting has stopped in Gaza. And that's simply because Hamas has defeated its political rival, Fatah. At the moment, Hamas is confined to Gaza. It's very unlikely they would be able to make any inroads into the West Bank. And that's because that is a Fatah stronghold. They're physically divided, and President Abbas is firmly in control of the West Bank. But basically what we're left with is Gaza under the control of Hamas, the West Bank under the control of Fatah, and the Palestinian territories are divided in two. Both Hamas and Fatah claim to be the true Palestinian Authority. Neither is giving in. And Palestinians don't know what's going to happen next, how Hamas can govern Gaza without the support of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. How will supplies be brought into Gaza? These are some of the questions that residents in Gaza are starting to ask. And even though the fighting has stopped for the most part in Gaza, there is now rampant looting going on. And so clearly law and order still has not been enforced.</s>CHETRY: Atika Shubert live for us in Jerusalem. We'll follow the latest developments throughout the morning. Thank you.</s>ROBERTS: The United States is going ahead with the missile shield in central Europe, despite Russia's effort to put a radar -- or to at least let the United States use an existing radar in Azerbaijan. Define Secretary Robert Gates delivered the news to the Russians just a few hours ago at a NATO meeting in Brussels. Gates says that the offer of the radar in Azerbaijan cannot replace the system that the U.S. plans to build. It would put the radar in the Czech Republic and missiles in Poland. We're waiting this morning for details on a new immigration deal that was crafted in the Senate late last night. It looked like the bill was dead, but now it appears live enough to return to the Senate floor, perhaps as early as next week. Negotiators agreed to limit the number of amendments to 11 on each side. And we're waiting now to see what they are. And, of course, everyone is wondering if there are enough votes to pass the measure. Andrea Koppel is following all of the latest moves from Capitol Hill. So what about that, Andrea? Do we know what's in the amendments? And do they have enough votes to reach 60, which is the point they need to cut off debate?</s>ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A lot of good questions, John. At this point, we've got lawmakers on both sides of the aisle that are being quite tight-lipped about the details of those roughly 22 amendments. What we know is that yesterday, President Bush announced that he was going to ante up $4.4 billion to toughen both border security and work site immigration enforcement. This was a key demand of many Republicans, who were concerned that this was going to be pushed off into the future. In addition, we also know another Republican amendment -- this is one by Kay Bailey Hutchison -- that would force basically anyone who wanted to get that Z visa to lay out the path to citizenship to return to their home country within 18 months -- John.</s>ROBERTS: Is this all a result, Andrea, of the arm-twisting that the president did the other day?</s>KOPPEL: You've got to believe that the fact that it came just two days after he made a rare visit to Capitol Hill, and for the first time in six years had that rare Tuesday luncheon with Republicans, did play a significant factor in it. We know it's been his top domestic agenda, to get this thing through, John. But whether or not it's actually going to pass is still the big question.</s>ROBERTS: Yes, because there's still a lot of people who don't like the bill at all, think it's a bad bill and don't want to -- don't want to vote for it.</s>KOPPEL: Oh, yes.</s>ROBERTS: But when could it come back to the floor? We said next week. Are we talking early next week, middle, end?</s>KOPPEL: They still have to get their energy bill through. And they expect that debate on that is going to run right up until the tail end of next week. So the earliest it can come up is the end of next week. They hope, John, to have the votes on those 22 amendments done by the 4th of July.</s>ROBERTS: All right. Andrea Koppel for us this morning on Capitol Hill. Thanks, Andrea. We'll talk with you a little bit later on this morning about all of this.