Signs of Hamas’s creeping Islamization are everywhere in Gaza, the Mediterranean coastal enclave that Hamas has run by itself since 2007. Gaza is already politically divided from the West Bank, the Palestinian territory administered by the secular Fatah movement.

“Ruling by itself, Hamas can stamp its ideas on everyone,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political science professor at Gaza’s al-Azhar University. “Islamizing society has always been part of Hamas strategy.”

Hamas-Fatah infighting has diverted Palestinians from their quest for statehood and from presenting a united front at proposed U.S.-brokered peace talks with Israel. With no Palestinian elections on the horizon — a vote scheduled for January was canceled — Hamas has free rein to rule in Gaza.

Sporadic flare-ups - like the exchange of fire on Friday - remind residents how easily fighting can be sparked. And an ongoing war of words between Israel and Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah guerrillas has some convinced that one or the other of the two sides is planning a revival of the brutal war that they fought in the summer of 2006.

“This peace that you see today is not real. It is extremely fragile, it can blow up any minute, just as it did in 2006,” said Salam Jalbout, a 45-year-old Lebanese Christian merchant who lives in the predominantly Shiite town of Khiam near the border.

The two South American countries are known to have close ties with Iran, but this is the first allegation that they are involved in the development of Iran’s nuclear program, considered a strategic threat by Israel.

“There are reports that Venezuela supplies Iran with uranium for its nuclear program,” the Foreign Ministry document states, referring to previous Israeli intelligence conclusions. It added, “Bolivia also supplies uranium to Iran.”

On Sunday a government panel backed putting the bill, proposed by the party of far-right Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, before the Israeli Knesset.

A Labour minister opposed it; Hadash, a mainly Arab party, called it “racist”.

Some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes in the 1948 war after Israel declared independence.

It said it made the decision after Richard Falk told the BBC he stood by comments he made comparing Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis.

But Israelis abandoned the collective farms in droves as socialism fell from favor in the 1980s, urban centers flourished and many kibbutzim sank into debt as they struggled to weather hyperinflation and soaring interest rates.

Now the kibbutz is staging a tentative comeback by embracing reform and eco-friendly practices to attract young families looking for an alternative to the daily grind.

“It’s no longer a commune,” said Udi Nathan, who moved his family to Kibbutz Kramim in Israel’s Negev desert in 2006 after a decade of living in the country’s secular metropolis Tel Aviv.

“It has its socialist aspects ... but we don’t share our wallets with people, which I think is good and is in tune with what’s going on today.”

Traditionally, the kibbutz was an agricultural settlement founded on Zionist-socialist principles, where everyone worked the land and shared income and possessions. The first collective farm was founded in 1909.