Some snippets from today’s news, with my comments:
[Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas, appearing on a podium alongside Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, said Hamas had committed “crimes, murder and aggression against everything Palestinians stand for” in its takeover earlier this month of the Gaza Strip. — Jerusalem Post
What do they stand for? Before Hamas started shooting Fatah members, Abbas went as far as saying that terrorism and murder against Israel was “counterproductive”. Now, when applied to Fatah, it’s finally become morally reprehensible. Of course, the charter of Abbas’ Fatah organization still includes these principles:
Article (17) Armed public revolution is the inevitable method to liberating Palestine.
Article (22) Opposing any political solution offered as an alternative to demolishing the Zionist occupation in Palestine, as well as any project intended to liquidate the Palestinian case or impose any international mandate on its people.
Here’s another statement, this from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert:
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Thursday that he had no intention of providing maximal protection to all residents of Gaza periphery communities. “A country cannot protect itself ad infinitum, because there would be no end to it…”
The prime minister added that stepping up protection would be “just as [ineffective] as the demand to solve Sderot’s Kassam problem by wiping Beit Hanun and other towns in Gaza off the face of the earth.
The prime minister appealed to the residents of the Gaza periphery: “In the short term we cannot supply you with all of the personal security that we would like to provide, because such protection would draw from expensive resources that are needed for other critical security needs…”
He added that “life in Israel entails a certain security risk, and anyone who chooses to live in the Jewish state is accepting this risk.” And yet, “the risk in Israel is lower than the risk threatening Jews in other parts of the world.” — Jerusalem Post
So…what is your plan? Should part of the sovereign state of Israel be abandoned? Should the remaining residents of Sderot just sit in shelters? What will be different in the long term from the “short term”?
Next item: Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is reported as saying
“Kadima isn’t a one-time thing and it’s not going anywhere. We still have a lot to do…our goal is a dual-nation State [I think — I hope — she said ‘two-state solution’], but the road to a Palestinian state goes through the war on terror”. — YNet
Israel’s goal should peace and security, not any particular arrangement of states. But she is unquestionably correct that the road to it, whether or not a Palestinian state is on the way, runs through war. And I would have preferred that she had said “war on Palestinian and other Arab rejectionists” than the nonsensical “war on terror”.