This makes me furious:
Palestinians have paid a heavy price for the capture of IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Schalit and there is no need to continue holding him in captivity, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday, adding that it was possible to reach a deal to secure the soldier’s release with the help of Egyptian mediation. — Jerusalem Post
So now Israel needs to pay yet again, a price payable in freed Hamas murderers?
In my opinion, the problem is that Palestinians have not yet paid a high enough price — one high enough to cause them to release Schalit.
Speaking of prices paid, something which occurred to me (and seems to have occurred to some Fatah people) is that Abbas, the Teflon ‘moderate’, doesn’t seem to have paid much of a price himself for the Hamas takeover of Gaza. It seems that he’s getting more money and arms than ever, and now has center stage in the new, revitalized ‘peace’ process.
At last, the Palestinians now know why Hamas managed to capture the entire Gaza Strip so easily and without facing tough resistance, if any. It’s all because of 60 Fatah security officers and political operatives who freaked out and fled to the West Bank and Egypt instead of remaining in their positions to thwart the Hamas “coup.”
The 60 “culprits” were implicated in a 200-page report that was delivered to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah last weekend by members of a special commission of inquiry that spent a whole month probing the reasons behind Fatah’s humiliating defeat.
Headed by Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a top Abbas aide and veteran Fatah operative, the commission has become known among Palestinians as the Tayebograd Commission – along the lines of the Winograd Committee that investigated last summer’s war between Israel and Hizbullah.
But unlike the Winograd Report, the Palestinian commission chose to lay most of the blame on some of Fatah’s security commanders and low-level political activists…
“We kept warning President Abbas that Hamas was planning a coup in the Gaza Strip and that it was training its men and smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip, but he did not take us seriously,” said a senior PA security commander who fled from the Gaza Strip to Ramallah. “Our president chose to negotiate with Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal and Ismail Haniyeh about political partnership even while it was obvious that Hamas was planning to stage a bloody coup in the Gaza Strip.” — Khaled Abu Toameh, in the Jerusalem Post