FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

News item:

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) – By day, Awad al-Qiq was a respected science teacher and headmaster at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. By night, Palestinian militants say, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad.

The Israeli air strike that killed the 33-year-old last week also laid bare his apparent double life and embarrassed a U.N. agency which has long had to rebuff Israeli accusations that it has aided and abetted guerrillas fighting the Jewish state.

In interviews with Reuters, students and colleagues, as well as U.N. officials, denied any knowledge of Qiq’s work with explosives. And his family denied he had any militant links at all, despite a profusion of Islamic Jihad posters at his home.

But militant leaders allied to the enclave’s ruling Hamas group hailed him as a martyr who led Islamic Jihad’s “engineering unit” — its bomb makers. They fired a salvo of improvised rockets into Israel in response to his death. [my emphasis]

The UN agency which operates the school is UNRWA, of course. UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) was set up by UN resolution 302 in 1949 specifically to deal with Palestinian refugees; no other refugee group has had its own UN agency. The UNRWA 2007 budget was $487 million. The largest contributors are the US, the European Commission, Sweden, the Norway and the United Kingdom. UNRWA has more than 27,000 employees, 99% of whom are Palestinians, almost all ‘refugees’.

UNRWA is a major employer in Gaza and other locations, and one of the biggest contributors to the Palestinian ‘economy’ (the other is Palestinian Authority salaries, mostly for ‘security’ forces).

More details about the ‘refugees’, from the UNRWA site:

One-third of the registered Palestine refugees, about 1.3 million, live in 58 recognized refugee camps in the area of operations in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the West Bank and Gaza Strip…

The other two-thirds of the registered refugees live in and around the cities and towns of the host countries, and in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, often in the environs of official camps. While most of UNRWA’s installations such as schools and health centres are located in refugee camps, a number are outside camps and all of the Agency’s services are available to both camp and non-camp residents.

UNRWA’s mandate is to provide services to the 4-5 million descendants of the 750,000 1948 refugees, not to resettle them. Resolution 302 clearly intends it to be a temporary agency, and the implication is that the host governments will ultimately take responsibility for the refugees and also, reading between the lines, that they would eventually be resettled.

As everyone knows, the Arab nations (except Jordan) refused to allow any change in the status of the refugees, and chose to keep them and their descendants miserable in order to create an army that they hoped would ultimately overwhelm Israel either as an inexhaustible source of terrorist recruits or by way of a ‘right of return’. There is no precedent for a refugee situation lasting 60 years, and none for refugee status to be passed to descendants. Yet somehow the Palestinians are different.

UNRWA is the mechanism by which this unnatural growth is fed and nurtured. Were it not for UNRWA, the original refugees would have found homes and employment in host countries (and indeed, had the Arabs been prepared to make peace, many would have been able to return to Israel).

The Arab nations haven’t had to pay for the development of this army. We have, and continue to do so, just as we pay for the Palestinian Authority security forces, many of whom are terrorists or gangsters.

The Palestinian employees of UNRWA share the politics of Palestinians everywhere, and that means that a majority of them approve of ‘armed struggle’ as the best way to ‘liberate Palestine’ and solve the refugee problem. So it entirely unsurprising that rocketry buffs like Awad al-Qiq are UNRWA employees.

But the irony of a teacher moonlighting as a terrorist that the Reuters dispatch plays on is actually not ironic at all.

Because there isn’t any contradiction between the mission of UNRWA and that of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Technorati Tags: Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, Qiq, Gaza, terrorism

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is in big trouble, being investigated by police for bribery allegedly committed when he was mayor of Jerusalem.

This is not the first time that Olmert has been accused of financial wrongdoing, but from what is said in the papers, it’s apparently the most potentially damaging accusation.

This is happening exactly when he is negotiating with the Palestinian Authority and under pressure from the US to commit to a ‘peace’ agreement that will result in a Palestinian state before President Bush leaves office. Unconfirmed reports suggest everything from ‘there is no progress’ to ‘he is agreeing to evacuate most of East Jerusalem and offering some form of right of return’.

It seems to me that a PM with the threat of jail hanging over his head, one who is massively unpopular and kept in office only by the self-interest of Knesset members who themselves do not want to face elections, is not in the best position to negotiate a ‘deal’ that will change the borders of the State of Israel.

Many in Israel believe that the judiciary is highly politicized — left-wing — and that decisions to prosecute Olmert or not, when to prosecute him and what to charge him with may well be made in order to push him to make certain decisions in the ongoing negotiations.

We can also note that the elements in the US government who would like to see an agreement favorable to the Palestinians now also have a way to apply pressure to Olmert, especially since a key figure in the investigation is a US citizen.

The continuance of Olmert’s government is dependent on his coalition partners. The best thing that could happen now would be for enough of them to resign and thereby force new elections, before Olmert is indicted — or worse, in the event that he is not indicted.

The Nightmare Continues — courtesy of Dry Bones

There is no question that the US is already fighting Iran by proxy, in Iraq:

BAGHDAD – Iraqi Shiite extremists are being trained by members of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in camps near Tehran, a U.S. military spokesman said Monday.

Iraqis are receiving the training at camps operated by the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps that has been accused of training and funneling weapons to Shiite extremists in Iraq, Air Force Col. Donald Bacon, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, told The Associated Press.

“We have multiple detainees who state Lebanese Hezbollah are providing training to Iraqis in Iranian IRGC-QF training camps near Tehran,” Bacon said.

The Quds Force is also known as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force, or IRGC-QF. Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem. — AP

It is not unimportant that the Iranian unit is called the “Quds force”. The desire to expunge the Jewish state from the Middle East is a fundamental part of Iranian policy, not a sideshow.

I’m reminded of Lucy Dawidowicz’s book, “The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945“, in which the writer shows that many of Hitler’s strategic decisions — even many that were militarily disadvantageous — were taken in order to enable the murder of Jews. Indeed, it appears that antisemitism was a major factor motivating of Hitler, and not just a demagogic tool that he used to inspire support.

In the case of Iran, there is a correspondence between her geopolitical aim to dominate the region and to export revolutionary Islamism, and also to become the great hero of the Muslim world by finally putting an end to Israel.

In the geopolitical arena, Israel projects Western power. Israel is what prevents Lebanon from falling under the control of Hezbollah, and thereby Iran. It also props up Jordan. Paradoxically, it can even be argued that it supports the hostile Assad regime in Syria and the semi-hostile Egyptian state against the strong (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood movements in those nations.

As an aside, it’s interesting to see how Shiite Iran manages to cooperate with Sunni radicals in Hamas and Al-Qaeda in Iraq and other places, to advance common goals of resisting the US and destroying Israel.

Having said all of this, it should be obvious that Israel and the US have the same enemies. American interests demand a strong Israel, because we do not want to see half of the Middle East fall under Iranian control, or even divided between Sunni and Shiite radical Islamic regimes.

If this is true then why is the US pursuing a policy of weakening Israel by forcing it to make concessions in the name of a ‘peace’ agreement with a Palestinian rump faction that can’t possibly deliver any kind of peace, and won’t even recognize Israel as a Jewish state? Don’t we understand that the concessions we are demanding simply make a Hamas takeover of all of the occupied territories more likely?

In my opinion, the US is playing the dangerous game of supporting the Saudi vision of the Mideast, in which Iran’s Shiite Islamic revolution is contained by US military might and radical Sunni Islamism, such as that of Al-Qaeda, is financed and kept on a tight leash by the Saudis, who view themselves as the natural leaders of the Sunni world. The risk for the US is that the leash will break and the weak, corrupt Saudi royal family will be overthrown by Al-Qaeda (or similar) fundamentalists.

The Saudis wish to split off Hamas from Iran and take overall control of the Palestinian movement. From the Israeli point of view, Saudi influence is as bad as Iran’s, if the result is a Hamas state in both Gaza and the West Bank.

A better policy for the US and Israel would be a strong Israel that could resist Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as supporting pro-western forces in Jordan. The US also needs to confront the excessive Saudi influence here which skews policy in a direction which actually strengthens Al-Qaeda and other Sunni terrorist factions.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mideast conflict

News item:

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad warned Friday that peace talks could collapse unless Israel changes course and accepts a more conciliatory approach…

“Israel has failed to meet any of its obligations from the ‘road map,’ including a freeze in settlement activity,” he said. “That is most troubling. Unless that changes, the political process is being stripped of its meaning”…

“The progress that started in Annapolis has been slow and does not suggest the likelihood of meeting the objectives from Annapolis of ending the conflict and launching a Palestinian state.” — Jerusalem Post

It is not at all clear to me why he thinks that “settlement activity” is the big stumbling block. As I pointed out recently, this activity is all construction within the boundaries of existing settlements and Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, areas that Israel expects will remain under Israeli control. Anyway, discussions of final borders, etc., could continue despite a few hundred houses being built inside these areas.

Leaving aside the questions of Hamas, the terrorist factions within Fatah and the lack of support for Fatah among the Palestinian population, there is one really major reason that the ‘peace’ negotiations can’t possibly succeed in ending the conflict — although they could give birth to a Palestinian state, a disaster if the conflict is not truly ended.

The reason is that the Palestinians do not accept that there can be a Jewish state anywhere in ‘Palestine’. A Palestinian state in the territories might or might not be an improvement for them, but it does not solve the ‘problem’ of Israel.

Here are some ways that we can see this:

1. If the Palestinians wanted an independent state alongside Israel, why should they care if Israel is a Jewish state? But even Salaam Fayad, the most ‘moderate’ of all PA officials, will not agree to accept Israel as a Jewish state.
2. The Palestinian demand for the ‘return’ of millions of descendants of refugees to Israel would instantly create an Arab majority in Israel, thus ending the Jewish state (and in truth, probably triggering a massive civil war). No population in history has ever been granted a ‘right of return’ like this, and yet they continue to insist on it.

Israel does not need to be ‘more conciliatory’ because Israel has already agreed, in principle, to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It is by no means clear from a historical or legal point of view that they had to do this, but they did. Now it’s time for the Palestinians to agree to a Jewish state alongside ‘Palestine’.

In order to display as much seriousness as Israel has, the Palestinians would have to accept that Israel is a Jewish state and agree to live in peace with it, and they would have to agree to solve the refugee problem in some way other than ‘return’ to Israel.

The present PA leadership — with full agreement from the population — will not take these steps.

Combine this with the weakness of the PA, the strength of Hamas, and the internationalization of the conflict by major powers inside and outside of the Middle East — the fact that it has become a proxy struggle in a complicated game of multidimensional chess being played by the US, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia — and we see that it is highly unlikely that a peaceful solution to the conflict can be achieved today.

There may have been historical moments when this could have been achieved — the early 1990’s, for example. But that opportunity, if there was one, was missed when Arafat’s PLO was chosen to speak for the Palestinians. Possibly there will be another such time in the future, although I’m pessimistic that it will be the near future.

For now, the strategy for Israel has to be to avoid concessions that will produce strategic weaknesses and to strengthen her military posture to defend herself against the threats from Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians