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Another ‘international’ wounded in action:

Some 2,000 Palestinians and left-wing activists gathered in the West Bank village of Bil’in on Friday to commemorate three years of their struggle against the security barrier in the area.

According to the organizers of the demonstration, 10 people were wounded in clashes with security forces, including a US peace activist who was hit in the head by a rubber bullet and evacuated in moderate condition to a hospital in Ramallah…

Since 2002, 11 people have been killed and thousands wounded in the weekly demonstrations. — Jerusalem Post

It would be cruel, but correct, to say that the organizers of the demonstration intend for such things to happen. That’s what makes them effective, and that’s why they do their best to provoke reactions from the soldiers and police who are trying to protect the fence (otherwise the ‘demonstrators’ would tear it down).

In my local newspaper today, there was a letter that pretty much encapsulates the point of view of the people who would risk injury or death to help the Palestinians.

The writer mentions “41 years of military occupation”, and talks about limitations on the freedom of Palestinians, such as Gaza residents who are allegedly (but in fact not) suffering from electricity reductions, etc. “Wouldn’t you fight back?” he asks.

He is unable or unwilling to see that the situation of the Palestinians today is a result of not 41 but close to a hundred years of war waged on the Jewish population of the region by the Arab world, especially including the Palestinians. He is unable to understand that the Palestinians have consistently rejected attempts to partition the already-partitioned Jewish portion of the Palestine mandate in such a way as to create an independent state of Palestine, choosing to hold out for the replacement of the Jewish state with an Arab one.

Even a Zionist like myself will admit that the Palestinians are having a rough time. The thing is, we are simply not prepared to give up the Jewish state. The Palestinian position that it all belongs to them is not justified historically, and certainly their murderous behavior and serial failures of leadership — the Mufti, Arafat, Hamas, etc. — place the majority of the blame for their problems squarely on them.

But the poor ‘international’ who was injured and my local letter-writer have room in their brains only for a list of Palestinian grievances — they did this to us, they did that to us. They don’t notice or don’t believe that the security fence has anything to do with terrorism. They don’t see that the minimal (in truth, laughable) reductions of fuel and electricity to Gaza are direct results of Hamas rockets hitting Israeli cities. And they are unaware of the long history of Arab terrorism against Israel (and against Jews in Palestine, before there was an Israel).

At some point, very soon I’m afraid, a rocket will hit a school and kill a bunch of children. Then Israel will invade Gaza, having exhausted every other means of stopping the rocket fire, and the internationals and letter-writers will go into high gear, exaggerating Palestinian suffering, inventing massacres, etc.

As I have pointed out, Hamas knows this and are continuing to shoot. This means that they welcome a confrontation. They expect that they will be able to cause significant Israeli casualties, which they think will weaken Israel’s resolve (to exist?) But also, they know that there is great value for them in Palestinian casualties, real or made up. They expect that the US, UN, etc. will intervene, protect Hamas from Israel, and force concessions.

Like the Bil’in demonstrators, the more bad things that happen to them, the better they like it.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Bil’in, Hamas, Gaza

Yesterday I discussed a plan to station UN troops in Gaza, as an ‘exit strategy’ for the IDF after an incursion to remove Hamas from power.

Today, I am reading about plans to introduce NATO soldiers into the West Bank:

The plan, which is being spearheaded by US Special Envoy to the region Gen. James Jones, is being floated among European countries, which could be asked to contribute troops to a West Bank multinational force.

Jones, a former commander of NATO, was sent to Israel in November to help the Israelis and Palestinians frame some of the security mechanics necessary for a broader peace agreement.

As first reported in the Post last month, Jones’s plan calls for stationing third-party troops in the West Bank to secure the area in the interim period following an Israeli withdrawal and before the Palestinian Authority can take over full security control. — Jerusalem Post

Currently, the only thing keeping the Abbas/Fayad faction of Fatah in power in the West Bank is the IDF and its operations against Hamas and anti-Abbas segments of Fatah. NATO would not have the intelligence capabilities of the IDF, nor the knowledge of the area nor the stomach to replace the IDF. And Abbas/Fayad is growing weaker, not stronger.

Despite certain failure of this and similar plans, they continue to go forward. Why? Because the international community has one and only one goal: create a Palestinian state.

This goal is being promoted as a way to bring peace, but it is the opposite. It is based on false assumptions: that the conflict between Israel and the Arab nations is based on the Palestinian issue, and that it is possible to create a Palestinian entity that will be moderate — that is, that will not wage war on Israel. It pays only lip service to Israel’s security.

But this doesn’t matter, because it is only important to curry favor with the Arab oil powers by rolling history back before 1967 as promised. There is no concern for security. Get the Palestinian state, and everything will be OK, say the Saudis, and heads at the State Department and EU nod in unison.

This is only a first step. Assuming that a weak Israeli leadership allows this to happen, the next one — it is already beginning — will be agitation by and for the ‘oppressed’ Arab minority inside Israel, and of course the refugees. This is evidenced by the refusal of the Fatah moderates to accept that Israel is a Jewish state.

So what is supposed to come next? International troops inside Israel to help transition it to a ‘state of its citizens’? Will the US and EU time machine bring back the mandate?

Technorati Tags: Israel, NATO

For some time, I’ve been arguing that the Western plan to support Fatah as a way of bringing about a two-state solution is bound to fail disastrously. Unlike Hamas, which at least has a (murderous) ideology, Fatah is no more than an agglomeration of gangsters.

In the days of Arafat’s support from the Soviet Union it at least pretended to be Marxist in orientation, although Arafat’s real ideology was just to kill as many Jews as possible. But now they are little more than a fractious street gang with US weapons and training. Giving them huge sums of money will be a boondoggle of enormous proportions, will lead to violence in the region, and will not achieve our goals.

Fatah Falls Apart

By Barry Rubin

Rather than unite in the face of the Hamas challenge and the task of gaining support from the West Bank’s people, Fatah seems to be collapsing.

Or perhaps the feuds are not only over power but who gets to control the almost $7 billion scheduled to be given the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) over the next three years. A contributing factor is that Fatah has said it will hold a congress in March, the first full such meeting in almost 20 years.

There are at least five factions operating in Fatah today, and even that is an understatement. While PA “president” Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad enjoy Western support, they have very little from their own organization. These two are relative moderates who have no internal base of support. Even the very tiny group of those who can be called moderate is split since, for example, Ahmad Khouri (Abu Ala), is quarreling with Abbas.

Then there are the cronies of the late head of Fatah and the PA, Yasir Arafat, who have not developed any moderate tendencies but are using Abbas to cling to power. A typical example of this group is Hakam Balawi who was the PLO ambassador to Tunisia when Arafat’s headquarters were there, a particular favorite of Arafat. These people are basically careerists who simply stick with whoever is leader.

A third group are the hardliners, like Abu Ali Shahin, who views himself as a revolutionary fighter. Other powerful figures in this group include Farouq Qaddumi, the actual head of Fatah; Sakhr Habash (Abu Nizar), chief of the Fatah Revolutionary Committee; and Salim al-Zaanoun, head of the Palestine National Council (PNC), the PLO’s legislature. These people want a continuation of armed struggle against Israel and believe that total victory is still possible.

A fourth faction can be called the “young guard,” but this is also split among different contenders for leadership. Muhammad Dahlan, formerly the leading Fatah security (i.e., military) commander in the Gaza Strip is one candidate; Marwan Barghouti, the head of Fatah in the West Bank and now imprisoned by Israel, is another. Dahlan and Barghouti are also very much at odds.

Recently, Shahin has called Abbas a failed leader who should resign. Balawi claimed Dahlan was plotting against Abbas, and Dahlan in return accused Balawi of being an Israel spy.

As if this isn’t enough, the “young guard” knows that the current leaders will not give it any meaningful share of power in Fatah. The group, for instance, does not have a single member on the Fatah Central Committee.

In short, PA and Fatah politics are a mess. This has long been true but few noticed and it didn’t matter when Arafat was alive since he kept the lid on everything, while playing off his subordinates against each other, and provided unity.

Now, however, things are different. It is amazing that since Fatah and the PA are the West’s candidate to make good use of almost $7 billion, beat Hamas, establish a Palestinian state, and make peace with Israel, few observers take note of this disastrous situation or factor it into their policies.

Unless Fatah changes its ways, and there is no reason to believe it will do so, one can only wonder if Hamas will be controlling the West Bank, too, within five years. Certainly, one can expect the aid money to disappear without helping the Palestinian people much and be sure that this divided, quarreling leadership will not be able to make peace with Israel.

. . .

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). His latest books are The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan) and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).

Technorati Tags: Fatah, Israel, Hamas

In an absolutely searing piece in the Jerusalem Post, editor David Horovitz takes note of the recantation of Adm. Michael McConnell, “the man responsible for the US National Intelligence Estimate”:

What McConnell is now saying amounts to the very opposite: Yes, runs the amended narrative, we think the Iranians may have halted what we narrowly, foolishly and misleadingly defined as their nuclear weapons program four years ago, we’re not sure if they’ve restarted it, but the fact is that we led you all astray with our definition of that program in the first place.

You see, the new line continues, weapon design and weaponization – those narrow aspects that might have been halted – really constitute the “least significant portion” of a nuclear weapons program. In retrospect, we should have relied on more than a footnote to make that clear. The “most difficult challenge” is actually “uranium enrichment [to] enable the production of fissile material,” and, as we probably should have stressed more prominently, work on that is proceeding apace.

Citing the “persistent threat of WMD-related proliferation,” McConnell told the [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Feb. 5] that “Iran continues to pursue fissile material and nuclear-capable missile delivery systems.” He then elaborated: “Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons. Iran continues its efforts to develop uranium enrichment technology, which can be used both for power reactor fuel and to produce nuclear weapons. And, as noted, Iran continues to deploy ballistic missiles inherently capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and to develop longer-range missiles.”

Horovitz goes on to contrast the original treatment of the NIE in the media with the way its refutation has been almost completely ignored. And then,

When the original, exculpatory NIE was published, Iran’s would-be-Israel-eliminating President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hailed “victory,” the international sanctions effort stalled, Russia began shipping fuel to the reactor it had built for the Iranians at Bushehr and Ahmadinejad’s regime merrily intensified its declared centrifuge installations and operations at Natanz. Meanwhile, President Bush found himself accused by political rivals and other critics of having unwarrantably, even dishonestly, overhyped the threat posed by Iran. Some of the more hysterical voices went so far as to charge that his administration had been deliberately skewing the intelligence on Iran’s nuclear drive to justify thrusting the United States into another unnecessary war.

McConnell’s barely noticed reversal has changed none of that. It has done nothing to dent Ahmadinejad’s public confidence that nobody is going to stop the Iranian drive now, and nothing to suggest to Iran that it need halt what McConnell acknowledged last week was the range of dual-purpose activities that daily bring it ever-closer to a nuclear weapons capability. The admiral’s climbdown has injected no new urgency, and no stronger teeth, into the weak and snail-paced UN-centered sanctions effort. It has prompted no rethink by Moscow about assisting Teheran’s “peaceful” nuclear programs. And with this US administration now counting down its final months, his “recalibration” has restored no credibility to Bush’s efforts to thwart Iran – credibility that was swept away when the shattering original NIE essentially removed his administration’s military option.

Obviously a decision has been made in whatever circles actually decide US policy — and it’s by no means clear who this is — that the US will not take aggressive military or diplomatic action to prevent Iran from getting the bomb and the means to deliver it.

If not the US, then who? Apparently nobody.

Now consider that Iran has more than once threatened to destroy Israel, clearly and unambiguously. What would you do if you were the Prime Minister of Israel? What would you do if you believed that Ahmadinijad was truly threatening a second, nuclear, Holocaust?

Israel does not have the diplomatic clout of the US. Israel does not have the military might of the US either, but what do you do when your back is against the wall? What do you do when your people, who within living memory were almost wiped out in a horrific genocide, are facing annihilation again?

Now suppose also that you understand that a surgical removal of Iran’s nuclear capability would be very difficult. It would provoke retaliation and might fail to completely eliminate the threat (which is nuclear, but also chemical/biological, and which might include attacks from countries other than Iran).

What you do is wait until you are certain that an attack is imminent and then you do what is necessary to prevent it, which may not turn out to be all that surgical. Then you deal with whatever retaliation the remnants of your enemy can muster.

If you wait too long, then you absorb the strike and retaliate massively (Israel is absolutely capable of this).

Either way, we are talking about deaths in the tens of millions.

And this is what will be the consequence of the US failure to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons, something which could probably be accomplished by diplomacy alone, if undertaken with sufficient resolve.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iran, NIE, McConnell