FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Khaled Abu Toameh reports:

Fatah will fight alongside Hamas if and when the IDF launches a military operation in the Gaza Strip, a senior Fatah official in Gaza City said Thursday.

“Fatah won’t remain idle in the face of an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip,” the official said. “We will definitely fight together with Hamas against the Israeli army. It’s our duty to defend our people against the occupiers.”

The Fatah official said his faction would place political differences aside and form a joint front against Israel if the IDF enters the Gaza Strip. “The homeland is more important than all our differences,” he said…

According to…reports, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have decided to invite representatives of Fatah and Hamas for talks on ways of ending their power struggle.

Big surprise.

Meanwhile, the German Foreign Minister suggests that Europe should send aid to Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, the Israeli government [!] has approved sending Russian armored personnel carriers, rifles and ammunation to Abbas, and Israel plans to release 400 Fatah security prisoners this Sunday.

No, Israel has not said that they will teach them to drive the APCs. That will probably be the job of US Generals James Jones and Keith Dayton, whose job is to ‘coordinate security’ and build up the Fatah faction’s ability to ‘fight terror’.

Last week, terrorists of Fatah’s al-Aqsa brigades murdered Israeli Ido Zoltan. Not Hamas. Fatah.

So they don’t agree to recognize Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, they plan to cooperate with Hamas — although they have supposedly agreed with the ‘roadmap’ that they will disarm and dismantle terrorist groups — and they can’t or won’t control their own terrorists. Partner…or enemy?

It should be 100% clear by now, to the US, Europe, and Israel, that Fatah’s moderation is only wishful thinking, and the strategy of building a solution to the conflict on it cannot possibly succeed. Arms supplied to Fatah will be used directly against Israel, as they were in the Oslo period, or they will end up in the hands of Hamas as they did earlier this year. How many times do we need to make the same mistake?

Are we really as stupid as we seem?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Fatah, Hamas

Palestinian Authority (West Bank branch) President Mahmoud Abbas is optimistic:

Israel and the Palestinians may sign a peace agreement within six months of the international Mideast peace conference scheduled for November, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said on Friday. — Jerusalem Post

Leaving aside the question of the more than 1 million Palestinians who live in Hamas-run Gaza, what has changed since 2000 to make this possible?

Has Israel’s attitude changed toward the Palestinian demand, not softened by Abbas, to resettle the descendants of Palestinian refugees in Israel?

Have the Palestinians indicated that they would be prepared to accept any less of Jerusalem than all of the areas formerly occupied by Jordan? Will they allow Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount?

Have the Saudis, billed as the stars of the upcoming conference, given us any reason to believe that the Arab League proposal on which this conference is supposedly based will offer Israel anything other than terms of surrender?

Does Syria, which the US wishes to invite to the conference, have any more desire to end the conflict with Israel than in the past (see Barry Rubin’s opinion here)?

No, there is only one thing that is driving this conference, and that is the US desire to gain concessions from Syria and help from Saudi Arabia in respect to Iraq. The polite way to put it is the way it appeared in the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report:

Iraq cannot be addressed effectively in isolation from other major regional issues, interests, and unresolved conflicts. To put it simply, all key issues in the Middle East—the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq, Iran, the need for political and economic reforms, and extremism and terrorism—are inextricably linked…

The United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict. There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria, and President Bush’s June 2002 commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. This commitment must include direct talks with, by, and between Israel, Lebanon, Palestinians (those who accept Israel’s right to exist), and particularly Syria—which is the principal transit point for shipments of weapons to Hezbollah, and which supports radical Palestinian groups.

I’ve argued that this ‘linkage’ idea is nonsense. Unfortunately, the US State Department doesn’t agree with me, and so is moving ahead with its plan to trade its only reliable ally in the Mideast for probably worthless promises from the Arab nations.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Saudi Arabia, Syria

Ha’aretz:

Imprisoned Fatah boss Marwan Barghouti will become the Palestinians’ next leader, Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer recently told Haaretz.

…Ben-Eliezer said that he believed that “there is no reason to become alarmed” by the possibility that Barghouti will be released from the Israeli prison system, where he is serving five consecutive life sentences for terrorist activities.

In case anyone is unclear, the ‘activities’ mentioned were the murders of four Israelis and a Greek monk.

Barghouti is the author of the “prisoners’ document” which is touted as a charter for a moderate Palestinian Authority, but actually simply calls for unity between Fatah and Hamas in the struggle with Israel, and does not call for an end to violence against Israelis.

This comes up every few months, usually when some Labor MK calls for his release. Apparently there is a point of view that any ‘peace’ agreement with the Palestinians, even a bad one that cannot result in peace, even an agreement with a Palestinian leader such as Barghouti with gallons of Jewish blood on his hands, is better than no agreement.

Ben-Eliezer says over the past months he had realized Barghouti is probably the best partner Israel has with whom it can hope to achieve a breakthrough in negotiations with the Palestinians.

Indeed. There is no better partner because there is no reasonable partner, but the idea, possibly born in the USA, is that — partner or not — an agreement must be reached.

According to Ben-Eliezer, Barghouti enjoys considerable sway over the situation in Palestinian Authority from within the Hadarim prison facility.

The minister says Barghouti’s pull extends to the preparations for the U.S.-sponsored regional peace summit Washington intends to hold in November.

That’s it, then. The Americans say there must be a ‘summit’ (somehow, and I shudder to speculate how, this is supposed to help with Iraq) and there must be an agreement, regardless of the consequences. The Palestinians, understanding this, will not play unless they get what they want, and this is one of the things they want.

“We have to find a suitable opportunity to release Barghouti, and we have to link it to the release of Gilad Shalit,” the minister said.

It’s not possible to release a quintuple murderer in return for a hostage. Israel needs to apply the death penalty to terrorist murders to prevent such situations.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Barghouti