FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

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”.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Abbas, Olmert, Livni

It’s really hard to know whether to laugh or to cry.

President George W. Bush held up Israel as a model for defining success in Iraq, saying Thursday that the goal of the US mission in the war-ravaged Arab nation is not eliminating attacks but enabling a democracy that can function despite continuing violence…

He suggested Israel as a model.

There, Bush said, “Terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it’s not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that’s a good indicator of success that we’re looking for in Iraq.” — Jerusalem Post/AP

One hopes that Iraq is not the model for a future Israel, with Israeli Jews and Arabs playing the roles of Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites.

Unfortunately, the same kind of inability to share a common vision seems to exist, although internal conflict has not taken off as it has in Iraq. It’s pretty certain, though, that conflict with external enemies — Hamas, Hezbollah, perhaps Syria — lies in the near future. And that, like the 2nd Lebanon War, will stress the uneasy relationship still further.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Israeli Arabs, Iraq

Some have suggested that it’s possible to look on the bright side and see the Hamas takeover of Gaza as opening the door to some kind of rapprochement between Israel and Fatah on the West Bank, now that Hamas appears to have been removed from the equation there.

Unfortunately, recent developments seem to point in the opposite direction. Here’s one observer’s possible scenario, following the recent summit at Sharm El-Sheik:

In the first days following the Gaza coup of the Hamas, it appeared as if no responsible power in the Middle East would acquiesce in the new situation. Hamas had broken the pledges of the unity government engineered by Saudi Arabia, massacred its Fateh rivals in the cruelest ways possible, and announced the formation of an Islamic regime…

President Hosni Mubarak, who hosted the Sharm summit, had originally called the Hamas takeover a coup. But Mubarak changed course. He threw a monkey wrench into the proceedings, when he announced in his summation speech at the conference, that Fateh and Hamas must work together to restore Palestinian unity.

This was reiterated by an Egyptian spokesperson after Mubarak met with Saudi officials following the summit. So it appears that

…the Saudis and the Egyptians perceive that the Hamas and their Iranian and Syrian benefactors are in control, and that Abbas and his US supporters are no longer powers to be reckoned with in the Middle East. Nothing succeeds like success. Nothing fails like failure. Saudi Arabia made this assessment originally when it brokered the unity agreement, which forced Fateh to accept Hamas hegemony on their own terms…

The acceptance of the fait accompli in Gaza and the prospects of another “unity government” create a very dangerous situation for Israel. A likely scenario is that the Fateh government will get arms, support and recognition, as well as possible peace concessions from Israel. The flow of foreign aid to the Palestinian government (of Abbas) has resumed. At a certain point, Abbas will be forced to accept the hegemony of the Hamas in a new “unity” government, in a deal mediated by Saudi Arabia and possibly Egypt. Remarkably nobody in the US government seems to be concerned that client states Egypt and Saudi Arabia are busy sabotaging the last hopes for the US sponsored Middle East peace effort.

Once the unity government deal is consummated, the Hamas government will then have been foisted on Israel and on the quartet, who will find that they have given arms to the Hamas in effect, and made concessions to the Hamas, and that they are obligated to give foreign aid to the Hamas government. The roadblocks removed from the West Bank will enable the free flow of arms and terrorists and the solidification of Hamas rule. Abbas, weakened from within and abandoned and betrayed by his erstwhile backers will have no choice but to acquiesce in a renewed and very virulent intifada, and Israel will be faced with extremely unpleasant choices…

— Ami Isseroff, ZioNation (the whole article is recommended)

Even murder and terrorism don’t disqualify a regime from international recognition and aid.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Fatah, Mubarak, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Abbas

AP reports:

Iran’s potential acquisition of nuclear arms is favored by majorities in only Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Palestinian territories, a poll released Wednesday showed.

Iran has threatened to destroy Israel numerous times. If it were to use its soon-to-be-acquired nuclear weapons to try to do so there would be numerous Palestinian casualties, in the attack and the ensuing war.

When (I wish I could say ‘if’) Iran gets nuclear weapons, there will be great pressure on other states in the region — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, even Syria and Jordan — to acquire them as well. Such an arms race will divert resources from civilian use, and it’s hard to imagine that this won’t be a great hardship in places like Egypt, where the economy is not all that great to begin with. And if it should happen that these weapons are used…

Can you imagine three or four new nuclear states in the Middle East? What if somebody like Fatah al-Islam got hold of a weapon or nuclear material?

Nuclear proliferation in the region is bad for Jews, but it’s as bad or worse for Arabs.

I suppose that Pakistanis feel far enough away that the general principle of Islamic power overrides the fear that the weapons will be used. Maybe they feel protected by their own nuclear armament, or maybe they think that the only real threat to them comes from India. Whatever.

But the Palestinians are right in the cross-hairs. What are they thinking?

Do we even need to ask? Haven’t we seen time and again that Palestinian thinking is dominated by hate, anger, and bitterness to the point that they consistently choose self-defeating tactics and strategies?

It’s still more important to them to hurt Jews than to help Arabs.

Technorati Tags: Palestinians, Israel, Iran, nuclear weapons

They are not random crazies. Not at all.

Thanks to Tom Gross of NRO and Tom Carew for pointing me to this:

Hamas was not using a random hit list. Every Hamas patrol carried with it a laptop containing a list of Fatah operatives in Gaza, and an identity number and a star appeared next to each name. A red star meant the operative was to be executed and a blue one meant he was to be shot in the legs – a special, cruel tactic developed by Hamas, in which the shot is fired from the back of the knee so that the kneecap is shattered when the bullet exits the other side. A black star signaled arrest, and no star meant that the Fatah member was to be beaten and released. Hamas patrols took the list with them to hospitals, where they searched for wounded Fatah officials, some of whom they beat up and some of whom they abducted.

Aside from assassinating Fatah officials, Hamas also killed innocent Palestinians, with the intention of deterring the large clans from confronting the organization. Thus it was that 10 days ago, after an hours-long gun battle that ended with Hamas overpowering the Bakr clan from the Shati refugee camp – known as a large, well-armed and dangerous family that supports Fatah – the Hamas military wing removed all the family members from their compound and lined them up against a wall. Militants selected a 14-year-old girl, two women aged 19 and 75, and two elderly men, and shot them to death in cold blood to send a message to all the armed clans of Gaza. — Ha’aretz

Carew remarks that Hamas did not actually ‘develop’ the kneecapping technique; that honor belongs to the Provisional IRA, who incidentally also pioneered the car bomb which has been employed so often by Hezbollah.

Read the Ha’aretz quote again and tell me about how we need to ‘engage’ with Hamas (as my local newspaper did last week).

Technorati Tags: Hamas