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News item:

Israel’s decision to clamp down on Hamas-affiliated institutions in the West Bank has drawn strong condemnations from the movement’s leaders.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh accused Israel on Wednesday of waging a “dirty war” against Hamas. He also accused the Palestinian Authority of “participating” in the Israeli campaign…

In recent days the IDF closed several Hamas-affiliated institutions, including a shopping mall in Nablus. The move is aimed at undermining Hamas’s influence and destroying its infrastructure in the West Bank.

Haniyeh said that altogether the IDF closed 37 institutions in Ramallah and Nablus since the beginning of the week.

“This is an ugly crime against humanity,” Haniyeh said, adding that most of the institutions were charities that provided for the needy. [my emphasis]

How ironic for Hamas to talk about dirty wars and crimes against humanity!

This is the Hamas whose  charter calls for Muslims to kill Jews, which claims all of Israel as a Muslim waqf [property or land dedicated to Allah], and which insists that the only solution to the problem of its Jewish occupancy is violent jihad.

This is the Hamas which popularized the tactic of strapping bombs to teenagers, mentally handicapped people, and disgraced women, and sending them to blow themselves up in the midst of Israeli civilians.

This is the Hamas which fires rockets and mortars into Israel at random targets, and which celebrates with glee whenever Israelis are killed.

This is the Hamas that creates childrens’ TV programs in which ‘cute’ characters preach hatred, revenge and death, and which dresses up toddlers barely able to walk as suicide bombers, to the great pride of their parents.

This is the Hamas whose entire heart and soul, its reason for being, is to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish state, whose ‘charities’ serve to recruit supporters for its murderous program and as a smokescreen for its ‘military’ — that is, terrorist — wing.

So explain to me why Israel should not do its best to suppress Hamas-affiliated institutions in the West Bank. Indeed, explain why Israel stands aside and lets it grow stronger and stronger in Gaza.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, dirty war, crimes against humanity

As everyone knows, the so-called ‘cease-fire’ agreement with Hamas has been broken numerous times since its inception on June 19.  In every case, Hamas has denied responsibility, with Islamic Jihad and Fatah (our moderate friends) being the usual suspects. Hamas has called the violators ‘criminals’. That hasn’t seemed to stop them.

Israel has responded by closing and reopening crossings. When they are closed, Hamas screams bloody murder about how Gaza residents are being strangled, something that is eminently untrue. Meanwhile, Israelis living in the Western Negev area remain quite literally under the gun.

Hamas has occupied itself by improving its military capability.

…Hamas is feverishly training as well as acquiring relevant weapons systems – of a type far superior in quality to those previously associated with the organization.

The weapons systems on which Hamas is thought to be currently training in the Gaza Strip include a wire-guided anti-tank missile, probably the AT-3 Sagger, and additional anti-tank guided missiles: the AT-4 Spigot, the tripod-fired AT-5 Spandrel and the shoulder-fired AT-14 Spriggan – all useful against armor. All these systems have ranges of several kilometers.

In addition, Hamas is thought to have brought into Gaza large numbers of RPG-29 Vampir handheld anti-tank grenade launchers with a range of 500 meters, which are capable of penetrating reactive armor and are considered far superior to the RPG 7 systems used by the movement in the past.

Hamas is also developing improvised explosive devices, i.e. bombs. The organization possesses an Iranian-developed, locally-produced system known as the Shawaz explosively-formed penetrator that it says can penetrate 20 cm. of steel [such devices have wreaked havoc in Iraq — ed.]. Hamas also claims to possess air defense missiles, though no information could be obtained on their nature or the veracity of the claim. Imports from Iran and Syria and local production are all playing a role in the movement’s development of its arsenal.

In addition to arming Gaza to the teeth, Hamas is recruiting fresh fighters. Once again, the model is Hizbullah, and the intention appears to be to develop a force part-way between a regular army and a guerrilla force, of the type developed under Iranian tutelage by the Shi’ite Lebanese group. Extensive recruitment has been taking place in the past month. New fighters have been accepted to both the Izzadin Kassam Brigades – Hamas’s long-standing military wing, and to the Executive Force – the newer group created since Hamas’s election victory in January 2006. — Jonathan Speyer, “Fortress Gaza“

At the same time, ‘progress’ is being made in the direction of unifying the Palestinian Authority, bringing Fatah and Hamas together. In an editorial today, the Jerusalem Post writes,

It may yet take months, but there is every likelihood that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will ultimately reconcile his Fatah movement with Hamas, an interim government of “technocrats” will be formed, and new Palestinian elections will be held.

Abbas was in Damascus on Sunday and Monday to discuss those prospects of reconciliation with President Bashar Assad, who is pushing for Palestinian unity. Arab leaders, though jostling for relative influence, want to see Palestinian factions form a united front…

While Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria keeps Hamas’s military wing in check, Hamas’s leaders prepare for the day when they will take control of the PA. Despite intensive well-funded Western efforts channeled through Abbas supporters to strengthen Palestinian civil society, a vast network of Hamas-affiliated social welfare organizations, supported by donations from throughout the Muslim world, boosts the popularity of an already admired organization. The IDF is expanding its efforts to close Hamas’s West Bank institutions and confiscate their property – really a job the PA should have done.

It is hard to believe that anyone – not US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, not EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, and certainly not Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni – has any illusions about what would happen to Abbas and Fatah were the IDF to withdraw from the West Bank.

As Abbas’s prospects dim – a Ramallah judicial body unilaterally “extended” his term beyond January 2009 – Fatah needs the legitimacy unity would bring. And for Hamas, unity is the road to controlling the West Bank.

A Palestinian Authority government that included Hamas would be the end of Israel’s attempt to isolate Hamas internationally. And there is no doubt that such an unstable entity would quickly tilt in the direction of Hamas. Even the direct support of the US has not been enough to improve Fatah’s position, and the huge quantity of weapons being supplied to them now will ultimately be in the hands of a Hamas-dominated PA.

This blog, as well as many more authoritative commentators, opposed the truce for these reasons. We argued that there was no preventing an eventual confrontation with Hamas, which has shown no intention to moderate its radical position calling for the destruction of Israel.

We argued that Israel could have and should have mounted a large enough incursion into Gaza to cut off the weapons smuggling across the Egyptian border, and to destroy Hamas’ war-making capability, and its leadership.

Those of you who are reading this and thinking “bloody right-wing warmonger” should use their remaining brain cells to consider whether that action would have led to a greater or smaller number of dead Israelis and Arabs than the coming conflict between Israel and a Hamas which controls the West Bank as well as Gaza.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Fatah, cease-fire, Gaza, West Bank

The interpretation of polls is not as easy as it looks. For example, a recent poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes [PIPA] at the University of Maryland asked the following question:

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, do you think [country] should take Israel’s side, take the Palestinians’ side, or not take either side?

21% of Americans chose Israel’s side, 3% chose the Palestinians’, and 71% said that the US should not take sides in the conflict.

Some observers immediately concluded that Americans don’t actually support Israel as much as had been thought. Some said that this shows that the US should take a more ‘even-handed’ approach (implying that current policy is somehow unfair to Israel’s enemies).

For example, here is how Al-Arabiya spun the results:

Even Americans overwhelmingly said their government should not take sides.

In a finding that goes against the common assumption that Americans overwhelmingly support Israel, seven out of ten Americans said they thought their country should not take sides in the conflict. Of the rest, 21 percent said it should take Israel’s side compared to only 3 percent who supported taking the Palestinians side… [my emphasis]

Americans, said [PIPA Director Steven] Kull, are unequivocal that U.S. policy needs to be even handed in dealing with the situation. “There is a discrepancy in this sense between the public and government foreign policy,” he added.

I don’t think so. I think the question is seriously flawed.

In American English, ‘taking sides’ has a very negative connotation. We are for fairness, and ‘taking sides’ is being unfair; being prejudiced. I think that if Americans were asked if their government should ‘take sides’ on almost any issue,  many would say no. Even the worst criminal deserves a fair trial.

We want our government to be fair, but that does not mean we don’t think that one side is not more worthy of support than the other. I’m willing to bet that most of that 71%, if asked, would have said “yes, we have to be fair to both sides, but the right thing to do is to support Israel”.

Kull’s reference to a “discrepancy…between the public and government foreign policy” suggests that the government is tilting toward Israel in opposition to what the public wants. Leaving aside the question of whether US policy really is tilted toward Israel (I’m prepared to argue that it is not), the poll results do not support this conclusion.

Now let me point out another area in which the poll is problematic. Just talking about the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” evokes pictures of Israeli tanks and stone-throwing Palestinians. But this is a focus so narrow as to distort the real nature of the conflict.

Suppose the question had been “which do you support, the continued existence of a Jewish state or the Iranian-sponsored destruction of it by the proxy armies of Hamas and Hezbollah?” then possibly the answer would have been even more interesting.

Technorati Tags: Israel, public opinion, PIPA, Steven Kull