Why did the Gaza Strip fall so easily and quickly into the hands of Hamas? How come Fatah, which has more than 40,000 armed men there, was defeated despite the millions of dollars and the large amounts of weapons that it received over the past year and a half? These are only some of the questions that decision-makers in Washington and many European capitals have been asking in the wake of the "military coup" staged by Hamas in the Gaza Strip this week.
It's obvious why. Hamas is a disciplined terrorist organization, and Fatah is an ill-mannered, ill-led, undisciplined terrorist organization.
While these decision-makers may have been caught by surprise by the Hamas victories, for many Palestinians - particularly those living in the Gaza Strip - the writing has long been on the wall.
Fatah lost the battle for the Gaza Strip not because it had fewer soldiers and weapons, but because it lost the confidence and support of many Palestinians a long time ago.
The decline of Fatah actually began with the day Yasser Arafat died in November 2004. Since then, Fatah has been dealt one blow after another. The biggest disaster occurred in January 2006, when Fatah was defeated by Hamas in the parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Fatah lost the vote mainly because of its leaders' involvement in rampant corruption and abuse of power.
Mahmoud Abbas, who succeeded Arafat in January 2005, had run on a platform that promised Palestinians an end to corruption, mismanagement and nepotism. That's why more than 60 percent of the Palestinians then gave him a mandate. But after Abbas came to power, he did almost nothing to fulfill his pledges. Instead of fighting corruption, he surrounded himself with symbols of corruption and former Arafat cronies.
Since that's the mandate the insiders had given him. The Fatah boys wanted a lackey in charge and that's who they put up. His job was to provide a genial face to the world and make sure the boodle got divided according to instructions.
Instead of ending the anarchy and lawlessness, he promoted notorious warlords, and for the first time, the number of Palestinians killed in internal fighting under Abbas was higher than those killed by Israel. And instead of dismantling gangs and militias, whose members had long been terrorizing the Palestinian public, Abbas rewarded many of them by granting them "military" ranks and placing them on his payroll.
Subsidized by your tax dollars and mine.
Many voters who went to the ballot boxes in January 2006 wanted to punish Abbas and his Fatah faction for having failed to improve their living conditions on all fronts.
That's why they voted for Hamas. Even some Christians are said to have cast their ballots for Hamas. The name of the game back then was: Let's punish these Fatah thieves and thugs who have been stealing our money and terrorizing us for so many years.
The point of an election is to give people a choice: here the choice was between murdering crooks and crooked murderers. Anyone with any sense, and that includes Rantburg, knew where this was going the instant Hamas won the election.
ON THE eve of the 2006 election, Hamas knew exactly what the Palestinians wanted: an end to financial corruption and good governance. That's why Hamas ran under the banner of Change and Reform. That's also why Hamas put on its list of candidates doctors, university professors, engineers, pharmacists and lawyers. By contrast, the Fatah list did not come up with any new faces.
Hamas also knew what Hamas wanted, what its leaders wanted, and most importantly, what their overlords in Iran and Syria wanted. And it wasn't reform.
Hamas won because its leaders promised the Palestinians good governance and an end to anarchy and lawlessness. Hamas also won because there was still a large percentage of Palestinians who believed that "Islam is the solution."
And still do. Hamas is still very popular, as this writer and others note. Hamas isn't imposing itself against the will of the Gazans, it's imposing itself with their consent. They're the strong horse.
US-backed efforts to undermine the Hamas-led government over the past 16 months have failed, largely because most Palestinians clearly do not regard Fatah as a better alternative to Hamas. In the aftermath of its defeat in the 2006 election, Fatah failed to draw the conclusions and get rid of all the icons of corruption among its top brass. Moreover, Fatah did not engage in any kind of internal reforms, and representatives of the young generation remained marginalized.
Would have been better if Bush had washed his hands of all of it after Hamas won the election, but one can understand why he couldn't.
Even if free and democratic elections were held tomorrow in the Palestinian territories, it is highly unlikely that Palestinians would vote for the same people they voted out in 2006. Besides, many Palestinians would argue that Hamas did not fail in government; from day one, no one actually gave them a chance to rule.
Because no one in the Western world was eager to support a band of cut-throat terrorists. That's the point the Paleos and their symps around the world refuse to acknowledge: the Paleos were free to vote for a terrorist government, and we were free to decide not to do business with them.
BY OPENLY embracing Abbas and Fatah, Washington has caused them grave damage.
That's likely true. The more diabolical amongst us would note that this was the point.
The weapons and funds that were supposed to boost Fatah ahead of a confrontation with Hamas have only increased Hamas's popularity on the streets of the Gaza Strip. The public support for Fatah made Abbas and Muhammed Dahlan look, in the eyes of many Palestinians, like Antoine Lahad, the former commander of the pro-Israeli South Lebanon Army. And when a Palestinian sees that the Americans are trying to bring down his democratically-elected government, his sympathies go straight to the government and not to those allegedly involved in the conspiracy.
Also true, because in the end, most Paleos are either terrorists themselves or openly support their terrorist brethern. That's the clearest point made in the Hamas election, one that many in the world can't grok. The Paleo leaders, from Arafat on down, have spent the last fifty years turning their population into a terrorist society. It's worked.
The writing was on the wall because Hamas had already inflicted heavy casualties on Fatah in previous rounds of fighting over the past year. In addition, it was clear that Hamas was eventually going to take over the entire Gaza Strip, because of the anarchy and disunity among the Fatah-controlled Palestinian security forces and their commanders. It was obvious that Fatah was going to lose, because the masses were not going to take to the streets to defend leaders living in villas and driving luxury cars.
They don't 'defend' that anywhere in the Arab world, they tolerate it until they get an alternative. Unfortunately, that alternative is generally putting more theocratic-minded terrorists in charge, who first thing grab the villas and luxury cars for themselves, and second work to perpetuate their rule through misery, misfortune and war. See Iran for a current example.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/17/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Why instead of terrorists who talk Peace in English & Jihad in Arabic, Paleos prefer terrorists who speak only in Arabic?
#2
That's why they voted for Democrats. Even some Christians are said to have cast their ballots for Democrats. The name of the game back then was: Let's punish these Republican thieves and thugs who have been stealing our money and terrorizing us for so many years.
And that's how Hillary came to power.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/17/2007 8:23 Comments ||
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#3
They don't 'defend' that anywhere in the Arab world, they tolerate it until they get an alternative. Unfortunately, that alternative is generally putting more theocratic-minded terrorists in charge, who first thing grab the villas and luxury cars for themselves, and second work to perpetuate their rule through misery, misfortune and war. See Iran for a current example.
That's right, Steve. The New Communism for the 21st century, courtesy of the 7th century.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/17/2007 8:26 Comments ||
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#4
Fatah lost the vote mainly because of its leaders' involvement in rampant corruption and abuse of power. You'd almost think New Orleans or Chicago got transplanted to the MidEast
#5
Careful about dissing Chicago. I mean like don't all parking garages cost near 2 billion and have billion dollar sculptures made by friends of the mayor's wife?
#6
How long has the Darfur situation been going on? I say we sit back and let the UN watch impotently for at least as long as that until we even acknowledge that something is going on there.
Gaza's mayhem is the bitter fruit of terror as statecraft.
Scores of Palestinians were killed this week in Gaza in factional fighting between loyalists of President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and those of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. As if on cue, it took about 24 hours before pundits the world over blamed the violence on Israel and President Bush.
This is the Israel that dismantled its settlements in Gaza in August 2005, a unilateral concession for which it asked, and got, nothing in return. And it is the U.S. President who, in a landmark speech five years ago this month, called on Palestinians to "elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror." Had Palestinians done so, they could be living today in a peaceful, independent state. Instead, in January 2006 they freely handed the reins of government to Hamas in parliamentary elections. What is happening today is the result of that choice--their choice.
That election didn't simply emerge from a vacuum, however. It is a consequence of the cult of violence that has typified the Palestinian movement for much of its history and which has been tolerated and often celebrated by the international community. If Palestinians now think they can advance their domestic interests by violence, nobody should be surprised: The way of the gun has been paying dividends for 40 years.
In 1972 Palestinian terrorists murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Yet only two years later Yasser Arafat addressed the U.N.'s General Assembly--the first non-government official so honored. In 1970 Arafat attempted to overthrow Jordan's King Hussein and tried to do the same a few years later in Lebanon. Yet in 1980, the European Community, in its Venice Declaration, recognized Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization as a legitimate negotiating partner.
In 1973, the National Security Agency recorded Arafat's telephoned instructions to PLO terrorists to murder Cleo Noel, the U.S. ambassador in Sudan, and his deputy George Curtis Moore. Yet in 1993, Arafat was welcomed in the White House for the signing of the Oslo Accords with Israel. That same year, the British National Criminal Intelligence Service reported that the PLO made its money from "extortion, payoffs, illegal arms-dealing, drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud." Yet over the next several years, the Palestinian Authority would become the largest single recipient of foreign aid on a per capita basis.
In 1996, after he had formally renounced terrorism in the Oslo Accords, Arafat told a rally in Gaza that "we are committed to all martyrs who died for the cause of Jerusalem starting with Ahmed Musa until the last martyr Yihye Ayyash"--Musa being the first PLO terrorist to be killed in 1965 and Ayyash being the Hamas mastermind of a series of suicide bombings in which scores of Israeli civilians were killed. Yet the Clinton Administration continued to pretend that Arafat was an ally in the fight against Hamas. In 2000, Arafat rejected an Israeli offer of statehood midwifed by President Clinton and instead initiated the bloody intifada that left 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians dead.
In 2005, only months after Arafat's death, Israel dismantled its settlements and withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip. Palestinians have used the opportunity to intensify their rocket fire at civilian targets within Israel. Last month, Israeli security services arrested two Gazan women, one of them pregnant, who were planning to enter Israel on medical pretexts in order to carry out suicide attacks. Yet the same month, the World Bank issued a report faulting Israel for restricting Palestinian freedom of movement.
Now it appears Hamas has taken control of the Gaza Strip's main road and its border with Egypt, as well as the offices of the so-called Preventive Security Services, traditionally a Fatah stronghold. "They are executing them one by one," a witness told the Associated Press of Hamas's reprisals against the Preventive Security personnel.
We do not pretend to know where all this will lead. On Thursday, Mr. Abbas dissolved the government and declared a state of emergency, though he seems powerless to change the course of events in Gaza. Israel could conceivably intervene, as could Egypt, and both states have powerful reasons to prevent the emergence of a Hamastan with close links to Iran hard on their borders. But neither do they wish to become stuck in the Strip's bottomless factionalism and fanaticism.
At the same time, pressure will surely mount on Israel and the U.S. to accept Hamas's ascendancy and begin negotiations with its leaders. According to this reasoning, the Bush Administration cannot demand democracy of the Palestinians and then refuse to recognize the results of a democratic election.
But leave aside the fact that Mr. Bush did not simply call for an election: Is it wise to negotiate with a group that kills its fellow Palestinians almost as freely as it does Israelis? And what would there be to negotiate about? The best-case scenario--a suspension of hostilities in exchange for renewed international funding--would simply give Hamas time and money to consolidate its rule and rebuild an arsenal for future terror assaults. Then, too, the last thing the Palestinians need is yet further validation from the wider world that the violence they now inflict so indiscriminately works.
The deeper lesson here is that a society that has spent the last decade celebrating suicide bombing would inevitably become a victim of its own nihilistic impulses. This is not the result of Mr. Bush's call for democratic responsibility; it is the bitter fruit of the decades of dictatorship and terrorism as statecraft that Yasser Arafat instilled among Palestinians.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/17/2007 00:00 ||
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WOW! As someone who prides himself at wordsmithing, WOW! This is it!
This is the Israel that dismantled its settlements in Gaza in August 2005, a unilateral concession for which it asked, and got, nothing in return. And it is the U.S. President who, in a landmark speech five years ago this month, called on Palestinians to "elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror." Had Palestinians done so, they could be living today in a peaceful, independent state. Instead, in January 2006 they freely handed the reins of government to Hamas in parliamentary elections. What is happening today is the result of that choice--their choice.
Devastating logic which, unfortunately, the Palestinians are entirely immune to.
The deeper lesson here is that a society that has spent the last decade celebrating suicide bombing would inevitably become a victim of its own nihilistic impulses. This is not the result of Mr. Bush's call for democratic responsibility; it is the bitter fruit of the decades of dictatorship and terrorism as statecraft that Yasser Arafat instilled among Palestinians.
End of story, end of line, end of it all.
This is one of the few DEFINITIVE assessments I've ever read about exactly why, how and for what reason the Palestinians have painted themselves into a corner tighter than a gnat's ass.
#2
IMO, it's a mistake to view "Palestine" as an isolated case---instead of a controlled experiment. Paleos are not doing anything different from other Muslims under similar circumstances.
Examples:
India vs. Pakistan.
"Western" Muslims.
Sudan.
A recent news story reported that the government of Israel is considering agreeing to a United Nations peacekeeping force in Gaza. One would think that after Israel's experience with UNIFIL, the UN force in southern Lebanon, Israeli leaders would have said "Never again." But Israel has found that in Gaza, occupation, trading land for peace, and unilateral withdrawal do not work, and the mystique of peacekeeping may have enticed decision-makers in Jerusalem.
That mystique is an illusion, but it is one that is actively promoted by the UN.
For example, on May 29th the UN observed the fifth International Day for UN Peacekeepers, honoring the men and women who serve around the world.
Did they set aside a day for the little girls? Or were they two-for-one on May 29th?
Since the end of the Cold War, the number of peacekeeping missions has multiplied with uncommon speed. There are reportedly more than 100,000 peacekeepers from 115 countries currently serving in 18 operations on 4 continents, with additional deployments on the horizon.
And they're all working really well. Gaza. Lebanon. Ivory Coast.
According to the UN, they are doing useful work keeping warring parties apart, disarming armed forces, and protecting refugees and children. Some of this may be true. Some peacekeepers may have served with distinction. But is it the whole truth?
It's the U.N. What do you think?
THE DATE of May 29th for international peacekeepers day was chosen because it is the date in 1948 when the first UN peacekeeping mission, the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), began operations on Israel's borders. Although there have been no truces to supervise for a very long time, UNTSO still exists with headquarters in Jerusalem.
With lunch in Paris and dinner in Geneva.
UNIFIL, which was established in 1978 to end lawlessness in southern Lebanon, had a record of cooperating with the PLO, when the PLO dominated and terrorized that region and launched terrorist raids into Israel and around the world. UNIFIL used to return the PLO's weapons when confiscated, give it advance warning of searches for concealed weapons, and supply it with sophisticated communications equipment.
That tradition apparently continues with Hezbollah today.
UNIFIL even hired PLO contingents to guard its offices in Beirut, and individual UNIFIL officers were caught smuggling explosives into Israel for use by PLO terrorists. (Interviews conducted by this author with UNIFIL contingents in 1981 revealed widespread hostility towards Israel.)
Nothing the Israelis hadn't seen before.
FOLLOWING Hizbullah's murderous raid on Israel last summer, UNIFIL reportedly supplied real time data on Israeli troop movements into Lebanon on its Web site for Hizbullah to read. The enlarged UNIFIL created under Security Council Resolution 1701 last August has done nothing to disarm Hizbullah (which replaced the PLO in southern Lebanon in the 1980s) or to stop arms smuggling to Hizbullah and Palestinian terrorist groups in Lebanon, including the group Fatah al-Islam, which clashed this spring with the Lebanese army.
But they're not supposed to. Surely you're not one of those rubes who thinks UNIFIL is supposed to be even-handed?
In this sad story the Fiji Battalion stands apart. It followed orders to return weapons, but reportedly broke the trigger fingers of the PLO terrorists caught returning from killing sprees into Israel.
Moral of the story: don't anger a Fijian.
PEACEKEEPERS in other parts of the world have not done better. It was downhill after the UN peacekeepers were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1988.
Peacekeepers in Bosnia were reported to have sold their supplies on the black market. Peacekeepers in Cambodia were reported into sex, booze, and drugs parties. One peacekeeper contingent sent there was reportedly composed of convicts and mental asylum inmates who were promised their freedom if they served in Cambodia for six months.
They were the nice ones.
Peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were reported implicated in the massacre of villagers. Others in the DRC were reported to have sold weapons in return for gold to Congolese militia groups they were meant to disarm, according to a BBC report. These militia groups were guilty of some of the worst human rights abuses during the Democratic Republic of Congo's long civil war.
Don't forget the mighty Uruguayans!
A UN investigative team sent to gather evidence was obstructed and threatened. According to the BBC, the team's report was buried by the UN itself to "avoid political fallout."
In at least two African countries, peacekeepers sexually exploited the women and girls they had come to protect. In one they demanded sex from hungry females in return for food. A New York Times editorial condemned the practice and said that "far too little has been done to end the culture of impunity, exploitation, and sexual chauvinism that permits" it to go on.
On May 29th, Undersecretary-General Jean-Marie Guehenno, head of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations during many of the scandals, admitted to reporters at UN Headquarters in New York that discipline in the field must be improved. But he claimed that the problems were not his responsibility, for, he said, it is up to the troop contributing countries to agree to disciplinary measures.
Why he cannot insist on reviewing applicants for peacekeeping operations and insist as well that any country wishing to participate in UN peacekeeping operations must accept UN disciplinary measures for its contingents engaged in dishonorable acts was not made clear.
It's clear. The U.N. doesn't want to fix it. Peacekeeping is a sham, a scam meant to suck money out of western governments, especially Uncle Sugar, and give it to third-world kleptocrats and U.N. apparatchiks.
Nor it is clear why Israel would consider agreeing to a peacekeeping operation in Gaza, given the peacekeepers' record of malfeasance and cooperation with Israel's enemies.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/17/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Yes. The current situation is intolerable: a freedom fighter can't fire a Kassam on an occupation military base disguised as a kindergarten without his human rights being violated by Zionists!
#2
Weve started a little bit later here, but progress on the North American Union is moving right along. Once again, its an alliance of convenience among different powerful groups: American businesses that want an inexhaustible supply of cheap helot labor from Mexico, Democrats who see a huge bloc of voters in the influx of new Latino welfare-state clients, Latin American (especially Mexican) leaders who can maintain their positions and perks only so long as their countries keep exporting potentially restive peasants to El Norte, and not least Arab petrodollars. The Saudis stand to gain from any actions that further weaken the American political system and erode our traditional culture of liberty and self-reliance.
Take note of how, not even once, are the interests of actual American citizens mentioned above. With nearly unanimoius participation America's political body is joining the traitor class.
#4
Fine, if assimilation is racist, then their invansion of my country should be considered genocide. Maybe it's time for us to actually fight the open war they've begun.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A recent news story reported that the government of Israel is considering agreeing to a United Nations peacekeeping force in Gaza. One would think that after Israel's experience with UNIFIL, the UN force in southern Lebanon, Israeli leaders would have said "Never again." But Israel has found that in Gaza, occupation, trading land for peace, and unilateral withdrawal do not work, and the mystique of peacekeeping may have enticed decision-makers in Jerusalem.
