 Alvaro de Soto, the just-retired UN coordinator for the Middle East, has warned that international hostility to the Palestinian Hamas movement, now fighting in the bitterly escalating civil conflict in Gaza, could have grave consequences by persuading millions of Muslims that democratic methods do not work.
| To borrow from Orwell, you have to be an intellectual elite -- a well fed and pampered one at that -- to believe stuff like this. No ordinary person would be so stupid. |
The Peruvian diplomat's sensational valedictory dispatch, written last month and published exclusively in the Guardian today, traced increasingly violent responses to the victory of the Islamist group in the Palestinian elections in January 2006.
| That's true, but not in the way he means it. |
These included a continuing boycott of the freely-elected government - which he admits has had "devastating" consequences, which have contributed to the current violence between Hamas and Fatah.
| The Paleos were free to choose who they wanted to represent them. They freely (more or less) chose a terrorist organization. We in the rest of the world have an equal right to decide that we won't deal with a terrorist government. That latter fact seems to have escaped Mr. de Soto. |
"The steps taken by the international community with the presumed purpose of bringing about a Palestinian entity that will live in peace with its neighbour, Israel, have had precisely the opposite effect," he wrote in his confidential internal memo.
| For which he blames us, not the terrorists. It's neater that way, it fits the meme he and his fellow-travelers have been promulgating. |
The US and Israel had both erred in seeing Hamas as a passing phenomenon, the envoy argued. "Hamas is deep-rooted, has struck many chords, including its contempt for the Oslo process, and is not likely to disappear," he wrote.
| Not unless it's forced to, and that's the point of our current foreign policy. Hamas will either have to reform itself sufficiently so that it's no longer Hamas (good luck with that) or it will be put to an end, either by the Israelis or by the Paleos themselves. Some of the latter have been trying that, not because Hamas is evil but for their own purposes, and have failed. |
"Erroneous treatment of Hamas could have repercussions far beyond the Palestinian territories because of its links to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose millions of supporters might conclude that peaceful and democratic means are not the way to go."
| They were never keen on the 'peaceful and democratic means' idea in the first place; they saw democracy more as a 'one male believer, one vote, one time' phenomenon, after which the righteous would submit to a caliphate. |
In a key passage that may already have been overtaken by the rapidly deteriorating situation, Mr De Soto wrote: "Hamas is in effervescence and can potentially evolve in a pragmatic direction that would allow for a two-state solution - but only if handled right.
| And they have a two-state solution today: Hamas rules Gaza and Fatah rules the West Bank. At least until Hamas boots them from there, too. |
"If the Palestinian Authority passes into irrelevance or collapses (as now seems likely) calls for a one-state solution to the conflict "will come out of the shadows and enter the mainstream."
| Mr. De Soto hasn't been paying attention: Hamas has always advocated a one-state solution in which the Joooz are dead or deported from Palestine. It was never in the shadows, it's in the founding charter. And those of us who have been paying attention have always known that. |
Mr De Soto is critical of the UN as well as of the US and Israel.
| But not so much, he has a rank-order list. |
He also attacked the Palestinians' record on violence directed at Israeli civilians as "patchy at best, reprehensible at worst" ...
| There's a best when it comes to violence aimed at wimmins and kidlings? |
... and described the Hamas charter as "abominable" while highlighting the movement's "alleged links to an Iranian regime which makes bloodcurdling statements about Israel."
| Now that you've noticed that, you should draw the proper conclusion: that Hamas is a terrorist organization sponsored by (and for its own purposes) a theocratic, terrorist state. That ordinarily would sharpen the eyesight, stiffen the spine and steady the hands. |
"Palestinian terror strengthens the hardliners and weakens the peace camp in Israel," he wrote, but added: "If Israel was less heavy-handed about the way it conducts its military business, and... was seen to be moving earnestly to end the occupation, it would aid rather than handicap its legitimate fight against terrorism."
| And so it's the fault of the heavy-handed Joooz, forgetting that even when the doves have been in power in Israel Hamas had advocated and committed murder all the same. |
The effect of the quartet's intense focus on Hamas, (which still refuses to formally recognise Israel or renounce violence), was to take all pressure off Israel, Mr de Soto argued. That allowed the construction of yet more Israeli settlements and the separation barrier, which have in turn damaged the slim hopes that a viable Palestinian state can ever be created.
| A viable Paleo state can't be created no matter what the Israelis do, unless they cease to exist -- even than a Paleo state, while it might exist, wouldn't be anything you'd want to live in. It would just be another despotic Arab state, no different from Egypt and Syria. Better to have Israel as a candle in the darkeness. |
It would need a "Sherlockian magnifying glass," to find allusions to Israel's failure to comply with its "road map" obligations. "No amount of magnification" would find references to its responsibilities as an occupier to ensure the welfare of Palestinian civilians."
The Paleos can't have it both ways: they can't demand that the Joooz leave and then complain that they aren't meeting their responsibilities as an 'occupier'. Frankly, one of the first things the 'occupier' would do to ensure peace would be to round up and shoot all the Hamas hard boys. I don't think Mr. de Soto means quite that.
And further, Hamas was given a golden opportunity by that devious Ariel Sharon to prove themselves. That got Gaza. They got the whole thing, put into some sort of repair by the Israelis as they pulled out. Remember what happened? The greenhouses were destroyed, the infrastructure broken up, and the population put under seige by the criminals and tough-boys. About the only thing Hamas has managed to do is find launch sites for the Qassam rockets. Anyone think that if the Israelis withdrew from the West Bank that it would be any different? In a year's time we'd see Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad tough-bunnies slugging it out house by house, mosque by mosque for control. It wouldn't be pretty, and of course the world would (once again) blame Israel. |
On the UN and Israel he wrote: "We are not a friend of Israel if we allow it to fall into the self delusion that the Palestinians are the only ones to blame, or that it can continue blithely to ignore its obligations under existing agreements without paying an international diplomatic price in the short-term and a bitter price regarding its security and identity in the long-term."
| What obligations are those -- stop the Paleos from killing each other? Good luck with that. What's happening now in Gaza is part of the tragic play that must run to its end. The Paleos have to hit rock-bottom before they will, as Golda Meir once pleaded, love their children more than they hate the Israelis. They aren't there yet and so they'll continue to send their young men out to kill, their young women out as splodydopes, and their young children to be educated as the next generation of martyrs. |
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