Palestinians Abandoned By Arabs, America and World

Nine Years ago I was short-listed for the UNRWA chief job in Gaza. I thank God/Allah every day for sparing me such a thankless task.

Condi Rice's massive attack of idealism in allowing a terrorist organization like Hamas to participate in the '06 elections [Her State PolOffs had told her Hamas had a snowball's chance in Gehenna] has led to this impasse.

Hamas imports Iranian weaponry via Egypt & immediately attacks Israel. Why in the world should Hamas be let off the hook? Mindless attacks supported by a distant pair of allies [Syria & Iran] do not get your population anything except retaliation and a complete border closure.

Either Hamas cannot control rogue elements with advanced rocketry [which I don't for a moment believe] or it is completely responsible for the horrific conditions in Gaza.

First and foremost the Palestinians have abandoned themselves. I'm sure they'll let Arabs, America and the world know when they find themselves.

"First and foremost the Palestinians have abandoned themselves."

Brilliantly phrased, and spot on. It doesn't matter what side of the fence you are on in this issue. The current crisis and situation is almost self-immolation by the Palestinians, as a whole, or at least the current leadership, which after all was elected.

And shortly thereafter, the international community removed every bit of financial and technical support. Apparently elections only count if the people we support win.

Having done everything we could to reverse the result of the election, Hamas took over Gaza where they more than legitimately won the elections. Having failed to prevent the takeover of Gaza by the winner of the election, Israel with our support turned Gaza into the world's largest open air prison, and you are shocked that Hamas & the Palestinians would rather go down fighting than watch their children be starved into submission.

On the bright side the only way the Israelis can win this conflict is by slaughtering every other Palestinian, in which case they will go down in history as no better than the Nazis.

"(T)he international community removed every bit of financial and technical support."

We are the sum total of the 'international community"? Hmm, I don't buy that argument.

And yep, we can pull our support when leaders like Chavez, or Hamas, or whomever get elected. We have no moral obligation to support our enemies. What a silly statement on your part.

And gee, I kind of remember Hamas lobbing rockets at Israel (and other acts of aggression) long before they were in power. Back then, people such as yourself claimed it was their only course of action because they were cut out of the political process.

That position having been shown to be a lie, now new justifications have to be brought forth. Because God forbid the Palestinians themselves ever be held accountable for their own actions.

The piece cited has veered from editorial or opinion into polemic. The piece opens:

Since Wednesday, the Israeli air force has been conducting raid after raid over the Gaza strip. These are no longer “targeted” strikes, but are operations meant to claim the largest possible number of victims in a population that has been declared a “hostile entity,” and to which the principle of “collective Punishment” applies.

Gaza has 10,000 people per square mile. If it were the intent of the Israeli Air Force to “claim the largest possible number of victims”, they could do so by carpet bombing which the Israeli Air Force is capable of from a military standpoint. Casualties would be numbered in the thousands, not the hundreds.

Consequently, this article is spreading obvious lies and I think that World Meets Us errs in citing it. In making us more aware of editorial and opinion outside the US, the site performs a valuable service. Spreading unsupportable propaganda is a step over the line.

I'm one of those who think that US policy is overly forgiving in the case of Israel. However, I think we should neither be irrationally forgiving nor irrationally condemning and this piece supports those who'd take the latter position.

And yep, we can pull our support when leaders like Chavez, or Hamas, or whomever get elected. We have no moral obligation to support our enemies. What a silly statement on your part.

A) what does Chavez have to do with this discussion?
B) Since when is Chavez an enemy of the United States?
C) What does one have to do to become an enemy of the United States?

Because in as far as I can tell Chavez got elected fair and square (The way we are suppose to approve of), has not killed, kidnapped nor imprisoned any American Citizens. In as far as i can tell Chavez sole shortcoming has been the willingness to defend the interest of the Venezuelan people who elected him to do that job.

Because God forbid the Palestinians themselves ever be held accountable for their own actions.

Because God forbid the Israelis themselves ever be held accountable for their forty plus year illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

CORRECTION: Civilized World Washes Hands Of Terrorist Vermin

DLS,

What civilized world are you talking about?

The Israelis bomb and kill innocent civilians practically on a daily basis and we make them look like pikers.

Unless by civilized you mean the Germans or the Japanese who have not invaded any foreign countries in the last fifty years and have not bombed defenseless civilians back into the middle ages yet.

Gaza is a very sad situation - I have been there many times to visit my relatives in the former Gush Katif. My niece and her new husband moved there in 1975 with the express purpose of breaking up the continuity of the native gaza population. From 1979, when the Egypt/Israel peace treaty was signed until 1987 when the first Infitada was started, the Palestinians begged Israel for a peace agreement that would allow them their own state. There was absolutely no Palestinian violence during this period. Israel's response was Nyet, never to a Palestinian state or for Israeli citizenship.. I remember thinking at the time this was VERY shortsighted and it will eventually cause Isreal no end of grief. So Israel's bed was made.

My niece's family employed a Gazan family as nanny and gardener and I became fairly close to that family and met many of their extended family and friends. They simply could not understand Israel's attitude toward Palestinians - pemanent statelessness. Authorities in Gush Katif simply stated that a permanent supply of cheap labor was good for Israel. Statehood or citizenship for Palestinians would spoil the "dream".

Gaza has been either a minimum security or maximum security open air prison since 1967. Nothing or no one has gone in or out of Gaza without Israel's permission for 40 years. Gaza's coastline has had a Israeli naval blockade for 40 years. Even under Barak's offer at Camp David in 2000, the Palestinians could have had a state but it would have been without any access to the outside world. Israel's offer insisted on continuing all egress and ingress authority to Egypt, Jordan and the sea. That is not sovereignty and was a contributing factor to the Camp David failure (this restriction was eliminated in the Taba talks).

My settler relatives are committed to never allowing a Palestinian state or more than "reservations" for Palestinians. Over the last 5 years I have heard numerous Knesset members reassuring settlers that they will never be abandoned and any Palestinian "state" will NEVER be contiguous or have access to Jordan. The son of the niece who lived in Gush Katif has now moved and is helping establish the settlement of Maskiot, deep in the heart of the Jordan Valley to help prevent Israel from ceding this land.

Without approving Hamas and it's tactics, there is only one solution for Israel. It must acknowledge and agree to Hamas and the 50 year hudna they have offerred. Bring them into the peace negotiations. Hamas has publicly stated that if the Palestinians agree to a peace agreement in a plebiscite, Hamas will honor it. Israel will not be able to kill off Hamas permanently any more than the British were able to kill off the Haganah, the Irgun (my grandfather's outfit) or the Stern gang. The flame of Palestinian nationhood will burn hot (as it was with the Jews) until it becomes a reality. The sooner we get there the fewer who will die.

It is my dream to be buried in the Jewish homeland of Israel but the way Israel is proceeding militarily will be no more successful than the British.

The Gaza Bombshell

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

Gaza residents tell of sniper attacks on homes

Palestinians described yesterday how civilians were killed while hiding in their homes as Israeli ground troops stormed through northern Gaza suburbs this weekend searching for Hamas militants.


More than 100 Palestinians and three Israelis have died after Israeli troops entered Gaza to try to halt rocket attacks


Raad Abu Seif held his 12-year-old daughter in his arms as she died after she was shot in the stomach as she stood several metres from a window.

"I stroked Safa's hair," said Mr Abu Seif, his voice hoarse. "And then her eyes rolled backwards in her head."

"I tried to massage her heart for a minute, two minutes, three minutes, I don't remember. And then I felt there was nothing."

There are your civilized forces at work.

Hamas is pledged to the destruction of Israel, the Palestinians elected Hamas. Hamas continues to fire rockets at a vastly superior military power as its chosen, and only means of redressing the wrongs done to them. This was inevitable.

Stef Wertheimer built industrial parks and tried to cut through the political rhetoric to make real meaningful economic opportunities for these people, but the indemic corruption of the Fatah warlords made him give up. Israel went through a heart-wrenching exercise of uprooting its citizens from Gaza and millions were spent by international donors to buy and turn over state-of-the art greenhouses to the Gazans, but they destroyed the infrastructure and smuggled thousands of munitions across the Egypt border to rain rockets down on Sderot and Ashkelon. while being powered by a diet of pure hatred and deadly ideology.

Enough. Grow up and do something positive with your lives or continue acting as an aggressive death cult and face the deadly consequences.

In the end, Israel is going to take care of herself. And I'm sick to my stomach that it's not going to be pretty...

Don_Quixote, there will be many, many tragic stories. But when you live in a society that is granted a degree of independence and the chance to make good, even if it's not perfect, and you react by electing an ideologically virulent leadership that is operationally aggressive against a neighboring entity, this is what happens. Would you prefer carpet bombing? That's the alternative. And many an Israeli who is tired of seeing their boys and girls traumatized and killed trying to deal with this crap have been advocating just that. Really not a pretty picture.

Idiosyncrat - How about a peace treaty with hamas! That has not been tried before. You did not repond to my discourse on the history of Gaza or on Israel's plans durring the last 40 years. If you look at only one side of the equation - you will never find the right answer. It must be nice to have pat answers for a complicated issue.

"If you look at only one side of the equation - you will never find the right answer."

The two sides are not equally at fault, obviously. Hamas is terrorist vermin.

"Enough. Grow up and do something positive with your lives or continue acting as an aggressive death cult and face the deadly consequences.

In the end, Israel is going to take care of herself. And I'm sick to my stomach that it's not going to be pretty..."

Damn, that sums up my feeling better than I can.

jdledell, Gaza is Judenrein. What the Israelis got in return was their worst nightmare -- a Hamas state, backed by Iran and Syria, openly committed to Israel's destruction and actively bombarding it with munitions brought in through a porous Egyptian border.

The Gazans have done nothing whatsoever to demonstrate that they are capable of running an autonomous entity of any variety that will either be productive for its own citizens or non-threatening to it's neighbor (Israel). In fact, day in and day out, they demonstrate the exact opposite. Wish it wasn't the case, jd, but projecting your reasonable liberal values on them doesn't make it any more so, Yossi Beilin thinking otherwise be damned.

jd, the Hamas in your head sounds like a reasonable organization. But you're in la la land. And cherry picking facts without regard for external malfeasance or internal Palestinian dysfunction doesn't help your case.

But when you live in a society that is granted a degree of independence and the chance to make good, even if it's not perfect, and you react by electing an ideologically virulent leadership that is operationally aggressive against a neighboring entity, this is what happens.

When you occupy a country for forty years, steal it's natural resources and treat it's inhabitants as third rate human beings and if you are foolish enough to let them have an election in which the choice is between a Party of Collaborators who don't get anything for their collaboration (Fatah) and a party of Nationalist Resistance who will stand up and fight and make the occupiers pay dearly for their occupation, which would you expect people to vote for?

Would you prefer carpet bombing? That's the alternative.

That is what the Israelis are going to have to do to win, and even then they will lose! There are more Palestinians living in Greater Israel than there are Jews, and that does not take into account all the Palestinians living in Jordan, Syria & Lebanon.

Given enough time Israel will go the way of the Crusader Kingdoms.

Idiosyncrat - Ah another one of those people who think Israel is 100% perfect and the arabs are 100% wrong. You remind of all the Israelis I know. The best that an Israeli will ever admit is an "ah shucks maybe we made a couple of little boo-boo's. You should have been in israel in the 1940's - the British made the same comments as you do - only it was about the Jews. See how that turned out.

I am absolutely sick and tired of people who have NEVER been to Israel and have no skin in the Israeli world thinking they know everything there is to know about the situation and have all the answers. Name the date and I'll meet you in Jerusalem and take you on a guided tour of the West bank so you can see what is really going on. I'll take you to IDF checkpoints manned by two of my nephews. I'll have you meet a bunch of Israeli settlers as well as their Palestinian neighbors. We'll go to shul and you can hear first hand how the rabbi talks about those "vermin". You sit thousands of miles away reading first, second, third and 25th hand accounts and opinions and thus know the situation intimately. Give me a break.

Well what do you expect after 40 years? I mean 60 years of it. The arabs have been screaming death to Israel from the get go back in 1947 and then mobilizing their armies to match deed to word. Palestine lost big in 1967 but its not like they were peaceful bystanders either and the current situation stems from all of that.

Hamas's goal isn't FREE PALESTINE, its DESTROY ISRAEL in accordance with longstanding arab wishes. Frankly the arabs have forced Israel into this situation. The more I read of the stances and words and things done by the arabs in the 50's and 60's or even during the 20's and thru WWII, I find it hard to have sympathy for the their cause. Add to that the arab nations in the region are non-democratic, religously ruled, treat their women like slaves, and are in open approval of organizations whose primary tactic is to kill civilians and hide amongst their own, not even trying to avoid it, I just can't get on board with that.

And yea, I haven't been over there and I have zero intention of going. All I'm going to do is watch the news and hope things settle down one way or another. When I hear that palestinians stop randomly firing weapons into civilian population centers, don't brag every time they blow up a nightclub, and stop using hospitals and schools for staging grounds maybe I'll warm to them. Not only are their tactics despicable, but they are totally ineffective in the grand scheme. Their only hope of getting their old borders back is to somehow make Israel believe that it won't get attacked again, which is an impossibility with folks like Hamas calling the shots.

Slamfu - My grandfather was Irgun and the Hamas tactics sure worked for us Jews against the Brits. This is a fact you simply refuse to acknowledge. The fact that you refuse to visit the West Bank and personally see how people are treated makes you an uniformed commentator.

Remember, I am a Jew who believes with the very fiber of my soul in a Jewish homeland in Israel. Egypt and Jordan were more virilent anti-Jewish/Israel than Hamas. Egypt and Jordan killed thousands more Israelis than Hamas has. Yet Israel signed peace treaties with both countries and those peace treaties are critical to Israel's future. The same thing will happen if Israel signs a peace treaty with Syria and Palestine.

"My grandfather was Irgun and the Hamas tactics sure worked for us Jews against the Brits."

Thats total BS. The reason Israel was established was that the victors of WWII decided to create the place. Israel was not won by force of arms, at least not by jewish force of arms, it was won by some pretty damn savvy political manuvering in the aftermath of WWII. Up until that time the tactics were about as effective as Hamas, ensuring survival and propoganda and not much more.

The jews, unlike Hamas, wanted a homeland and this was the end goal. The palestinians HAD a homeland, lost it in the 6 day war as a result of their goal of destroy Israel, and now are trying to pass themselves off as innocent victims of Israeli aggression instead of dealing with the fallout of their own aggressive policies towards Israel.

Hamas is not a nation like Egypt or Jordan. They are a bunch of terrorists, you can't sign a peace treaty with them. Even if you tried the splinter factions would just ignore it like they have done in the past and resume their attacks.