How's It Going?
So how, might an interested party enquire, is the good-faith bargaining proceeding?With concerned friends on all sides urging the two protagonists to cap their grievances, shelve their differences for the time being in favour of eventually placing everything on the bargaining table in good faith, with the assurance that each side is fully prepared to give a little to gain a lot - well - we hope.
There are, unfortunately, some obvious glitches. While Israel is capable of restraining the lunatic element within its border to some good extent, and makes a full effort to do so, the PLO appears rather mushy on its ability to restrain its jihadist-intent minions and offshoots.
That’s just the way it is, apparently. A state, versus a quasi, would-be state. And one must query: If and when the Palestinians do achieve statehood, what then? Will their law and order forces become then capable of restraining the violence levelled constantly against their neighbour? Just asking.
Curious, after all. You know how it is. While Israel is graced with more than sufficient religious nutbars they’re largely benign nutbars; they don’t continually assault those whom they know fervently pray for their untimely demise.
Whereas on the other side, the action is always on show; stealth and determination aided and abetted by a bloodily righteous sense of entitlement and tribal instincts to go for the jugular. Those Kassams just keep coming. And determined Palestinians keep digging those tunnels.
And let’s not forget the crazed Palestinian bystander who swiftly turns from innocuous to deadly, taking the opportunity to unleash a deadly assault on unsuspecting Israelis. All guaranteed to breed a climate of distrust, to harden neighbours one against the other.
And let’s face it, Israel is bargaining with whom exactly? Ah, the “moderate” Fatah forces, yes of course. As opposed to the volcanic-erupting jihadist forces of Hamas.
While each boasts their death-dealing militias given to the entertainment value of killing Israeli civilians and screaming bloody murder at the international community when the IDF fires back, there doesn’t appear to be any other ‘responsible’ body representing the interests of the Palestinian population for Israel to come to the bargaining table with.
Hope springs eternal. The once-combined, albeit bilaterally-snarling forces of Fatah and Hamas have been separated; one in control of the West Bank the other ensconced among its supporters in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas is extending itself with the effort to bring respect for their law to Gaza, installing their brand of Islamist values and just incidentally instituting a rather effective policy of fear among Fatah adherents. Staff members of Gaza’s major hospital are in shock after Hamas security forces arrested a senior doctor belonging to Fatah.
“We came to protest against the arrest of our colleague”, said Ussama, a physician who refused to give his surname for fear of reprisals by the Islamists. “We are refusing the policy of fear and terror that Hamas is imposing on the doctors of Shifa”, he said.
Never fear, the Fatah leadership will come to the rescue. They are already proving they have matters in control, having - oops - “accidentally” wired $16 million to Hamas, sufficient to pay an entire year’s salary to 3,500 members of Hamas’s terrorist forces.
Needless to say those funds represent monies forwarded in good faith to Fatah by the international community with the proviso that none of it reach the hands of Hamas. It was, sigh, inadvertent. Accidents do happen, even in the best-run operations. Right?
Israel should feel reassured that this wasn’t meant to occur; after all Israel had stipulated when she transferred held-back tax monies that none of it be transferred to Hamas. Gotta trust your neighbours and peace-bargaining partners, right?
Funnily enough, despite the fact that Hamas militias routed the superior-numbered-and-armed Fatah from Gaza; in the process demonstrating the brutality they’re most capable of, Mahmoud Abbas now appears willing to re-institute the ‘unity’ PA government if Hamas expresses a willingness to stand down from the Gaza takeover.
But as a political cartoon demonstrated, the unity gesture will wait until Israel has completed its transfer of new weapons to the Fatah ‘moderates’ in the West Bank. Israelis have plenty of fodder to express their ironic wit. Better to laugh than to despair.
But there’s some honest interpretation of the proceedings from none other than once-dovish but battle-hardened Ehud Barak who was impolitic enough to state publicly that not much separates Fatah from Hamas, in any event.
He spoke of a three-to-five-year horizon before an interception system to neutralize the ongoing dangers of Kassam from Gaza becomes a reality - and at such a time when a militarily-defensive Israel is prepared, matters might proceed toward Palestinian statehood.
What a premise: Palestinians gaining their prized statehood, and nothing at all changing between the-then neighbouring states. Hostilities ongoing, with one continually on the defence, the other continuing their bloody offence. The very idea has the stench of defeat.
Might it be conceivable that peace will remain elusive, after all? That’s what we see, after all; no hiatus in the ever-present bombast and blasts. How the Palestinians present themselves is how they are. Unfit to govern, unfit to become residents of a respectable, law-abiding state. Bleak.
“The Israelis have healthy intuition”, according to Ehud Barak. “They can no longer be fed fantasies of an imminent agreement with the Palestinians… No agreement can be made with the current Palestinian leadership, and Olmert’s meetings with [Fatah chief] Abu Mazen are just packaging and air, nothing more.”
The man speaks from tedious experience. He knows whereof he speaks. Events playing out each and every day illustrate just how immutable the Palestinian will to dominate and deprive Israel has become; a festering wound of intolerant revenge.
Events such as that where an Arab man took possession of a guard’s gun near the Jaffa Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem, shooting the guard and nine passersby, an incidental case in point.
Hamas seeking to control the Gazan Mediterranean shoreline to provoke incidents with Israeli navy patrols another. The security fence is proving its protective value; launching attacks against Israel by sea evidently appeals to well-armed Hamas militias - better armed now that they’ve taken possession of newer weapons originally handed over to Fatah.
Underground tunnels, assiduously being dug out by hand, to go under the Philadelphi Route between Gaza and Egypt is another ongoing project. At one end the tunnel may lead up into someone’s home or nearby barn.
The passageways are regular tunnel routes for the smuggling of arms, perplexing and infuriating Egyptian troops who have taken to blowing up the entry and exit points, but unable to keep up with all of these infiltrations.
Mahmoud Abbas, it would appear, recommended to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the decidedly effective deterrence flooding such tunnels with seawater might represent.
Are these but temporary aberrations, these determined incursions and assaults, unmeaning in the larger order of things, and certain to be suppressed by a resurgent and more confident Fatah-inspired PLO administration?
Doesn’t seem likely, on the evidence. Prove the evidence wrong, please do.
Labels: Middle East, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Friday, August 10, 2007
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