Gaza, Gaza, Go Away, Let Hell Break Out Another Day!
June 13, 2007
http://www.tribulati onp
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Israel i s
growing closer and closer to her date with prophetic destiny. The Gaza Strip, the homeland of the uncircumcised Philistines, has always been a thorn in Israel’s side that seems impossible to pull out.
It is the smelly armpit of the Middle East, and will play a major role in the events that lead up to the initial Islamic attack that sets off a war, which is likely to begin at some point in time between 2008 and the end of
2012.
I will simply let the following four articles from DEBKAfile and the Jerusalem Post speak for themselves concerning the current and future possibilities for the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.
Article 1
DEBKAfile: Gaza in flames. Palestinian Hamas storms Fatah positions in Gaza as brutal civil strife breaks up fragile Hamas-Fatah unity government
June 12, 2007, 6:50 PM (GMT+02:00)
Senior Palestinian politician Saab Erikat warns “Mogadishu syndrome” is overtaking Palestinian Gaza. “If war and lawlessness are not extinguished, the fire will burn us all”
The outcome unfolding after at least 20 deaths in 24 hours is the separation of Palestinian rule between Hamas-controlled Gaza and the Fatah-led West Bank. Hamas gave Fatah’s two hours to vacate its Gaza command posts or face death.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Hamas threw its entire 15,000-strong Executive Force armed with mortars, RPGs, heavy machine guns and grenades into the final bid to conquer the Gaza Strip, whereas Fatah commanders’ desperate appeals to Mahmoud Abbas for rein
forcements drew nothing but a futile call for a ceasefire.
His Fatah earlielr mounted an RPG attack on the Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya’s home in Gaza. No one was hurt. Hamas gunmen then shot dead the top Fatah commander in northern Gaza, his brother and cousin.
Monday, they bound a Fatah fighter hand and foot and hurled him from a 15-story building in Gaza to his death.
For two days, Hamas gunmen have been targeting injured Fatah fighters, killing them in ambulances and Beit Hanoun hospital beds. Fatah has retaliated with mortar and RPG attacks on the Hamas-controlled Shifa hospital.
Several attempts by the Egyptian mission in Gaza to arrange a ceasefire have been short-lived.
In Cairo Tuesday, President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah discussed the Palestinian crisis.
Article 2
DEBKAfile’s Military sources: Iran and Syria are the winners of Hamas’ military coup against Fatah in Gaza Strip
June 12, 2007, 6:46 PM (GMT+02:00)
It was the second triumph in a week for a Palestinian force backed by Iran and Syria, after the Lebanese army failed in four weeks’ combat to crush the pro-Syrian factions’ barricaded in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian camp near Tripoli in four weeks of combat.
Tuesday, Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Palestinian Authority forces faced disaster. Their inevitable ejection from the Gaza Strip effectively severs Palestinian rule between Ramallah, where Fatah will have to fight to retain control of the West Bank and Gaza, dominated now by an Islamist Palestinian force manipulated from Tehran and Damascus.
The Iran-Syrian alliance has acquired by brute force two Mediterranean coastal enclaves in northern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
Its momentum, launched a month ago in both sectors was unchecked.
The Fouad Siniora government’s troops failed to break through to the Palestinian camp and crush the pro-Syrian uprising. The Olmert government stood by unmoved as the most radical elements in the Middle East snatched the Gaza Strip on Israel’s southwestern border.
The Bush administration is finding itself forced out of key Middle East positions, its main assets Siniora and Mahmoud Abbas trounced on the battlefield.
Israel’s technological feat of placing the Ofeq-7 surveillance satellite in orbit Monday quickly proved ineffective against the sort of tactics Tehran and Syria employ: mobile, suicidal Palestinian terrorists, heavily and cheaply armed with primitive weapons, who are winning the first round of the Summer 2007 war and preparing for the next.
Article 3
Olmert: West should step into Gaza fray
Herb Keinon, THE JERUSALEM POST
June 12, 2007
Israel has no intention of going into Gaza to aid the pragmatic Palestinian forces against the extremists, but “if Gaza falls into the hands of Hamas it will have regional implications,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday.
Olmert made his comments at a meeting with visiting Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen. Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office said Israel was “carefully watching” the developments in Gaza.
“The situation in Gaza is troubling and worrying, specifically in relation to the ability of the pragmatic forces in the Palestinian Authority to stand up to the steps taken by the extremists, and also in regard to the smuggling of arms into the Gaza Strip,” Olmert said, according to a statement issued by his office.
Olmert also called on the West to take immediate action to “change the situation in Gaza” and said that serious consideration should be given to the introduction of a UNIFIL-type international force along the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt to prevent the continued smuggling of arms to Hamas.
This marked the first time that Olmert has publicly backed this idea, first broached a few weeks ago by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
European officials have said the European Union would only discuss the idea if it received formal requests from all the parties involved.
Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office would not say Tuesday whether Israel had received any urgent requests over the last few days to allow weaponry into Gaza to strengthen Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Reflecting concern that the intra-Palestinian violence would lead to an upsurge in attacks on Sderot, as was the case some three weeks ago when the Hamas-Fatah violence re-erupted, Olmert said that “Israel would defend itself and its citizens against any aggressive action from terrorist groups.”
However, he made clear that the IDF would not get involved in the fighting to help out the “moderate” Palestinian forces.
The security cabinet, meanwhile, is scheduled to hold its weekly meeting on Wednesday, but rather than dealing with the situation in Gaza, the issue on the agenda is the establishment of a “National Disaster Administration” to unite and streamline all the civilian rescue emergency services – Israel Police, Magen David Adom and Fire and Rescue Service – with the IDF during times of war.
The meeting is also expected to deal with a reorganization of the Home Front command to make it more effective.
Article 4
Is it time for UN peacekeepers in Gaza?
HARRIS O. SCHOENBERG, THE JEURSALEM POST
June 12, 2007
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The writer serves as President of UN Reform Advocates.
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