WORLD – STAY OUT OF IT!
A FULL EXPOSITION OF THE GAZA CRISIS!
A POWER START UP FOR A MISSILE SHUT DOWN!
HAMAS ONLY RESPONDS TO AN EYE FOR AN EYE, A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH, OR A START UP FOR A SHUT DOWN!
WHAT DOES THE WORLD EXPECT ISRAEL TO DO?
WHAT WOULD ANY NATION DO?
January 21, 2008
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Ham as is now crying out in its latest propaganda extravaganza effort to portray Israel
as a heartless monster. Hamas wants to be allowed to terrorize and kill Israeli civilians without Israel being able to retaliate in kind.
The major reason that the conflict in Israel never ends is that the UN and international community won’t let Israel end it.
Until the United Nations, and the rest of the work, believes what Barry Rubin has accurately presented in his Jerusalem Post article, which follows our heading, the Palestinian rockets will continue to fly out of Gaza. Barry Rubin’s analysis of the situation is deadly accurate, but the chances of the world accepting it, and acting on it by letting Israel handle the situation, just as they are doing now, is a billion to one. The free world is actually continuing to fuel more deaths, both Israeli and Palestinian, by strengthening a mob of terrorists with what they identify as humanitarian assistance.
I have written so much about this Gaza Strip situation that I am going to try and lay off of it for awhile, so I am including several articles on this one. If you want to know the truth about it, I hope you will read all of them.
Region: Abbas is trapped
By Barry Rubin, THE JERUSALEM POST
January 20, 2008
T.S. Eliot wrote memorably in The Hollow Men: Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the shadow.
In the case of the peace process and all the great ideas for fixing everything in Arab-Israel relations, the shadow has been Palestinian leaders’ unwillingness – and now also inability – to make a compromise agreement ending the conflict. Close examination of the movement’s ideology, organization and structure shows why this is true.
Exactly 40 years ago, in 1968, Yasser Arafat and Fatah took over. That same year, Arafat laid down two principles that have dominated the movement ever since.
First, in July 1968 he changed the PLO Charter, emphasizing the group was no longer a follower of Arab states but both independent and the struggle’s leader. But at the same time he stated: “We are an extension of the hundred million Arabs.” It proved hard to have it both ways, though Arafat usually managed the tension adequately.
Today, the Arab world’s real support for Fatah and for the Palestinians generally is minimal, though many in the West still don’t notice that. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas recently said, “Our Arab relations are at their best.
We do not have any problems with any Arab country.”
Well, not exactly.
THE REMAINING backing does not include financial aid (the West pays the bills), direct military involvement, or strenuous diplomatic effort. Instead, it mostly revolves around demanding that the US solve the problem while the regimes focus on their own real priorities.
Second, back in 1968, Arafat mandated the goal as total victory bringing Israel’s disappearance. Thus, “armed struggle” was the main tactic intended to “maintain an atmosphere of strain and anxiety that will force the Zionists to realize that it is impossible for them to live in Israel.”
Since then, Israel has prospered, the Palestinians have suffered, and Hamas has seized that slogan.
But it also remains a central plank for Fatah.
Today Abbas puts the main emphasis on diplomacy.
But most of his colleagues and constituents are still focused on glorifying violence and insisting on ultimate, total victory.
What he can do, or even say, is quite limited.
On January 13, for example, Abbas briefed the PLO Central Council in Ramallah about President George Bush’s visit and relations with Hamas. It was not a demagogic speech aimed at scoring points against Israel or attacking the US – some things have changed – but rather a soberly given presentation, albeit one steeped in wishful thinking.
QUITE NOTABLE, however, is that Abbas uttered not a word showing readiness to compromise or preaching the virtues of peace with Israel. Nor has he changed anything in the schools or the PA-controlled mosques and media, whose virulence and enthusiasm for violence continues.
Fatah’s symbol, displayed next to Abbas, still shows all of Israel as Palestine. Abbas dares not challenge his constituents’ fervent beliefs.
He merely insists that the PLO is still “the Palestinian people’s sole legitimate representative,” despite the fact that Hamas is not in it. To conciliate Hamas he offers it a large minority share in the PLO, which Hamas rejected even when it was weaker.
In addition, the PA will spend 58 percent of its aid money on salaries for its employees in the Gaza Strip, thus subsidizing Hamas’s bureaucracy. Ironically, money given by Western donors to strengthen Fatah and weaken Hamas will help the latter, and no one will complain about this reversal of their intentions.
Abbas discusses the Annapolis conference and Bush’s visit only in terms of Palestinian demands, without mention of Palestinian obligations. Yet without telling h is people that violence
is outmoded, that coexistence with Israel is necessary, that terrorists attacking Israel must be punished, and that refugees need to be resettled in a Palestinian state, he cannot build popular support for doing these things.
On the contrary, such concepts are still seen as treason to the cause. Abbas knows this, and, as a result, takes none of the steps needed to achieve peace.
ABBAS DOES present a softer line, up to a point. He opposes shooting rockets from the Gaza Strip at Israel, as well as Israeli retaliatory raids. He even recounts that when Israel offered to let people leave the Gaza Strip freely for study, work, or medical treatment abroad, Hamas refused and even fired “on any crossing that was opened [in order] to close it.”
But his treatment of Hamas’s “coup” in the Gaza Strip seeks to evade the problem. Israel, he complains, holds him responsible for what happens in Gaza, claiming this is an excuse. And he shows nationalist solidarity with Hamas against Israel, in effect giving the Islamists veto power over any strategy or solution.
Yet how can Abbas, Fatah and the PA claim to be the sole representative of the Palestinians when they don’t control over half the land and people they supposedly represent? How can Abbas do anything when most of Fatah is closer to Hamas than to Abbas’s more moderate impulses?
HIS REGIME, then, simply cannot deliver an agreement ending the conflict. Not only cannot Fatah regain control of the Gaza Strip, it will be lucky to hold onto the West Bank.
“Fatah is now convalescing,” Abbas assures colleagues, “and, God willing, you will witness that it will fare very well” in the future. Yet nothing has changed in Fatah.
The Arafat crowd, veteran leaders from decades of PLO intransigence, still rule.
Whatever Abbas’s personal views, there are few moderates in Fatah; nor would they back their supposed leader if he actually tried to stop cross-border attacks, punish terrorism, end incitement, clamp down on internal anarchy, or make a deal with Israel.
This leadership, moreover, is being challenged by the “young guard,” which decries the “old guard’s” corruption and suggests it has become too soft. The new generation is by no means more moderate. Its reference point is not the 1990s peace process, but the 1980s intifada.
Many, or most, of the young guard prefer a deal with Hamas to one with Israel, and a return to systematic armed struggle. At best, they believe a peace treaty can come only after Israel is expelled from the West Bank, a task that would take decades and, if ever fulfilled, would whet their ambitions for total victory.
Abbas is trapped. He can neither defeat nor make peace with Israel; and neither defeat nor make a deal with Hamas in which the latter would accept Fatah’s leadership. Nor can he control his own organization, end the chaos in the West Bank, or implement an economic development program.
That is his “shadow,” as T.S. Eliot put it. His only asset – though a considerable one – is that the West, including Israel, will ignore all these problems and pretend otherwise.
The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center at IDC Herzliya and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs.
Begin DEBKAfile Article
Palestinians darken Gaza – although Israel supplies 75% electricity, Egypt 5%
January 21, 2008, 7:43 AM (GMT+02:00)
Israel’s electricity corporation continues to supply the Gaza Strip with most of its power although its personnel maintain the system under the Palestinian missile offensive which pounds Israeli civilian locations.
No independent organizations confirm the Hamas claim of a humanitarian crisis and hospital deaths for lack of electricity. Israeli military sources report: Hamas is staging a crisis to drum up international intercession and mobilize the Palestinian Authority and Arab League
to end the blockade of the Gaza Strip while continuing to shoot missiles at Israel.
Gaza has adequate stocks of basic commodities, foods medicines and fuel. The population is suffering from shortages but their plight has not reached crisis point – unlike the Israeli communities living under constant Palestinian missile fire. Israel will keep the crossings closed until this stops.
Hamas is incapable of normal government; its top priority is to terrorize Israeli civilians day after day. DEBKAfile adds: The population has suffered acute economic suffering, especially unemployment, since the Palestinian Authority declared its war on Israel in 2000 and tens of thousands lost their jobs in Israel.
Begin Series of Articles from Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs – Daily Alert
Lights Out in Gaza City
Nidal al-Mughrabi
Parts of the Gaza Strip plunged into darkness on Sunday when its main power plant shut down after Israel blocked fuel supplies and closed the border to the Hamas-run territory. Israel said the blockade was in response to rocket attacks from Gaza and that “everything would go back to normal” if militants stopped firing missiles, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said. Mekel questioned whether the complete shutdown of the generating plant was necessary, suggesting Hamas Islamists had a political interest in exaggerating the impact of the Israeli measures. Palestinian militants have attacked border towns in Israel in the past week with some 230 rockets. (Reuters/Washington Post)
Supply of Electricity to Gaza Continues
The supply of electricity to Gaza from the Israeli and Egyptian power grids has continued uninterrupted, representing about 75% of Gaza’ s electricity need
s.
While the fuel supply from Israel into Gaza has indeed been reduced, due to the Hamas rocket attacks, the diversion of this fuel from domestic power generators to other uses is wholly a Hamas decision – apparently taken due to media and propaganda considerations. (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
Israel: Hamas Pretending There Is a Crisis
Ali Waked
“There is no power crisis in Gaza. Apparently Hamas, out of its own considerations, has decided not to transfer fuel to the power station,” said a security official in Jerusalem. “There is enough diesel in Gaza to power the station. And to the best of our knowledge there is also enough fuel for cars. Enough fuel has been provided and there should not be any shortage,” the official said.
Israel also rejected the claim that there was a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying that Palestinian liaisons have said that there are sufficient stockpiles of food and water. “Our feeling is that someone over there, apparently Hamas, is trying to exaggerate the problem and make it seem as though there is a humanitarian crisis. There is no truth to this.” Minutes after the Gaza power station shut down, Gaza residents holding candles began marching through the city’s streets along with Palestinian children holding signs in English and Arabic.
(Ynet News)
Gazan Hearts Saved in Israel as Conflict Rages
With violence along Israel’s southern border escalating, a hospital in Israel offers a ray of hope for a handful of seriously ill Gazans. “This child would have died without surgery,” said Dr. Alona Raucher-Sternfeld, looking at the small Palestinian baby, Jamal, and the echo machine checking his heart. Six-month-old Jamal came with his grandmother from Dir al-Balah in Gaza to get a check-up on Jan. 15 at Wolfson Medical Center near Tel Aviv. Jamal was operated on there when he was two months old, suffering from two heart defects.
The surgery, hospital stay and logistics in bringing him out of Gaza were coordinated and partially funded by Save a Child’s Heart, an Israeli humanitarian organization, with some EU donations. In 2007, 128 Palestinian children from the West Bank and Gaza, all suffering from heart conditions, were treated by the program. Col. Nir Press, head of the Israeli coordination and liaison administration in Gaza, said the number of permits to Israel issued for medical reasons had risen 50% in 2007. (ReliefWeb-UN)
Israel Won’t Let Humanitarian Crisis Erupt in Gaza
Barak Ravid, Avi Issacharoff, and Amos Harel
Israel will not allow a humanitarian crisis to erupt in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen on Monday. “We will provide the population with everything needed to prevent a crisis,” said Olmert. “Hamas is firing on the power station that supplies electricity to Gaza. That is simply crazy,” he told Verhagen, adding, “What would the Dutch government do if it were being fired on daily?” “We won’t allow the Palestinians to fire on us and destroy life in Sderot, while in Gaza life is going on as usual.” (Ha’aretz)
Israel Is Supplying Electricity to Gaza While Under Rocket Fire – Tani Goldstein
Miko Zarfati, chairman of the workers’ committee at the Israel Electric Company, said: “This is Palestinian spin. No one has stopped the supply of electricity to the Strip.” He claimed that Israel Electric Company employees worked day and night in a power plant in Ashkelon while putting themselves in danger of being hit by Kassam rockets fired by Palestinians from Gaza.
“The Electric Company sends people to fix power outages that are caused from the Kassam barrages everyday in Sderot and the Gaza vicinity and more than one worker has already been injured in these rocket attacks.” (Ynet News)
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