Fatah never fought

I just found Charles Levinson's blog, Conflict Blotter. It looks like a truly excellent resource.

Levinson was in Gaza and interviewed Fatah fighters, where he discovered that they were never instructed to fight back:

We left Gaza yesterday with a Red Cross aid convoy, but I want to post some thoughts on Fatah’s collapse. We spoke with nearly a dozen Fatah fighters and soldiers from the various branches of the security services, all of whom were around in the president’s compound, the intelligence headquarters, the Preventative Security headquarters and even in Khan Younis until the final hours of the battle. We came with a pretty damning indictment of the political and military leadership.

Fatah never fought. Gaza was essentially handed over to Hamas. Soldier after soldier said they felt betrayed and abandoned by their leadership. There was a seemingly willful lack of decision making by the senior most political leadership. Up and down the Gaza Strip from the first moments of fighting, the military leadership disintegrated while the political leadership remained eerily silent.

Ousted Fatah loyalists in Gaza widely suspect a political decision was made early on in Ramallah to surrender the Gaza Strip to Hamas in order to extricate Abbas, Israel and the US from the seeming intractable pickle they were facing as infighting spiraled, living conditions worsened, and the peace process seemed hopelessly stuck. With the Palestinian territories now split, the US, Israel and Abbas suddenly have way forward, without compromising to Hamas.

I don’t mean to sound conspiratorial, and I think the likeliest scenario is that all the parties involved simply accepted what was essentially a fait accompli some time in the course of the fighting and set about finding whatever silver lining could be salvaged.

There are of course a dozen reasons why Fatah was so ineffective. Fatah was unpopular and the vast majority of the security forces were not really Fatah loyalists. They were merely after a steady salary, not some messianic belief in Fatah or the rightness of the Palestinian Authority. They were doing it because it was their job and they hadn’t been paid more than a fraction of their salaries in 18 months. Fatah was also divided into disparate bickering factions.

All that being said, the total surrender of the security forces is striking. Keep reading.

Fatah fighters’ accounts

Abu Qusay is a 23 year old police officer from the Nuseirat camp. He’s a die hard Fatah loyalist and says he was inside Abbas’ presidential compound until late Thursday evening.

We handed Gaza over to Hamas. We don’t understand why our leaders betrayed us like this. We fought back against orders because if we had followed orders, we would have given ourselves up… [Our leaders] received orders from Abbas to give up bases but some military commanders couldn’t accept this.

Abu al Majd, 23, fought along side Abu Qusay the entire time and corroborated many of the details of Abu Qusay’s account.

It was a story of surrender. The bases were given up. I feel psychologically destroyed. It really hurt. I understood that there was an order to evacuate the bases. We were betrayed.

A.R. was a major in the Presidential Guard and has served in the elite highly selective force since the days of Arafat. He is educated, bilingual and comes across as a well disciplined career soldier. In the midst of interviewing him in the garden of the Marna Hotel, Gaza City’s oldest, Al Arabiya began broadcasting a live interview with Dahlan and we all gathered around to watch. After the interview we continued.

“Funny,” A.R. said. “Despite all that has happened in Gaza, Dahlan’s spirits seem pretty high.”

“What do you think that means?” I asked.

“He knew. Dahlan knew this was coming and he was planning for this scenario,” A.R. said.

A.R. continued, describing the total lack of resistance by the Fatah security services. The only order they ever received was to surrender bases if Hamas wanted them badly enough, he said.

The only order we ever heard coming from Abbas in Ramallah was that he didn’t want a blood bath and if Hamas wanted the security bases, let them take it. We understood that there was not supposed to be any resistance.

The presidential guard were the most highly trained and professional soldiers in the security services’ ranks and they were dismayed when rudimentary and repeatedly drilled steps to respond to the Hamas onslaught were never taken.

No state of emergency was ever declared, curfews were never imposed, contingency counter attack plans were ever drawn up, heavy weapons were never mounted on the roofs of the security bases, and extra ammo stocks were never dragged out of storage.

Abu Mohammad, a 26-year-old barrel chested soldier in Force 17, spoke to me at Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital:

This was a total betrayal by the political leadership. We were only told ‘don’t fire back,’ and a lot of people didn’t like this… When the clahses first started, when a soldier was being attacked the officers would give him two or three clips max. When they were finished and he asked for more they’d say no more… they only brought out the heavier weapons and ammo on Thursday when it was too late. By then most of the soldiers had run away.

The battle for the Preventative Security Services headquarters in Gaza City was the decisive turning point, when it became clear that nothing could save Fatah’s remnants in Gaza. But even that climactic battle was little more than a symbolic stand by only around 30 remaining soldiers, fighters said. Everyone else had long since jumped ship. They put on civilian clothes, dropped their weapons and scampered home. Some soldiers were dragged away from the trenches by frantic mothers who had heard Hamas’ threats to kill any fighters who didn’t surrender.

Hatem Iki, 22, a presidential guardsman with a gruesome story all his own:

The forces saw their leaders had all fled and so everyone else just ran away too.

Hatem’s brother, Mohammad Iki, 29, a sargent in the presidential guard:

When your leaders disappear and run away of course you will be defeated. Until the moment I left the presidential compound, there was never any orders or commands at all. Who would have expected the Muntada could fall without a single bullet being fired. It’s a total betrayal by our leadership.

We spoke with Abu Shaban, 37, a general intelligence officer as he waited at Erez to flee to the West Bank. This is what he had to say:

They decided to deliver Gaza to Hamas to put them in trouble and isolate them from the world. The way the fighting went leaves no doubt that they really gave it up to Hamas.

Abu Abdallah, 31, also a general intelligence officer, was in Khan Younis for the fight:

The decision came from high levels to withdraw from our compound because they didn’t want a blood bath. We were totally surprised.

h/t greenmamba commenter at discarded lies

Read More

Hamas' conspiracy theory of the day: Dahlan assassinated Arafat!

According to the pro-Hamas Palestine Today, intelligence documents that Hamas captured in Gaza implicated Fatah "strongman" Mohammed Dahlan in the assassination of Yasir Arafat. Autotranslated:

Leaders of the Islamic Resistance Movement "Hamas accused Chancellor of the Palestinian Preventive Security Mohammed Dahlan [for] involvement in the assassination of the late leader Yasser Arafat, and the fire on the motorcade of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, the Egyptian security delegation in Gaza.

He drew Chairman of the Legal Committee of the Palestinian Legislative Council Faraj al-Ghoul, a serious accusation to Dahlan, told "Gulf" that Hamas obtained documents serious confirm conclusively Dahlan and his involvement in the assassination of the late leader Abu Ammar.

He added that the documents Dahlan condemned corruption and the creation of "death squads", and stressed that Dahlan accused of involvement in the assassination of Arafat is not "talk čela" The saying, "We have documents current, previous and confessions of the leaders of the Preventive Security who had been arrested in Gaza recently, however, we are with the formation of a fair trial for Dahlan and his colleagues. investigation and honest and pure in this evidence and documents ", Ghoul refused any outside interference in these trials.

For his part, the spokesman for the Hamas bloc in the Palestinian parliament Egyptian mentor of the "Gulf" that Dahlan and his team behind the shooting of the Egyptian security delegation in Gaza where he was "Brigadier Sharif," one of its members, He pointed out that Dahlan is also responsible for the shooting incident at the parade Haniya at the Rafah crossing after returning from his first tour of Foreign Affairs last February, and stressed that the Egyptian Hamas welcomed the formation of the Arab League "a fact-finding committee" because it wants the truth to be revealed?, He pointed out that those who oppose it are the ones who are afraid of exposure to the facts, and emphasized that the Egyptian movement which developed University and Arab parties in the picture of what is happening on Palestinian land currently, has already warned Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and his predecessor, the late Abu Ammar of Dahlan, He pointed out that Egyptian security delegation in Gaza "shells full details of what happened and is happening" in the Gaza Strip.

Not that I give much credence to this, but the idea that Dahlan was behind an attack on Egyptians in Gaza would tend to support my previous posting about how Egypt favors Hamas rule in Gaza to Fatah's.

Read More

Egypt playing both sides of the Fatah/Hamas fence

In public, Egypt has fallen in line with the West's attitude that Fatah is a moderate, peace loving group of guys:

The takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas militants has pushed Egypt to transfer its embassy from Gaza to Ramallah in the West Bank.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abul Ghait decided to dispatch his ambassador to the Palestinian territories, who has been based in Gaza for the past 12 years, to Ramallah, according to the Egyptian Middle East News Agency.

The Egyptian move, which came a week after it pulled out its ambassador from Gaza to protest the Hamas takeover, is a clear indication of Cairo's support for Abbas and Fayad's government.

But in private, Egypt seems to be a little more nuanced towards Hamas terrorists:

Egypt has quietly supported the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip.

Western intelligence sources said Egypt cooperated with Hamas in allowing shipments of weapons, munitions and explosives that facilitated the Islamic takeover of the Gaza Strip last week. The sources said Egypt concluded that a Hamas takeover would halt or reduce insurgency infiltration in the Sinai Peninsula.

"The Egyptians were in the picture as early as several weeks ago," an intelligence source said. "[Hamas leader Khaled] Masha'al discussed the Fatah strategic threat and said Hamas would stop [Fatah security chief Mohammed] Dahlan at any cost."

In a recent telephone conversation with Egyptian intelligence chief Gen. Omar Suleiman, Masha'al said Dahlan and his allies were working with Al Qaida-aligned groups to undermine Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The sources quoted Masha'al as saying that Fatah was allowing Al Qaida to infiltrate the Sinai Peninsula to facilitate attacks on the regime of President Hosni Mubarak.

So Egypt was a prime force behind Hamas' victory - which they are justifying by saying that the "moderate" Fatah has ties to the "extremist" Al-Qaeda which was trying to infiltrate Egypt from Gaza. If true, it stands the conventional wisdom of Fatah moderation on its head. But if it was true, why would Egypt be publicly supporting Fatah?

Perhaps because Fatah in the West Bank is no threat to Egypt and meanwhile it can get brownie points from the West by falling in line on Fatah.

Of course, that doesn't quite explain this:

We will apparently also need to act in an effort to curb the smuggling that has turned into a flood on the Philadelphi Route. We are talking about above-ground smuggling through breaches in the wall.

Then again, what does YNet know about smuggling? Olmert himself denies it is getting worse:

The prime minister said that the arms-smuggling situation along the Philadelphi Corridor between Gaza and Egypt was no worse now than in the past, and he still felt that IDF military action there would not be "a preferred option."

He said he had spoken recently with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak about the situation on the border, and hoped that the Egyptians would take "more aggressive action" to stop the weapons smuggling.

Good old Olmert, "hoping" that the Egyptians do something about the smuggling that they seem to be actively encouraging. Ehud is very affluent with the currency of hope and dreams, rosy assumptions and wishful thinking, rainbows and unicorns.

His share of the reality market seems a bit lacking.

Read More

World Refugee Day and World "Refugee" Day

Today is "World Refugee Day." As a result, we will be seeing plenty of articles about Palestinian "refugees" who would not fit the legal definition of refugee if they were anyone but Palestinian Arabs. Alone among world peoples, Palestinian Arabs are considered "refugees" if any of their ancestors lived in Palestine for two years before 1948.

What do you call someone who was born and raised in Baghdad who was forced out by the Iraq war to live in India? Why, he's a "Palestinian refugee!"

Nassem Jamal Mohammed is a quiet, well-mannered man living in a squalid neighbourhood of New Delhi, who, unlike his neighbours, has a more international tale of misery.

The dark-haired, olive skinned 24-year-old is a Palestinian refugee who had the misfortune to be born in Baghdad, the city his parents chose as a sanctuary before war once again caught up with them.

“I ran away with my cousin 14 months ago to escape the bombings, grenade attacks and constant threats from the Shia groups now running out of control in Baghdad,” Nassem said in halting English.

“It is chaos. I was scared for my life.”

Nassem was among about 1,000 Palestinian refugees living in Baghdad’s Baladiyat neighbourhood on the edge of Sadr City, now a radical Shia stronghold.

He decided to flee when a Shia “death squad” threatened him last March.

Not content with counting only the descendants of real refugees, PalArab s like to add an even more absurd category to their litany of supposed suffering. According to the "BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights," not only are there six million Palestinian Arab "refugees," but also 450,000 "internally displaced persons" - Arab citizens in Israel but who had to move in 1948. Even though they are not suffering, even though most of them would probably have moved anyway voluntarily over the past 60 years, for Israel bashers they are yet another opportunity to try to push an agenda even beyond the "right of return" - these haters, under the guise of "human rights" workers, are insisting that Israel rebuild towns that haven't existed for decades.

For proof of the bigoted agenda of these supposed "human rights" agencies: None of them mention any descendants of Jewish refugees nor displaced persons from 1948 - the ones who were expelled from Jerusalem, Gush Etzion, Gaza and elsewhere, even though they are every bit as much "Palestinian" as the PalArabs are, according to their own definitions. And forget even thinking about anyone defining the millions of descendants of Arab Jews who were forced out of their homes in the 1940s and 1950s as "refugees."

There are some 10 million real refugees in the world today. They are being taken care of by the UNHCR with the aim of settling them in places so that they no longer remain refugees. It is way past time to disband the UNRWA, devoted exclusively to Palestinian Arabs and to perpetuating their status as eternal victims, to use a single definition of "refugee" worldwide, and to pressure Arab governments to treat Palestinian Arabs in the same way they treat any other Arabs with the right to resettle in their countries. Anyone who truly cares about Palestinian Arab "refugees" would agree.

But those who want to use this "refugee" issue as a reason to destroy Israel have the opposite intent.

Read More

A Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs, part 6

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5


While al-Husayni built his power base strictly based on Muslim unity, the Christian Arabs in Palestine seemed to lay low. They kept doing their jobs and ran as blocs in municipal elections but it seemed that they stayed out of the Muslim violence against Jews (except as the occasional innocent victims.) Even so, Arab Christians were generally very anti-Zionist and many of them supported the Husayni's goals (George Antonius was an adviser to the Mufti, Ya'coub Farraj and Alfred Roch were members of the Husayni-led Arab Higher Committee.) In general, the Christians in the 1930s were seen as more moderate and pragmatic than their Arab neighbors. The Arab Christians identified strongly with the Arab nation against Zionism and Husayni's Islamic supremacist rhetoric does not seem to have bothered them too much.

The Mufti continued to increase and consolidate his power, and he started organizing demonstrations against Jewish immigration and the sale of Arab lands to Jews. In 1933 the illegal Jaffa demonstration turned fatal as the Arabs shot at the British police and the British tried to restore order. The riots quickly spread to Haifa, Nablus and Jerusalem, leaving a total of some 14 Arabs dead. The major grievance was stated as "Jewish immigrants have so much money that poor Arab farmers are tempted and sell out to them. Unless something is done the Jews will slowly buy up all of Palestine."

Interestingly, at this time no one was talking about Jews forcing Arabs out, and in fact there was still plenty of illegal Arab immigration besides the, then legal, Jewish immigration.

An underground movement led by Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam advocating Arab revolt was growing in the early 1930s. At the time the British and Jews considered him nothing but a gang leader and murderer, and he was shot and killed by the British during a gun battle in November 1935 that claimed a British constable's life. al-Qassam had apparently been planning a deadly revolt at the time. The size of his funeral the next day showed that he had secretly already built a significant following, based on his philosophy of violence and murdering Jews. The Arab press uniformly referred to him as a martyr and al-Qassam's violent exploits were considered heroic by the Arab masses. This was one of the sparks that led to the twin mass violent strikes of 1936 and 1937-39.

Obviously, ordinary Arabs were enchanted with the leadership of people like al-Qassam and al-Husayni. Their preaching of racism and violence struck a chord with Palestinian Arabs, and their incitement against Jews seeped into their collective minds. While a decade earlier they might have been considered somewhat embarrassing hotheads, now they were heroes. How did this transformation take place?

Centuries of being dominated by outsiders take an inevitable toll on people, especially people as proud and wedded to honor as Arabs are. The peak of Arab civilization occurred between the 9th and 12th centuries and their dominance in the sciences, architecture and art have steadily declined since then. Islam as well had been in steady decline for many centuries, and the West had come to effectively rule the world economically and militarily.

The Ottoman Empire had been destroyed less than two decades before this, so even the illusion of Islamic dominance had been only recently dashed. This was a tremendous blow to the Arab psyche, and living under British rule chafed at the Palestinian Arabs.

Any leader who uncompromisingly promised to restore Arab unity and pride, using the time-honored tradition of the Arabic sword, held an irresistible sway among even the more practical Arabs who grew up with the idea of a dormant but inevitable Arab supremacy.

After so many years of being dominated, the definition of "victory" becomes diluted. An Arab victory is no longer the ability to win against a much stronger foe, but the ability to be noticed by that foe. Riots, random murders and terror attacks are a means to restore lost honor, as it proves that the enemy has some level of weakness - and Arab strength is measured by how weak it can make an enemy appear. The idea of a "zero-sum game" is basic to Arab thought: when the enemy loses, you must be winning.

With this mindset being spread throughout Palestine, Amin al-Husayni was able to come to an agreement with his rivals the Nashashibis. He also kept the British under the impression that he was a moderating influence on the Arab masses, even as he kept the incitement against the Jews and Arabs going strong. By 1936, Husayni was the head of the new Arab Higher Committee and confident enough of his political strength as to begin to take on the British themselves.

He formed a paramilitary youth group called al-Futuwwah in February and compared them, admiringly, with the first Nazis. This group was largely responsible for the events that followed but they afforded Husayni with plausible deniability.

In April of 1936, the same month the the Arab Higher Committee was formed, Arab leaders announced a general strike and a boycott of Jewish goods. They again rioted in Jaffa, killing 17 Jews the first day. Their terror activities escalated against the British as well, forcing a crackdown against them in August. By October, 80 Jews had been murdered. The Jews of Hebron who had returned after the 1929 riots were forced out yet again.

These riots seemed to have the full support and admiration of even "moderate" Palestinian Arabs. Khalil Sakakini, an Arab Christian educator and poet, wrote, "They throw bombs, shoot, burn fields, destroy Jewish citrus groves in Jaffa, blow up bridges, cut telephone cables, topple electric poles. Every day they block roads and every day Arabs display a heroism that the government never conceived of. "

The Arab Higher Commission called off the strike in October, telling its members to wait until the British Peel Commission would make its recommendations in the hope that their rioting will achieve their political goals of stopping Jewish immigration and land ownership:

Honored Brethren! Heroes!... Our poor tongues cannot express the strength of our love and admiration and the exaltation concealed in our hearts for your self-sacrifice and your devoted war for religion, fatherland and all things Arab. Rest assured that your struggle is engraved in letters of flame in the chronicles of the nation. And now...we...urge you to stop activity until needed. Save the bullets and take care of them. We stand now in a period of hope and expectation. If the Royal Commission comes and judges equitably and gives us all our rights, well and good. If not, the field of battle lies before us...We request...self-control and armistice until a new notice.

In July 1937, the Peel Commission recommended that Palestine be partitioned with the Jews getting a tiny sliver of land in the northwest of Palestine. The Mufti and Arab leaders heatedly rejected any plan that would give Jews any sovereignty at all.

The British slowly started realizing that the protege that they installed as Grand Mufti in 1922 was not the moderate leader he claimed to be. They attempted to arrest him in July 1937 for his part in the riots but he was tipped off and escaped. In September, the British High Commissioner of the Galilee was murdered, reportedly by the remaining followers of al-Qassam.

Arab terrorism and violent strikes resumed later in 1937. al-Husayni's followers resumed murdering with relish, and there were many massacres of Jews, including 19 in Tiberias (11 children in a nursery burned to death.) In addition, the intra-Arab rivalries between the Husaynis andthe Nashashibis resumed, and al-Husayni directed a reign of terror from exile against his old enemies as well as against any Arabs who opposed the resumption of the rioting. Many more moderate Arab leaders were cut down.

By the end of the revolt the Arabs were killing more Arabs than Jews, and the British were merciless in their collective punishment of the instigators. Over 5000 Palestinian Arabs were killed in the years 1936-39, mostly by the British. 400 Jews were martyred, many horrifically. For a short while the terrorists managed to expel all the Jews from Jerusalem.

Arabs who had the means fled Palestine in droves during the terror, so that more Arabs left Palestine in 1938 than arrived.

Economically, the Arab boycott that accompanied the strike did not hurt the Jews at all. The revolt resulted in the Jewish economy of Palestine disengaging from the Arab economy. The Arab economy was always more dependent on the Jews than vice versa, but the riots meant that Jews created an entirely independent economy of their own. It was during this time period that the Jews opened up a port in Tel Aviv instead of using the Arab seaport at Jaffa.

There are two yardsticks that can be used to measure the effectiveness of the Arab riots of 1936-39.

From the Western perspective, assuming that the Palestinian Arabs were acting out of nationalistic interest, the riots were an unmitigated disaster. They didn't hurt the Jewish economy but they did hurt their own; their moderate leaders fled to neighboring countries and they no longer had even radical unifying leadership. Thousands of Arabs were dead. The British support for Arab nationalism was hurt badly. Their infighting made them look like barbarians to the world at large as well as the rest of the Arab world.

Yet Palestinian Arab histories regard this as "The Great Revolt." Sympathetic Westerners have romantic notions of this uprising. It is regarded as a source of pride by most Palestinian Arabs today. How can this be?

The answer is that the Western yardstick is not the only measure of success. Remember that there were two major goals of the revolt - to stop legal Jewish land purchases in Palestine and to stop Jewish immigration. In the aftermath of the riots, the British issued their notorious White Paper of 1939 that indeed largely rewarded the Arab terror with those exact wished - severely limiting immigration and the ability of Jews to buy land. Because of the White Paper, hundreds of thousands of European Jews who could have been saved were burned in Hitler's ovens.

The Palestinian Arabs at the time had little real interest in nationalism. They didn't expend effort to build a state, to build an economy, to build a culture. The goals of the "Great Revolt" was simply to stop a Jewish state from being born, not to build an Arab state. The organizers of the riots intended to drive the Jews out of the area. From that perspective, the "Great Revolt" was largely successful - caused the spineless British to cave in to terror and give in to the initial demands of al-Husayni and his henchmen.

The entire Arab-Jewish conflict can be looked at from the prism of Arab nationalism or from the perspective of Arab anti-semitism. Only one of these categories fits in with the known facts.

Read More

Morning linkdump

WSJ: In Gaza, "If you can afford a mobile [phone], you can probably afford a Kalashnikov"

YNet: Saudis funding Hamas through "charities"

It's Almost Supernatural: Benny Morris takes down Ronnie Kasrils on the Six Day War

UN: West Bank UNRWA warehouse in Nablus looted, computers and tons of food stolen

Ajami in NYT: Peaceful Fatah West Bank a fantasy

WaPo op-ed: "Fatah has ceased to exist as an ideologically or organizationally coherent movement."

New York Sun:

It will be a farce if President Bush and Prime Minister Olmert spend their meeting Tuesday discussing a two-state solution or how many millions of dollars are needed to shore up the non-existent authority of Fatah. What is needed is a plan to stop the addition of Gaza to Jihadistan, to contain it, and to bleed it.
Throwing money at the problem will not do. If the Gaza collapse has proved anything, it is that Western funding ends up either in the hands of Muslim fundamentalists or in the pockets of corrupt Fatah officials. Many Palestinian Arabs are cared for with funds from the UN and Western charities. This humanitarian aid, unfortunately, has relieved Palestinian Arab terror groups, such as Hamas and Fatah, from the obligation of feeding their own and allows them to use all their money for war.

Dennis Ross in WSJ:

Since January, the administration's objective has been to produce a "political horizon" between Israelis and Palestinians - meaning an agreement (or plan) on the contours of a permanent status deal on Jerusalem, refugees and borders. The feasibility of such an objective needs to be reassessed now. With two Palestinian regimes, one led by Fatah in the West Bank and one led by Hamas in Gaza, does it make sense to be defining what permanent status would look like? Pushing for an objective that is demonstrably not achievable now is not going to enhance our already shaky position in the Middle East.

Robert Satloff:

"We should not believe the simplistic logic that says the West Bank is totally controlled by Fatah while Gaza is totally supportive of Hamas; indeed, there is quite a lot of Hamas support in the West Bank, too. But Hamas has not succeeded in penetrating nearly as far in the West Bank primarily due to the active presence of the Israeli army. Ironically, the political horizon that some in the administration would like to talk about would raise premature hopes about the removal of precisely that factor that is the most important barrier to the spread of Hamas in the West Bank today."

Cox and Forkum:


UPDATE:
ADL: Anti-semitic cartoons in Arab media blame Israel for Fatah/Hamas fighting. (h/t Zionist Spy.)

Read More

Western money will still go to Hamas

A small item in Palestine Today (autotranslated):

The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance Ismail Mahfouz will release the salaries of military personnel and civilians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank territories early next month, the usual manner.

Quoting the "Palestine" issued today by Mahfouz said : "The emergency government promised to lift the financial embargo and we await the application in this area, saying that political differences should not be reflected on the financial side and employee benefits."

Reuters adds some detail:

Palestinian Information Minister Riyad al-Malki said the emergency government knew of no Israeli conditions on the tax funds which Israel collects on the Palestinian Authority's behalf. "We will not accept any conditions. We determine how we will spend it," he said.

Abbas's aides said the emergency government believed it had a responsibility to pay those workers in Gaza, including members of the security services, who follow the instructions of the new government and not the Hamas administration.

"But it's unclear how they would make that distinction," one senior Western diplomat said.

The emergency government could use Arab funds, rather than the tax money transferred by Israel, to pay Gaza workers.

The West again is trying to oversimplify the Hamas/Fatah civil war, but in fact they have cooperated before and will cooperate again when the target is Israel. The West and Israel will resume aid to Fatah, and Fatah will pay its "employees" in Gaza who happen to be almost wholly Hamas members. Meanwhile, Hamas will whine about the "humanitarian crisis" in order to extort more Western money for them to build and buy weapons. And when the auditors come calling, the money going to Gaza will be "Arab funds" freed up by the huge sums paid by the West and Israel to Fatah.

The PA will get a billion dollars for free in the coming months and you can be sure that much of it will go to the Fatah terrorists and some more will end up in Hamas' coffers. The mistakes of the past are being repeated - over and over and over again.

Read More

Ma'an loses its objectivity

Ma'an News has been, by far, the most objective news source in the PA. But since the Hamas takeover of Gaza, its remaining stringers there dare not say anything that could get them killed, and Ma'an will take unfounded Arab claims of Israeli attacks at face value.

In the last week there have been two examples: one where Hamas claimed that Israel fired on a car in southern Gaza, killing a family of five, and yesterday when a PRC shooting at the Erez crossing was blamed on Israel. In this latter case, Ma'an quotes Ha'aretz in reporting Israel's denial but it dishonestly ignores the very evidence that Ha'aretz mentions.

Ma'an:

The Israeli soldiers opened fire on the Palestinian civilians while they were waiting in an area known as the 'sleeve' at Erez Crossing. The Gazans were trying to leave through Israel and take up residence in the Palestinian West Bank.

Israeli denial

Israel has denied responsibility for the attack. However, the killed and injured Palestinians were hit with Israeli military bullets.

According to an Israeli investigation, reported in Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, on Tuesday, Israeli soldiers came under fire where they were stationed, several hundred metres from the Palestinian civilians. No injuries were reported among the Israeli troops.

Israeli soldiers claimed that they returned fire towards the 'assailants'. Officials from the Israeli forces said that the issue of the assassinated civilian is an internal Palestinian problem, which has nothing to do with the Israeli military.

Ha'aretz:

Responsibility for the attack was later claimed by the Popular Resistance Committees, a grassroots paramilitary organization.....

An initial investigation by the commander of the northern brigade of the Gaza Division, Colonel Menachem Katz, concluded that IDF troops were not responsible for the shooting incident.

Earlier, Palestinian sources said the Palestinian civilians were hit by IDF bullets.

According to the investigation, an IDF position in the area also came under fire, several hundred meters from where the Palestinian civilians were waiting. No IDF troops were wounded.

IDF soldiers fired a limited number of rounds against the assailants.

Palestinian sources said a gunman on a bicycle came close to the area where the civilians were waiting and threw a grenade and fired several bursts at the people.

The dead Palestinian was named as Jihad al-Madhoun, a relative of Samih al-Madhoun, a senior member of the Fatah-linked Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, who was lynched by Hamas several days ago.

Since Hamas wrested control of the Gaza Strip from the rival Fatah movement last week, the Erez Crossing has been crowded with Gazans trying to get away. Israel has let only a few through, citing its own security concerns.

Masked Hamas gunmen have erected a roadblock outside the terminal to keep waves of people from rushing to the border, and to look for Fatah officials trying to escape.

On several occasions, gunmen, some from Hamas and others from warring clans, have run into the tunnel, which leads to the border terminal, and fired at those waiting, only to be driven off by IDF fire and tear gas, witnesses said.

Read More

Followup on Hamas attacking Christian institutions

Soccer Dad pointed out to me that the irate head of the Gaza's Latin church, upset over Hamas' desecration of his church property, is in fact a totally anti-semitic and anti-Western nutcase.

Here are some MEMRI quotes of Father Manuel Musalam:

"Had we lived in the days when the Church was a [real] Church that controls the world - a Crusader war crueler than the Crusader wars of the past would have been waged [against Israel]… Where is Christianity?!… We called upon them: 'Save Jesus.' But it appears that the Christians [in the West] have no connection to us… We told the Christians in the West: In Afghanistan, you moved heaven and earth to protect the Buddha statue; in your belief and ours, Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity are much greater than a Buddha statue…"

"Therefore I, the Christian Palestinian, say in all rage and daring to the Christians of the world: You are loathsome! You are contemptible! You are cowards! – because you cannot carry the message of Jesus in your hearts. The message of Jesus is one of love, sacrifice, mercy, life, and manhood, and these Christians of the world have no mercy, no compassion, no manliness, no sacrifice. I do not mean only towards us, but even towards the Jews, as not only do the Jews kill us – we also kill them, because we are in a war of self-defense…"

"We – and I say this brutally, because he who remains silent is Satan – are facing the filthy Christians of the West… We hear that the American Congress is demanding that Bush unleash Israel to slaughter the Palestinians. What kind of Christian is this?! This is not Christianity; it is not even paganism. This is Christianity of the jungle. Our New Testament is not their New Testament, our Jesus is not their Jesus, our [Church of the] Nativity is not their [Church of the] Nativity, and our peace is not their peace. I will say still more: Our God is not their God…"

Father Manuel Musalam compared the armed Palestinians in the Church of the Nativity to Jesus on the cross: "…We kneel before the Palestinian in the besieged Church [of the Nativity]. He hungers, but he is steadfast; he thirsts, but he is steadfast. These words were not born in a vacuum. The one who said 'I am hungry' when he was on the cross was our Lord Jesus himself… Our Palestinian people in Bethlehem died like a crucified martyr, on the rock guarded by the Israeli soldiers armed from head to foot who have no compassion, love, life, or tolerance…"

"The Jew has a principle from which we suffer and which he tries to impose on people: the principle of the 'gentiles.' To him, the gentile is a slave. They [the Jews] give the [Palestinians] working in Israel only a piece of bread, and tell them: 'This piece of bread that you eat is taken from our children, and we give it to you so you will live not as free men on your land, but as a proletariat and slaves in Israel, to serve us…' The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are based on this principle, and anyone who reads the Protocols feels that we are in this period with the Jews …"

"The Church, the Pope, the Christians, and the New Testament clearly state that, according to Christian belief, the ones who killed Jesus are the Jews, and there is no way to deny or renounce this… The Jews are the ones who killed Jesus; after him, [they killed] the Christians, and after them, the Muslims. Now they are again killing both the Muslims and the Christians. Throughout history, we have seen that the Jews persecuted the Christians at the beginning of the Church, and now they are again persecuting the Church, and Islam…"

"As is known throughout the world, even in our time, they always accuse the Christians… The case of Pope Pius XII is bad enough. They accused him of terrible things… They attack the Church because the Pope was not as strict as they wanted in protecting the Jews from Nazism – while the Jews found shelter only in the Church and with Christian families…"[9]

So far in my series of the Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs I have only briefly touched on the attitude of Palestinian Arab Christians towards Jews. Many feel that they imported classical anti-semitism to the Arab Muslims at the turn of the 20th century. Even recently, Palestinian Arab Christian anti-semitism appears deep and endemic.

UPDATE: Hamas is threatening the Gaza Christians even as it denies attacking them:

By Aaron Klein
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

JERUSALEM – Christians can continue living safely in the Gaza Strip only if they accept Islamic law, including a ban on alcohol and on women roaming publicly without proper head coverings, an Islamist militant leader in Gaza told WND in an exclusive interview.

The militant leader said Christians in Gaza who engage in "missionary activity" will be "dealt with harshly."

The threats come two days after a church and Christian school in Gaza was attacked following the seizure of power in the territory by the Hamas terror group.

"I expect our Christian neighbors to understand the new Hamas rule means real changes. They must be ready for Islamic rule if they want to live in peace in Gaza," said Sheik Abu Saqer, leader of Jihadia Salafiya, an Islamic outreach movement that recently announced the opening of a "military wing" to enforce Muslim law in Gaza.

Jihadia Salafiya is suspected of attacking a United Nations school in Gaza last month, after the school allowed boys and girls to participate in the same sporting event. One person was killed in that attack.

"The situation has now changed 180 degrees in Gaza," said Abu Saqer, speaking from Gaza yesterday.

"Jihadia Salafiya and other Islamic movements will ensure Christian schools and institutions show publicly what they are teaching to be sure they are not carrying out missionary activity. No more alcohol on the streets. All women, including non-Muslims, need to understand they must be covered at all times while in public," Abu Asqer told WND.

"Also the activities of Internet cafes, pool halls and bars must be stopped," he said. "If it goes on, we'll attack these things very harshly."

Abu Saqer accused the leadership of the Gaza Christian community of "proselytizing and trying to convert Muslims with funding from American evangelicals."

"This missionary activity is endangering the entire Christian community in Gaza," he said.

Abu Saqer claimed there was "no need" for the thousands of Christians in Gaza to maintain a large number of institutions in the territory.

About 2,000 Christians live in the Gaza Strip, which has a population of over 1 million.

Abu Saqer said Hamas "must work to impose an Islamic rule or it will lose the authority it has and the will of the people."

His comments come after gunmen Sunday attacked Gaza's Latin Church and adjacent Rosary Sisters School, reportedly destroying crosses, bibles, pictures of Jesus and furniture and equipment. The attackers also stole a number of computers.

The attack was the first targeting of Christian institutions since Hamas last week staged a coup against the rival Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, seizing all Fatah positions and security compounds, essentially taking complete control of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas officials in Gaza claimed to WND Fatah was behind Sunday's church attack in an attempt to discredit Hamas to the international community.

Abu Saqer claimed he had "good information" the attack actually was a robbery aimed at the church's school computers, even though Bibles and Christian holy objects were destroyed.

Read More

July 9, 1942: When Arabs welcomed Jewish settlements

From the July 9, 1942 Palestine Post, a small article showing how excited the local Arabs were at the founding of a new Jewish settlement in the Negev named Dorot:

Read More

Fatah's hold on the West Bank is tenuous

The world is rushing to embrace the conventional wisdom of "Gaza=extremist Hamas, West Bank=moderate Fatah" and therefore use this as a basis of pushing the "peace" process forward, rewarding Mahmoud Abbas for his "moderation," and so forth.

The problem is that, like most conventional wisdom, this is a gross oversimplification.

In the local PA elections of 2005, before the Hamas victory in the legislative elections, Hamas won the majority of seats in Nablus (73% of the vote to Fatah's 13%) , Al-Bireh (72% of the vote) and Jenin (winning eight seats to Fatah's four.) Fatah didn't even win a majority in Ramallah; although it outpolled Hamas there it ended up tied with the Popular Front.

In other words, backing the corrupt and tattered PLO government in the West Bank may be as stupid as supporting Fatah in Gaza was.

Palestinian Arabs like to support winners, and Fatah is anything but a winner. Its inability to stand up to the numerically smaller Hamas forces in Gaza was nothing less than disgraceful in the Arab mind. Betting on Fatah now is as foolhardy as it ever has been.

One would hope, in vain, that the "experts" in the State Department and Kadima would know this.

Read More

Weapons lifecycle: US->Abbas->Fatah->Hamas

And it appears that the US has not learned its lesson yet:

American officials have asked the U.S. Congress to restore funding that was to beef up weapons, ammunition and other materiel for Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Force 17 personal militia last year.

The reason: Fatah lost a massive amount of military supplies when its Gaza forces were vanquished by Hamas last week in the PA civil war.

A PA official warned during the Hamas takeover that the terrorist faction had succeeded in grabbing “thousands of rifles, large amounts of ammunition and dozens of vehicles,” including armored jeeps and armored personnel carriers supplied by the U.S., Egypt and Israel. “This is really bad news for all,” he said.

According to the State Department, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch submitted the request at the end of recent Congressional hearings to restore $27 million in aid to the Fatah militia in order to help Force 17 re-arm.

The original aid package, more than $50 million, was approved six months ago to help train the Fatah forces under the direct supervision of U.S. military envoy Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton.

The package was trimmed by half however, after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned she could not guarantee that Hamas would not end up with the equipment supplied by the U.S.

Thousands of weapons and other materiel were shipped to the PA militia from American allies Egypt and Jordan, with Israel’s full knowledge and approval. Of those, however, many were confiscated by Hamas as it won smaller skirmishes with Fatah over the year.

Lt.-Gen. Dayton’s performance is now being questioned in the wake of his protégés’ stunning defeat at the hands of Hamas terrorists in Gaza, who honed their military skills under the tutelage of Iranian-backed Hizbullah terrorists in Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran.

Hamas' Al Aqsa Television broadcast footage on Thursday and Friday of Hamas gunmen brandishing American assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, rocket launchers and ammunition the U.S. reportedly provided to Fatah over the past few months. Hamas fighters also showed what they said were 10 American-provided armored personnel carriers the terror group said it seized from U.S.-backed Fatah security compounds it took over Tuesday.

Most of the American aid and weapons were transferred to Fatah's Force 17 fighters unit, which serves as Abbas' Presidential Guard and de facto police officers in Gaza and Judea and Samaria.

Many members of Force 17 are openly members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, Fatah's declared "military wing" which took responsibility for many suicide bombings in Israel the past two years. The Jewish state regularly arrests Force 17 members accused of carrying out shooting attacks against Israelis.

Read More

Hamas attacks Christian sites in Gaza

Surprise, surprise - Islamic extremists also happen to be Islamic supremacists. From AP:

A school and convent belonging to the Gaza Strip's tiny Roman Catholic community were ransacked, burned and looted during clashes around a major security headquarters, the head of the community said Monday.

Crosses were broken, a statue of Jesus was damaged, and prayer books were burnt at the Rosary Sisters School and nearby convent, said Father Manuel Musallem, head of Gaza's Latin church.

The damage took place on Thursday, but wasn't reported until days later because of the chaos that has prevailed since Islamic Hamas militants wrested power in Gaza, Musallem said. The religious compound is located near a key security headquarters Hamas captured Thursday on the final day of its Gaza takeover.

Gunmen used the roof of the school during the fighting, and the convent was "desecrated," Mussalem said.

"Nothing happens by mistake these days," he said.

Haniyeh condemned the attack on the religious compound and President Mahmoud Abbas of the rival Fatah movement said in statement late Sunday that the "barbaric" attack was the act of Hamas' militia.

Read More

Egyptian author on PalArab culture of violence

MEMRI translated an article written in May by liberal Egyptian author Kamal Gabriel, before the Hamas coup, that describes Palestinian Arab psychology perfectly.

"The All-Against-All Infighting… [Has] Become the Mental and Psychological Makeup of the Palestinian People"

"What is going on now in the Gaza Strip, since Israel withdrew from it, is a clear example that exposes the faults of what we have done. The domestic infighting among brothers of the same homeland, wretched from the occupation and wretched from the yielding of their culture, is too great and too dangerous to be [just] the result of differences of opinion among the factions, or the absence of a strong central government, or even of what they call the weapons anarchy.

"It is definitely all of this. But the most dangerous thing about this, and that which the bilateral meetings between the sides, or meetings under the auspices of a third party… or even the folkloric Arab League summits have been unable to overcome, is that the all-against-all infighting and its basic code have become the mental and psychological makeup of the Palestinian people, as a natural result of the predominant discourse of hostility and incitement. [This discourse] has been adopted by Palestinians of all persuasions and in all the factions - religious, pan-Arab revolutionary, and leftist. It is a discourse whose aim was sowing hatred, having recourse to violence, and enjoying spilling blood.

"At first it was directed against the so-called the Israeli enemy, and it uprooted any possibility of or tendency towards rational mutual comprehension or of recourse to discussion, dialogue, and negotiation - what is known as peaceful resolution - and it raised the slogan of 'clinging to the choice of resistance.' But one clings to goals, not methods, and resistance (meaning armed resistance) cannot, psychologically and culturally, be the only choice for peoples to achieve their goals, without there being any alternative…

"Perhaps this is [an example of] the only [psychological] state in which the goal and the means are seen to become united in the choice of violence. This occurs when someone is overcome with the spirit of vengeance…

"The culture and psychology of violence has been able to take possession of the Palestinian people for two reasons. The first is that the discourse of violence had already managed to be the only one on the scene, which was emptied of any counter-discourse when the rational thinkers fled or were forced to keep out of sight - [either] out of desperation or in order to preserve the wellbeing of themselves and their families amidst the vast flood of feelings of violence that began to sweep away everything in its path.

"The second reason is that the predominant discourse of violence, most of which was formed by the religious discourse, was not the discourse of a means that attempts to achieve a goal - for instance, the liberation of the homeland - but rather was a discourse of violence and sacred killing in the name of jihad, which the literature of violence considered to be a duty that had been neglected and which needed to be carried out by every believer. [This was written,] for instance, in 'Abd Al-Salam Farag's book The Neglected Duty, which has been an authoritative source for the jurisprudence of jihad since the 1970s."

"The Hatred was Transformed from Hatred of Zionism to Hatred of Jews, the Sons Of Apes and Pigs"

"This was translated into political language in the slogan that the Arab-Israeli struggle is an existential struggle, and not a struggle over borders, and its implementation in practice was the so-called martyrdom-seeking operations for killing Israeli civilians. The hatred was transformed from hatred of Zionism to hatred of Jews, the sons of apes and pigs.

"Perhaps no one has noticed - for where are we to find someone to notice, in the absence of reason and rationality? - that when you take an individual or a group away from the culture of using reason and peaceful dialogue, and replace it with the culture of violence and of killing those who are different, you cannot then afterwards control it and direct it to be used against one single side.

"This is what we said: It starts with the Zionist enemy who is occupying the Holy Land, and then the violence and the hatred spread dangerously, like fire, in the psyche of the one over which they have gained mastery. They consume everything around them - and the first thing they consume is the light of reason. The individual loses his natural balance, which is based on the balance between peaceful tendencies [that encourage] peace, and angry tendencies that incite to violence…

"Thus we observed, and gave our blessing to, the conflagrations of violence and hatred, and they extended from [being aimed at] the Zionist enemy to [being aimed at] anyone who befriended it or helped it - even if they helped us as well, and even if it was someone on whom we depended for medicine, food, and everything.

"Our violence and hatred extended to America, England, and the other Western countries, and there is a BBC journalist who is still a prisoner of our jihad-fighting organizations…"

"The Natural Consequence of… the Culture and Psychology of Violence… is the Fraternal Violence We See [Today]"

"The natural consequence of the rule of the culture and psychology of violence and its expansion is the fraternal violence we see [today], which has defied and will [continue to] defy all attempts to contain it - [violence among brothers] whom we all agree are miserable by any standard.

"The state of the Palestinian territories is perhaps the most critical in this respect… but we can give similar examples from all corners of what is called the greater Middle East - among them what is happening in Iraq among the Sunnis, the Shi'ites, and the Ba'thists as a result of the influence of the Ba'thist-Saddamist discourse…

"There are thousands of other examples, which seem at first sight less important and less acute in their level of violence, but that we assess as more serious because they indicate the expansion of the culture and psychology of violence and the rejection of discussion… This is among regular people in their daily lives…

"Violence naturally exists at all times and in every place. But we are in the midst of a striking growth in violence, not to say an increase at a catastrophic rate. In my estimation, this is the fruit that we are harvesting because we sowed thorns for over half a century.

"Thus, the crisis in the region is not the amount of disagreements in points of view or differences in interests [between ourselves] and our neighbors or the world. In both of these [cases], reason and dialogue can find solutions, whether comprehensive or partial, that are completely satisfactory, acceptable, or at least can be borne.

"Rather, the true crisis in the region is that the peoples of the region need psychological and cultural reeducation - which must necessarily be preceded by halting the discourse of violence, incitement, and hatred, in all its colors and classifications.

"But can this come about when the fires of hatred have already broken out [everywhere]?"

Any Westerner who dared to write this in a mass-media publication would be branded a racist.

Read More

160 dead Gazans in a week

The Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights has counted the Gaza dead from last Sunday to today, and counts 160 people. This is higher than I had counted - I was at 146 including some West Bank murders as well. So the revised total is now 289 (my count as of last Sunday morning) +160+3 West Bank deaths I've documented+5 dead civilians that Hamas killed but blamed on Israel=457 killed this year by each other.

They also count 769 injuries.

UPDATE: Another execution of a Hamas dude by Fatah in the West Bank. 458.

UPDATE 2: "Popular Resistance Committees" shoot at PalArabs waiting at the Erez crossing, killing one. PalArab media uniformly and wrongly blames Israel. 459. (Fatah also claimed that Hamas executed 5 in Gaza this morning, but I could find no corroboration.)

UPDATE 3: PalArab murdered Wednesday, arriving at a hospital with multiple gunshot wounds. 460.

UPDATE 4: A second executed today. Wafa mentioned two dead today. It is very interesting that Wafa has this news and Ma'an does not. 461.

Read More