Gaza Unbound

The inevitable discussion will turn to who lost Gaza to Hamas. I'd posit that this is the wrong question.

No one lost Gaza. It's been there all along. The Palestinians in Gaza have simply decided that Fatah's time has ended. They would instead back Hamas and the Islamists rather than Fatah and all their corruption and sticky fingers. The residents in Gaza chose this path, and now have to live with it.

Hamas has grown from being an offshoot of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in 1987 into the dominant force in Gaza. Hamas long dominated Gaza before this week's bloody elimination of Fatah and the PA from within Gaza. The elections last year proved that Hamas was the overwhelming favorite in Gaza, and showed that Fatah's power was waning.

Hamas has never wavered from its goal - the destruction of Israel. This vision is enshrined in the Hamas Charter, and they repeat that mantra at every opportunity. They do not recognize Israel's right to exist, and will refer to Israel simply in order to claim that they will eventually destroy it. For Hamas, it is a religious obligation.

This last point is one that the pseudorealist diplomats fail to grasp. This isn't a bargaining position for Hamas. It is a matter of their faith. Iran's former president notes that Hamas and Fatah are busy fighting the wrong enemy - they should be fighting Israel instead. Thanks for restating the obvious as we know that Iran would love to see Israel destroyed as well; the problem is that Israel wont go quietly and the Palestinians are busy trying to determine which bunch of terrorists is going to dominate the next chapter of Palestinian violence.

Hamas will not moderate as a result of now having tossed Fatah to the curb in Gaza. As I noted above, Hamas has dominated events in Gaza for a long time now, but the bloody hell they've inflicted on Gaza in the past week is a sign of things to come. Hamas has declared that they would purge Gaza of collaborators - with Israel or with Fatah, and they will make good on their word. While Hamas has freed some Fatah thugs, others have fled to Egypt.

Even the Hamas victory parade in Gaza City was not without violence - one person was killed and two wounded.

For Fatah, this is a crushing defeat and shows just how flawed the whole notion of the Palestinian Authority was. The PA was corrupt to the core and none of the security forces were wedded to the idea of Palestinian nationalism; they were more concerned about which terrorist group to ally with. Fatah is now trying to ensure that it can retain power in the West Bank by going after Hamas thugs there.

Abbas has announced that he's selected a Fatah member to be the new Prime Minister of the PA. The guy he selected is the current Finance Minister. The PA is now comprised of Fatah solely, as Hamas is essentially setting up a separate entity. Neither should be recognized as a legitimate representative of the Palestinians since neither is anything more than a terrorist organization dressed up so that it can process international aid.

Both Fatah and Hamas are calling for unity, which is laughable considering that both can't wait to kill the other side and their leadership.

Egypt has withdrawn its diplomats from Gaza.

Israel has said that it would continue to ship aid to Gaza, but only if now Palestinians were present at the crossing points - to reduce the possibility that terrorists might take advantage of the situation and chaos. Israel has also separated Hamas and Fatah thugs being held in Israeli jails to avoid riot situations (imagine the Sharks and Jets in West Side Story and throw in Ak-47s and religious obligations, and you get the idea).

The UN has shot down any idea of peacekeepers being sent to Gaza - or the Philadelphi corridor. No one wants to go into Gaza. Not Israel. Not Egypt. Not the UN. No one.

The New York Times reports that Gaza is calm, if you exclude the looting of formerly Fatah positions in the area. Fatah has fled, which is why things are seemingly quiet for now. The Times also reports that the White House appears ready to let Hamas seize Gaza. Sorry, but that's a fundamental misreading of the situation on the ground. Hamas was already in de facto control of Gaza before the fighting even began, so this just puts a cherry on top to seal the deal. It, however, shows the ongoing folly of trying to claim that there is a diplomatic solution to the situation there.

As the NY Post editorial notes, this should put to bed any notion that Israel ever had a partner in peace.

With Hamas in control of Gaza and the official breakup of the Hamas-Fatah unity government, it's no longer possible to pretend that Israel has a reasonable partner with which to negotiate.

That was never anything but a fiction, of course, but now that Hamas has promised to set up an Islamist rump-state (doubtless with the aid of its Iranian masters), it's clear that war-war h as won out over jaw-jaw.

So be it.

Now, when Hamas turns its guns on its chief target, Israel will have a clear field of fire to shoot back.

As it no doubt will have to do.

For nothing less than a vicious band of Islamist terrorists has triumphed in Gaza this week, after a prolonged game of Throw the Other Guy Off the Roof.

The problem is that the pseudorealist diplomats have never thought about the facts on the ground as they actually exist, and instead drempt up ways to force Israel to make concessions while never requiring the Palestinians to live up to their side of the bargain.

UPDATE:
Carl in Jerusalem points out the Hamas strategy of discrediting Fatah by exposing ties to Israel and the CIA is actually a page from the Israeli playbook when Israel discredited Arafat in 2002.

Meanwhile, PM Olmert and President Bush are scheduled to meet. That's sure going to be an interesting meeting, given the events of the past 72 hours. While I hope that they both decide to take a stand on Hamas and stick to it, knowing how Olmert has vacillated on issues of Israel's national security in the past, I am not too hopeful.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the situation in Gaza should not be discussed in a vacuum. It is part of a wider trend of Iranian influence in the region - Iran is operating through its proxy forces - including Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Sadr gang in Iraq - to expand its influence, and it is increasing its toehold in Lebanon, Iraq, and Gaza. That's a bad thing for the entire region - not just Israel and the US. The Sunni dominated countries have more to worry about than Israel - they fear Iran because of the Sunni-Shi'a clash.

Avoiding discussion of Iran ignores a major reason for the events of the past several years in the territories, Lebanon, and Iraq.

UPDATE:
John Podhoretz notes what should be blazingly apparent to all - Jews and Israel in Gaza was never the problem. It was the Palestinians all along who were the cause of all the troubles and the reason that the Palestinians do not have a state alongside Israel.

Gaza is Judenrein - emptied of all Jews, just as Hitler dreamed Germany would be. No Jews live in Gaza. No Jews patrol Gaza. It's Jew-Free-by-the-Sea, with a charming Mediterranean coast worth billions of dollars in tourism and trade.

So what's the problem?

The problem is that the Jews weren't the problem.

The problem is that the Palestinians are the problem: They are drenched in an ideology of blood and murder and suicide.

As I noted yesterday, Gaza had the potential to be a major international trading center, with tourist opportunities aplenty. Instead of massive infusions of international investment in hotels, airports, banking centers, casinos, and other trappings of modernity, we have terrorist training camps, devastated infrastructure, and jihadis running the show. The Palestinians have no one to blame but themselves for this situation. They had more than a year to show that they could govern - and all they did with that time is obliterate any semblance of law and order. Now, the new version of law and order will hit non-Islamists very hard.

UPDATE:
This WaPo editoral suggests that the fix was in - that Abbas let Hamas take Gaza, essentially serving Gaza on a platter to Hamas so that they have to deal with that mess. Hamas will have to decide whether to deal with Israel (I doubt it will), or try to deal with Egypt (which has its own interest to avoid any deal with terrorists aligned with both the Muslim Brotherhood that always has a hankering to assassinate Egyptian leaders and Iran). I suspect that Abbas recognized that Fatah was better off jettisoning Gaza and consolidating power in the West Bank to make a separate peace, if that is even possible. Of course, the article goes on to cast blame on Condi Rice and the Bush Administration. What Indyck fails to mention is that his boss, President Clinton pushed the PA in the first place, and its failures are ones that the current Administration has to deal with. Nice omission there.

UPDATE:
This is the Palestinian idea of diplomacy (courtesy of Snapped Shot):

This is Palestinian border control - make sure you empty your pockets and your pants (courtesy of LGF):

They're so professional looking wearing their balaclavas so that you can't see their faces.

UPDATE:
More defenestrations and looting in Gaza, while Fatah is busy looting Hamas-related 'charities' in the West Bank.

UPDATE:
So what does the UN have to say about the situation today? Well, they're demanding that humanitarian aid resumes. Who's fault is it that the aid had to be stopped? Where are the resolutions not only condemning the violence, but demanding accountability? *crickets*

“The shocking violence of recent days in Gaza, much of which has involved violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, has caused great alarm and sadness around the world,” Mr. Ban said in a statement released by his spokesperson.

Dozens of people have been killed in recent days amid fighting between members of the Hamas and Fatah movements in Gaza, and UN officials say the clashes are worsening the already perilous living situation of many Palestinian civilians.

In his statement Mr. Ban said he was particularly concerned about the ability of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the World Food Programme (WFP) and other agencies to deliver humanitarian assistance to the majority of the estimated 1.5 million people living in Gaza.

Anyone following the actions of Hamas would not be surprised at any of this. This is exactly what they've been promising all along. This isn't shocking, and UNRWA deserves to take the blame for allowing the terrorists to build up in Gaza right under their noses.

UPDATE:
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UPDATE:
Hamas claims that they're going to make a major announcement about kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston. They've been holding him all along, and now we're supposed to feel better about the terrorist group that they're possibly releasing him? Sorry, it doesn't work that way, but the BBC no doubt will run stories praising Hamas for releasing him and Johnston will no doubt claim that he was treated well, despite the fact that his life was repeatedly threatened.

This isn't a surprise - Gaza residents already realizing that things were much better when Israel was running things. Well, you voted for Hamas and war. You get to live with that result. You chose the more violent of two terrorist groups and you chose a path of incessant war. Israel would have been quite happy to live in peace alongside a Palestinian state. Palestinian thugs like Arafat made sure that would never happen. Generations of Palestinians have been taught to hate - and now Hamas throws the Islamist doctrine on the fires of hatred and misery.

So, what did Hamas win in the fighting? Well, it was a lot more than a new car. They scored big - tons of ammo, weapons, armored vehicles, many sent by Jordan and Egypt. But quite a few of those weapons were made in the US and EU - all to bolster the PA security forces, which by and large were Fatah terrorists.

Hamas has captured thousands of assault rifles and scores of combat vehicles financed by the United States and supplied by Egypt and Jordan to the Palestinian Authority.

The Islamic movement acquired the weapons, ammunition and vehicles during Hamas’s capture of security installations in the Gaza Strip aligned with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. For the most part, Fatah-aligned PA officers fled the Hamas assaults.

“I would say that they have most of the weapons and armored vehicles sent by Egypt and Jordan over the last year,” a PA security officer said.

The officer said Hamas seized thousands of U.S.-origin M-16 and Soviet-origin AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifles as well as military radios. He said other booty captured by Hamas included trucks, mortars and hand grenades.

Those mortars and grenades will certainly come in handy, as will the armored vehicles when the inevitable conflict with Israel happens.

Meanwhile, Haniyeh says that the Abbas emergency government is illegal. Heh. Terrorism is illegal, but that hasn't stopped Abbas or Haniyeh either. Thugs do what they want regardless of law, morals, or ethics.

Mashaal says that Hamas was forced to take over Gaza. What?! No one was forcing Hamas to do anything. No one forced Hamas to throw Fatah thugs off rooftops or murder people in cold blood. No one forced Hamas to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity by firing on civilian populations in hospitals. No, Hamas had many choices, but it chose the most violent one.

Do I have to remind folks that despite the fact that Hamas and Fatah are running a civil war against each other, the hammer will eventually come down on Israel to concede even more to one or both?