Guernica Redrawn

Hamas, Fatah, and the other regional terrorist groups and state-sponsors of terrorism, including Syria and Iran, are busy trying to recreate the conditions found in Picasso's masterpiece, Guernica.

The situation is little changed from yesterday. Hamas is still threatening Israel. Fatah is still playing games with the West, hoping to cash in for just a little while longer, all while wondering whether they can hold out against Hamas or will Israel be forced to finish Hamas off for them.

Abbas's office claims that Hamas is getting its marching orders from Iran.

An aide to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday Iran had encouraged Hamas to use violence to take control of the Gaza Strip.

"Iran supports non-democratic groups in Palestine, Lebanon and in Iraq and we hold Iran responsible for encouraging Hamas to carry out its coup in Gaza," senior Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo said.

That wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Iran, as usual, blames Israel for all the problems.

Hamas muzzling anyone speaking out against them isn't surprising either. They've shut down pro-Fatah radio stations in Gaza. You see, competition would be bad:

However, after Hamas defeated its rival Fatah in days of infighting and seized the Gaza Strip completely, Al-Horria Radio along with other pro-Fatah radio stations in Gaza is looted and closed.

"There is nothing here except for these scattered papers," she croaked with tear drops rolling down her cheek. and could be seen in the dark studio where the lamps were also looted.

Now, Fayrouz lost her job, while her fiance lost her voice in the Israeli jail.

In the Gaza Strip, only the Islamic radios, mainly Hamas' and the Islamic Jihad (Holy War)'s stations, remained broadcasting.

Fatah has broken off all contact with Hamas. Hamas says that they're large and in charge. Well, it's not as though they were communicating all that well before. It is, however, quite funny that Fatah is not talking to Hamas while the US and Israelis are busy sending humanitarian aid to the same terrorist group. Well, it's funny in a real sarcastic and ironic fashion. Fatah, a terrorist group in its own right, has decided that it is best not to talk with Hamas, another terrorist group that is even more violent than itself. Yet, the US and Israelis are busy providing humanitarian aid to Gaza and are propping up Fatah's Abbas.

Oh, and Fatah is again making demands of Israel to release convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti. Fatah is in absolutely no position to make demands on anyone these days, and yet it comes out with these kinds of pronouncements. Fatah's lucky that they're getting support from the US, Israel, and even China, because if they withdrew their support, Fatah would fold like a house of cards. Barghouti's name has repeatedly come up in relation to a prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit, so this is yet another attempt to use that situation to pressure Israel to release terrorists.

Other members of Fatah are blaming Dahlan for the crisis. Heh. Terrorists blaming terrorists for the fact that Fatah has always operated in this fashion. Arafat promoted the multiple factions so that he could remain in charge. Abbas inherited this, despite being obligated to create a single force under Oslo and other agreements with the US and West.

It was Arafat the created the entangled system of parallel security organizations that competed with each other for authority and power, in order to guarantee that none would challenge his power. Not only have these organizations fought each other, but their commanders were all too pleased to watch their rivals in Fatah lose battles against Hamas. Dahlan, who assumed his post two months ago, could not alter the culture of the organization.

Israel has sent tanks to the Erez junction to hopefully prevent a recurrence of yesterday's attacks by Hamas on fleeing Fatah thugs. Again, isn't it ironic that Israelis are being sent to protect Palestinians from themselves?

Several IDF tanks entered the Gaza Strip through the Erez Crossing on Tuesday afternoon. Military sources said the move was to protect the crossing from incidents similar to Monday's Hamas attack
during which Palestinians opened fire and threw a grenade at a nearby military outpost.

At least one Palestinian was killed, reportedly a Fatah military commander named Jihad Madhun.

Meanwhile, Israel has provided 11 tons of medical supplies to Gaza. Hamas will be sure to appropriate that for themselves, given that they're the ones with the guns. Humanitarian aid rarely goes where it is supposed to when you not only have failed states, but when you have terrorists and thugs dominating every aspect of the polity. Gaza is no different.

Israel, however, has decided to end a policy of letting the Israeli Magen David Alom (Red Cross) evacuate further Palestinians from Gaza. The possibility that some might be evacuated led to concerns that there might be additional riots and incidents at the crossing.

No food shortages are foreseen in Gaza, primarily because Israel is allowing humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza. The Gazans aren't exactly producing food for themselves, or any other items of worth for that matter. To the Palestinians, Hamas thugs had taught that to give oneself over to jihad was the highest honor - to become a suicide bomber the ultimate goal.

Alan Johnston remains a prisoner of the Palestinian terrorist group Army of Islam. Some reports indicate that the Army of Islam was given an ultimatum by Hamas to release Johnston or else face military action. Where had Hamas or Fatah been for the past three months? They were clearly waiting for an opportune moment to push their own agenda - to put on a facade of humanitarianism, while the reality is quite different.

Russia, meanwhile, is sending a shipment of fighter jets to Syria.

The business daily Kommersant said that Russia had begun delivering five MiG-31E jets under a deal apparently negotiated during Syrian President Bashar Assad's trip to Moscow last autumn.

Commenting on the report, Russia's Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in a statement that "all of Russia's deals in the sphere of military-technical cooperation comply with international law and Russia's obligations under various treaties and United Nations resolutions." He would not elaborate.

Conflict Blotter points out that Gaza is an arms bazaar with more weapons entering the area that you can possibly imagine. Prices for the ubiquitious AK-47 have dropped by half from $2,800 to $1,400, which means that the arms dealers have to increase their sales to make up for the per unit costs. All those weapons, and Hamas is more than willing to use them. So are the other thugs and terrorist groups in Gaza. Fatah? Not so much.

Are the Hamas thugs going to engage in law and order administration of Gaza? Well, some are. However, it's quite telling when a looter had to do backbreaking work for hours, just to net $2.50 per kilo of copper wire taken from the Erez crossing. What it says is that there simply isn't anything to loot - at least not after Arafat's home was emptied.

Oh, and it figures that Jimmy Carter would show himself to be utterly deluded. He thinks that the US and EU must bring Hamas and Fatah together in Palestinian territories. The only thing that unites Hamas and Fatah is their unending desire to kill Israelis.

Elsewhere, the fighting in Lebanon between Fatah al Islam and the Lebanese military continues, with more two more Lebanese soldiers reported killed.

UPDATE:
To pick up on what former President Carter had to say about the situation in Gaza and the Palestinian plight:

Carter said the American-Israeli-European consensus to reopen direct aid to the new government in the West Bank, but to deny the same to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, represented an "effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples."

While seeking to boycott the Hamas leadership because of its refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel, Europe and the U.S. have continued to send humanitarian aid to Gaza through the United Nations and other organizations.

During his speech to Ireland's eighth annual Forum on Human Rights, the 83-year-old former president said monitors from his Carter Center observed the 2006 election in which Hamas won 42 percent of the popular vote and a majority of parliamentary seats.

Carter said that election was "orderly and fair" and Hamas triumphed, in part, because it was "shrewd in selecting candidates," whereas a divided, corrupt Fatah ran multiple candidates for single seats.

Far from encouraging Hamas' move into parliamentary politics, Carter said the U.S. and Israel, with European Union acquiescence, has sought to subvert the outcome by shunning Hamas and helping Abbas to keep the reins of political and military power.

"That action was criminal," he said in a news conference after his speech.

"The United States and Israel decided to punish all the people in Palestine and did everything they could to deter a compromise between Hamas and Fatah," he said.

Carter said the United States and others supplied the Fatah-controlled security forces in Gaza with vastly superior weaponry in hopes they would "conquer Hamas in Gaza" — but Hamas this month routed Fatah because of its "superior skills and discipline."

Carter still doesn't get it. Hamas will not give up the ghost of trying to destroy Israel. They are not a partner for peace. Fatah pays lip service to diplomacy and are both corrupt and devoted to destroying Israel (they've just gotten waylaid by the sticky fingers syndrome common to all thuggish regimes).

As noted above, Fatah was heavily factionalized - a byproduct of Arafat's methods of staying in power by preventing any one thug beneath him acquiring too much power. It had nothing to do with superior skills or discipline. It doesn't take much dicipline to throw Fatah thugs off rooftops, unless you're trying to keep score for accuracy.

Carter has never met an election he didn't certify, even when they were rigged or involved terrorist groups. There's no reason to treat Hamas as anything but a terrorist group. Indeed, there's no reason to treat Fatah any different than Hamas, but the diplomats have made the decision to look the other way - a fatal flaw in the current approach, but it's the one that started well before the current Administration.

Carter is right in one respect; the West shouldn't be playing favorites. We should be doing absolutely nothing to take sides and to prevent anyone else from taking sides. Let the Palestinians duke it out between themselves with no one else arming them, because once they've finished their own civil war, they'll turn those same weapons on Israel.

UPDATE:
The view in Tripoli, Lebanon as Lebanese forces continue pounding Fatah al Islam positions. This particular building has been hit with hundreds of shells, and is barely standing:

Fatah thugs in Jenin practicing their best impression of seig heil:


Baghdad, Iraq was the scene of a major terrorist attack, where a Shi'ite mosque was bombed and at least 78 murdered and 200 injured in the resulting carnage:


UPDATE:
The Israelis and Americans have pledged to assist Abbas. That's coming from President Bush and PM Olmert, and not simply their press flacks. I have a real bad feeling about this. Not only is this bound to backfire, but Hamas and others will use Israel's support for Fatah to further radicalize Gaza. That, and Fatah has no love for Israel or the US either, and sees this simply as a continuation of the gravy train. Calling Abbas a moderate is just nonsense. He is no such thing.

And the claim that if we had simply provided even more support to Abbas than we had months back that Hamas would not have been in the position to take over Gaza is simply false on its face. Hamas thugs are ideologically driven, and Fatah sees dollar signs. They have different motivations, which showed itself when Hamas overran the numerically superior Fatah thugs at the Palestinian security headquarters. The Fatah thugs simply didn't have the will to fight, and lacked the leadership among its terrorist leaders to put up a fight. As noted above, Fatah doesn't like any one thug getting too much power, so there was no coordination. All the money in the world wont fix those problems; it will simply increase the number of weapons that will fall in to Hamas's hands.

UPDATE:
Compare and contrast time - Fouad Ajami v. Carter. It's no contest. Ajami identifies the problems, and notes it has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with those who lead the Palestinians.

The Palestinian ruin was a long time in coming. No other national movement has had the indulgence granted the Palestinians over the last half-century, and the results can be seen in the bravado and the senseless violence, in the inability of a people to come to terms with their condition and their needs.

The life of a Palestinian is one of squalor and misery, yet his leaders play the international game as though they were powers. An accommodation with Israel is imperative — if only out of economic self-interest and political necessity — but the Palestinians, in a democratic experiment some 18 months ago, tipped power to a Hamas movement whose very charter is pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state and the imposition of Islamist rule.

The political maxim that people get the leaders they deserve must be reckoned too cruel to apply to the Palestinians. Before Hamas, for four decades, the vainglorious Yasir Arafat refused to tell his people the basic truths of their political life. Amid the debacles, he remained eerily joyous; he circled the globe, offering his people the false sense that they could be spared the consequences of terrible decisions.

In a rare alignment of the universe, there came Mr. Arafat’s way in the late 1990s an American president, Bill Clinton, eager to redeem Palestinian claims and an Israeli soldier-statesman, Ehud Barak, who would offer the Palestinians all that Israeli political traffic could bear and then some.

But it was too much to ask of Mr. Arafat to return to his people with a decent and generous compromise, to bid farewell to the legend that the Palestinians could have it all “from the river to the sea.” It was safer for him to stay with the political myths of his people than to settle down for the more difficult work of statehood and political rescue.

Read it all.

UPDATE:
Hamas vows to car bomb its way to power in the West Bank. They'll lay low, but they're going to put the screws to Abbas and Fatah thugs. Count on it. This is the terrorist group that Carter wishes the US to back, or at least get to talk with Fatah thugs. Need we remind Carter that federal law prohibits direct contact and the provision of aid to Hamas?

Still, the quotes about numbers of Hamas or Fatah thugs is based on self-serving statements by those involved. Hamas has every reason to inflate its numbers, while Fatah wishes to do the opposite.

UPDATE:
Investors Business Daily takes Carter to task for his ravings:

Has Jimmy Carter gone off the deep end? He's now scolding the West for refusing to bankroll Hamas terrorists who've just seized power at gunpoint in Gaza. It's a new low in coddling terrorism.

And it gets better from there.

Michelle Malkin rips into Carter and his ongoing anti-Israel and anti-US position, but also notes that US taxpayers have been providing assistance to Hamas for years, in the form of humanitarian aid. Carl in Jerusalem is quite right in insisting the world has gone mad.

Others blogging Carters ravings: Don Surber, Ed Morrissey, Ed Driscoll, LGF, Blue Crab Boulevard, Macranger, and Instapundit.

Hamas complains that the West is playing tricks with aid. No kidding. You're a terrorist group hellbent on destroying Israel, and we're just supposed to give you the means to do that? Sure. Well, we actually are - in the form of humanitarian aid to Gaza, which frees up Hamas funds from elsewhere to continue buying arms and paying off thugs in the black market.

An Israeli court! has required that Israel provide medical assistance to Gazans at Erez crossing. No good deed goes unpunished. Israel has to provide assistance to those who would, on any other day, be preparing to go to war with Israel.

The High Court of Justice instructed the State Attorney's Office on Tuesday night that "everything Israel can do to save human life must be done today," following a petition submitted by "Doctors for Human Rights" and "Gisha" that Erez Crossing be opened immediately to allow sick and wounded Gazans into Israel.

The High Court decided that a panel of three judges would rule on the matter Wednesday in an emergency hearing and demanded that until then, the State Attorney's Office respond to Tuesday's ruling in place of the IDF.

Some 190 Palestinians holed up in a stench-filled concrete tunnel at the border crossing with northern Gaza , desperately trying to flee the Hamas-controlled Strip.

Meanwhile, hoping to prevent a humanitarian crisis and to end the standoff at the Erez Crossing, defense officials revealed that Israel had asked Egypt to evacuate some 100 Palestinian women and children holed up at the border terminal.

The officials said Israel expected Egypt to play a role in solving the crisis at Erez, where a few hundred Gazans - mostly affiliated with Fatah - have taken refuge from Hamas.

That is no ones fault but the Palestinians themselves. They can't go to hospitals in Gaza because Hamas turned them into shooting galleries - eliminating rivals and killing civilians.

There are also reports that Hamas would like a dialogue with Fatah, but I don't think it means what most folks think it means.

Bush and Olmert still think a two-state solution is possible? How? What are they going to do that will eliminate Hamas from the equation? Or will Fatah fall by the wayside because Western support will push more folks to radicalize? Fatah is quite weak right now, despite the support from the West. They simply can't get the job done and that ignores the inalienable fact that they're still a terrorist group in their own right.