Gaza, Syria, and the Propagandists In Action

The Syrians are at it again, trying to blame Israel for not ceasing to exist - or as the Syrians are phrasing it - Israel is thwarting the peace process for more than 30 years.

Assad is wondering for how much longer Arabs are going to offer land for peace deals. Israel should be asking that very question - why are they being forced to give land for terrorists to do nothing but fire on Israeli cities ad nauseum just as they've done since Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. Hamas has turned it into a terrorist breeding ground. To that end, Hamas says that it's developing new missile technologies, but denies that it's getting assistance from Iran. Well, they may be right - the direct military assistance is coming via Syria (from Iran). After all, Hamas leaders have a very cozy relationship with Damascus, with their leader Khalid Meshaal running things right alongside Assad in Damascus.

It's all too clear that Hamas is getting assistance from Iran, via training, sharing tactics from Hizbullah (another of Iran's proxies), and general support from the mad mullahs in Iran and the pencil necked geek Assad in Damascus. Hamas continues to say that it's ready to talk a ceasefire (a hudna really), which suggests that Israel's pinpoint strikes against Hamas terror infrastructure is getting the job done (far too slowly for my tastes, but Hamas is starting to cry uncle, which is why you've got Syria running interference and trotting out their diplo-babble).

Hamas is trying to get other countries on board with the Yemeni backed plan to reconcile the rift between Hamas and Fatah. To Hamas, the Palestinian civil war between Fatah and Hamas has taken away from the more important goal of destroying Israel. After all, Hamas continues to operate under its core tenet of seeking Israel's destruction and supplanting the Jewish State of Israel with an Islamic one.

So far, neither Hamas nor Fatah is going to concede on anything, which is typical for their ongoing fighting.

After months of hostilities, the factions agreed this week to restart direct talks to "return the Palestinian situation to what it was before the Gaza incidents." But an apparent dispute quickly broke out.

Hamas has said talks will start on April 5, while Abbas's office insisted the Islamist group must first relinquish control of the Gaza Strip – a condition Hamas has rejected.

According to the website, Mashaal also urged Arab leaders to support the group's fight against Israel and to protest against an Israeli-led blockade of Gaza, defending militant cross-border rocket attacks from Gaza as self-defense.

It's interesting that Hamas singles out Israel's blockade of Gaza, but chooses to ignore Egypt's blockade of Gaza at their border with Gaza. Egypt has no love lost for Hamas, given that Hamas invaded Egypt when it blew up the border fence and enabled thousands of Gazans, including many terrorists to stream into the Sinai.

There's much talk about how Israel is engaged in a siege of Gaza. None of that would have ever been necessary had the Palestinians chosen not to engage in a war against Israel ever since Israel withdrew in 2005. Since 2005's decision to withdraw, Israel has been under constant fire from the Palestinians there - more than 7,000 rockets fired in all, and more than 1,000 in just the first three months of 2008. No nation would ever tolerate such actions, and yet Israel allows not only humanitarian aid to pass into Gaza despite knowing that Hamas controls its dispersal, but it provides water and electricity to Gaza even as Hamas seeks to target the very power plants providing the power to Gaza.

Meanwhile, media outlets and humanitarian groups are touting how Israel has left the sewage infrastructure in a complete mess that is incapable of handling a growing population.

Design errors, a fast growing population, the halting in recent years of development projects, and restrictions on imports have rendered the Gaza Strip's sewage system incapable of handling the enclave's waste, experts said.

The result is the pumping of partially treated or untreated sewage directly into the sea, and the seepage of dirty water into the ground and groundwater.

"The environmental situation in Gaza is bad and getting worse," an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expert on water and sanitation said in an interview with IRIN.

While exact statistics are unavailable, 30,000-50,000 cubic metres of partially treated waste water and 20,000 cubic metres of raw sewage end up in rivers and the Mediterranean Sea. Some 10,000-30,000 cubic metres of partially treated sewage end up in the ground, in some cases reaching the aquifer, polluting Gaza's already poor drinking water supply.

Gaza's power woes have exacerbated the situation. When power is limited, pumping sewage away from homes takes priority, leaving little left over for treatment, Monther Shoblak, head of the Gaza Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, told IRIN.

Here's the thing - if the Palestinians had bothered to use the pipes meant for sewage lines and not turned them into kassam rockets, they would have a sewage system that works properly. See also here and here and here. There's also concerns that if Gaza goes forward with their sewage plans to pipe the effluent into the Mediterranean, that it would affect the water quality of the desalinization plant in Ashkelon.

Power is limited only because the terrorists seek to run propaganda stories about Israel withholding power, when it is in actuality Hamas holding the power hostage. The media then runs them without question. The terrorists invented a crisis, and then stage managed the scenery with complicity of a compliant media that doesn't bother to take a critical look at the photos and stories they run.

Yet, not everyone falls for the media games, but the media regularly turns a blind eye to the propaganda and casts Israel as the evil actor, when the Palestinian terrorists are the ones who should be cast out.