Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Moderate?

A recent poll carried out in the Palestinian territories by a Palestinain organization showed a shocking result, fully 84% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza supported the massacre of students in the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem 2 weeks ago in which 8 were killed. Also, 65% of Palestinians support the firing of Kassam rockets into Israeli cities.
Under these circumstances two things are obvious, 1. there is no such thing as an "innocent civilian," the vast majority of Palestinians approve the killing of Jewish children and civilians and are at least complicit if not actively involved in such activities (that's why there are so many "work accidents" in homes when bombs go off inadvertantly); 2. If given a choice the majority of Palestinians would vote for a Hamas Govt. over all the PA, Gaza and the West Bank. In fact the poll shows that for the first time PM Haniyeh of Gaza would beat Pres Abbas of the PA by a small margin.
This emphasizes that Pres. Abbas and PM Salam Fayyad of Fatah on the West Bank are in a minority Govt., that is not representative of the Palestinians or even of Fatah. The current negotiations taking place in Yemen to try to reconcile the two factions, Fatah and Hamas, are reputed to have achieved some success. They talk of a unity government, in which both Fatah and Hamas will share power. But, Israel has made it clear that it will not deal with any Govt. that includes Hamas, and Pres. Abbas has also immediately distanced himself from any such agreement.
Meanwhile there are other negotiations going on thru Egyptian auspices. Although they reported that Israel had agreed to a ceasefire with Hamas, this has been strongly denied by the Israeli Govt. But there is a possibility that Hamas will agree to Fatah taking over the currently closed Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt. However, since Hamas has also been complaining that its members in Egyptian gaols have been tortured, there is little credibility to these reports.
In the West, Abbas and Fayyed are known as "moderates" or "pragmatists, "but indeed there are very few such Palestinians, and one reason is that most of them were murdered. A new book, "Army of Shadows" by Hillel Cohen (Univ CA press) has documented the murder of thousands of Palestinians leading up to the 1948 Israeli war of independence who proposed accepting the idea of dealing with a permanent Jewish State. Also, after the 1967 war and since then murders of Palestinian "collaborators" has been a constant feature of the PA. This is a main reason why there are so few moderates alive today among the Palestinians and why so little progress can be made in real peace negotiations.
US VP Dick Cheney is visiting Israel now, one of a series of recent political visitors, including Condy Rice, John McCain, several European PMs, and the Russian FM Lavrov, who proposed another Middle East peace conference in Moscow. Well, talk doesn't hurt, unless some actually believe that it can accomplish anything. The current US position is to support Abbas by throwing money at him, and ignore the real situation, that he is powerless and that Hamas is growing in strength with Iranian support. Instead of worrying about Israeli settlements the West should be worrying about Iranian satellites.

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