Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas said today he wasn’t backing down from his plan to try and get the United Nations to recognize an independent state without it first having to make peace with Israel. Abbas believes that if the UN General Assembly votes in the coming months to recognize the PA as a nonmember observer state — an upgrade from its current status — it will give him more leverage with the United States as well as make it easier for the Palestinians to harass the Jewish state in forums like the International Criminal Court. But the leaders of the real independent Palestinian state aren’t interested in helping Abbas get a make believe one.
More than 80 rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel over the weekend as Hamas unleashed a barrage that wounded several Israelis and damaged buildings in Sderot and the Sha’ar Hanegev area. The motive for the escalation from the normal volume of fire over the border (more than 600 missiles have been fired at Israel from Gaza in 2012 up until Saturday) from the Hamas-run enclave is a matter of speculation. But the most logical explanation is a desire on the part of the terrorist group that exercises sovereignty in Gaza to remind the world that it is they, and not Abbas and his Fatah, that are in control of events. This latest surge in terror from the place that is an independent Palestinian state in all but name also is a heads-up to even those inclined to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause of the nature of that state and what would happen if they had the same freedom of action in the West Bank alongside Israel’s main population centers.
One of the main reasons the PA’s first attempt to get UN recognition failed last year — why the so-called “diplomatic tsunami” never materialized — was the understanding even on the part of Israel’s critics that such a move was rendered impossible by the fragmented nature of Palestinian politics. Abbas not only doesn’t control Gaza, the government there is, for all intents and purposes, the sovereign over the area. Even if Israel withdrew tomorrow from the West Bank, it would mean the corrupt and incompetent Fatah ran part of a state of “Palestine” while Hamas ruled another with an iron fist. That is a formula for chaos and more violence, not independence.
Despite off-and-on negotiations for a unity government, Hamas is carefully biding its time as it plots an eventual West Bank takeover. It certainly has no interest in seeing Abbas, who is currently serving the eighth year of a four-year presidential term, win a victory at the UN. The recent surge in terror attacks on Israeli targets serves to bolster Hamas’s popularity since in the upside-down world of Palestinian politics, parties gain ground by violence against Israel and the Jews rather than doing something for their own people. But it also helps to undercut Abbas’s pretensions to leadership over a unified people seeking redress at the UN.
Some may wonder whether Hamas terrorism, like the recent kind words directed at former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert by Abbas, are intended to influence the January elections in the Jewish state. That’s doubtful, but even if true it is a futile gesture. The vast majority of Israelis long ago gave up on the Palestinians. They understand that a sea change will have to take place in their political culture before a leader or a party willing to actually end the conflict with Israel can be produced. That’s why the notion that Olmert or anyone else could put together a coalition to defeat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by running on a platform seeking to revive the peace process is about as likely as Fatah and Hamas competing peacefully in a democratic election and then working together to ease the plight of their people.
The reality of life in southern Israel is brutal and will, no doubt, create more pressure on Netanyahu to eventually act decisively to clip the wings of the growing military threat in Gaza. The Iron Dome anti-missile system has had some limited successes, such as the interception this weekend of rockets heading for the cities of Beersheba and Ashkelon. But the towns along the border like Sderot are still getting pasted. Above all, the near-daily assault from Gaza brings home to Israelis the real meaning of Palestinian independence.
For those who might be wondering what the State Department's reaction is to this latest round of war crimes committed by the leadership in Gaza, wonder no more: silence. Not one statement has been issued in Washington condemning these rocket attacks. At least American Ambassador Dan Shapiro, who is in Israel, issued a statement so I guess State can hide behind that: n n"Our thoughts are with the residents of southern Israel, who continue to be bombarded with missile attacks from terrorist organizations in Gaza. The United States supports Israel's right to defend itself and its citizens from these attacks". n nBy contrast, when a mosque was subjugated to an act of vandalism a few months back, State issued a separate press release (rightfully) condemning that malicious act within hours of it occurring. n nI'll take bets now that the first question at tomorrow's State Dept. press briefing will be about Palestinian causalities. n nAs for the media, naturally the BBC, CNN, and Guardian have ledes with Israel's response but downplay it's cause. And Israel-basher Tom Friedman has yet another column today telling Israel to go to hell.
Would it be a stretch to say that Hamas likely feels empowered by Obama's reelection? n n
Hamas is practically in the employ of the Obama administration. BTW if Susan Rice becomes Secretary of State the US will enact boycotts against Israel Jews who live or work on the other side of the Green Line. My guess he'd go so far and to bar them entry to the US.
Whatever Hussein and affirmative action sidekick Susan (Hamas) Rice do, most American Jews will quickly find a way to rationalize their actions and fall in line. So much for the anti-Semitic "Jewish lobby" thesis. If only we really were as powerful as Tom Friedman and those who published Der Sturmer believed.
Didn't you hear how emotionally Obama talked about his visit to Sderot? Israelis have nothing to fear. Obama got their back.
Of course it was silence. Rockets aimed at Israeli towns don't endanger peace. Terrorist attacks in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem don endanger peace. The PA glorifying and inciting the murder of Jewish civilians don't endanger peace. n nNow, if Hamas or the PA were to issue a building permit for a Jewish owned apartment building, THAT would endanger peace, and be appropriately condemned by the Obama administration. n nAnd by Idubinsky.
Besieged Palestinian Gaza is an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly…and, surprise, surprise – they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment? Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now under attack you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an accommodation. And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland.
When your facts and assumptions are all wrong JohnWV, it is no surprise you come up with idiotic conclusions.
Now, my guess is, John, that you'd be mighty upset if Israel smartened-up and actually did a few of those things you slander it with. A few artillery barrages down the trajectories of the rockets and a mere fortnight without free Israeli power, water, food shipments and access to medical service in Israel might focus and humble a few minds perhaps, yours included.
No mention by JohnWV that Gaza's border crossings leading into Israel, through which thousands of Gazan workers passed each day, were closed as the result of 140 suicide bombing attacks between 2000 and 2007 that killed more than 500 Israelis. n nNo mention by JohnWV that since 2001 more some 13,000 rockets and mortar shells have been fired from Gaza at civilian targets in southern Israel. n nNo mention by JohnWV that Gaza also shares a border with Egypt. The some 1,000 tunnels under this border have been used to freely import race horses, construction materials, luxury cars as well as missiles. n nNo mention by JohnWV that Gaza's population has increased by more than 400% since 1967. (I suppose Israel is also to blame for this.) n nNo mention by JohnWV that life expectancy in Gaza is higher than in Venezuela, Malaysia, Bulgaria, Jamaica, Egypt, Brazil and Turkey, just to name a few countries. Similarly, no mention by JohnWV that infant mortality is lower in Gaza than in Mexico, the Philipines, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Turkey and Egypt. n nNo mention by JohnWV that the Hamas charter calls for the murder of all Jews (not just Israelis) and rejects any negotiated settlement with Israel. n nInsufficient food in Gaza? JohnWV has obviously never visited Gaza's new shopping malls or dined at the Roots or Al Salam restaurants. n nAnd of course, no mention by JohnWV of the peace offers made by Israeli prime ministers Barak and Olmert, which would have resulted in Palestinian independence along the 1967 borders with agreed upon land swaps, but which were rejected by Arafat and Abbas.
I would bet the average Arab in Gaza earns more in foreign aid than many in the US earn in a year, and has more access to better health care than a significant subsegment of the US population. They are certainly better off materially than most arabs elsewhere in the world, and 'west bank' Arabs have more political freedoms than any arabs anywhere else within Arab countries. They put up with their share of corruption, but no more than other arab countries. n nThey are not allowed a standing army, however, because they are genocidal. n nWe don't let children play with matches. When they get older, perhaps, but not today.
The AT-4 Kornet missile Hamas used this week costs $800,000 per unit in blocks of 8 missiles and a guidance station. Hamas is said to have about 300 units. I don't know about Arab accounting but in the rest of the world that's a hell of a lot of other things they could afford.
Wow. No doubt JohnWV will say that it is a natural for them to want Kornet missiles. After all, they have to wait in line at Israeli hospitals, and Israeli electricity and food is so very expensive. n nNever before has a genocidal population been so utterly dependent on the generosity of those they want dead and gone. n nThe Jews are the softest touches of all. Always.
"…Besieged Palestinian Gaza is an experiment in provocation…" n nProvocation is clearly something you know a great deal about, John. Why not drop the pseudonym? Tell us your true name and ethnicity. You know the ethnics of those responding to your Jew-baiting. Tell us yours. n nCome out of under your rock, John. Show us you little wee wee. n n
Good thing Israel might be able to depend on Russia for the next four years. n nAmerica is turning into Erdogan's Turkey.
I can not believe the EPA is running a banner ad here advising everyone to vacuum dust!
The UN Human Rights Council has adjudged the Jewish state guilty of violating international law by repeatedly obliterating infrastructure and civilians in Palestinian neighborhoods with American tanks, fighter jets and white phosphorous. Innocent fathers, mothers and children are being killed, splattered actually. The Palestinian's response with crude rockets is pathetic. But those rockets do confirm that Palestine will not accept defeat, they “give proof through the night that (their) flag is still there.” n
The 13,000 Grad missiles (nothing primitive about them), rockets and mortars fired from Gaza at civilian targets in southern Israel "give proof through the night that (their) flag is still there”? Nauseating.
While curiously ignoring all the rockets that Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad fire at Israeli towns, with special care to increase the rockets when children are going to and from school. And giving credence to charges that have been repeatedly shown to be false, exaggerated, or distortions of international law. I'd say your statement is a much more serious indictment of the UN Human Rights Council than it is of Israel.
Waiting for the bow to the Burmese General. Unless the Obama's advisers have already told him to nix the genuflecting.
This Times of India excerpt of June 18, 2012 facilitates understanding of Israel's behavior. n nRABBI OVADIA Rabbi Ovadia Yosef is the former Chief Rabbi of Israel and the spiritual leader of the Shas party, Israels “kingmaker” party. In a sermon given on Saturday on laws concerning what non-Jews are permitted to do on Shabbat, Yosef said: "Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel. Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat." According to Yosef, death has "no dominion" over non-Jews in Israel. "With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant… That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.” n nMENACHEM BEGIN "Our race is the Master Race. We Jews are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects. In fact, compared to our race, other races are beasts and animals, cattle at best. Other races are considered as human excrement. Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races. Our earthly kingdom will be ruled by our leader with a rod of iron. The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves."
JohnWV, thanks for reminding us that those who claim to be "only" anit-Israel but not to hate Jews in general are usually lying. Your lies about Begin are particulary transparent.