Two Palestinian States?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten


Yeah, I recognized it as well. Apparently LOTM thinks all gentiles are morons...

nah, I just didnt think "Judea and Samaria" was that current.

especially abbreviated, which it rarely is in English. Even I had do a double take.

[Heresson]

J&S is a nice abbreviation.
& looks like two o's; JooS!

[Ramo]

Good Danny Rubenstein piece. The meat:

The recent events we have been witnessing in Gaza are actually the disbanding of Palestinian rule. The primary reason for the break-up is the fact that Fatah, headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, has refused to fully share the PA's mechanism of power with its rival Hamas - in spite of Hamas' decisive victory in the January 2006 general elections.

Fatah was forced to overrule the Palestinian voters because the entire world demanded it do so. The United States, the European nations, most of the Arab leaders and, of course, the State of Israel, warned Fatah not to share power with Hamas.

And so, after the Israeli pullout, instead of becoming a model for Palestinian self-rule, Gaza turned into the exact opposite. Matters have come to the point where Hamas operatives attempted all through Monday and Tuesday to take by force what they believe they rightfully deserve.

:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/870530.html

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Whoha
Damn Reagan for sending Saddam Soviet, French, and Chinese weaponry! Why didn't he buy American, that bastard!

In raids we'd routinely find American made .45 which were still stamped "Property of the U.S. Army" on them and which still had their US Army serial numbers. The US wasn't the main arms supplier to Iraq but we did sell lots of stuff including lots and lots of munitions.

[SlowwHand]

Abbas dissolves Palestinian government
24 minutes ago

Israel could just kick back and wait it out. Eventually, all the militants may kill each other off.

[Sirotnikov]

Ramo - that's a good analysis, but it places way too much blame on Israel.


Abbas, Dahlan and co never intended to be replaced by Hamas. Israeli and EU, US demands were a very good reason not to do it, but its not like they were coerced to try and out maneuver Hamas. No one wanted to let Hamas in. They cosntantly sought for creative solutions to disempower them.

The Israeli pullout gave the palestinians a chance to sort what kind of future they want for themselves. Well they did.

[Last Conformist]

Just out of curiosity, had Fatah won the WB if it and Gazah had separate elections?

[Gatekeeper]

Hmm. If Hamas begins using the Gaza Strip as a base to bombard Israel with rockes and other assorted offensive efforts, would Israel reoccupy the strip? Or would it be more cautious because of last year's stymied push into Lebanon?

Gatekeeper

[Sirotnikov]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
Just out of curiosity, had Fatah won the WB if it and Gazah had separate elections?

I'm not sure.

Factually, one should note, that Hamas and Fatah received a similar number of votes.

However, due to the organization of the sectorial seats, it so happenned that in each sector, Hamas gained the upper hand, leading to the nullification of pro-Fatah votes.

Similar to how Bush won in 2000, while receiving less votes than Al-Gore.

[Sirotnikov]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
Hmm. If Hamas begins using the Gaza Strip as a base to bombard Israel with rockes and other assorted offensive efforts, would Israel reoccupy the strip? Or would it be more cautious because of last year's stymied push into Lebanon?

What do you mean by if?

It's already happening and Israel is considering all kinds of things.
Obviously Olmert is a little less trigger happy

[Eli]

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to split the Palestinians into two more easily manageable factions.

So far Israel had to deal with both Hamas and Fatah both in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. You couldn't attack one without somehow hurting the other, and you couldn't make peace with one because the other could exercise a de-facto veto.

Israel has to do everything within it's power to turn the Gaza Strip into a homogeneous Hamas entity, and the West Bank into a homogeneous Fatah entity.

Israel must assist the Fatah, publicly and covertly. And more importantly, it must somehow convince the Fatah to wipe Hamas out of the West Bank. Unlike Gaza, in the WB Fatah is more powerful than Hamas, and Israel can help more in the WB.

When it's done, some sort of temporary peace can be achieved with the Fatah, it being the moderate faction and in total control of the WB. Doing so will be easier than before because Hamas will no longer have influence on WB policy, and because of the aid Israel had given to the Fatah. Also, I expect a sort of counter reaction to Hamas' "Gaza Islamic Republic" rhetoric, which will push the Fatah even more towards a moderate stance.

In Gaza, thanks to it being controlled completely by Hamas, Israel will be able to wage open war. No longer fighting against a conglomeration of factions, some of which have the support of the world public opinion, but against a clearly hostile radical Islamic entity which does not enjoy public opinion support.

[Last Conformist]

Eli:
In Gaza, thanks to it being controlled completely by Hamas, Israel will be able to wage open war. No longer fighting against a conglomeration of factions, some of which have the support of the world public opinion, but against a clearly hostile radical Islamic entity which does not enjoy public opinion support.

I wouldn't trust Hamas's lack of public opinion support to last if Israel was to wage open war in Gazah.

[Az]

Last Conformist: what public opinion are we referring to, btw? the Palestinian one, or the world one?

Machiav-Eli

[MOBIUS]

This polarisation might end up as a blessing in disguise if Hamas moves to Gaza and vice versa for many of the reasons Eli pointed out - apart from the open war bit!

Then of course Israel can treat the nice Fatah run WB nicely by removing all the settlers, knocking down the wall and returning to pre '67 borders, seeing as all the bad guys will be penned into Gaza whose borders are now effectively defined.

Cue: Squadrons of Flying Pigs!

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ramo
Good Danny Rubenstein piece. The meat:

The recent events we have been witnessing in Gaza are actually the disbanding of Palestinian rule. The primary reason for the break-up is the fact that Fatah, headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, has refused to fully share the PA's mechanism of power with its rival Hamas - in spite of Hamas' decisive victory in the January 2006 general elections.

Fatah was forced to overrule the Palestinian voters because the entire world demanded it do so. The United States, the European nations, most of the Arab leaders and, of course, the State of Israel, warned Fatah not to share power with Hamas.

And so, after the Israeli pullout, instead of becoming a model for Palestinian self-rule, Gaza turned into the exact opposite. Matters have come to the point where Hamas operatives attempted all through Monday and Tuesday to take by force what they believe they rightfully deserve.

:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/870530.html

Widely deserve? By now its pretty obvious Hamas would have lost a new election, which is why when Abbas proposed it they opposed it with everything they had. Would a new election have violated the Pal Basic Law? I dont know, Im not a Pal Constitutional Lawyer. What I do now is that the Basic Law is absurd without a recognized Pal Authority, and the Pal Authority existed because of the Oslo accords. For a group that renounces the Oslo Accords to invoke the technicalities of a Basic Law that would never have come into existence but for those Accords, strikes me as absurd.

And, let us recall, back when Fatah was the govt of the PA, under the Basic Law, Hamas defied the authority of Fatah, to the point that apoligists for Fatah, from 1997 through 2004, regularly said that Fatah could not eliminate terrorism because of the strength of Hamas, and so Israeli demands for Fatah to do so were unrealistic. For a group that spent 14 years undermining legality in the PA, and in Gaza specifically, to take a technical violation of the PA Basic Law by Abbas as a justification for a coup, is absurd.