If an article Tony Karon/Time magazine article* I read (via Yahoo) is at all accurate, Israel needs to tighten its borders with Fatah-controlled areas of Occupied Israel.
Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas soon will be trotting the Moslem's top vote-getting strategy of "Who can claim the most Israeli civilian lives" during the first conference in two decades of his Fatah movement, a conference to be held in Bet Lehem (Bethlehem).
In order for a Moslem politician to win Moslem votes he needs to show not only that he is anti-Israel, but that he walks the walk by sending others to kill Israelis - babies in baby carriages, pregnant women, old folks, and - with rockets from afar - soldiers at their bases.
The reason Hamas controls Aza now is because it walked the walk better than Fatah; the latter was relegated to historic Israel.
Two things are needed for any Moslem group to gain control of a government:
1. Evidence that it can, will, and does wantonly slaughter Israelis
2. That it is willing to maim and murder other Moslems to assure it wins at the polls
I will concede that Hamas DID "win" in Aza. Was it a "fair" election by US standards? Jimmy Carter thinks so - that and $3.50 might buy a cup of coffee at Bernie's, a Starbucks-like place with better tasting (to my mind) java.
The Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt actually wins elections by providing services to the poor, a process apparently overlooked by the warlords in Aza and Occupied Israel (possibly because they can't compete with the services provided by Israel when it controlled the area, services provided at the expanse of loyal Israelis - Jews, Moslems, and others).
Abbas, the Times article suggests, wants the conference to be held in Bet Lehem so that Fatah can scream to the world that Israel refused to allow his terrorists into the country to attend the conference (where Israel's destruction is bound to be a top item on the agenda).
Never mind that Abbas' fellow Moslems in Hamas are, as of this writing, blocking Fatah delegates from Aza from traveling to Bet Lehem until Abbas agrees to release some 1,000 Hamas prisoners being held by Fatah in the Occupied Israel.
The article concludes that the conference marks the first opportunity Fatah's own membership will have to comment on the moderate negotiating strategy adopted by President Abbas, and the result is likely to weaken his mandate to pursue the sort of talks the Obama Administration is envisaging in the near future. For many the priority is to rebuild Fatah, which requires that the movement return to the sort of politics that can challenge Hamas for the mantle of "resistance". Since the failure of the Camp David talks in 2000, successive Israeli elections have shown the voters moving steadily away from support for the peace process envisaged in the Oslo Agreements. So, too, have Palestinian exercises in democracy, and the Fatah conference is unlikely to buck the trend.
* http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090804/wl_time/08599191445900
--------
Yohanon Glenn
Yohanon.Glenn at gmail dot com
No comments:
Post a Comment