Posted on 05/16/2007 5:41:08 PM PDT by SJackson
PALESTINIANS MAY BE CROSSING POINT OF NO RETURN TO NATIONAL SUICIDE
By Michael Widlanski
JERUSALEM-MAY 16--May 15 is always a "black date" on the Palestinian calendar, representing the founding of Israel and the Nakba (or "catastrophe" in Arabic) of the Palestinians. But after yesterday, May 15 may also come to symbolize the date that the Palestinians passed the point of no-return toward national suicide.
At least 20 Palestinians were murdered yesterday in Gaza (May 15), according to the most conservative Palestinian accounts, by liquidation squads of the Hamas Islamic movement that often grabbed gunmen and officials of the rival Fatah movement and publicly dragged them from cars and executed them in the streets.
"The only ones who benefit from what is happening now are the Jews. They are celebrating right now," declared an unidentified Gaza man in the street who was interviewed yesterday by official Palestinian television which is controlled by Mahmoud Abbas, the chairman of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The Hamas movement itself issued statements yesterday and today that denied that its men had murdered Fatah personnel, saying that the deaths were part of a "Zionist plot," and its gunmen and racketeers stepped up their attacks on Israel, launching more than 20 rockets on Israel Tuesday, wounding more than 30 Israelis.
The joint Hamas-Fatah "national unity government" appears anything but unified, and it seems only a matter of time before the Palestinian Authority collapses under its own internal violence or by dint of an Israeli military strike designed to stop mounting rocket terror attacks on its southern communities.
The Jerusalem Arabic newspaper Al-Quds ran a completely black front page banner today to symbolize the parlous state of Palestinian affairs.
Hamas squads raided the house of PA Gaza security chief Rashid Abu Shback on Wednesday, killing six of his bodyguards. Shback and Muhammd Dahlan are the primary "muscle" of PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah group.
A day earlier, on Tuesday, Fatah forces fled a Hamas assault near the Karni terminal east of the Gaza border with Israel after at least nine PA officers were killed when their training base was attacked by forces from the "Executive Force" of the Hamas-controlled PA Interior Ministry.
PA television carried anguished public and personal appeals from Abbas to his Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyyeh, to "think about what you are doing."
It is a measure of what the Palestinians themselves call the situation of fawda-anarchy-that the Egyptian government, which has been trying to mediate between Fatah and Hamas, has had to withdraw its officials, after several were attacked and wounded.
At least 40 people Palestinians have been killed since May 13 in the latest round of the Fatah-Hamas war, most of them Fatah fighters, and there are reported to be more than 100 wounded.
The bloodshed was described by official Palestinian radio-Sawt Felasteen-as a majzara, a "massacre," in Arabic. This is the kind of terminology usually reserved only for actions by Israel, and it was clear that both Hamas and Fatah were desperately trying to channel the internecine fighting and hatred into attacks on Israel, rather than on Arabs.
The rocket attacks on the Israeli town of Sderot and other communities in the Negev -more than a dozen-continued on Wednesday, seriously wounding an Israeli woman, as hundred of Israelis asked to be evacuated from the area that has absorbed three to eight rocket attacks on the average for the last year.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seemed once again not to be able to decide on a clear course of action beyond shooting artillery at empty fields in Gaza, and the Russian-born Israeli businessman, Arkady Gaidemak, spent his own money to evacuate 800 women and children from the rocket-pocked area.
"Everybody is going crazy, and nobody knows what's going on," added Ziad Abu-Ziad, a Fatah Party minister in the PA cabinet.
It appeared that the foreign press corps in Gaza was isolated and locked up in a few locations, afraid to venture outside because of what the Palestinians call falatan-chaos, and it has been about a month since a British journalist was kidnapped for ransom by one of the Palestinian gangs of riflemen that swarm through Gaza.
"Everybody is hoping that the Israelis will come in and liquidate these maniacs," declared a Gaza man who was interviewed on Israeli Television Channel 10.
"Anybody who shoots a rocket at us has to pay a price," declared Shaul Mofaz, the current Israeli transportation minister and the former defense minister, but he declined, during a radio interview, to say what kind of action he would support.
Israeli army (IDF) officers have been pressing for a major Israeli land operation into Gaza for two reasons: to push back the rocketeers out of shooting range of Israel, while also closing down the smuggling routes from Sinai and Egypt into Gaza.
In the last weeks, Israeli officers have said privately that the 31 tons of high-grade explosives which were smuggled into Gaza in the last year have been supplemented by "hundreds of tons" of other arms, largely financed by Iran. ================
Dr. Michael Widlanski is a specialist in Arab politics and communication whose doctorate dealt with the Palestinian broadcast media. He is a former reporter, correspondent and editor, respectively, at The New York Times, The Cox Newspapers-Atlanta Constitution, and The Jerusalem Post. He has also served as a special advisor to Israeli delegations to peace talks in 1991-1992 and as Strategic Affairs Advisor to the Ministry of Public Security, editing secret PLO Archives captured in Jerusalem.
“The Dirt Nap To Peace”
“But after yesterday, May 15 may also come to symbolize the date that the Palestinians passed the point of no-return toward national suicide.”
Who says that the news is all bad?
1 Moreover the word of HaShem came unto me, saying:
2 ‘Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and prophesy against it,
3 and say unto it: Thus saith the L-rd GOD: Behold, I am against thee, O mount Seir, and I will stretch out My hand against thee, and I will make thee most desolate.
4 I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate; and thou shalt know that I am HaShem.
5 Because thou hast had a hatred of old, and hast hurled the children of Israel unto the power of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time of the iniquity of the end;
6 therefore, as I live, saith the L-rd GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee; surely thou hast hated thine own blood, therefore blood shall pursue thee.
7 Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth through and him that returneth.
8 And I will fill his mountains with his slain; in thy hills and in thy valleys and in all thy streams shall they fall that are slain with the sword.
9 I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return; and ye shall know that I am HaShem.
10 Because thou hast said: These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas HaShem was there;
11 therefore, as I live, saith the L-rd GOD, I will do according to thine anger and according to thine envy, which thou hast used out of thy hatred against them; and I will make Myself known among them, when I shall judge thee.
12 And thou shalt know that I HaShem have heard all thy blasphemies which thou hast spoken against the mountains of Israel, saying: They are laid desolate, they are given us to devour.
13 And ye have magnified yourselves against Me with your mouth, and have multiplied your words against Me; I have heard it.
14 Thus saith the L-rd GOD: When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee desolate.
15 As thou didst rejoice over the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I do unto thee; thou shalt be desolate, O mount Seir, and all Edom, even all of it; and they shall know that I am HaShem.
Exactly! They may talk religious martyrdom (for the other guy) but it's all about the money. The providers of "humanitarian aid" are enabling this blood bath.
It's similar in any other welfare state, including our own "inner cities". If the men have to work at any available job, no matter how menial, in order to feed themselves and their women, then you have stability because the men are too tired from working to have time for fighting. If the food is taken care of, then the men get preoccupied with glory
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