Posted on 11/08/2007 3:12:35 AM PST by SJackson
Americans, your secretary of state has been in Israel for the eighth time this year. The usual stuff is going on—plans afoot for mass releases of jailed terrorists, Israeli communities getting relentlessly shelled with only token military responses while Ehud Olmert waxes rhapsodic about “two states living side by side in peace and security.”
This time it was Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad who raised a demand that Israel release no less than 2000 of the 12,000 Palestinian security prisoners that it holds as a “bold move” ahead of the still-unscheduled Annapolis conference. The well-mannered Fayyad—who holds a PhD in economics from the University of Texas at Austin and has worked at the Federal Reserve Bank and the World Bank—is viewed by eager peace processors as someone who just has to fit the cherished image of the “Palestinian moderate.”
But there he goes, demanding a mass freeing of terrorists so that Israel can prove its peace mettle while getting absolutely nothing in return, not even a solitary “gesture” such as the freeing of its kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.
What to do? Question Fayyad’s moderation and peace credentials? No, the answer is . . . comply!
Fayyad’s demand was first reported on Sunday, and as of Monday Olmert already was reportedly planning to go along with it—this in addition to two earlier releases in the present “peace” context of 250 and 100 terrorists respectively. Although Olmert had not yet “decided how many people would be freed, or when,” this time Fayyad, by setting the bar high at 2000, is using his bargaining skills to try and elicit a bigger batch.
Meanwhile on Sunday afternoon Hamastan, the Palestinian entity to Israel’s west, hit the Israeli town of Sderot with the almost-daily barrage. One rocket destroyed a home and sent its residents into shock; another hit a power line and caused blackouts throughout the town—ironic because earlier-announced Israeli plans to deny electricity to Gaza were already stalled by a negative ruling by Israel’s attorney-general.
The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center reports 59 rockets and 87 mortars hitting Israel from Gaza in October, along with two Israeli soldiers, aged 20 and 34, killed in tactical fighting in the Strip. (Scroll down a ways in the Center’s bulletin for a Saudi cartoon of Olmert as a Jewish snake.)
No one—not Condoleezza Rice, nor Olmert, Secretary of State Tzippi Livni, or anyone on the Israeli side—has explained how Gaza is supposed to fit into the Annapolis framework or the “two-state” vision. But according to a report by Alex Fishman, senior military correspondent for Israel’s largest daily Yediot Aharonot, the problem is not only that Gaza is already Hamastan but also that the West Bank may not be far behind.
Fishman describes a new unit in the Israel Defense Forces’ Central Command that is going through papers and computer parts confiscated in IDF nightly raids in the West Bank. “Everyone knows,” Fishman says, that “this unit will be growing. . . . There is no other choice: Gaza was already overtaken by Hamas, and unless something drastic is done, a West Bank takeover is only a matter of time.”
Fishman continues:
Only now, IDF officials are starting to realize that [they] actually have no clue about the extent and depth of Hamas’ hold in the West Bank…. the initial examination of the…material, which was mostly confiscated at charity foundations and mosques, produces a scary picture: a giant octopus that controls hundreds of millions of dollars coming in from all over the world—an apparatus that looks exactly like the one that led to Hamas’ Gaza takeover within several days is also up and running in the West Bank.
...At this time, security officials estimate that ahead of the peace conference in Annapolis, Hamas will attempt to carry out painful terror attacks.
…Israeli officials believe Hamas is not yet ready for an all-out clash against the IDF in the West Bank. The arrests and manhunts are making it
difficult for Hamas to operate. It’s not yet ready to come out of the woodwork. Yet it’s only a matter of time before it does.
Some say the present diplomatic activity is just for show—as David Samuels puts it, “a tactic to help ensure Arab support for an orderly American withdrawal from Iraq and a future attack on Iran.” Even if so, the problem is that it is a costly tactic that inhibits Israel from dealing realistically with its security problems and so enables them to get worse.
It is not only that the planned conference increases the risk of demonstrative Hamas attacks, and also increases the risk of intensified post-conference terrorism as happened in the case of Camp David in 2000. Israel’s fear of upending the conference and angering the U.S. is also probably the main reason for its continuing to allow a terrorist buildup in Gaza that already threatens to assume the proportions of the Hezbollah enclave in Lebanon—while essentially abandoning Israel’s Gaza-belt communities to their harrowing ordeal.
Possibly even more critically, the ongoing make-believe that Mahmoud Abbas and Fayyad are in charge in the West Bank, desirous and capable of crafting it into a “state” that accepts Israel, is—if Fishman’s well-informed report is right—helping prevent Israel from taking the stronger steps needed against a Hamas takeover there as well.
The moral of the story is that when an ostensibly conservative U.S. administration pursues a fictitious peace process based on liberal shibboleths of even-handedness and Palestinian virtue and moderation, the losers are Israel and Middle Eastern stability and the winners are the terror organizations and their patron the Tehran regime, which is successfully orchestrating the real “process.”
Thanks for your good work posting to the Israel ping.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
----------------------------
(Fast forward to 2007):
Abu Abdullah of Hamas' Izzedine al-Qassam Martyrs Brigades of Hamas',
and apparently the US State Dept's, military wing (Gaza, June 20, 2007).
"We have no worries about running out of weapons or ammunition
thanks to your American government"
Folks are being rallied to oppose the Annapolis meeting.
http://www.israpundit.com/2007/?p=6440#more-6440
This gets repeated a lot but what are the implications if this is true? That the US cannot attack Iran without Arab help? That the US is actually being attacked by many Arab states and, in the case of a withdrawal from Iraq our boys would be shot in the back by Saudis and Kuwaitis and Egyptians along with Iraqis and Syrians and Iranians?
The implications of this strategy project even greater weakness than retreat alone. We shot our way into Iraq, we should shoot our way out if we have to (if, in fact, we are leaving, which I am not so sure of).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.