Jimmy Carter must certainly feel conflicted about this. From the Times UK:
A HAMAS plot to assassinate Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been thwarted after he was tipped off by Israeli intelligence.
Hamas’s military wing, the Izza Din Al-Qassem, had planned to kill Abbas at his office in Gaza, intelligence sources said.Abbas, who became president of the Palestinian Authority last year after the death of Yasser Arafat, was formally warned of the danger by the Israelis and cancelled a planned visit to the territory.
The murder plan is the clearest sign yet of the tensions inside the Palestinian Authority between Hamas, which swept to power after elections in January, and Abbas’s Fatah movement.
Hamas leaders, who refuse to recognise the state of Israel, suspect Abbas of obstructing their attempts to govern, which have been hampered by a financial boycott from donor nations. “Hamas considers Abbas to be a barrier to its complete control over Palestine and decided to kill him,†said a Palestinian source who was an adviser to Arafat and is a close acquaintance of Abbas.
It is understood that the attack would also have targeted Mohammed Dahlan, Abbas’s strongman in Gaza.
The sources were unable to say who in Hamas’s secretive leadership had given the order to kill Abbas. But an indication of its hostility towards Abbas came last week.
In a statement to Al-Jazeera, the Arab television news network, Mohammed Nazzal, one of its leaders, accused the president of being party to “besieging and isolating the Hamas-led governmentâ€Â.
Writes Allah, who sent along the link:
Is it true? Is it bogus, planted by Israeli intel (with Fatah’s cooperation) to turn world opinion further against Hamas? Is it sort of true, i.e., based on info planted by Hamas with the knowledge that Israel would find out and tip Abbas, thereby putting the fear of god into him? The intrigue is as thick as your imagination can make it.
My imagination is telling me the assassination plan involved a poisoned shoe blade a la Lotte Lenya in “From Russia With Love,†and possibly a crossbow. But that’s just me. Substitute your own details as needed.
Interesting thoughts, but me, I’m an Occam’s Razor kind of guy. And because this is Hamas we’re talking about, I’m leaning toward the “yeah, they were looking to assassinate the guy, most likely with a barrage of rifle fire trained on his car, or with some sort of explosion that took out whoever else was unlucky enough to be in the area at the time” scenario—Hamas being, well, Hamas.
Of course, as Juan Cole (or Jimmy Carter, or Mearsheimer and Walt, or David Duke) might hasten to point out, the Jews are sneaky folk with their hands up the back of the US administration—so don’t rule out the likelihood that they orchestrated this whole misinformation campaign to turn the world against a fledgling Hamas democracy that just wants to end the brutal and illegal occupation of Palestine that began the moment Israel was formed.
By eradicating the Jewish state, and killing the remaining Jews in the region.
The important question is whether Hamas intends to kill Abbas now. I think I’m for it.
Why on earth would you be for it?
You know, a story like this almost makes me sympathize with Saddam Hussins heavy handed methods of population control. Some of those people are animals without a shread of civilized decency in them.
I would have no problem feeding those butchers into an industrial shreader feet first. Not that I would enjoy it, but there would be a certain feeling of satisfaction.
oops , sorry, wrong thread…
Yes, but isn’t this exactly what the Gay Jewtrix wants?
Those Israelis should shed their white guilt
Somebody slap the retarded telephobne pole, his record is skipping.
RTO Trainer sez:
I see it as the mask finally falling to the floor, never to be raised again. Then, even the most dedicated Jew-hating Eurocrat cannot pretend that the Palestinians are a people one can reason with, or that there are rational actors in control.
Maybe then the War on Terror principles can find their way to that corner of the world, and there will be consequences realized for electing Hamas.
Speaking of masks slipping…
Because perfidious Zion wishes the Palestinians to keep killing each other as long as possible. It’s a win-win for them.
You’d think Hamas would know this.
Hey Jeff, not for nothing, but Ace just bagged himself a “mike” on his blog and I think he’s probably going to stuff and mount him over the fireplace. The reason I bring this up is, well, has it ever crossed your mind to, you know, do something about that actus smell that permeats through your blog? The whole one sentence comment to serious questions sometimes just, what are the words I’m looking for here, stinks the place up a bit. Look, I’m all for keeping pets, but at some point in time after they’ve shit on the floor, or pissed in the shoes more than what really is normal or rationale, I think you have to consider, well you know, the big sleep.
He brings nothing to the table Jeff. He adds nothing to the debate. There are Libs, there are moonbats, and hell there are Kennedy’s, but do we need a compilation of all of that in one persona? I like the trend Ace may be setting here. I’m all for expressing a differing viewpoint, but does Actus really do that?
Or maybe not. Maybe I just don’t get him and if that’s the case, well, disregard my post. I’m sure Actus will and I’m sure he’ll have something to say about it, and hell, I’m sure I won’t understand that either.
mastour,
What we do here is ignore the acthole. You see, if you make no reply or try to engage him, he will eventually go away. When you encounter one of his inane, shit flinging posts, just pretend that it never happened. That way, he gets what he deserves – to be as insignificant as a piss ant on the sidewalk. You wouldn’t go out of your way to step on it, but you wouldn’t be concened if you happened to crush it. Acthole does not deserve the recognition of banishment>
On topic. I have often said of the Palestinian situation:
If the Palestinians would unilateraly disarm there would be no more violence.
If the Israelis would unilateraly disarm there would be no more Israel.
When the Palestinians decide they love their children more than they hate the Israeli’s, then there will be peace.
Good points rls & PVRWC.
In addition to self acceptance, the Palestinians need the neighboring Arab regimes to accept them. They should have been absorbed into the surrounding Arab countries in 1949. Instead they were made to live in slums. It is the Arabs who pushed them into the refugee camps and the Arabs who keep them festering there. The ‘cycle of violence’ won’t end until the Arabs show brotherly love and let the Palestinians settle in Arab countries.
Well, failing that, ProudVRWCor, there will be peace when the apartheid wall is finished and the Palestinians manage to perfect the antisemetic pogrom in the Levant Division of genocide championships. Of course, they will bring their own semites, but…
But those countries resisted, crying, complaining, of “la reconquista palestina.”
bastards!
Matthew,
The problem is that their Arab “brothers” would never accept the Palestinians and wouldn’t integrate them into their countries or cultures anyway.
Look at the history of the treatment of the Palestinians in Lebanon and Syria as an example. In neither case did the Palestinians assimilate, and either civil war or mass extermination followed.
Besides, the Palestinians provide a hammer for the rest of the Arab world (and the Europeans) to use against Israel. Without the Palestinian cause, how would they justify their desire to “ethnically cleanse” the Middle East of all Jews????
Peace also won’t be a product of a wall. Peace will come, as it did in the religous-based conflict in Northern Ireland, when enough people grow tired of sacrificing their children for centuries old grudges and decide that living together is better than losing another generation to bloodshed and violence.
TW – “death”, sometimes this AI stuff freaks me out….
Doesn’t deserve banishment?
What is this, the blog equivalent of ‘don’t kill him, it’ll only make a martyr’?
Israel leaves the occupied territories. East Jerusalem becomes the capital of the new Palestinian state, West Jerusalem remains under Israeli control and the Old City as well as greater Jerusalem is goverened by the UN. Peace
New warning:
Ignore actus and Imhotep.
I think they are related. Spiritually, if not genetically.
That is all.
PVRWC  Ask the Jordanians what good neighbors the Palestinians make when you let them into your country. Ask the Kuwaitis.
For a desert people, the Palestinians have an amazing gift for pissing in every well they’re invited to drink from.
If there was the remotest possibility that this would pan out, the Israelis would jump on it…
t/w: Only the Strong survive.
The financial managers who bought you “oil for loot, er…food”, peacekeepers who molest first, protect later (when they aren’t too busy smiling and nodding as the victims are loaded on buses)?
The city’s governing body could be voted in by Iran, Syria, China, Russia, Zimbabwe, Cuba and the other upright members of the General Assembly?
Got any realistic and serious suggestions instead?
Governed by the UN?? So instead of slightly f-ed up, you are in favor of TOTALLY f-ed up??
Get the US out of the Useless Nations, get the Useless Nations out of the US.
You know the difference between actus and a telephone pole?
The telephone pole exhibits a quiet stoicism that could be mistaken for intelligence.
Very well put indeed. Golda Meir (of blessed memory) remarked along similar lines that peace will only come when Arabs love their children more than they hate Jews.
Mrs. Patton:
The irony is that for years, Israeli hardliners have claimed that there already is a Palestine—it’s called Jordan.
So, what did the Palestinians try to do in the 1970s? Take over Jordan.
One wonders, though—if they had succeeded, do we think that, as many fantasize, the Palestinian issue would have been solved and Israel would now live in peace? Or would there still be attacks by Palestinians, now supplied across the Jordan river by their compatriots in Amman?