Bloodthirsty Zionist apologist Charles Krauthammer takes a hard line on both Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas — calling on Israel to threaten Gaza with isolation, and, while supporting Abbas, insisting that this time he show results, or else step down as head of the Palestinian Authority. Which is predictable rhetoric for Krauthammer, as any leftwing blog will readily point out.
What these same critics won’t discuss, however — at least, not in any way other than with sneering, self-righteous condemnation of anyone advocating a hardline stance (under the pretense of their supporting “human rights”) — is whether Krauthammer’s counsel is wise, from either a short-term military or a long-term security standpoint both for Israel and a moderate Palestinian territory.
Which, too, is predictable. So instead, I’ll put it to you: is Krauthammer’s hardline stance advisable — particularly now, when the new British prime minister is making noise about turning his attention to dusting off the road map and getting back down to diplomacy? Or is this Israel’s chance to reverse the tactical errors it made when it evacuated Gaza, and when it bowed to political pressure and retreated from Lebanon?
Gaza is now run not by a conventional political party but by a movement that is revolutionary, Islamist and terrorist. Worse, Hamas is a client of Iran. Gaza now constitutes the farthest reach of the archipelago of Iranian proxies: Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Mahdi Army (among others) in Iraq and the Alawite regime of Syria.
This Islamist mini-replica of the Comintern is at war not just with Israel but with the moderate Arab states, who finally woke up to this threat last summer when they denounced Hezbollah for provoking the Lebanon war with Israel. […]
The splitting of Palestine into two entities is nonetheless clarifying. Since Hamas won the parliamentary elections of January 2006, we’ve had to deal with the fiction of a supposedly unified Palestine ruled by an avowedly “unity” government of Fatah and Hamas. Now the muddle has undergone political hydrolysis, separating out the relatively pure elements: a Hamas-ruled Gaza and Fatah-ruled (for now) West Bank.
The policy implications are obvious. There is nothing to do with the self-proclaimed radical Islamist entity that is Gaza but to isolate it. No recognition, no aid (except humanitarian necessities through the United Nations), no diplomatic commerce.
Israel now has the opportunity to establish deterrence against unremitting rocket attacks from Gaza into Israeli villages. Israel failed to do that after it evacuated Gaza in 2005, permitting the development of an unprecedented parasitism by willingly supplying food, water, electricity and gasoline to a territory that was actively waging hostilities against it.
With Hamas now clearly in charge, Israel should declare that it will tolerate no more rocket fire — that the next Qassam will be answered with a cutoff of gasoline shipments. This should bring road traffic in Gaza to a halt within days and make it increasingly difficult to ferry around missiles and launchers.
If that fails to concentrate the mind, the next step should be to cut off electricity. When the world wails, Israel should ask, what other country on Earth is expected to supply the very means for a declared enemy to attack it?
Regarding the West Bank, policy should be equally clear. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas represents moderation and should be helped as he tries to demonstrate both authority and success in running his part of Palestine.
But let’s remember who Abbas is. He appears well intentioned, but he is afflicted with near-disastrous weaknesses.
[…]
Moreover, his Fatah party is ideologically spent and widely discredited. Historian Michael Oren points out that the Palestinian Authority has received more per capita aid than did Europe under the Marshall Plan. This astonishing largess has disappeared into lavish villas for party bosses and guns for the multiple militias Arafat established.
The West is rushing to bolster Abbas. Israel will release hundreds of millions in tax revenue. The United States and the European Union will be pouring in aid. All praise Abbas as a cross between Anwar Sadat and Simón BolÃÂvar. Fine. We have no choice but to support him. But before we give him the moon, we should insist upon reasonable benchmarks of both moderation and good governance — exactly what we failed to do during the Oslo process. […]
Abbas is not Hamas. But despite the geographical advantages, he does not represent the second coming, either. We can prop him up only so much. In the end, the only one who can make a success of the West Bank is Abbas himself. This is his chance. His last chance.
It is, of course, surreal to think that the howling “human rights” crowd on the left would expect Israel to continue to subsidize attacks against it — but it is also beyond doubt that a rationale for that very thing will be forthcoming, should Israel act in the way outlined by Krauthammer.
Israel has shown a weakness lately for being able to stand up to “international pressure”; and the consequences of taking a hard line, only to back down with a whimper under political pressure, could weaken it even further, in the eyes of what Krauthammer calls the “archipelago of Iranian proxies.”
So. What to do?
Thoughts?
Darwin learned a lot from an archipelago.
The Israeli government can flee to Okinawa and manage the evacuation of the rest of Tel Aviv from there?
Anyone know what the election schedule is, if there is one? I can’t seem to find it.
Gee. I think they ought to flood the place with Blue Helmets till civil order and stability are restored.
Dan – I think that the terroists have enough help already. The blue helmets will just get in their way, slow them down.
Snake. Head. Some disassembly required.
Perhaps they could hire David Copperfield to make it disappear. He is a Joo, you know.
Arclight.
My thoughts? Israeli state ascendant; Palistinian state failed. Dispatch the fussy brown ones at once; absorb the leftovers and destroy the long-term dissenters. Rabble is best dealt with decisively.
Welcome to the Dark Side, cynn. We’ve been waiting for you.
I’ll gladly buy you a drink, but I sure as hell won’t join you groveling replugs.
"Fussy" – that’s quite a euphemism, isn’t it?
"Fussy" — you know, the ones who compain. The rest are fair game!!
Oh oh oh – I thought you meant fussy.
Hmmm.
Wall it off and then invite the rest of the world to send their most vicious criminals there. If the barbarians in Gaza want it to stop, then they can either prove that they’re now civilized or they can leave Gaza permanently and give up any claim to it.
Plus it’ll be a great place to send members of the Aryan Brotherhood.
I think Israel should act as if Gaza and the West Bank are separate entities, since it just so happens that they are… separate entities.
As for what to do with Gaza, the humanitarian crisis wrapped in an Iranian puppet wrapped in a hateful mob wrapped in an enigma surrounded by concertina wire? Israel should close it off and let it fail on its own lack of merits. Should they attack? I don’t think they should invade, but they should retaliate for lobbed missiles. Israel doesn’t need to invade, doesn’t really want Gaza, the Gazans aren’t going to flee, and Egypt won’t take them in. The crappy status quo will do for now.
And Israel should do what it needs to do now to work with the government in the West Bank. It’s a potential slap in the fact to Hamas, will give hope to regular Palestinians, will piss off Palestinians in Gaza, and progress can actually happen now that the West Bank has lost its ugly sibling. Of course, Abbas would get assassinated, but that’ll probably happen anyway.
Abbas is in an interesting position. He’s probably more free to act than ever before, but also should be scared shitless. It’ll take some interesting diplomacy to get some lasting good out of this, and I’m not too confident that our country will be involved for the better. But one can hope, eh?
To me the sickest thing about Palestine is that any positive steps whether it is military action (Israeli or UN peace keepers) or any peace negotiations will be used as motivation to fuel & recruit for further jihads or as proof of Western encroachment or Western favoritement towards the Jews. Whereas if left to continue to kill themselves off, Palestine’s fellow Muslim nations will simply continue blaming the mere existence of Israel or the west for any further violence.
Basically it is a lose/lose situation. Meanwhile, the international media will continue push whatever position that places Israel & the US in the worst light possible. Bonus points for adding more fuel to an already explosive situation. Because if all out war takes place, what better example to use to show how wrong Israel, aided by the US, was wrong all along.
I think someone in our State Department should leak that we’ve been in three way talks with Isreal and Egypt to negotiate the return of Gaza.
The more all three parties deny it, the more everyone will believe it to be true and eventually Egypt will have to enter Gaza. Leaving Hamas with the uncomfortable problem of living in a country that has a peace treaty with Isreal and a government that doesn’t have too many scruples.
I think that would be a great example of outsourcing.
I gotta disagree with you on a couple points.
Or is this Israel’s chance to reverse the tactical errors it made when it evacuated Gaza, and when it bowed to political pressure and retreated from Lebanon?
It’s convenient you put them into one sentence. I’ll add another point to this that I don’t think you agree with either, Israel didn’t lose the war in Lebanon against Hezbollah last year. I don’t know if they “won”, but they surely came out better than they went in.
For the first two, what did the Israelis do? They ‘retreated’ into what they want their country to be, then, they built a wall, now, the Palestinians are like scorpions in a jar, going crazy and killing wildly but they can only kill themselves. I have always thought that was the idea, especially that that was Sharon’s idea when he left Gaza and moved out the settlers who he had encouraged.
As for the war, look at what’s happening in Lebanon today, the Lebanese gov’t is fighting the jihadis instead of ignoring them. Do you really think they would have a year ago? They really, really, really don’t want Israel blowing up half their country again. Sure Israel didn’t do a lot of good, but they seemed to use FrnakJ’s “Nuke the Moon” strategery. They also made the Lebanese gov’t look incredibly weak. They couldn’t control their own terrorto… errr, territory against either their own terrorists or Israel.
Notice also that when somebody fired rockets at Israel last week, Hezbollah was very quick to deny that they were involved. The press might think that hiding in a bunker, going from ‘safe house’ to ‘safe house’ at night and being afraid to show your face is “winning”, but I think the jihadi iceholes who run Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the People’s Front of Palestine, the Palestinian People’s Front and the rest might disagree.
So what to do? Nada, nothing, zilch. Let the Palestinians blow each other up. People talk about their “democratic” elections. That’s a load of rich, creamery butter. It’s not democracy when you can be killed for running for office. Imagine if there had been a political party that was for dealing with Israel. They would have looked pretty gruesome as they were hung up on street lamps for being “collaborators”.
So my opinion is that Israel should stay disengaged and lash out maniacally at any and every provocation from jihadi scum. Their attempts at ‘engagement’ only encourage the jihadis. Jihadis are like the way Romans saw Germans, they’re either at your throat or at your feet.
Fair enough, Veeshir. I think the Israeli’s hurt themselves w/ Lebanon, but it may be that, given the propensity for anti-Israel forces to shoot themselves in their own feet, Israel comes out better in the long run.
Veeshir,
But isn’t that more a function of self defense against the Islamist forces that are trying to take the Lebanese government down then fear of how Israel might act?
But isn’t that more a function of self defense against the Islamist forces that are trying to take the Lebanese government down then fear of how Israel might act?
Pablo, I think the answer is very long and I’ll screw it up in the middle but I’m going in anyway.
Yes. Obviously.
No. Not so obviously.
I think even that is at least partially thanks to Israel. I didn’t really make this point well, but They also made the Lebanese gov’t look incredibly weak. They couldn’t control their own terrorto… errr, territory against either their own terrorists or Israel.
What I should have written was “They also showed the Lebanese gov’t how weak they (the Leb gov’t) were in their country.” They saw Hezbollah carve out a portion of their country and there was absolutely nothing they could do. That’ll scare a gov’t (and a country) a little bit.
So now Lebanon really doesn’t want the jihadis to attack Israel again. And… they really don’t want to jihadis to overthrow their gov’t. And… they are really happy the Syrians are (mostly) gone and want to keep it that way. And, they know that Israel will blow up much of Lebanon if attacked. They also know that Syria and Iran, through their proxy Hezbollah, are more than willing to let Lebanon get blown up for no reason than they really don’t like Arab Democracies.
Add in that fact, that they’re attempting to form an Arab democracy which is verboten according to all the other Arab despots in the region.
So yes, the Lebanese gov’t is now acting in self-preservation, but much of the reason the jihadis are attacking Lebanon is because they’re afraid to attack Israel and, IMO, much of the reason their attacking the jihadis is because that war showed them exactly how weak a hold they have on much of their territory. Lebanon has another, very real, problem. They can’t turn to anyone for help. Who would help them? Who could help them?
The first category includes the US, France maybe… and most likely non-militarily, Israel, Iraq and…..uhhhhh…….. (how much oil do they have? Little? None? Forget China and Russia), their, dictatorial, Arab brethren? The same ones who really, really, really don’t want an Arab democracy and who are fighting against it tooth and nail in Iraq. Iran? Sure, for client state status.
Who could help them? Well, Lebanon can’t ever be seen getting help from Israel. The US claimed to give them some ammo a month or so ago. I hope (and bet) that we gave them much more. Like trucks to carry the ammo and possibly, some nice guns to shoot the ammo. But we can’t really get too involved. Iraq has enough problems on their own. France could, and maybe with Sarkozy they would, but I would hate to bet my country’s existence on French aid. Look at how well that worked for the Czechs and Poles.
So Lebanon understands that they have to fight the jihadis because if I’ve learned anything, it’s that despots and would-be tyrants (jihadis) have to kill somebody. If they can’t kill Jews, well, those damn Lebanese “democrats” (read “apostates”) who are against sharia law will do nicely.
I just entered a reply that was very long (about one sentence worth in Jeff Goldstein parlance) and it seemed to take but then disappeared. I will try it again if it doesn’t show up.
I find it kind of funny that Krauthammer’s view is what passes for “hard-line” these days. What he said was Hamas was trying to kill Israel so they should … stop giving them money. I could think of a couple of responses a lot more hard-line than that!
McQ at Q and O seems to implicitly agree with my analysis. At least, he thinks Israel is popping popcorn in anticipation of a rematch between Hamas and Fatah.
I hope they get the extra-buttery kind. That’s my favorite.