The Emerging Hamas Disaster
The initial signs of the ascension of Hamas continue to be horrible. Today, we are greeted with this:
Hamas suggested Saturday that the Islamic group could create a Palestinian army that would include its militant wing _ responsible for scores of deadly attacks on Israelis _ in the aftermath of its crushing victory in parliamentary elections.
Israeli officials condemned the plan, demanding that Hamas renounce violence. Palestinian security officers, including loyalists from the defeated Fatah Party, said they would never submit to Hamas control.
“Hamas has no power to meddle with the security forces,” said Jibril Rajoub, a Palestinian strongman.
Angry police stormed the parliament building in Gaza and armed militants marched into Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ compound in Ramallah to demonstrate their rejection of Hamas’ authority. Their defiance raised fears of a spike in violence between Palestinian factions.
Imagine, for a moment, that the United States military coexisted with a ‘Republican’ wing or a ‘Democratic’ wing. It’s inconceivable…fortunately, a number of Palestinians apparently feel that way as well.
Many say we have to give Hamas a chance…well, we don’t really have a choice, now, do we? Yet I see no reason for optimism yet…
One mild counterpoint: one of the key problems with the Palestinian Authority has been that the government had no monopoly on the use of force. (Continue your analogy to one in which the U.S. Army is about the same size as the Democratic People’s Army and the Militia of the American Republic, which answer to Howard Dean and Ken Mehlman respectively.)
A few years ago, when Abbas came to power, there was a post on One Hand Clapping relates an incident from the formation of Israel when the new Israeli Defense Force had to fight against future P.M. Menachem Begin’s militant group, Irgun, to establish that the IDF was to be the only armed military in Israel. The same thing will have to happen, somehow, in the Palestinian Authority — all of the armed militias have to be either merged into the P.A. or disarmed before there will even be a real “partner for peace” (*gag*) to negotiate with.
Even if the forces are being unified under the current command of the Hamas leadership (and isn’t that what’s supposed to happen when they take civilian power??) at least it’s being unified — that’s a step in the right direction, or at least in a necessary one… at least necessary if there’s ever going to be a “two-state” solution.
I admire Clint’s optimism–I keeep coming back to a Golda Meir quote that a commenter left yesterday:
Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.
Comrades,
Hmmmm.. let’s see here… Violence-based single-issue political party rides a wave of popular support to victory in a democratic election. Complains of having land taken from them by international fiat. Vows to return their land to them. Exhorts national unity in the face of “Zionists”. Uses brute force, intimidation and murder to silence critics. Complains of their lands being overrun by Jews. Publishes handbook of political ambitions, including extermination of Jews, and returning their nation to it’s rightful place…..
International leaders harrumph and say that the new ruling party is simply, “misunderstood” that the new leaders are not “serious” about what they preached, it was all just politics. They are simply reacting to what they perceive as onerous treaties and restrictions placed upon them. Governing, of course, will dampen their ambitions and smooth out all the rhetoric. After all, they were just slogans and electioneering. They don’t REALLY mean they will destroy all the Jews.
Sadly, within 10 years, 6 million Jews were dead. People refused to believe. The self-appointed intelligentsia refused to accept that “Mr. Hitler” actually meant what he said. That it WASN’T rhetoric after all.
Now here we are. Hamas and Iran and Syria combining to support each other. Iran calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map”. Hamas calling for the destruction of Israel. For the deaths of the Jews.
And the sheeple who editorialize from editor’s desks, the Self-Appointed Mullahs of Intellectualism, crying out their liberal fantasies from their ivory minarets at Berkely, and Harvard, and Yale and Columbia J-school, the terrorist enablers of Turtle Bay, all refuse to use their eyes and their ears and accept that perhaps these Johnny Jihads actually DO mean that they are going to kill all the Jews.
Hitler may be dead, but his ghost is speaking loudly and plainly through the mosques and minarets of Gaza and Tehran, and his brownshirts are marching once more through blood-soaked boulevards. The only thing missing is the rousing chorus of the Horst Wessel.
Respects,
Tim
The logical counterpoint would seem to me to argue that if people had given in to the so-caled “mullahs of intellectualism” in 1919 and not appeased the French thirst for revenge by signing the Treaty of Versailles, you could have prevented Hitler’s rising to power in the first place, that if people had admitted that the Germans were getting a bad deal under that treaty and being given a useless, corrupt, government, they might not have been desperate enough to think that Nazism was a solution 20 years later. But why do that when you can just assume that the Germans were the only ones who ever did anything wrong?
Comrade Owen,
Apples and Oranges. How many times do the Germans have to march through Belgium and into France before folks wake up?
Franco-Prussian war, WWI, WWII, ah… well anyway…
The problem IS the Palestinians. They have been on a long road to collective suicide. They have raised up generations in hatred and perverse, convoluted interpretations of the Koran. They strap explosives to their young, and send them into crowds of Israeli civilians, school buses full of Israeli children, and restraunts full of Israeli families to kill as many as possible. The Israelies rightly strike back.. at the terrorists and their leaders. Israel does NOT intentionally target civilians, despite what so many would earnestly rather believe.
Hamas, like Wahabism, is a cancer upon civilization, and the only solution left is surgery. Kill the cancer before it kills the patient. No more Georgia Cracker talk of Palestinian rights. They threw those away when they elected Hamas. They invited terrorists willingly into their nation and now they will pay dearly for that mistake. They have sewn the wind, and so will now reap the whirlwind.
People make decisions, and decisions have consequences. Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.
Respects,
Tim
AE-
I’m not sure how optimistic I am. I suspect things will have to come to open war before the Palestinians will discover how much they really want peace. They’ve been fighting a bizarre one-sided war for an awfully long time.
With luck, bargaining chips like the money we (and Europe) give the P.A. and the openness of Israeli borders will be sufficient to bring Hamas to the table — but even if they don’t, and things get really bad, that won’t necessarily mean that there was any other way to get from where we were to any kind of two-state solution.
Your perspective is better than mine on this one, Clint–I’m in a funk.
One more thought — back on the original point of the post: having dedicated “Hamas” units within the Palestinian defense forces, with their own dedicated “Hamas” barracks could be extremely handy when Israel wants to respond to Hamas’s first terrorist outrage.
It is too early to announce victory or defeat for the idea of peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, but we should consider one of the factors that seems to have led to the resurgence of Hamas: the decision, by Sharon, to unilaterally withdraw.
Israel had, rightly in my view, asserted that it had the right to defend itself and, for years, made the withdrawal from Palestinian land conditional on the cessation of hostilities and a demonstrable commitment to peaceful coexistance. By acting unilaterally, Sharon was hailed as a peace maker. But with the recent election victory of the indefensible terrorist organization Hamas I think we have seen, once again, that appeasement fails.
“The road to despair is paved with good intentions.”
Comrades,
Well, I believe that Sharon was not working towards appeasement at all, but giving the Israelies a better position from which to fight Hamas. By leaving Gaza, and now having elections that put Hamas in charge, Palestine is a legitimate nation by any definition. That means that any attack, however small or great, originating in Palestine is an act of war, and Israel need not hold back any of it’s forces.
Israel will no longer be responding to terrorist attacks, but acts of war comitted by an elected government against another sovereign nation. No more treating it with limited responses, no more “police” actions, no more need to take things to the UN.
The UN charter recognizes a nations right to self defense. Israel can now fully exploit that recognition, and deal with Hamas in the manner that the world dealt with the Nazis.
Hamas, Iran, and Syria don’t seem to recognize the subtle shift in realpolitik that has taken place in Palestine. Israel has a great capacity for restraint, but that restraint is like a glass of water. It can only hold so much. You can, to a certain extent, even over-fill the glass. But at some point, there will be that one final drop that breaks the tension holding it all together, and then decades of restraint will overflow that glass. It will be a fearful reckoning.
respects to all,
Tim
How is it that my comparison is apples to oranges and yours is apt?
It should also be pointed out that historically, it’s hardly a consensus view that Germany started WWI. In fact, the French had adopted as a political platform the idea of avenging their defeat in the Franco-Prussian war and had actively maneuvered Europe towards war with Germany.
It’s not that the Germans aren’t to blame for WWII, it’s that they had a legitimate grievance after WWI (The Treaty of Versailles is pretty universally regarded as ridiculously punitive); had that grievance been better addressed early on, it seems fair to argue that WWII might never have happened. Do you think that Iran would have had their Islamist revolution if they hadn’t been forced under the control of a fascist dictator?
Appeasement is not the way to go, but violent overreaction and zenophobia is not, either. It seems worth pointing out that the Fatah party that everyone wanted to win was also a terrorist organization, and that no one thought they could ever be reasonable. Now we’re mourning their loss? What will do when Hamas (who have proven themselves to be far less theocratic in their municipal rule than we expected) are undercut by international unwillingness to deal with them and they are replaced by Islamic Jihad, the group responsible for all of the suicide bombings during the 2005 cease-fire? People are mad that Fatah is gone, but even they didn’t honor the cease-fire as well as Hamas.
Again, if you want to talk apples to apples, Sinn Fein is the best comparison to Hamas that I can think of, and allowing Sinn Fein to participate in real government did do a lot of good and help to divide the movement in productive ways.