If you want to learn more about the US role in promoting Fatah-Hamas warfare, check out Tony Karon. Deliberately initiating a proxy war and then having your proxy lose is really just incredibly shoddy. I've said before that we should hope for a Democratic Party that puts something better on the table than superior implementation of a Bush-esque worldview, but it really would be nice to see some better implementation.
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Made in the USA
14 Jun 2007 02:28 pm
Comments (38)
Actually, if Hamas wins in Gaza but loses in the West Bank, it could lead to rapid independence for the West Bank, which would be a great step forward.
Not that this means I think U.S. policy was brilliant, or foresaw this silver lining at all...
Your concern is noted, Thomas.
That's a very good piece, even if much of it is simply a compilation of what we already know: the Bush-Rice approach to democracy means the people must be allowed a free vote, and then be punished for exercising it.
Though I'm sure that SLC will be along soon to explain why this shows the population of Gaza needs to be driven into the Mediterranean.
I guess it can be called "shoddy", but clearly the logic behind this is simple: 'the towelheads are killing each other - great, pass the popcorn'. The Democratic party, of course, will try to do the same, but not as decisively.
They are fighting because we cut off aid?
Why is it that for some people, everything must always be about the US? This isn't about us! Sometimes people just fight because they hate each other.
Obviously, it's not just made in the USA - clearly, Fatah & Hamas deserve their own share of blame. That said, it's a fact that the United States's unspoken policy has been to forment a civil war between Fatah & Hamas. Read the confidential report from Alvaro de Soto, the former UN Mideast Envoy:
...the US clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fateh and Hamas -- so much so that, a week before Mecca, the US envoy declared twice in an envoys meeting in Washington how much "I like this violence", referring to the near-civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because "it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas ".
See here:
http://warincontext.org/2007_06_10_archive.html#2369796006009353298
I'm not sure why Tony Karon's piece is particularly good. He seems to wildly go back and forth between blaming the US for Hamas' power and complaining that the US didn't accept Hamas' power soon enough.
Karon's arguing that (1) the Bush Administration's unconditional support for Sharon discredited Fatah and helped elect Hamas and (2) has worked to undermine Hamas since it was elected rather than engage them. I don't see the contradiction.
Karon's arguing that (1) the Bush Administration's unconditional support for Sharon discredited Fatah and helped elect Hamas (2) that the Bush Administration should engage Hamas rather than encourage a Palestinian civil war. You may disagree with Tony's argument, but where's the contradiction?
One thing that can't be missed is that Hamas fighters are murdering their own people right now. It would not be logical to blame the US/Israel for that methodology.
One thing that can't be missed is that Hamas fighters are murdering their own people right now. It would not be logical to blame the US/Israel for that methodology.
Yeah, Sebastian, Peter just made pretty easy work of that apparent contradiction. Twice.
Though I'd throw in that the manner of disengagement from Gaza undertaken by Sharon cut the legs out from underneath Fatah, so he deserves a share as well. All to deny the Palestinians a victory, which in the end they claimed anyway...only it went on Hamas' side of the ledger, and not Fatah's.
As the kids say: Brilliant!!
But then, this is the Bush administration and the Middle East, so that's a given.
It would not be logical to blame the US/Israel for that methodology.
Define "blame."
Are you really suggesting that superior powers have never manipulated inferior powers/insurgents/irritants such as to divide and conquer, pit one against the other or otherwise goad a fight?
Or is it that once those splintered factions start fighting, the match lighters deserve none of the "blame"?
I blame them all, but this is an old, old game that has been played since the beginning of human time.
Ralph Peters has a different take:
"We need to stop making politically correct excuses. Arab civilization is in collapse. Extremes dominate, either through dictatorship or anarchy. Thanks to their dysfunctional values and antique social structures, Arab states can't govern themselves decently."
Ralph Peters has a different take...
Yeah, he would wouldn't he. The guy whose loudest complaint is that we don't have the stomach for fire bombing and other war crimes. That we're too soft to win wars due to our "morality."
How is it our fault again? Even if we were funneling money to Fatah, still, Fatah would need to be in a confrontational stance against Hamas in order for them to fight. It's not like we convinced them to fight. It's such a moral cop-out to blame the U.S. or Israel. This is a power struggle between two sides, regardless of whether we assisted or didn't assist one side.
Matt's posts on the Israel/Palestine issue are consistently superficial to a shocking degree. I'm more convinced than ever that he comes from a place where he is looking to criticize the Bush Administration and the government of Israel no matter what.
"Karon's arguing that (1) the Bush Administration's unconditional support for Sharon discredited Fatah and helped elect Hamas (2) that the Bush Administration should engage Hamas rather than encourage a Palestinian civil war."
That is nice, but it isn't real. If anything, Syria's support for Hamas is what has made Hamas so powerful, that and the fact that Hamas is willing to engage in suicide bombings--something which we probably shouldn't encourage.
As for point 2, what is this 'encouraging a Palestinian civil war'? Bush didn't do that, Hamas did that. Bush isn't executing Fatah administrators in the street. Bush was perfectly willing to engage Hamas if they ceased support for suicide bombing and accepted Israel's right to exist. Frankly not that hard (and certainly much easier than civil war). But for some reason they chose civil war.
You don't seem to want to analyze what that reason might be if you can't blame Bush for it. That is going to lead to muddled thinking.
As for point 2, what is this 'encouraging a Palestinian civil war'?
Elliot Abrams term was "hard coup", but oh yeah, there was a very on the books and not exactly hidden project to spike the Hamas government (and then the unity government). Around $60 million dollars in small arms was sent in for this purpose, maybe they didn't want a "war" but they had a side they wanted to give up the ghost. Up until Dahlan's guys lost, the administration also had figures willing to admit that things were going well if you had Palestinians killing Hamas.
Bush was perfectly willing to engage Hamas if they ceased support for suicide bombing and accepted Israel's right to exist.
Did you catch this part of Karon's piece?
force the Hamas government to chant the catechism of recognizing Israel-renouncing violence-abiding by previous agreements (again, Israeli leaders have to giggle at that one!)
Maybe it's too much an in joke, but they played this game with Arafat for years and years and years. "He said it in English", "He said it in Arabic, but he said it to the wrong newspaper", "Well, whatever he said, we have this letter from the 70's that he signed and never renounced", and on and on and on ad nauseum. If you don't know the joke, they do in Palestine.
Ed Marshall,
But Hamas isn't playing a game. They are completely forthright about not recognizing Israel or abiding by previous agreements. I don't think that position is even controversial in Hamas. (As far as I can tell, the moderates only want a hudna, to of course be followed by the ultimate destruction of Israel when circumstances permit.) Do you think they are just pretending to be more hard-line than Fatah?
I think Tony Karon is putting too much agency in the hands of the United States here. Hamas has always been more popular in Gaza - it's not too surprising that they could win a civil war there. That's the main reason we have a war now - Hamas decided they could win it and seize sole control, so they went for it, and it looks like they are succeeding.
I'm mystified why they don't just declare a Palestinian state in Gaza and ask for international recognition, with the understanding that they could get more territory later. It worked for the Israelis.
Bush was perfectly willing to engage Hamas if they ceased support for suicide bombing and accepted Israel's right to exist.
This is not incompatible with "Bush urged Fatah not to accept the results of the Palestinian election because he didn't like the outcome."
Re pseudonymous
"Though I'm sure that SLC will be along soon to explain why this shows the population of Gaza needs to be driven into the Mediterranean"
Comments like this are not funny. What's going on in the Gaza strip is threatening to become a humanitarian tragedy. Most of the residents there undoubtedly wish that Hamas and Fatah would take their dispute somewhere else. Unfortunately, the Gaza strip is such a rats nest that nobody wants anything to do with it. This includes Egypt, Israel, the EU, the US, Russia, or any of the other Arab states. During the 1979 negotiations between Egypt and Israel, Begin practically got on his hands and knees begging Sadat to take back the Gaza Strip. Sadat wisely said nothing doing.
Re Mr. Noah
Mr. Noah may be right. That doesn't solve the problem in the Gaza Strip however. What everybody is failing to appreciate is that there is a third party quietly vying for control in the Gaza Strip, namely a group allied with Al Qaeda. There have been reports in the Israeli press citing both Hamas and Fatah officials expressing concern about the Al Qaeda presence, and Daniel Levy has mentioned it on his blog. A takeover by an Al Qaeda allied group in the Gaza strip would be a far worse disaster then the takeover by Hamas as it would give the former a base to plot terror attacks against the US and European targets and possibly undermine the regime in Egypt.
SLC's sudden humanitarian concern for the inhabitants of the Gaza strip would be a lot more convincing if he had ever acknowledged anything about Israel's role in turning that region into such a disaster zone.
Do you think they are just pretending to be more hard-line than Fatah?
No, but I don't think it matters, do you really think there was anything they could have said to make a difference?
Then there is context, there isn't a debate in Israel over destroying Palestine because, they did that over half a decade ago. The debate in Israeli polity is to offer a sort of really theoretical protectorate status to the West Bank or just continue colonizing it. The descendents of both these schools of thought accomplished their aims with massive co-ordinated bus bombings, machine gun massacres, and other atrocities on a scale (in terms of timeline) which Palestinian factions have tried to replicate and never came close to managing. It seems churlish to have the same people cry so bitterly for someone else picking up their playbook.
There is also the fact that Hamas is displaying it's rejectionism by currently shooting crappy homemade rockets into the Negev Desert. That doesn't exactly inspire fear that the Palestinians are going to come marching home and displace the nuclear armed Jewish Israeli's.
Half a century ago, my bad.
What is so difficult to understand here? The Fatah and Hamas fighters are directly responsible for their own crimes, but the US with Israel's help has spent the past 18 months or so trying to topple the Hamas government by arming Fatah and encouraging civil war. This tells the Arab world that the US is in favor of democracy unless the wrong side wins. Then it'll encourage civil war and deplore the violence.
It's not like you have to have any identifiable good guys in this situation. There aren't any.
This is interesting.
I haven't read it, but others who have say that the report says US official David Welch was happy about the Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence.
My link didn't work. Cut and paste this--
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_black/2007/06/an_obituary_of_hope.html
One last link.
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/
It seems sorta clear from the list of quotes there that the US has been pushing for a civil war. Of course they had a different outcome in mind, one where the loser of the elections won the gun battles.
Permalink for the Tiny Revolution post.
(BTW, when I said that Bush didn't like the outcome I don't mean to imply that I like it. I wish the Palestinians wouldn't vote for Hamas. That doesn't mean I think it's good for Fatah to refuse to accept the outcome of the election.)
Has Hamas ever been asked to recognize the Israeli government as the legitimate representative of the Jewish people in the region? It seems like this would allow negotiations to begin without preconditioning Palestinian acceptance of 'facts on the ground' before negotiations.
I think if Israel shifted its position to require such a recognition and this shift was combined with a requirement of armistace, rather than 'renunciation of violence', it would compel Hamas to the negotiating table given their history of statements critical of the current preconditions.
Would this shift endanger Israel's security or improve it? I think it would improve it. The other option, endless low intensity warfare, is both corrosive to Israeli society and facilitates the continuous radicalization of the Palestinians.
I think Wetzel's point is extremely fair, minus one thing: WHAT ON GOD"S GREEN EARTH IS A GOVERNMENT REPRESENTING THE JEWISH PEOPLE? You just can't have a religious democracy. If it's true for Iran, it's true for Israel. And you can't say Jews are just some cultural group. My Jewish mother won't buy that, and neither will yours (if you have one), and neither will any Israeli Arab. The trouble with Israel is that it wants it both ways, all the benefits of the secular state and all the benefits of a religious one. How can we possibly expect other peoples, who are by definition excluded from the myth of a chosen people, to participate in it at the same time?
But I am quite sincere that I think Wetzel's point is good. His is the most fair-minded post here, next to Matthew's (MY and Daniel Levy are the best in the Blogosphere when it comes to Jewish perspectives on Israel). The best way to think about these things is from the point of view of self-interest. And there is absolutely no question whatever that the demonization of the Palestinians, however justified, will be very bad for the Jews in the long run (even worse than it's been). But the Jews do not have a good record of knowing what's good for them, do they? Indeed, the entire history of Israel is the sad story of people that, in trying too hard to learn from its mistakes, makes the same mistakes all over again. To paraphrase an Jewish sage, it's the story of people that destroys itself by "following the rules too closely."
Has Hamas ever been asked to recognize the Israeli government as the legitimate representative of the Jewish people in the region?
It wouldn't fly. Hamas has covered the 19th century vintage Jewish population in various statements, they aren't so big on the immigrants after the British Mandate. There is a larger question there, begging to be answered in our new fasination with Islamism
(which we have just granted a new sense of victimism through our patronism of Fatah in the P.A. vs. Hamas) What's the difference if they are all about religion?
The EU has always been the primary donor to the PA and they also stopped funds in reaction to the hamas victory. It seems if you were serious about the rational put forward the EU would be deserving of heavy criticism as well as the US government. This isnt serious though is it? it's just an example of interpretating events in whatever manor is most damaging to the bush administration.
Hamas=Taliban.
Its goal is the establishment of an Islamic state in what is now Israel.
"The guy whose loudest complaint is that we don't have the stomach for fire bombing and other war crimes."
You mean the way we won the "good" war, World War II? Boy, that war would have looked a lot different with today's media covering it, no?
...the Jews do not have a good record of knowing what's good for them, do they?
Is this The Onion?
...the Jews do not have a good record of knowing what's good for them, do they?
I guess that's why, over the years, other -- well-meaning -- people have stepped in to help them out, eh?
Comments closed June 28, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Matt, would you care to explain which parts of this "analysis" you agree with? I'd like to know whether I should ignore your future posts on the topic or not.
Posted by Thomas | June 14, 2007 3:22 PM