I don’t know if it’s being bored by another tribal conflict as much as thinking this snapshot of chaos and violence is any more explosive than past outbreaks (wasn't there worst fighting between the two groups last year?). I trust your expertise here and would hate to see things really blow up there.

The Palestinians, many of who are generational refugees, have been on the edge of catastrophe for some time. I don’t think European or Arab states are going to step in to help as they will be opposing Israel and America. It seems to me that Israel and the U.S. are getting just what they want. They have denounced Hamas and declared it illegitimate from the day it was democratically elected. They have tried to starve it to death and have arrested and assassinated leaders of the government and played the two groups against each other.

The Palestinians have been occupied for decades and what happens in the territories is a reaction to that domination. Israel does not have to take out Hamas if it can get Fatah to do it for them. Remember, it was Abbas who could not deliver and could not be trusted before Hamas was elected. Now he is being played against them.Gaza has been more assaulted, constricted and subjugated since being relinquished by Israel than when it was still officially occupied. I agree it is bloody and predictable.

"This is urgent. As Gaza sneezes, Israel and the region are in danger of catching a very nasty cold."
Actually, it's other way around.
As Gaza's catching a very nasty cold, Israel and the region sneeze.

I'm afraid, this is only solution:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/860681.html

I can only say that anybody who refers to Netanyahu affectionately as Bebe has already forgotten about his corruption or his linear approach to diplomacy.

The fact that Israel's monetary and land-line isolation of the Palestinian government, since Hamas were the democratic majority, has led to the same conclusion as their destabilization -- with similar tactics -- of the previous Fatah government, is as predictable to any simpathetic observer as it was to the hardline Israelis who promulgated these actions.

The deliberation behind Israel's continuous undermining of any Palestinian stability should be obvious to all as their main polcy toward the occupied territories.

Wake up, Israel, if you want peace. Otherwise you will eventually reap what you sow.

"Wake up, Israel, if you want peace. Otherwise you will eventually reap what you sow."

Ditto.

I agree with Daniel that this is a seminal moment & Gaza is on the cusp of disaster.

The only solution is for Israel & the U.S. to end the economic embargo of Gaza immediately and support the national unity government.

If they don't (& I realize it's extremely unlikely they will see reason to do so when they've failed to do so for the past 6 yrs or more of the Bush Admin.), then Gaza will begin that downward spiral to all out civil war.

As Daniel says, Fatah cannot win this battle. And an Israeli reoccupation to squelch Hamas' victory in the current ongoing hostilities is at best a poor stopgap measure. It merely postpones the inevitable--that Fatah is a bankrupt political entity offering very little to the Palestinian people.

I don't know that Hamas is much better. But what's the alternative as Levy says? Al Qaeda?

Richard Silverstein
Tikun Olam>

I think that a lot of the problems we're seeing in the world today relate to having weak borders. This is partly, in my view, attributable to the whole 'globalization' business. People on opposite sides of a concrete wall have a really hard time trying to hurt each other, and as they won't be mingling socially, it's also hard to nurse grudges, agitate each other into fights, or otherwise perpetuate a lot of the problems we've read about in the news for, oh, say the last 40 years or so. Borders really do work, and the sooner the concept of maintaining and defending them gets re-popularized, the sooner there'll be less people trying to keep being hostile towards each other.
Good fences DO make good neighbors...

It would be nice if Israel, Europe or the United States could wave a magic wand and make the Arabs come to peaceful terms with each other. However, it is time to give up the fanatasy that someone other than the Arabs can resolve their own problems.

However big a threat bin Laden is to the U.S. and the West his first enemey was Saudi Arabia. In iraq despite the incompetence of the Bush Administration it is not necessary for Sunni and Shiite Arabs to torture and slaughter each other. Lebanon has not only been occupied by Syria for 25 years without a peep from the American Left but it too is experiencing a low grade civil war.

Then Israel leaves Gaza leaving the Palestinians a difficult but not an imposssible situation. One of the first things the Palestinians do is destroy the greenhouses that were a potential source of foreign currency. The Palestinians have had the potential to building a government and a better life for themselves. Instead civil war and growing death.

It might be time to face the truth. Most of the Arab World has been under the thumb of Turks, Ottoman and Seljuk for over a thousand years. They need a lot of assistence in building a liberal society and a lot less apologists. There also has to be a lot less make believe about what Western countries "owe" the Arabs.
Daniel A. Greenbaum

Excellent! Why should Gazan factions murder each other when Israel can come in and murder everyone?

That's such a wonderful idea! All it needs is a catchy slogan: "We had to kill them all in order to save them." "Occupation is Freedom." "Democracy is great so long as you elect who we like." "If your puppet can't do the job, we'll do it ourselves."

Yes, I'm sure a force of occupation troops re-inserted into Gaza will be welcomed with open arms by all those people who celebrated its departure and who voted for Hamas!

And I think we can soundly anticipate that the Gazans will lay down their weapons, embrace the miseries of their existence, and not treat the Israel occupation forces as handy targets. They will certainly not apply any lessons learned in Afghanistan, Lebanon or Iraq.

Hey, perhaps we can even start trying a few settlements in Gaza once again. Hmmmm.

Wonderful idea, friend Davai, entirely typical of you.

I notice you've never invited me to tell you what I think of you.

Why is it not OK for Israel to say that it does not want to have anything to do with Gaza?

I would say launching rockets out of F-16s constitutes "having something to do" with Gaza. So does Israel's current policy of active if submerged military and financial support for Fatah. Israel can no more say that it does not want to have anything to do with Gaza than the US can say it wants nothing to do with Mexico, or Manhattan can say it wants nothing to do with the South Bronx. I mean, if you really want to "have nothing to do with" Gaza, then I suppose you could just sit on your hands and let the Qassams fall and the suicide bombers attack. But I don't really imagine you're about to do that. And as soon as you move in and retaliate, you have "something to do with" Gaza again -- because obviously simply launching retaliatory strikes is puerile and ineffective, you have to have a coherent strategy for preventing future attacks, and that means backing friendly factions against unfriendly ones, gathering information by recruiting networks of informants... before you know it, there you are again.

There's no way out. You're in. The wall doesn't work. All the approaches are awful; but some are less awful than others, and complete disengagement turns out to be one of the more awful ones.

Accumulating Peripherals

" Generally, it's a better idea not to administer other people "for their own good", unless you like rocks in your face."

Generally, you are correct, but not in this case.
Look at West Bank from where there are no rocks in Israeli faces, and at Gaza from where there are rocks in Israeli faces.
So, what you should do when facts don't prove your Hypotheses?

American credibility will be further tarnished

If the US is pushing two I-P policies, one by Condoleeza Rice and the State Dept and a vastly different policy by Elliott Abrams in the White House, how can there be any American credibility?

Abrams promises President Bush will act as an "emergency brake" so that Israel will not get pushed into agreements it doesn't like, and describes Secretary Rice's efforts as a "process" to show the Arabs and Europeans that the US really is pushing for peace.

According to Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), it is Abrams, and not Rice, who is in charge of Mid East policy, while Swoop notes VP Cheney's message during his recent Mid East visit:

In return for reduced US pressure to democratize, the Administration expects more understanding from the Arab governments of its reluctance to seek concessions from Israel.

American credibility is tied in an Abrams (k)not.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. H.L. Mencken

Yeah, no, I didn't actually mean that the wall wasn't effective in the limited goal of preventing terrorists from entering Israel. But it's not a sufficient approach. There was a sense back in 2003 or so that it might be possible to just build a wall, retreat, and let the Palestinians rot. That turns out not to work. Israel needs an active strategy for fostering stable rule in the territories; otherwise, as Daniel says, you end up living next door to Mogadishu, and in the long term no wall is high enough to keep out Mogadishu.

Basically, and this has been said many times, Israel has based its Palestine strategy for the past 40 years on the premise that I am safe if my neighbors are weak and divided. It has been clear for 20 years now that this is a huge failure, and that Israel will never be safe until its neighbors are stable and unified. All of Israel's safe borders are with the strong countries which it once considered enemies: Egypt, Jordan, Syria. Its dangerous borders are with the unstable, weak, failing states which it has tried to dominate and break up: Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon.

Accumulating Peripherals

In an ideal world Daniel Levy’s comments would make for a great deal of sense.

But it can’t have escaped everyone’s notice that we don’t live in an ideal world. Far from it. If we did, then this whole subject would be little more than ‘academic.’ In fact, the expectation is it wouldn’t exist at all.

But the world is as it is and we can make of it only what we can. Although an ‘ideal’ world seems far beyond our grasp or understanding, we’re not entirely helpless in our dealings with the one we have now.

While reinventing the wheel isn’t always the best of methods, there are times when that particular exercise can seriously be worth the effort.

http://yorketowers.blogspot.com

But isn't Hamas a Mossad creation?

"Are you saying that Israel is worse off today then 20 years ago ?"

What is this, a joke? Obviously from a security perspective Israel is worse off today than it was 20 years ago. 20 years ago a Jew could get into his car in Jerusalem and drive down to Jericho for peanut chicken at an Arab restaurant. A Jewish family could drive out to Wadi Kelt and go for a hike and a picnic, without an armed escort. A 12-year-old Jewish kid could wander around by himself in the Arab quarters of the Old City, or in the shops and squares of Bethlehem. Any Jewish parent who would let his 12-year-old son do that today should be arrested for parental negligence.

If you think Israel is "stronger than it has ever been," you live in a dangerous fantasy world.

Accumulating Peripherals

"If you think Israel is "stronger than it has ever been," you live in a dangerous fantasy world."

OK, If you could draw the graph , at what point Israel was the strongest?

I'm wondering if you are correct.
Anybody with informed thoughts up there ?

What quantitative factors do you include in strength? I'd like to see how you specifically define strength, rather than simply saying you think Israel is stronger and expect other people to give opinions, with specifics, of why you might be wrong.

A starting point might be for you to reconcile how terrorist rockets are a critical threat, yet strong Israel seems to be unable to stop them. At least in this context, either the rockets are actually not that dangerous, or Israel is not strong enough to stop them.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

When I was a lad, and complained to my mother about a bully, it became clear that the school administration wasn't going to do anything because he had been doing things off school premises. My mother pointed out that we could only address my actions, which could include avoiding the situation or defeating it. It certainly didn't mean staying in a stalemate with him.

If the Palestinians are not sufficiently organized to respond, and Israel is, it is at least appropriate to address Israel's disproportionate military responses -- which don't seem to be stopping the problem. Israel has objected to multinational force, so what is left?

Palestinians could be purple and it would make no difference. From a practical strategic standpoint, if they have decided they would rather die than deal with Israel, that has to be addressed, either by finding a solution or moving out of their range.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]