O Palestine!

For anyone who didn't hear: Hamas took over the Gaza Strip last Thursday. The Hamas-controlled Parliament was then dissolved by (Fatah) President, Mahmoud Abbas.

It was inevitable.

When Arafat died in Nov 04, Palestinians had no reason to vote for Fatah any more. Even prior to his death Arafat was the "little Dutch boy" holding his finger in the dike: Hamas and Fatah fought for years and Arafat could do nothing to stop it. And within Fatah, Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade and others were disobeying Arafat.

The sole reason Arafat held on as long as he did was because Palestinians didn't have another icon. He was it (in part because he made it so), and when he died there was no other. Compared to Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas was a Western lackey.

Palestinians were through with Fatah and Fatah corruption--so in the first election they voted for Hamas. Community-minded Hamas, who had been building hospitals and running charity organizations since 1987. This caused the West to cut off funds to the PA (since Hamas won't recognize Israel) and to try and starve them out while Palestinians were engaged in a low-grade civil war. But the US/Israel liked that. (I wouldn't even be surprised if Israel supplied Fatah with weapons!)

Now that Fatah has lost its Gaza offices there are effectively TWO Palestinian governments: Hamas, in Gaza, and Fatah in the West Bank.

Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe now the West can give funds back to Fatah or, better yet, directly to Palestinian hospitals...and we can look like the good guys. Meanwhile, we'll hope the Gazans will see what happens when you support the West. Unfortunately, it won't stay that way for long. Israel will probably do a couple of "surgical strikes" over the next few weeks: assassinating Hamas leaders with missiles. Then they'll wait for the katusha rockets to start falling on S Israel--or a soldier to be kidnapped. Next they'll invade.

This won't be S Lebanon again. Just their armored thrust: probably one leg to secure the Egyptian border and one to attack Hamas offices. But mostly it will be to turn up the heat on Gazans and give Fatah a chance to re-take Gaza. Israel won't require the US to do anything except stall the Security Council and keep an international peacekeeping force at bay.

Easy enough...we've been doing that for 50 years.