Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Foreign Policy & News The Triumph of US/Israeli Policy in Palestine

Claims that Hamas' "victory" in the Gaza Strip is a sign that the Bush Doctrine in Palestine has failed are misguided. While no one can foresee all of the events that might take place in a region as volatile as the Middle East, Hamas' takeover in Gaza will ultimately benefit Israel and the United States. It will benefit Israel by giving it a free hand to destroy Hamas, permanently sever the West Bank from the Gaza Strip, and re-"negotiate" with its newly appointed "partners" the remaining islands of economically unviable territory that will soon be entirely encircled by a concrete and barbed-wire wall, cut off from their supplies of water and fertile land, and separated internally by "Arab-free" roads.

Watching the barbarous killing between brothers in Gaza, a power struggle between rival factions seething in frenzy like the great prison in which they thrive, Israeli and American political analysts can rest their cases with confidence. Across the spectrum of debate, these experts can expect vindication by the media juries who, in sanctimonious indignation at the brutality meted out by partisans of Fatah or Hamas, have assembled all the "evidence" they need to justify our righteous war against Muslim-Arab terrorists and their internecine blood feuds.

Hamas won power in good part because of the refusal of Israel’s right-wing governments and the Bush administration to halt West Bank settlement even though it violate international law, the 1993 Oslo Accords, and UN Resolution 242.

West Bank Jewish settlers grew from 111,000 in 1993 to nearly 500,000 today – in spite of Israel’s agreement at Oslo to stop settlements.

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Inter-Palestinian violence and political chaos, of course, suit Israel’s expansionist right-wingers very well. They want turmoil on the West Bank. Palestinian infighting supplies them the perfect excuse to avoid ever having to make serious land concessions and provides useful cover under which to keep building settlements.

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Finally, we are still hearing rumor in the bazaar that President Bush may name Tony Blair, who is making his long goodbye as Britain’s prime minister, as a sort of Peace Czar to deal with the Palestinians. Just when White House policies couldn’t get any more bizarre or counter-productive, along comes this daft notion.

Blair is discredited at home in Britain for launching a war of naked aggression and becoming a serial liar to promote it. He is viewed with hatred and contempt in the Muslim World as a lackey of the Washington neocons. The oleaginous Blair should be selling kitchen appliance or aluminum siding, not dealing with the world’s most explosive issue that he helped worsen when in office.

oleaginous: unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech; containing an unusual amount of grease or oil.

We created a civil war. This is actually outrageous. Ongoing U.N. envoy to the Middle East peace process, Alvaro De Soto, himself accused the U.S. of fomenting a civil war by training, funding and arming Fatah thugs and inserting them into Gaza to destabilize the Hamas government.

We never gave them a chance. They were democratically elected in an election that was widely recognized as free and fair, even by former President Jimmy Carter.

And then the U.S., along with Israel, Jordan and Egypt trained these gangs and actually put them in Gaza to overthrow the Hamas government. And, of course, it's actually backfired and Fatah was overthrown. But all you're going to do is isolate and further radicalize Hamas.

And so when you say that the U.S. is seeking to ease tensions in the Middle East, I disagree with you. These are tensions that the U.S. actually created in the Middle East.

Lowenstein is obviously an anti-Western ideologue

I haven't read the article yet and I don't know who Lowenstein is but your comment deserves a comment.

Is it not possible the author did get something right? But you wouldn't know since you dismissed it before reading it. Is it possible your prejudice may have clouded your objectivity?

I don't all the in's and out's of Palestinian politics but I'll read the articles and see what these folks have to say.

I should not have read the entire thing since Lowenstein is obviously an anti-Western ideologue who is heavily invested in hating all things associated with it -- especially Israel's existance -- and one who believes that if a yak in Outer Mongolia gets a case of the shivers it was somehow caused by the Great Satan America.

As Israelis, we believe that the only chance for a genuine peace is one that enables the Palestinians to establish what we have, a viable and truly sovereign state of their own.

I suspect she is reflecting an impartial view of the situation, condemning both sides and hoping they can meet somewhere in the middle and find resolution. Idealogue? Perhaps but what would that make you?

As to the author being anti-western and anti-Israel, even while being Israeli, herself, and in Israel -- that is not at all unusual.

As Israelis, we believe that the only chance for a genuine peace

On what basis do you assign her the labels "anti-Western" and "anti-Israel".