Eloquent Incoherence

The BBC’s West Bank correspondent Paul Adams offers some excellent insight into the recent conflict in Gaza and the deep divisions within the Palestinian leadership. Adams discusses Hamas’ takeover of Gaza and Fatah’s subsequent consolidation of its authority in the West Bank within the context of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which allowed Fatah leaders to return from exile and assume internationally-recognized, albeit limited, civil authority over the West Bank and Gaza. According to Adams, the new arrivals from Fatah arrogantly brushed aside Palestinian leaders that had held the fort in their absence and openly flaunted their misappropriation of the foreign aid they received as part of the Accords, construcing extravagant villas for themselves in the heart of impoverished neighborhoods. This corruption and ineptitude caused widespread disillusionment and spurred the rise of Hamas, which culminated with its surprising victory in the January 2006 elections and predicated the current crisis. The shocking manner in which Hamas fighters executed their Fatah adversaries and looted the property of Fatah leaders in Gaza was thus as much an act of revenge and reprisal as it was a show of force.

In any case, the degeneration of the Palestinian struggle into a gangland-style war between factions is much simpler than the “Fatah good, Hamas bad” dichotomy often portrayed in the media. But that’s not good news; judging by their actions since taking power, Hamas likely won’t fare any better than their rivals did. Hamas brought little relief to the Palestinians during its tenure as part of the short-lived unity government. Though it persisted in refusing to recognize Israel despite the crippling economic sanctions its position brought on, Hamas presented no practical alternative path to resolving the crisis.   And, as explained by BBC correspondent Jeremy Bowen, there’s little indication that Hamas’ leadership can control the masked gunmen that now patrol the streets of Gaza. Despite the apparent reality that neither side has a coherent vision for the future, nobody seems willing to back down. And so the tragedy of Palestine continues to unfold.

Rabbis in the Israeli city of Bnei Brak have signed a statement declaring it forbidden for Jews to sell or rent property to Arabs. The statement echoes sentiments expressed in racist fliers distributed in the city last month. The Hebrew-language fliers read:

Our homes have become non-Jewish. In Pardes Katz, there are hostile Arabs, not of our people, who have brought to our streets intermarriage, destruction and fear… We must not agree to an atmosphere so dangerous to our souls and bodies! We cannot allow them to destroy the education of the youth in our neighborhood!

But I guess it doesn’t matter, since 68 percent of Israelis already refuse to live in the same apartment building as an Arab.

This latest bit of racist bile comes on the heels of Israel’s bombing of Lebanon this past summer, during which the Yesha Rabbinical Council declared, “according to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as ‘innocents’ of the enemy.” Perhaps Yesha’s ‘fatwa’ is simply a reflection of the prevailing attitude toward non-Jewish life within the Israeli Defense Forces, as evidenced by the alarming practice of IDF soldiers posing for pictures with dead Palestinians (Of course, CNN somehow missed all of these incidents, though they did report on this in great detail)

How is it that racism and religious extremism are so pervasive in the “only democracy in the Middle East”? I wonder if MEMRI will translate and distribute these statements…

(courtesy of KabobFest)

Israel killed three times as many Palestinians (660 to be exact) in 2006 as it did in 2005, according to annual statistics published by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Meanwhile, the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian militants dropped from 50 in 2005 to 23 in 2006. In addition, 9,075 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli jails, of which 345 are minors and 738 have not been informed of the charges against them, if any.

When Israel vacated its illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip last year as part of its “unilateral disengagement plan”, Western media commentators described the move as “historic” and generated a media frenzy reporting on every last detail of the settler evacuations. Lost in the hoopla over Israel’s “generosity” was the fact that the evacuated settlers would be resettled not within Israel proper, but within new and expanded illegal settlements in the West Bank. Last December, shortly after the Gaza Strip evacuation was completed, Israel approved a massive expansion of the Maale Adumim illegal settlement, already the largest in the West Bank. Today, Israel approved its first new illegal settlement since 1992 in the northern Jordan Valley specifically to accommodate families evacuated from the Gaza Strip. Both stories were completely absent from the front pages of CNN.com, MSNBC.com (which apparently finds unwanted Christmas presents a more fitting subject for a front page story), and FOXNews.com, and were mere bylines on BBC.com.