NPK INFO - 20 juni 2007

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NPK-info - Nederlands Palestina Komitee / www.palestina-komitee.nl

Today in Palestine! http://www.theheadlines.org

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Actualiteit qua "divide and rule"

- From Nakba to Gaza: Palestine at the friction point, Mazin Qumsiyeh, 20-6-2007

http://www.qumsiyeh.org:80/fromnakbatogaza/

- Whose Coup, Exactly? Virginia Tilley, 18 June 2007

http://electronicintifada.net:80/v2/article7038.shtml

Quote: "According to the Basic Law, Abbas has violated a whole stream of Articles as well

as the spirit of its checks and balances, which were designed during the Arafat era partly

to limit the power of the presidency."

- The Crisis in Gaza: Made in Israel, Michael Warschawski, 18 June 2007 (*)
http://www.alternativenews.org/blogs/michael-warschawski/the-crisis-in-gaza-made-in-israel-20070618.html

Quotes:

-- ".. For months, the US State Department has been pushing the Fatah leadership to launch a military offensive against Hamas, and two weeks ago, Israel was giving a green light to the entry of huge quantity of arms for Fatah militias in Gaza. In that sense, the Israeli part in the present situation is not only conjectural, but an active role...."

-- "... Since the electoral victory of Hamas, Dahlan’s militia has been provoking the government, attacking Hamas militias and refusing to let the government control the Palestinian police forces. Despite Dahlan’s aggression, Hamas has been doing its best to reach an agreement with Dahlan, asking its own activists to refrain from counter-violence. However, when it became clear that Dahlan was not looking for a compromise, but indeed attempting to liquidate Hamas, the Islamic organization had no alternative but to defend itself and fight back...."

- The Real Coup Plotters, Peter Beaumont, 18-6-2007
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-06180713201.htm

- Hamas' Shock and Awe, Sam Bahour, June 18, 2007
http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=13958&CategoryId=5

- The People of Palestine must Finally be Allowed to Determine their Own Fate, Karma Nabulsi, June 18, 2007
http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=13962&CategoryId=5

- Welcome to 'Palestine', Robert Fisk, 16 June 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2663199.ece

- A setback for the Bush doctrine in Gaza, Ali Abunimah, 14 June 2007
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article7030.shtml

Quote: "The core of US strategy in the Southwest and Central Asia, particularly Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine,

and Lebanon is to establish puppet regimes that will fight America's enemies on its behalf."

De EU en NL/Verhagen

http://www.minbuza.nl/nl/actueel/nieuwsberichten,2007/06/Europese-Unie-hervat-financi-le-steun-Palestijnen.html

Minister Verhagen meldt dat "alles gedaan moet worden om verdere escalatie in de regio te voorkomen".

Goed te herinneren (NRC 24 maart) dat Nederland als enige EU-land "een voorzichtige ontdooiing van de relatie met de

Palestijnse regering" blokkeerde en daarmee escalatie mogelijk maakte en stimuleerde (escalatie-management).

Verhagen/NL steunt, evenals de vorige regering, het negeren van het Palestijnse parlement en heeft zelfs niet één eis aan de Israelische regering.

Bijeenkomsten

20 juni (vanavond) om 20 uur spreekt Dries van Agt over Palestina-Israel (Nijmegen, Stevenskerk, St.Stevenskerkhof 62)

NPK/WL, 20-6-2007
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(*) The Crisis in Gaza: Made in Israel

http://www.alternativenews.org/blogs/michael-warschawski/the-crisis-in-gaza-made-in-israel-20070618.html

Written by Michael Warschawski, Alternative Information Center (AIC)
Monday, 18 June 2007

The old dream of Ariel Sharon is becoming a reality: Palestinians are killing Palestinians, and Israel is counting the number of victims with great satisfaction. The tears of Israeli leaders are crocodile tears, and their claims that they are sorry for the tragic developments in Gaza are mere hypocrisy. The bloody confrontations were predictable, and the Israeli-US responsibility and active involvement are crystal clear.
Many Israeli journalists are analyzing Israel’s responsibility as indirect: “1.4 million people closed in a small territory like Gaza, without any possibility to have normal economic life, but also without the possibility of escape, are doomed to kill each other… like mice closed in a box.” That zoological explanation is not only typically racist, but also based on a huge understatement. For, the Israeli and US role in the present confrontations was much more than simply “creating the conditions” for an inner-Palestinian conflict.
For months, the US State Department has been pushing the Fatah leadership to launch a military offensive against Hamas, and two weeks ago, Israel was giving a green light to the entry of huge quantity of arms for Fatah militias in Gaza. In that sense, the Israeli part in the present situation is not only conjectural, but an active role.

Who is the Aggressor?
“Hamas is taking over,” “A Hamas coup d’etat”—these are some of the headlines from the Israeli newspapers in the last days, repeating the big lies of the Tel Aviv and Washington administrations. It appears that there is a need to make clear what should be obvious: Hamas smashed Fatah in the last Palestinian elections, after an electoral process that the whole international community, including Washington, hailed as “the most democratic ever in the Middle East.” Unquestionable democratic process and massive popular support, few regimes can claim such legitimacy.
Despite their huge victory, Hamas accepted to share the power with Fatah in a national unity government formed under the hospices of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and hailed by the entire international community, with the exception of Washington and Israel. The political platform of the new government gave de facto recognition the State of Israel and endorsed the strategy of peaceful negotiations, based on the mechanism of Oslo.
The priority of the new government was to deal with the burning domestic issues—economic improvement, restoration of law and order in Gaza, fighting the endemic corruption of the old Fatah-led administration—while allowing President Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO to continue the negotiation process, if and when Israel would accept to renew it.
Hamas’ moderate government platform, however, was confronted by two powerful enemies: a segment of the Fatah cadres who are not ready to renounce their monopoly in the political power, and the material privileges connected to that monopoly, and the US-Israeli neoconservative governments, which are conducting a global crusade against political Islam. Muhammad Dahlan, former Preventive Security chief and present Security Adviser of Mahmoud Abbas represent both: they are the executioners of Washington’s plans in the Palestinian leadership, as well as the representatives of those corrupt Fatah leaders who are ready to do everything in order not to lose their economic resources.
Since the electoral victory of Hamas, Dahlan’s militia has been provoking the government, attacking Hamas militias and refusing to let the government control the Palestinian police forces. Despite Dahlan’s aggression, Hamas has been doing its best to reach an agreement with Dahlan, asking its own activists to refrain from counter-violence. However, when it became clear that Dahlan was not looking for a compromise, but indeed attempting to liquidate Hamas, the Islamic organization had no alternative but to defend itself and fight back.

The Algerian Model
The US-Israeli plan is part of a global strategy aimed at imposing governments which are loyal to their interests, against the will of the local population. Algeria provides an example of such a strategy, but also of its failure and its colossal human cost: the unquestionable electoral victory of the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) over the corrupted and discredited FLN, in 1991, was followed by a coup d’etat, supported by France and the US, which paved the way for a civil war that lasted for more than a decade and provoked more than one hundred thousand civilian victims.
Hamas has clearly learned from the Algerian tragedy, and decided not to let Dahlan’s plans succeed in his attempt to take power by force. Enjoying the support of the majority of the local population, Hamas militants smashed Fatah in less than two days, despite the arms supplied, indirectly, by Israel: a corrupt militia without any popular support could not face a relatively disciplined and highly motivated organization.
Even after its smashing victory on Fatah, Hamas leadership has reiterated its intention to keep a national unity government and not to exploit the failed coup d’etat of Fatah as a pretext to eradicate the organization or to exclude it from the government. Fatah leadership, however, decided to cut any kind of relation with Hamas, and to establish a government without Hamas… in the West Bank. Another dream of Ariel Sharon is becoming a reality: total separation between the West Bank and Gaza, the later being considered a hopeless “Hamastan,” a terrorist entity in which there are no civilians, but only terrorists which can be put under a total state of siege, and doomed to starvation.
Washington, which fully endorses this policy, promised its full support to Mahmoud Abbas and his new Bantustan in the West Bank, and Ehud Olmert decided to release some of the Palestinian money that is in the Israeli government hands.

Not a Civil War
One of the Israeli and US administrations’ objectives failed however: there is no chaos in Gaza. On the contrary. As one Palestinian security officer told Haaretz (17 June): “For a very long time the city has not been quiet. I prefer the present situation to the previous one. I can, finally, go out from my house…” The eradication of Fatah gangs from Gaza may put an end to a long period of anarchy, and allow for a return to a certain level of normal life. The latest events confirmed that Hamas does have the power to impose it.
Israeli talks about a “Palestinian civil war” are no more than wishful thinking. The armed confrontation was between armed militia only, and if, unfortunately, there were civilian casualties, there were what the US army calls “collateral damage.” The population is indeed politically divided—in the West Bank as well as in Gaza—but not fighting each other, in the meantime at least.
With Gaza being defined as a hostile entity and its whole population as allied to Hamas, there is no doubt that it will be, in the near future, the target of a brutal Israeli aggression: eventual military incursions, bombardments and starvation.
This is why our top priority, in Israel as well as throughout the world, is to organize solidarity with Gaza and its population.
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Robert Fisk: Welcome to 'Palestine', 16 June 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2663199.ece

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.
Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn't like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.

No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over ?
And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word "occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment" rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority".

I recall years ago being summoned to the home of a PA official whose walls had just been punctured by an Israeli tank shell. All true. But what struck me were the gold-plated taps in his bathroom. Those taps - or variations of them - were what cost Fatah its election. Palestinians wanted an end to corruption - the cancer of the Arab world - and so they voted for Hamas and thus we, the all-wise, all-good West, decided to sanction them and starve them and bully them for exercising their free vote. Maybe we should offer "Palestine" EU membership if it would be gracious enough to vote for the right people?

All over the Middle East, it is the same. We support Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, even though he keeps warlords and drug barons in his government (and, by the way, we really are sorry about all those innocent Afghan civilians we are killing in our "war on terror" in the wastelands of Helmand province).
We love Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, whose torturers have not yet finished with the Muslim Brotherhood politicians recently arrested outside Cairo, whose presidency received the warm support of Mrs - yes Mrs - George W Bush - and whose succession will almost certainly pass to his son, Gamal.
We adore Muammar Gaddafi, the crazed dictator of Libya whose werewolves have murdered his opponents abroad, whose plot to murder King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia preceded Tony Blair's recent visit to Tripoli - Colonel Gaddafi, it should be remembered, was called a "statesman" by Jack Straw for abandoning his non-existent nuclear ambitions - and whose "democracy" is perfectly acceptable to us because he is on our side in the "war on terror".
Yes, and we love King Abdullah's unconstitutional monarchy in Jordan, and all the princes and emirs of the Gulf, especially those who are paid such vast bribes by our arms companies that even Scotland Yard has to close down its investigations on the orders of our prime minister - and yes, I can indeed see why he doesn't like The Independent's coverage of what he quaintly calls "the Middle East". If only the Arabs - and the Iranians - would support our kings and shahs and princes whose sons and daughters are educated at Oxford and Harvard, how much easier the "Middle East" would be to control.
For that is what it is about - control - and that is why we hold out, and withdraw, favours from their leaders. Now Gaza belongs to Hamas, what will our own elected leaders do? Will our pontificators in the EU, the UN, Washington and Moscow now have to talk to these wretched, ungrateful people (fear not, for they will not be able to shake hands) or will they have to acknowledge the West Bank version of Palestine (Abbas, the safe pair of hands) while ignoring the elected, militarily successful Hamas in Gaza?

It's easy, of course, to call down a curse on both their houses. But that's what we say about the whole Middle East. If only Bashar al-Assad wasn't President of Syria (heaven knows what the alternative would be) or if the cracked President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wasn't in control of Iran (even if he doesn't actually know one end of a nuclear missile from the other).
If only Lebanon was a home-grown democracy like our own little back-lawn countries - Belgium, for example, or Luxembourg. But no, those pesky Middle Easterners vote for the wrong people, support the wrong people, love the wrong people, don't behave like us civilised Westerners.
So what will we do? Support the reoccupation of Gaza perhaps? Certainly we will not criticise Israel. And we shall go on giving our affection to the kings and princes and unlovely presidents of the Middle East until the whole place blows up in our faces and then we shall say - as we are already saying of the Iraqis - that they don't deserve our sacrifice and our love.
How do we deal with a coup d'état by an elected government?
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