Slater confirms what Shaked said about separating Hamas from Fatah. But he explains it much more clearly. This also explains why Lieberman was bashing Abbas and saying he prefers him to be deposed. Looking good. Looking very good. Israel doesn’t have to blockade Gaza. It just has to bomb the shit out of them if they attack Israel with their new weapons. Also there will be no land corridor connecting them.
DEBKA noted previously,that this trade came about because
Those clauses, negotiated directly between Panetta and Hamas’ political chief Khaled Meshaal, entailed the shutting down of Hamas headquarters in Damascus in order to undercut Syrian President Bashar Assad, Iran and Hizballah and loosen their hold on the Palestinians. Meshaal who visited Tehran a week ago agreed to gradually downgrade his ties with Iran in return for American patronage of Hamas.
But the bigger question is, has the US thrown “Palestine” under the bus? Ted Belman
By Jerome Slater
Oct 19/11
On September 27, Israel announced plans to build 2600 new homes in East Jerusalem; an October 18th Haaretz editorial noted that “the creation of the new Jewish neighborhood will reduce the likelihood of reaching a peace agreement over Jerusalem.” The ongoing Jewish expansion into formerly Palestinian neighborhoods, not only within the pre-1967 boundaries of Jerusalem but beyond them as well, will “complete the ring that will cut off East Jerusalem completely from the southern West Bank,” Haaretz noted.
Two days ago a Hamas leader reported that an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza was a central component of the Shalit/Palestinian prisoners agreement; Haaretz reports that Israeli officials have essentially confirmed the Hamas report and that the Shalit agreement “marks a turning point in relations between Israel and Hamas.”
Almost certainly, these two recent developments are connected: taken together, they make the overall Israeli strategy unmistakably clear: to separate the West Bank from Gaza and to make a two-state settlement even more impossible. Unlike in the West Bank, Israel no longer has territorial, nationalist, or religious claims in Gaza; consequently, since its 2005 withdrawal of the Jewish settlements, Israel’s only interest in Gaza is that it not be attacked from there—regardless of who rules it.
Indeed, the return of hundreds of Hamas prisoners and the gradual ending of the Israeli economic siege of Gaza will assuredly strengthen Hamas’s control of Gaza and should be regarded as essentially a reward for the organization’s willingness to continue the de facto ceasefire with Israel—regardless of its policies and actions in the West Bank–that has been in effect since the end of the Israeli attack on Gaza in January 2009.
At the same time, the deal with Hamas has had the effect–in all probability the intended effect– of marginalizing and humiliating Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, and other Palestinian moderates in the West Bank. Current international pressures (feeble as they are) focus only on an Israeli willingness to seriously negotiate a settlement with the Abbas government, but not Hamas: hence, it is likely that the logic of the Netanyahu government is that the weaker the PA in the West Bank, the stronger Hamas in Gaza, the less likely a two state settlement and the freer hand Israel has in the West Bank.
It is not the first time in Israeli history that it has actually preferred dealing with Hamas than with Palestinian moderates, precisely because the pressures on Israel to grant Palestinian independence in a viable state are far greater when it must negotiate a true compromise settlement with moderates, as opposed to reaching partial, unofficial, and reversible de facto agreements with Islamic radicals. The Shalit deal and the apparently impending end of the economic siege of Gaza, then, reflects a larger Hamas-Israeli agreement, tacit or negotiated: you leave us alone in Gaza, we leave you alone, not only in Israel proper, but in the West Bank as well.
The likely future is revealing itself: no Palestinian state, and certainly no Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem: just two “entities,” the one in essentially disconnected and probably smaller and smaller Bantustans dominated and controlled by Israel, the other in a tiny sliver of land of no interest to Israel. If anything, irony of ironies, Hamas-controlled Gaza may well end up being freer of Israeli pressures, military incursions, and economic control than the West Bank under the most moderate and responsible Palestinian leadership in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Jerome Slater is a professor (emeritus) of political science, currently holding the position of University Research Scholar, State University of New York at Buffalo. Since 1963 I have taught and written about U.S. foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
23rd and 24th. Gazaland is a fait accompli, and Ramallah is already a separate quasi-state with its own military and its own foreign policy. The US already de facto recognizes Abbas as the head of a Palestinian state, with capital in Jerusalem: The US consulate in Jerusalem is for Arabs only, Jews excluded.
Too many Jews think they can cut out their own heart and give it away, and still live. Hevron, Beit Lechem, Beit El, Sh’chem, Jericho and East Yerushalayim — that is the Biblical, historical heartland of Israel. The rest of Israel is essentially the “Near Galut”, the shriveled, useless right hand of a dead Am Israel that has lost its soul.
Israel cannot be divided. End of story.
One more comment: “Stupid Jews”.
There, call me an Antisemite.
Big problem there, Felix. The world’s Jews seem unwilling to occupy the rest of Eretz Israel. Not much has changed since Joshua’s day.
More leftist rubbish. Abbas is “the most moderate and responsible Palestinian leadership in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?” What rubbish. How many times must the Arabs, including Abbas, repeat that they want Israel dead, and act on those statements, before stupid academics will believe them?
Look at the big picture. B.O. and the West, as well as the Arabs, are intent on carving a 23rd Arab state out of Israel’s heartland, but it will not end anything. It will only be the key step in the intended destruction of Israel.
The latest news is that Israel has successfully tested a nuclear capable ICBM, 7000 or longer range. Yesterday?. The same information disclosure says that Israel has the means to destroy all the Iranian key nuclear sites. One could assume that it would include critical infrastructure as well. Also it is informally disclosed that the Cabinet of 8 is considering ending the nuclear ambiguity policy.
I would be safe to assume that pending the UN report on Iran nuclear status, there is s pretty nasty storm brewing.
Further, I also would say that after that war, Hamas would be not longer and so would be anyone joining Iran, Assad, Hezbollah…
Israel in turn will suffer serious losses both in human lives lost and harmed and materially.
an October 18th Haaretz editorial noted that :
“the creation of the new Jewish neighborhood will reduce the likelihood of reaching a peace agreement over Jerusalem.”
A peace agreement over Jerusalem? Who needs or wants it?
And I always believed that there is a consensus that Jerusalem is a non negotiable issue.
Nope. The US Admin, CinC, is holding up the bus till Israel can be serially thrown under it.
David
Left to their fading devices, the “ha’aretz” will never fail to convert gold into… you know what I mean. It is the nature of that aggregate and will never change until that time when true MAPAINIKS will re take that formerly decent, if wrong newspaper.
It is a sorry sight seeing that consistently staffers tumble from one spying episode to the next.
Gaza and Y&S islamics are form completely different origins. Gazans are for the most Africans of origin. Not many “hamulas” have contacts with the Y&S ones.
Mr. Obama is naturally inclined to side with African islamics for obvious reasons…
Military doctrine No 1
“In a war situation you have to win the ground on which the enemy stands and occupy it. Applies to Gaza and the hills of Judea and Samaria”
Hamas is the Palestinian’s favorite. Everyone and their cousin knows someone in Hamas. That’s why Hamas won (in Gaza). Fatah is regarded as a bunch of corrupt, ineffective schmucks. It was inevitable that the Obamaites would deal with Hamas. Whatever it means, who knows?
Do we never learn? Are our memories so short? Strengthening Hamas may work for us short term, but the piper will demand to be paid down the road, as it always does…….and again as always the price will be Jewish blood.
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A- Israel won’t bomb the shit out of them, or at least haven’t till now.
B-Tell that to all of the residents of the South that the government of Israel will not try their best to block weapons into Gaza and that their lives and property are forfeit.
C- We know How the government would react to a rocket attack against Tel Aviv and we in the South want the same consideration otherwise we have class A citizenry and Class D citizenry. I can tell you it’s no thrill to be expendable.
Keep it up BB and the Likud won’t get any votes from the South.
Ted you keep looking for any reason even half baked to justify and support BB, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Ronny Shaked is a left wing Hack in Bed with the Palis for years. He is a fluent Arabic speaker and to get his stuff from the Palis he has to be considered by them as supportive, which he is.
The indigenous Gaza Arabs have Bedouin and Egyptian roots, Egypt ruled Sinai and Gaza through a military government. The inhabitants were never granted Egyptian citizenship before 67. Today the vast majority of Gazans are former refugees from Israel or their decedents. solve the refugee problem in Gaza and you will essentially solve much of our Gaza problem.
Palestinian Public Opinion Poll No (41)
Massive support for going to the UN, but a majority expects US and Israeli financial and political sanctions and three quarters want an actual exercise of sovereignty throughout the West Bank
Get rid of those 50% the rest will follow!!!!
This is typical Haaretz BS. I’ve seen the map of the proposed construction, noting that
(1) It is not in “Palestinian neighborhoods. It is on open land
(2) it doesn’t “cut off” anything. In fact, most new Jewish settlements in Jerusalem seem cut off from older Jewish settlements by large blocs of Arab neighborhoods.
The rest of the article continues in this phoney tone. Why is (G)Aza separated from Judea and Samaria (Yesh)? Because of Israeli policy? No. It is because of:
(a) Geography. Yesh is in the eastern hills, Aza is on the western coast, and Jews predominate in between — as they have, since the days of the British Mandate.
(b) Arab politics. The PA, centered in Yesh, is the province of Mahmud Abbas, elected “Palestinian Prime Minister” who has stayed in office beyond his lawful term and become a kleptocratic dictator. Aza, meanwhile, is the province of HAMAS — the terrorist group which became the dominant party in the PA parliament in free elections. They have since staged a military coup (2007), in which they kicked the PM and his followers out of Aza and set up their own oligarchical reign of terror.
(c) Ethnicity. The Arabs who occupy Aza came there primarily from Egypt, and those who occupy Yesh came mostly from Syria and Jordan. They are genetically different from each other, and speak different dialects.
(d) History. Until the Oslo Accords, there has never been an independent, unified Arab entity in Aza and Yesh. HAMAS is more historically correct than the PLO, in rejecting the whole idea of a “Palestine”; and even the latter admits that the creation of Arab “Palestine” is only an interim step on the way to establishing a regional empire. This isn’t a matter of Aza being separated from Yesh; it is a matter of two groups of kleptocrats vying with each other for control of a caliphate.
To Haaretz’s credit, they were right in that Israel has played a PART in maintaining the separation of Aza from Yesh: The presence of the IDF between the two entities has prevented the two warring parties from going after each other in a bloody civil war. Haaretz seems to be opposed to such peacemaking, however, only when Israel is the peacekeeper.
Is this real? Is Hamas really giving up J&S and Palestinian nationalism for the idle pleasure of launching missiles into the rest of Israel? If the Palestinian nationalists can be pried loose from Gaza, then certainly not only is the “peace process” dead, but so is the whole basis of Palestinian nationalism, which is the destruction of Israel. Without Gaza, the Palestinian nationalists have lost a key playing piece in the board game that is being played against Israel. Maybe Hamas is possessed of a grander scheme of things, maybe taking into account the advance of the Islamic Brotherhood in seizing power in so many neighboring countries. The pretense of Palestinian nationalism, never a vital belief in Islam, is no longer necessary. But without the dewy eyed plea for Palestinian nationalism to cover for the sadistic war against the Jewish state, their sympathizers in the rest of the world are not going to have the spine to smack Israel around when it tries to do something about Gaza. Without Gaza, there is nothing left for Israel’s neighbors to vent their spleens with. Israel’s borders will be secure. They are going to have to ratchet up their rhetoric to some level in order to whip themselves into a state for war. But what have they got? The liberation of Palestine? But at that point, “Palestine” would be the emperor with no cloths. The world has changed. Much of the leverage that existed against Israel is fading day by day. An end game is on the horizon.
Its a strategy as old as the Romans: divide et impera = divide and rule.
By cutting off Abu Bluff and Fatah at the knees, Israel is sending him and his PA the message his attempted runaround of Israel will lead nowhere.
While the IDF high command is urging boosting the PA, in the wake of the Palestinians being seated as a full member in UNESCO, few Israeli officials now think that would pay dividends.
Israel is putting an annexation bill on the Knesset winter calendar and if things continue going the way they are, Abu Bluff’s avoidance of negotiations and attempting to impose a fait accompli upon Israel will in fact achieve the exact opposite of his declared aim.
This is not the first time the Palestinian misreading of Israel has ended in disaster for them. The peace process is dead.