-Being Lonely On Top of Massada, or, Santa Comes To The ME
Hamas has their Massada now, surrounded by Israelis, the sea and Egyptians that don't want their ideology spreading south. Their pathetic attempt at legitimacy visa-via arresting a couple of token jaish al-Islam gunmen is just that, a PR gambit that has no traction. Meanwhile, Fatah loyalists and agents embedded in Gaza will continue to ID hamas leaders and C&C sites for IDF missles. It reminds me in a way of the US giving Stinger missles to the mujahadin in Afghanistan to use against the Soviet Hind choppers. An enemy of an enemy is a temporary friend as they say. Can't you just imagine some Shin Bet and Mossad men sitting down to tea with some of the good ol' boys from Fatah? I would say Christmas comes early for some folks, except Jews and Muslims who don't much believe in Christmas.
Preparing for the Next Battle of Gaza
SWJ Blog post - Preparing for the Next Battle of Gaza by Gary Anderson.
Quote:
The current situation in Gaza is a laboratory for the kind of conflicts that we are likely to see in the immediate future throughout the world. The best case solution would be to broker an agreement where the Hamas radicals and the more moderate Fatah faction can agree to accept that the existence of Israel is a fact and for Hamas to stop shooting rockets at the Israelis and threatening to annihilate them, which Hamas is not in a position to do in any case. If that fails, the big question for America and her allies is whether or not to support a Fattah military attempt to retake Gaza.
Fatah is now like "“Sarge”" in the Beetle Bailey cartoon. It has gone over the brink and is holding onto a tree on the side of the cliff. The Americans and Israelis have offered Fattah a rope. The question is both whether the Fatah leadership will grab it and whether the Americans and Israelis will know how to handle the lifeline. None of this is a given. This is, at best, a tenuous situation. It might lead to a happy ending, or it might be a debacle. Everything depends on how Fatah handles Israeli and American support, and how they handle Hamas...
Hamas to show an Improved Hand
Hamas to show an Improved Hand - Wall Street Journal, 30 July.
Quote:
When the Islamist group Hamas conquered the Gaza Strip in June it seized an intelligence-and-military infrastructure created with U.S. help by the security chiefs of the Palestinian territory's former ruler.
According to current and former Israeli intelligence officials, former U.S. intelligence personnel and Palestinian officials, Hamas has increased its inventory of arms since the takeover of Gaza and picked up technical expertise -- such as espionage techniques -- that could assist the group in its fight against Israel or Washington's Palestinian allies, the Fatah movement founded by Yasser Arafat.
Hamas leaders say they acquired thousands of paper files, computer records, videos, photographs and audio recordings containing valuable and potentially embarrassing intelligence information gathered by Fatah. For more than a decade, Fatah operated a vast intelligence network in Gaza established under the tutelage of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Hamas leaders are expected as early as tomorrow to go public with some of the documents and the secrets they hold.
The exact nature of the threat posed by the intelligence grab in Gaza -- including any damage to U.S. intelligence operations in the Palestinian territories and the broader Middle East -- is difficult to ascertain. U.S. and Israeli officials generally tried to play down any losses, saying any intelligence damage is likely minimal.
But a number of former U.S. intelligence officials, including some who have worked closely with the Palestinians, said there was ample reason to worry that Hamas has acquired access to important spying technology as well as intelligence information that could be helpful to Hamas in countering Israeli and U.S. efforts against the group.
"People are worried, and reasonably so, about what kind of intelligence losses we may have suffered," said one former U.S. intelligence official with extensive experience in Gaza ...
But what should we do about Hamas?
St. Petersburg Times Opinion by Carnegie Moscow Center's resident scholar
Alexei Malashenko:
Quote:
Why did President Mahmoud Abbas come to Moscow? The visit — his fifth, or by some accounts, sixth — had originally been planned for an earlier date, but Abbas postponed the trip due to turbulent events at home.
Abbas can only win from the Moscow visit. Russian authorities had no plans to saddle the president of the Palestinian Authority with new projects and proposals. The Kremlin also made Abbas’ life easier by avoiding any discussion that the Palestinians should behave more diplomatically toward Israel.
To be sure, Russia is in no position to offer its own original plan for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This “stagnation” in Middle East initiatives began during the Soviet era, when it became clear that there were no viable alternatives to the Camp David summits.
So Abbas did not come to Moscow so much to listen to Russia’s ideas and plans. His real interest, as always, was to receive military, technical and financial assistance. Moscow promised all three. President Vladimir Putin even promised Abbas 50 armored personnel carriers, but only on the condition that he not use them in the internal Palestinian conflict.
Why should this be a surprise? It is well known that this is not the first time Moscow has attempted to position itself as an intermediary between followers of radical Islam and everybody else — that is to say, Europe and the United States.
More at the link
Israelis declare Gaza 'hostile'
The people of Gaza held a free and fair election (or as close to that goal as you are likely to get in that part of the world) and elected to dump the corrupt Fatah government and give Hamas a go. Naively they may have hoped that this would have improved their lot but it has only made matters worse as Israel has withheld the taxes collected from the Gazans which they should have paid to the duly elected government to provide essential services. To add insult to injury Israel, the US and EU have all attempted to subvert the peoples choice and constitution by dealing with Fatah as if they were a legitimate representative of the Gazan people. The Gazans are unhappy with their plight but not fooled by who is responsible they blame Israel and the west not Hamas. Gaza is a giant refugee camp whose people are prevented from working, trading or administering its self and it is to our collective fault.
Now “Israelis declare Gaza 'hostile' “
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7002576.stm
I would be too!
IDF to destroy what was theirs
Tom,
I don't know about resorts, but when 1-505 "first in to Sinai in 1982, I will never forget being stationed up on SCC-6 which was the North Control Station and the day the IDF was to pull out of sector they brought D-9 bulldozers to the top and down the mountain all the buildings went:rolleyes:
Unfortunetely they did not take out the many mine fields in the area before they left:confused:
Thank God they did not demo the beach resort, that's where all the R&R action was:)