Hamas in Gaza (merged thread)

[SoiCowboy]

Gaza's been a dump since at least the 1980s.

First Intifada showed them that violence as a way of life is A-OK.

And they've been doing it ever since, because to do anything else means you're just another unemployed bum in a failed statelet rather than a holy warrior of God / military muscleman.

Everyone should stop funding the Palestinians, and let Hamas bankrupt itself trying to fix the strip and the PLO/Fatah disintergrate from lack of patronage.

[Jedburgh]

The Economist, 13 Jun 07: The Road to Hamastan

By the end of this week, the Islamists of Hamas will have either destroyed the secular-minded Fatah in the Gaza Strip, or at least shown that they can. The relative quiet after a deadly burst of violence between the rival Palestinian parties in May was broken by a series of ###-for-tat killings that quickly got out of hand. After troops from the presidential guard of Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, fired rockets at the house of Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister, the Islamist party launched a full-scale attack. Hamas troops have taken control of most of the Gaza Strip and have chased Fatah forces out of their bases, while several top Fatah commanders have either fled Gaza or been killed....