Hamas vs. Fatah. What will this mean?

Parent Cafe
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<p>“So the Arabs for the past 35 years have been providing funds to Hamas to make them the leading social service provider in Palestine”</p>

<p>The Arabs have provided funds to Hamas to buy weapons and create suicide bombers. Hamas is smart enough to know that if they also provide social services, they will win over the people. Don’t attribute altruistic motives to Hamas. They are militants whose sole agenda is the destruction of Israel and anyone else who gets in their way (Fatah in Gaza, the Lebonese)</p>

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<p>Ignorant. You know not of which you speak.</p>

<p>But of course the argument goes that Arabs don’t provide social services to “their own people”. Then the argument is around whether they should be expected to. Then when it is demonstrated that they do, it is because building roads, schools, hospitals, clinics for 35 years is directed at the destruction of the state of Israel.</p>

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<p>mini: no one is saying that they didn’t “building roads, schools, hospitals, clinics” I said that they were SMART enough to realize that by doing just that, they will win over the populace to their MAIN, STATED objective for their existence. They are first and foremost a militant group whose number one STATED mission is to drive Israel into the sea.</p>

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It speaks to your willingness to subsume everything to your political agenda that you would consider the basic humanity of rescueing their fellow Arabs from abject poverty as merely a “nice thing”.</p>

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<p>Well said drb. It also speaks to how much one values human dignity and life.</p>

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<p>…and let’s not forget how it’s always Understood who the forever partner-in-blame is, in these discussions. Even if there were no, or barely any, partnership with Israel, if we did not see Israel’s needs as to some extent our moral obligation, the violence in the world, and the poverty, seems always to be the U.S.'s fault, ultimately. Africa, Mexico, Arab countries, you name it: we either caused it, or it’s ours to solve. Right, mini? I mean surely, this is your rationale for unlimited immigration from south of our border (not that I’m hijacking the thread), but it’s all the same to you: in that case, it’s NAFTA & our part in NAFTA. In this case, whom did we force into poverty again? (Remind us; I’m sure you will.) Whom are we now obliged to rescue?</p>

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<p>The Arabs aren’t the “new Jews”.</p>

<p>I have rebelled against the right wing screeching of “Islamofascism” for years. Suddenly though, I am beginning to think they were somewhat right…not for the US to invade Iraq on false premises, and terrorize that nation, but that there is a real and existential threat of militant Islam that is not only a figment of the imagination of the Fox News watcher.</p>

<p>The Arabs are not the new Jews, because Jews never presented an existential threat (except for people who wrongly thought they were all communists, but that is another thread altogether). While the fundamentalists and militants may not be the majority of Arabs, the moderates are still far too quiet…why so little admonishment of the violence and criminal behavior?</p>

<p>The internecine violence, the complete lack of regard for human life, for the rule of law, for human decency is a threat to the stability of the region, and the world, and this violence is NOT the fault of the US, of Israel of Britain or of anyone else. It is time for moderate Muslims to speak up, and much more loudly. In the meantime, while I am not fearful of the “caliphate” that some people are, I do think that this disregard of law and human rights presents a real and present danger.</p>

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<p>“While the fundamentalists and militants may not be the majority of Arabs, the moderates are still far too quiet…why so little admonishment of the violence and criminal behavior?”</p>

<p>^^I think because they fear repercussions from those fundamentalists & militants. (According to some of them who have spoken up about just that issue.)</p>

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<p>Hamas hasn’t been around for 35 years. It was created more or less by accident about 20 years ago, at the outset of the first intifada. As it developed, it modelled itself considerably on Fatah and Hezbollah, both of which were long-term shadow governments, providing comprehensive governmental services (education, trash collection, health care, policing, dispute resolution, and, of course “diplomacy” and defense, i.e., attacking Israel and Israeli occupation forces and settlers).</p>

<p>I don’t understand why everyone thinks it would have been “easy” to integrate the Palestinians into other Arab countries. For the most part, they have a political and ethnic culture that’s very different from that of many Arab states, especially the Gulf States, all of which tend to be very picky about whom they “absorb”. Lots of Palestinians are and were Christians, which creates all kinds of additional issues. And it’s far from clear that the unabsorbed Palestinians wanted to be absorbed. For a long time – and this has clearly changed – the mainstream Palestinian aspiration was to have a liberal, secular democracy. The tribal monarchies of Jordan and the Gulf States (including Saudi Arabia), the repressive dictatorships of Syria and Iraq, and the mess that was and is Lebanon were not terribly attractive. You wouldn’t have wanted to be absorbed by them, either. And even if the mainstream of Palestinian allegiance has shifted to Hamas’ brand of democratic Sunni Islamism, there is no natural home for that in any of the Arab countries surrounding Palestine.</p>

<p>And, on top of all that, it’s a lot of wishful thinking to imagine that the surrounding states were ever going to volunteer to solve Israel’s problem for it by “absorbing” Palestinian refugees and placing their own political equilibria (where such existed) at risk.</p>

<p>I’m not arguing that the refugees’ misery wasn’t exploited by everyone for political gain. Of course it was. But the situation was and remains far too complex to permit this particular longstanding AIPACism to go unchallenged. The premise for the argument that the surrounding states should have absorbed the Palestinians is that they are all culturally monolithic and of a piece with Palestine. But that’s simply not true, and it never was.</p>

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No, the premise is that it is inhumane to sit idly by and force hundreds of thousands of people to live in squalor and poverty within your borders. For you to defend this as a matter of being “picky” with respect to who one would absorb speaks to the cultural disaster that it is.</p>

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<p>Not only that, but in many countries, including Lebanon, the Palestinians have been forced to stay in refugee camps and not allowed, by law, to look for work, nor can they become citizens. </p>

<p>After the 1948 war, Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and its more than 200,000 inhabitants, but refused to allow the Palestinians into Egypt or permit them to move elsewhere. </p>

<p>Saudi Arabia chose not to use unemployed Palestinian refugees to alleviate its labor shortage in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. </p>

<p>Kuwait, which employed large numbers of Palestinians but denied them citizenship, expelled more than 300,000 of them. “If people pose a security threat, as a sovereign country we have the right to exclude anyone we don’t want,” said Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States, Saud Nasir Al-Sabah (Jerusalem Report, June 27, 1991).</p>

<p>And these are only a few such examples. It is disgraceful how the Palestinians are used as political pawns, and there is no defense of these actions by so-called progressives.</p>

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<p>And there’s the crux of the matter - why is it Israel’s problem? What other victor in a war has become responsible for the refugees caused by that war? Particularly when it did not start the war?</p>

<p>And as for “monolithic”, last time I looked Croatia and Slovenia were not monolithic, nor were Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or any other other European countries that absorbed a significant number of World War II refugees.</p>

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<p>“The premise for the argument that the surrounding states should have absorbed the Palestinians is that they are all culturally monolithic and of a piece with Palestine. But that’s simply not true, and it never was.”</p>

<p>No the premise for the surrounding Arab states to absorb the refugees they created is based on the fact that Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Eqypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen all sent their armies to crush the infant state of Israel precipitating the refugee problem. You created them. You take them.</p>

<p>BTW if NAFTA were responsible for creating Mexican refugees as opposed to creating tens of thousands of Mexican jobs I would be more willing to take all these illegal aliens in. But the fact is thier own government created the problem and we enabled them by failing to enforce our own laws.</p>

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<p>Oh and while we are at it all those Arab countries that expelled their Jewish population could have used all the property these refugees had to leave behind.</p>

<p>135,000 Jews expelled from Iraq
75,000 Jews expelled from Egypt</p>

<p>The list goes on and on but basically the indigenous Jewish population has been expelled from every Arab country and a number of non-Arab Islamic countries.</p>

<p>mini I have to tell you the truth. I have a hard time understanding a self-loathing American but I can do it. A self-loathing Jew on the otherhand completely baffles me.</p>

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<p>Let us not forget the Christians being driven from Iraq and other Muslim countries. Jews and Christians and any other religion not Islam are being murdered i nthe Middle East.</p>

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<p>“Or is that now that most Palestinian Christians live in Michigan, they should adopt a pan-Islamic view of things.”</p>

<p>According to the Arab American Institute, 3% of all Arabs living in Michigan are of Palestinian origin, which would be about 15,000 people, so was this really “most” of this group in the Middle East? This is a very small number. I don’t understand what mini wants these 15,000 people to do now in Michigan?</p>

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<p>I have posted this on it’s own thread, but it clearly answers the question posed and debunks Mini’s arguments.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.terrorismawareness.org/what-really-happened/[/url]”>http://www.terrorismawareness.org/what-really-happened/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Jimmy Carter shares his thoughts.</p>

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<a href=“Satellite News and latest stories | The Jerusalem Post”>Satellite News and latest stories | The Jerusalem Post;

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<p>Hitler was democratically elected. Democracy is sometimes a little over-rated. God knows it ain’t working so hot in Iraq right now.</p>

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<p>For much of history, Christians and Jews lived in peace in Arab states.</p>

<p>Plus, ask Christian Palestinians in Israel and in the West Bank how they feel they are treated by Jewish Israelis.</p>

<p>There’s enough blame to go around - Jews (ultra-orthodox, zionists), Palestinians (both Hamas and Fatah), the Brits, the US, etc.</p>

<p>As for the power struggle btwn Hamas and Fatah - while probably inevitable, it was hastened by the US and Israel refusing to deal with the unified Palestinian govt.</p>

<p>While I don’t particularly care for either Hamas or Fatah - the administration’s comparing them (esp. the former) with al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist groups is plain stupid.</p>

<p>Westerners, including journalists, for the most part, have been safer in the West Bank and Gaza (until recently) than in places like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt which are US “allies” (heck - Westerners were safer in Iraq and Iran pre-invasion).</p>

<p>However, with the deterioration of the economic and civil structure in the Palestinian territories (in no part due to the policies of the US and Israel), we are starting to see groups which are far more radical than Fatah or even Hamas - where the al-Qaeda ideology has taken hold.</p>

<p>And the whole public support of Abbas by Bush and Olmert doesn’t exactly do Fatah any good (yeah, we may be able to “buy” support with copious amounts of aid - but most Palestinians don’t particularly care for either Bush or Olmert and having Fatah seen as an American/Israeli puppet isn’t exactly a strong foundation for popular support).</p>

<p>What is it with American foreign policy makers who keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again? We’ve done the futile propping up of corrupt regimes with little popular support over and over again.</p>

<p>Like it or not - Carter is right. We needed to, at the very least, have some relations with Hamas.</p>