Hamastan

Well, your guess is as good as mine basically regarding Hamas’ capture of Gaza. There’s so many different possible outcomes and consequences.

E.g., Hamas could try and turn it into a mini-statelet run by Sharia law and use it as a base for permanent attacks against Israel. We could also see the ascendancy of Fatah in the West Bank and have perhaps two different Palestinian entities to deal with.

All the idiot leftists are now cock-a-hoop with the thought that now Hamas are isolated in Gaza, Israel can make an historic peace with the Fatah “moderates”. Hmmm...yes, nice idea, but about as likely as a glass bulldozer. For a start Israel tried to make peace with Fatah in the Oslo Peace Process begun in 1993. Fatah, with Arafat as the head, ended that. The current head of Fatah, Farrouk Kaddoumi, has said that “At this stage there will be two states. Many years from now there will be only one” and “there is no struggle for our rights other than armed military struggle…”, so my hopes for peace with him aren’t too high either. Furthermore, people have forgotten that Fatah, and all of its vicious and murderous offshoots were responsible for more suicide bombings and attempted suicide bombings then Hamas in 2006. Last year, 126 potential Fatah suicide bombers were detained as opposed to 30 from Hamas. What type of peace partner is that?

The reality is that the Palestinian national movement is completely balkanised and not one part of it has ever fully come to terms with Israel’s existence and permanently renounced violence.

Now, even if lets say Mahmoud Abbas is genuinely interested in making peace there’s two problems of equally gigantic proportions. 1) Abbas does not control the seventeen, yes that’s seventeen, Palestinian “security services”, armed factions and terrorist groups. Arafat created so many different groups as part of a traditional divide and rule policy in typical dictatorial style whereby nobody would have enough power to ever challenge his own authority. 2) The emergency government Abbas has set up is essentially a coup against Hamas which was elected by the Palestinian people in free and fair elections. Doing any deal with such an entity would be invalid since it would not be signed in the name of the Palestinians. Any attempt to force such a deal on the Palestinians without a referendum would have no legitimacy in their eyes and they would not feel bound by it.

When will people get it into their heads that there is nothing more that Israel can do at this point to advance this chimera they are obsessed with of a “final status” peace? Until the Palestinians can put their own house in order there is nothing Israel can or need do.

Once again, as with Syria, we see Olmert scuttling around trying desperately to resurrect his pathetic career by inventing for himself the role of an architect of peace, only he’s playing with Israeli security as he does so. His only reason for chasing a peace deal is his own political life and this is as reprehensible as it is irresponsible.