FDD

Israel’s Dilemma (CM)

Bret Stephens writes

Hamas was elected democratically and by overwhelming margins in Gaza. It has never once honored a cease-fire with Israel. Following Israel's withdrawal of its soldiers and settlements from the Strip in 2005 there was a six-fold increase in the number of Kassam strikes on Israel.

Hamas has also made no effort to rewrite its 1988 charter, which calls for Israel's destruction. The charter is explicitly anti-Semitic: "The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!" (Article Seven) "In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad." (Article 15) And so on.

It would seem perverse for Israeli taxpayers, including residents of Sderot, to feed the mouth that bites them. It would seem equally perverse for Israel merely to bide its time for an especially unlucky day -- a Kassam hitting a busload of schoolchildren, for instance -- before striking hard at Gaza. But unless Israel is willing to accept the military, political and diplomatic burdens of occupying all or parts of Gaza indefinitely, the effects of a major military incursion could be relatively short-lived. Israel suffered many more casualties before it withdrew from the Strip than it has since. …

[N]o self-respecting nation can allow the situation in Sderot to continue much longer, a point it is in every civilized country's interest to understand.

More here.

Egyptian Gaza? (CM)

Daniel Pipes writes:

Washington and other capitals should declare the experiment in Gazan self-rule a failure and press President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to help, perhaps providing Gaza with additional land or even annexing it as a province. This would revert to the situation of 1948-67, except this time Cairo would not keep Gaza at arm's length but take responsibility for it.

Culturally, this connection is a natural: Gazans speak a colloquial Arabic identical to the Egyptians of Sinai, have more family ties to Egypt than to the West Bank, and are economically more tied to Egypt (recall the many smugglers' tunnels). Further, Hamas derives from an Egyptian organization, the Muslim Brethren. As David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen notes, calling Gazans "Palestinians" is less accurate than politically correct.

Why not formalize the Egyptian connection? Among other benefits, this would (1) end the rocket fire against Israel, (2) expose the superficiality of Palestinian nationalism, an ideology under a century old, and perhaps (3) break the Arab-Israeli logjam.

More here. 

Power Play (CM)

Bret Stephens writes:

Hamas is the Palestinian branch of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, and Egypt -- not Israel -- is the country that has most to fear from a statelet that is at once the toehold, sanctuary and springboard of an Islamist revolution. …

As Middle Eastern power plays go, Hamas's decision to dismantle the Gaza-Sinai border was a masterstroke. Gaza's economic woes are almost wholly self-inflicted, but they are real. Dynamiting and bulldozing the border of a neighboring country is legally an act of war, but it was made to seem like a humanitarian necessity and a bid for freedom. Flooding that neighbor with hundreds of thousands of desperate people is a massive economic burden on Egypt, but one that it shirks at its political peril.

Above all, Hamas exploited the myth of pan-Arab solidarity with the Palestinians in order to explode it. Having whipped itself into its usual frenzy over Israel's "siege" of Gaza, it was a delicate matter for the state-run Egyptian press to make the government's case for deploying truncheon-wielding police to turn back the Palestinian human tide. It's an equally delicate matter for the Egyptian government to arrest Brotherhood protesters peacefully demonstrating "for Palestine," even if the Brotherhood's real target is Hosni Mubarak's regime and the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty that it supports.

More here.

Also required reading is Bernard Lewis’ op-ed on the core issue in Annapolis (CM)

Professor Lewis writes:

Here with some thoughts about tomorrow's Annapolis peace conference, and the larger problem of how to approach the Israel-Palestine conflict. The first question (one might think it is obvious but apparently not) is, "What is the conflict about?" There are basically two possibilities: that it is about the size of Israel, or about its existence.

If the issue is about the size of Israel, then we have a straightforward border problem, like Alsace-Lorraine or Texas. That is to say, not easy, but possible to solve in the long run, and to live with in the meantime.

If, on the other hand, the issue is the existence of Israel, then clearly it is insoluble by negotiation. There is no compromise position between existing and not existing, and no conceivable government of Israel is going to negotiate on whether that country should or should not exist. …

If the issue is not the size of Israel, but its existence, negotiations are foredoomed. And in light of the past record, it is clear that is and will remain the issue, until the Arab leadership either achieves or renounces its purpose -- to destroy Israel. Both seem equally unlikely for the time being.

More here.

Annapolis Photo-Op (CM)

Bret Stephens writes:

Remember Nancy Pelosi's spring break in Damascus? Condoleezza Rice apparently does not. When the House Speaker paid Syrian strongman Bashar Assad a call back in April, President Bush denounced her for sending "mixed signals" that "lead the Assad government to believe they are part of the mainstream of the international community, when in fact they are a state sponsor of terror." Today, said sponsor of terror will take its place at the table Ms. Rice has set for the Middle Eastern conference at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

Only at Foggy Bottom would Syria's last-minute decision to go to Annapolis be considered a diplomatic triumph. The meeting is supposed to inaugurate the resumption of high-level negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, with a view toward finalizing a deal on Palestinian statehood before the administration leaves office. On a deeper plane of geopolitical subtlety, it is supposed to bring Israel and the Arab world together in tacit alliance against Iran. ...

Put simply, there is nothing the U.S. can offer Mr. Assad that would seriously tempt him to alter his behavior in ways that could meaningfully advance U.S. interests or the cause of Mideast peace. Yet the fact that Ms. Rice's Syria policy is now a facsimile of Speaker Pelosi's confirms Mr. Assad's long-held view that he has nothing serious to fear from this administration.

So look out for more aggressive Syrian misbehavior in Lebanon, including the continued arming of Hezbollah; the paralysis of its political process; the assassination of anti-Syrian parliamentarians and journalists; the insertion of Sunni terrorist cells in Palestinian refugee camps, and the outright seizure of Lebanon's eastern hinterlands. Look out, too, for continued cooperation with North Korea on WMD projects: Despite Israel's September attack on an apparent nuclear facility, the AP reports that North Korean technicians are back in Syria, teaching their Arab pupils how to load chemical warheads on ballistic missiles. And don't hold your breath expecting Syria's good behavior on its Iraqi frontier to last much longer.

In the meantime, we have the Annapolis conference, and the one-day photo-op it provides Ms. Rice. In the spirit of giving credit where it's due, the least the Secretary can do is invite the Speaker to the party.

More here.

Why Hold an Arab-Israeli Peace Meeting Now? (CM)

Bret Stephens writes:

The short answer is that Condoleezza Rice demands one, and she has spent countless hours over eight mostly fruitless trips to the region this year trying to arrange it. But this hardly addresses the deeper mystery of why this administration has gotten itself caught in the Venus flytrap of the Arab-Israeli conflict, after vowing not to do so, and why it has done so with a degree of ineptitude that recalls the dimmer moments of the Carter administration. Maybe it's a matter of bureaucratic inertia. Or maybe it's about being seen to try. Or maybe it's the kind of fourth-quarter, fourth down Hail Mary pass that appeals to a secretary of state with a mania for football and a thin record of accomplishment. Then again, maybe it doesn't really matter.

But look on the bright side: Annapolis may yet serve us well as an object lesson in how diplomacy -- the competent kind -- just isn't done.

More here.

Welcome to Jihadistan (CM)

Youssef Ibrahim writes that the “Jihadistan” includes not just Gaza but also “several cities in Iraq, the tribal regions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, much of Somalia, and the Hezbollah-controlled areas of southern Lebanon” -- all places where safe for “terrorist-masters to meet, organize, plan, and operate.” He adds:

What is needed is a plan to stop the addition of Gaza to Jihadistan, to contain it, and to bleed it. … The dizzying descent of Gaza has alarmed pundits and decision-makers in surrounding countries to the point that they are openly saying: Forget the Palestinian Arab cause, save us:

• "The emergence of an Islamist ‘Emirate of Gaza' is far more critical than that the emergence of the Taliban," the editor in chief of a Saudi newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat, Tarik Al-Homeid, wrote on Saturday.

• In Cairo this weekend, the secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, rejected calls for recognizing a Hamas government in Gaza, saying he could not sanctify splitting the region in the name of Islam. …

The most immediate urgency is to cut off funds and weapons in the places that Hamas's flames are heading next: the Palestinian Arab refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. With Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the scene is set for a serious Islamic fundamentalist insurrection across the Arab world. …

There are many poor and dispossessed Palestinian Arabs, most of whom are cared for with funds from the United Nations and Western charities. This humanitarian aid, unfortunately, has relieved Palestinian Arab terror groups, such as Hamas and Fatah, from the obligation of feeding their own and allows them to use all their money for war. Thus, a related issue for do-gooders confronting the problem is how to stop this seepage of funds. …

The day may come for an independent Palestinian Arab state. But right now, the humane and decent thing to do is save the Palestinian Arabs from their rogue Islamists and would-be nationalistic heroes.

More here.

The Aqsa Brigades

There is nothing "moderate" about Fatah's Aqsa Brigades, explains FDD's Andrew McCarthy in today's National Review Online.

A Time for Middle East Peace

FDD President Clifford May argues in his latest column:

Resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict would be a wonderful thing. But it’s not happening anytime soon. And it cannot be a predicate for salvaging the vexing situation in Iraq.

One Thing We Know This Year (That We Pretended Not to Know Since 1973) (AM)

Yasser Arafat orchestrated and ordered the murders of two United States diplomats (as well as one Belgian diplomat) in Sudan in March 1973.

World Net Daily reports that earlier this year the U.S. government finally declassified this memorandum, providing a secret summary report of a raid on the Saudi embassy in Khartoum on March 1, 1973, by operatives of Black September, a militia within Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO.  (Thanks for the heads up to my friend Bill West, a frequent contributor at the Counterterrorism Blog).

The Saudis were holding a reception for the U.S. Charge d'Affaires, George Curtis Moore, who was departing.  The terrorists kidnapped Moore, U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel, and the Belgian Charge d'Affaires, Guy Eid, in addition to two other diplomats, a Saudi and a Jordanian. 

Arafat gave the order to kill the the two Americans and the Belgian from Fatah headquarters in Beirut.  The memorandum states:  "The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasir Arafat."

Interestingly, notwithstanding this information long known to our government, a State Department official as late as 2002 claimed — in an email to a Minneapolis attorney who was insistent that Arafat was behind the Khartoum murders — that "[e]vidence clearly points to the terrorist group Black September as having committed the assassinations of Amb. Noel and George Moore, and though Black September was a part of the Fatah movement, the linkage between Arafat and this group has never been established."   

For those interested in a walk down memory lane, my NRO obituary for Arafat, "The Father of Modern Terrorism," is here.  It includes the infuriating denouement to this episode.  Although the previously classified memo takes pains to point out that "[n]o effort was spared, within the capabilities of the Sudanese Government, to secure the freedom of the hostages[,]" that's not exactly the whole story. 

Arafat — as the memo relates — instructed the eight terrorists to surrender to the Sudanese authorities.  Not included, though, is what happened next.  The Sudanese quickly released two, purporting that the evidence was insufficient.  Then, a trial was held for the remaining six, upon which they were convicted, sentenced to life imprisonment in Sudan, and ... released to the PLO the next day.