Crossing the Line

The veterans at They Gave Us A Republic call our attention to Israel's use of white phosphorous in Gaza.

For the iron-stomached, Elmo has the horrific details of what white phosphorous does.

Still not sold on the fact that this is an atrocious act? Well, put your little brain in the grunt's boots who has to walk up on a mother with her three or four children cuddled in a torturous tangle. The Grunt- he has a wife and three kiddos (13,8 and 3) of his own. Do you know what the first thought that comes into his head is as he looks at their bodies, charred to the bone in spots, with faces frozen in demonic horror?

He pictures that being HIS family. Congratulations Mr. Grunt and thank you for serving! You win a mind-fuck for life!!!

There is not a good excuse for decimating a neighborhood with Willie Pete. And spare me the using it as concealment crap. Liars.

Hearts and minds, baby. Hearts and minds.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

There's more: "Crossing the Line" >>

Hamas arrests Fatah leaders in Gaza

A week of bizarre tit-for-tat arrests of leaders of the opposing Palestinian movements culminated with the arrest of 15 Fatah leaders, taken from their homes in Gaza, by Hamas forces on Friday.

Those arrested yesterday included three Fatah-affiliated district governors, as well as the two highest Gaza representatives of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, the officials said.

A spokesman for Hamas, Sami Abu Zuhri, declined to confirm the number or the identity of those taken into custody, but he did confirm that the arrests were a response to Fatah's seizures of "Hamas political leaders" in the West Bank.

The two Palestinian organizations have engaged in a bitter and often violent rivalry for several years, culminating in Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza one year ago. Fatah's power in Gaza was largely erased and it was left in control only of the West Bank.

Both groups have periodically carried out arrest sweeps targeting rivals in the territories they control. Several of the men arrested by Hamas on Friday had already been seized in the past and later released.

Hamas initiated the crackdown after a July 25 explosion in Gaza killed five Hamas members and a 6-year-old girl. Hamas blamed Fatah for the deaths and responded by arresting male members of the organization. Fatah denied responsibility, and launched it's own roundup of Hamas men in the West Bank in retaliation.

In all, it is estimated that both sides have seized about 200 of the other groups members, although neither side will reveal an exact number or the identities of those they are holding.

There's more: "Hamas arrests Fatah leaders in Gaza" >>

Bush launched civil war in Gaza

That explosive claim is the heart of this Vanity Fair exclusive. This pull quote graf from David Rose ought to whet your appetite, drop your jaw, or both:

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

Muhammad Dahlan, identified as Fatah’s long-term “heavy” in Gaza, and privately called “our guy” by Bush himself, is fingered as BushCo’s proxy in this, a pro-Zionist? pro-stupidity, for certain head-shaker that even neocon stalwart David Wurmser denounces, in the story, as anti-democratic. (Wurmser resigned from the State Department a month after Dahlan’s Gaza coup was launched.)

Dahlan, the story details, has a long history as a “heavy,” arresting Hamas people, on behalf of Fatah, as early as 1996. And, this isn’t anything new. He personally knows Bill Clinton as well as George Bush; he also knows George Tenet, under the Clinton Administration portion of Tenet’s CIA tenure.

This isn’t all Dahlan’s fault, though. He says he warned the Bush Administration that Fatah wasn’t ready for the January 2006 parliamentary elections:

“Everyone was against the elections,” Dahlan says. Everyone except Bush. “Bush decided, ‘I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.’ Everyone is following him in the American administration, and everyone is nagging Abbas, telling him, ‘The president wants elections.’ Fine. For what purpose?”

We all know the end result. Hamas won the elections, as Bush was even more criminally stupid in Palestine than in Iraq in presuming a democracy could be started from the top down.

It’s a long story, but hugely worth your reading.

The State Department, understandably, has refused to comment.

There's more: "Bush launched civil war in Gaza" >>

West Bank First?

“A State Department! A State Department! My kingdom for a functioning, competent State Department!” Don’t you just want to shout it from the rooftops when you think about what has come to pass in Gaza?

It’s like Déjà vu or something…Haven’t I heard what they are peddling now – or a variation of it, anyway – before?

In the wake of the chaos in Gaza, we are being told that the focus now is the West Bank – they have gone so far as to say the words “West Bank First!” Apparently with no qualms about consigning Gaza to the ash heap and turning their faces away in denial (may their tongues cleave to the roofs of their mouths) - and without acknowledging that the operative principle from roughly 2002 forward was “Gaza First!”

This “new policy” is accompanied by a huge dose of hypocrisy and a furious editing of recent history.

This floundering about is no way to solve the problems in the Middle East, and it is doomed to failure as surely as the “Gaza First!” policies they were peddling a mere two years ago.

Right up to the minute they…stopped.

Lets retrace the events that led to this point.

First of all, the Bush administration pushed for the complete withdrawal of the Israelis from Gaza – and they pushed for elections to be held too soon in the wake. Hamas has a political arm as well as an armed insurrection arm. Like it or not they are a factor in the future of Palestine.

Case in point: Lots of folks were right pissed when Sein Fein was given a seat at the table, too, since they are the political arm of the IRA. But progress was only realized in Northern Ireland once Sein Fein was brought into the process. The same principle applies to Hamas and the Palestinians. Once a group takes up arms, they either have to be crushed outright, or brought into the process. As the outright crushing didn’t work out, maybe they should have considered honoring the elections and bringing Hamas into the process? The people who elected them knew who they were voting for. You lose a lot of credibility when you claim that you are bringing Democracy to Iraq, while simultaneously you embargo the folks who voted “wrong” and you are cool with the nullification of a democratically elected parliament because you dislike the folks that were elected, and you throw yourself behind the guy whose side lost the shooting war that erupted, as they are wont to do in situations such as those prevalent in Gaza.

"[S]eizing the moment," as Rice said, involves risk. It is inconceivable without some sort of good-faith engagement. There was no way that Gaza, a slither of impoverished territory crammed with 1.3 million Palestinians, driven into the ground by corrupt Fatah governance, was going to show Swiss moderation in its first election.

To believe otherwise is to inhabit an imaginary Middle East - a transnational Green Zone - and it is not in a world of the imagination that anything is going to get solved. Hamas, right now, represents a very large number of Palestinians, like it or not. "West Bank first" will not change that.

Condi’s stirring rhetoric and four bucks will get you a coffee at $tarbuck$. It was not hard to foresee how this was going to play out. Hell – it was writ large for anyone who cared to look.

I thought I was the only person who remembered that they were peddling Gaza First! – until I stumbled across a piece by Roger Cohen at the New York Times, and realized there are a grand total of three of us – Mr. Cohen, myself and former World Bank president James Wolfensohn, who remember. (Yes, there was a Wolfensohn before there was a Wolfowitz. Had you forgotten?) He went to the State Department in 2005 – to be Special Envoy for Gaza Disengagement. But a year later, he was gone, increasingly marginalized by the administration he tried to serve – like everyone else who truly understands the Middle East. "The view on the American and Israeli side was that you could not trust the Palestinians, and the result was not to build more economic activity, but to build more barriers," Wolfensohn said. "And I personally did not think that was the way forward."

When Wolfensohn went to the State Department he raised $15 million ($10 million of it from a single donor) to buy the greenhouses that the Israelis were leaving behind as they withdrew. Do not believe the plaintive wails of “We even gave them the greenhouses!” from the Israelis. But that is not how it happened. That ignores Wolfensohn’s role, and it ignores the money that changed hands.

But more importantly, it overlooks the fact that those commercial greenhouses were on the verge of becoming profitable, and that the opportunity they represented was an opportunity for peace to flower, too. "Once it was clear the business was viable, threats stopped and the community took tremendous pride in growing flowers, fruits and vegetables for export to Israel," Wolfensohn said. “The absolute tragedy was that within months of the commencement of that activity, issues of security at the border, some proven, some not, led to the border being sealed and everything getting wasted," he added. "There is one inevitable truth in the Middle East: Unless you provide economic activity to young people who are 70 percent of the population, you will have conflict. They will shoot the people they blame and in the end they will shoot each other.”

“Gaza First” failed, because Gaza was cut off. The produce and flowers rotted. Economic opportunity was truncated. Unrest was inevitable.

Wolfensohn seems almost dejected in his assessment. "I can only tell you that the Israeli closing of the Gaza borders was made with less consideration of the impact than needed. Aside from the military analysis, you have to consider the impact on a society, because social dislocation leads to anger and violence."

There's more: "West Bank First?" >>

Let us hope...

In the wake of the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, senior Hamas leaders have vowed to work their influence to free kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnston. Johnston was snatched off the street by gunmen on 12 March, and has not been seen or heard from since, although his wellbeing has been claimed by the Army of Islam, the group that has claimed responsibility for his abduction.

"We have started taking practical steps to release Alan Johnston." Hamas leaders said in a statement released yesterday. Ousted Prime Minister Esmail Hamiya, echoing the sentiment that the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip was a positive development and offered the best hope forhis freedom. "From now on, there will be one legitimate armed forde. We will bring discipline and law to Gaza. It will thus be easier to gain the liberation of the British journalist Alan Johnston. His kidnappers will listen to us more closely."

The Army of Islam, which claims to be holding Johnston has demanded the release of several Islamic militants and the Palestinian-born cleric Abu Qatada who is imprisoned in Britain.

In the wake of the kidnapping, Hamas, trying to move toward legitimate governance from armed insurrection, severed all ties with the Army of Islam, and denounced the abduction. Hamas and Haniya have repeatedly called for his release.

May they be able to secure it soon.

There's more: "Let us hope..." >>

Setting the Mideast on fire

Retired U.S Army Colonel Pat Lang, the former head of Middle East intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at the Pentagon, discussed the situation in Gaza with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Key points: American foreign policy has gone down the wrong track: invading Iraq blew the lid off, weakened America's influence, and damaged the U.S. military's capability to intervene elsewhere in the region. The U.S. must step up diplomatic efforts with Iran, Syria, among others. IOW, see what you get when you trust Republicans with national security? One giant clusterfuck.

Watch the video. Transcript below the fold.



BLITZER: How worried should the -- concerned should the U.S. be that what has happened in Gaza -- Hamas taking over there, getting rid of Fatah -- could spread and then happen on the West Bank, as well?

LANG: Well, I think it's a possibility. I mean the fact of the matter is that, however, unpleasant it is to us, the Palestinian people, in elections that everybody says were pretty fair, in fact, elected these guys to run the parliamentary government. And, in fact, it's very difficult to choose other people's leaders for them, in the long run.

So I think maybe American policy has been on the wrong track in this. You know, no matter how much we might -- how much we may dislike these guys, they have offered a truce to Israel over -- for a 10 year period, and we ought to be looking at that as the best alternative of a group of bad alternatives.

BLITZER: Earlier today, Saeb Erakat, a well-known Palestinian figure here on CNN, a Fatah member, suggested that outside forces were instigating this Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence. And he also said this.... Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAEB ERAKAT, CHIEF PALESTINIAN NEGOTIATOR: We are determined not to allow what happened in Gaza to happen in the West Bank. And we stand tall with this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Suggesting it's part of a bigger regional problem. And a lot of experts, as you know, see the hand of Iran, maybe Syria, in a lot of this mischief.

LANG: Well, with regard to what he said about the West Bank, they were determined to not have this happen in Gaza as well. I think, you know, as you've been saying today, in fact, there's a major stress being put on the region by the fact that the Iranians are seeking to realize what they think of as their place in the sun, expanding their influence, getting recognized as being a paramount power to Islam, things like that, on the other hand.

On the other hand, the United States government has its own agenda, seeking westernization and democracy. These two things are exacerbating local conflicts of this kind in a tremendous way. And the real problem in this region is between us and the Iranians, really.

BLITZER: How much of this current explosion of violence in Iraq, in Gaza, in Lebanon, a threat potentially between Turkey and Kurdistan in the North, is a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, getting rid of Saddam Hussein?

LANG: Well, the specifics of the invasion of Iraq, of course, set off a maelstrom inside Iraq as we took the lid off a jar full of competing factions that was Iraq. And now they're all competing (ph). But there's this larger problem involving the whole region, involved in the fact that we have been pushing the whole region to change in directions in which are not natural to them and which various people in the area seek to manipulate and make use of in order to advance their own particular interests.

So, in general, our policy in the region is not helping the cause of people. Things are being (ph) quiet there.

BLITZER: I asked the question because a lot of analysts have suggested that the U.S. now, given the situation in Iraq, is seen as weakened. And whenever the United States in that part of the world as season as weakened, others want to take advantage of that and score their own points.

LANG: I think it is true, in fact, that people see it as very unlikely that we are going to intervene on the ground anywhere in the region with ground troops because of the fact we are so absolutely committed in Iraq to the very limit of our capacity, as you've been saying. On the other hand, they also know that the United States remains vastly powerful in terms of air power, possession of a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, things like this, and that this country is not something they can discount.

So we do have a lot of leverage in terms of that kind of implied power, plus the fact that there are a lot of things people want from us in terms of recognition and assistance in the credit markets and all kinds of things like that. We do have manipulating levers if we wish to use them.

BLITZER: If you were still at the Pentagon, what would you be advising the secretary of defense and other top officials?

LANG: Well, to the extent that Secretary Gates would let me, I would say that the Defense Department ought to say that we need to seek to engage especially the Iranians, but also a number of other groups around the area, in various things that involve our desires and their desires in such a way as reach some meeting of the minds that will bring the temperature down enough so that we can restore a status in which at least people are not shooting at each other.

BLITZER: You mean talking to Iran and Syria, among others?

LANG: Absolutely. Among others.

BLITZER: Who else?

LANG: Well, I think you need to talk to the Turks in particular as to what their intentions are with regard to our Kurdish clients. I mean, there's no doubt the Kurds are relying on us tremendously.

We've encouraged them to set up what amounts to a very autonomous state in the north. We owe them something to that regard.

There are the factions inside Iraq that involve the different Shia militia armies and parties, as well as different insurgent groups. All of these are groups are groups in which we can engage, and which we're starting to do now out in Anbar province with the tribes and some of the secular insurgents.

BLITZER: Pat Lang, thanks for coming in.

LANG: My pleasure.

(H/t to No Quarter)

There's more: "Setting the Mideast on fire" >>

Civil War in Gaza

Oh where to even start. I have been trying all day to write something about the pressure-cooker in Palestine that has blown apart in the last few days.

Five years ago this month, the President of the United States made a Rose Garden speech, wherein he laid out a bold, vivid two-state vision for the Middle East. Israel and Palestine, coexisting side by side, their peoples living in peace and prospering together. "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror." he declared back then.

That vision was a mirage.

I certainly do not have the answers to this dilemma but I do know one thing beyond all doubt – a lot of it can be directly traced to the horrid policies of the Bush (mal)administration and the State Department that wasn’t.

United States policy overtly encouraged Israel to withdraw from the Gaza strip – not in and of itself a bad thing. But they also pressed for elections in both the Palestenian territory and Israel. Abbas won the election to replace Arafat as the President of the Palestinian Authority after Arafat’s passing in late 2004. He arrogantly allowed Hamas to run candidates to stand for legitimate election to parliament, thinking that he could defeat them at the polls.

He thought wrong.

So the Bush administration – on the heels of moving the goalposts in Iraq from WMD’s to fostering Democracy – decided that they didn’t much care for Democracy the way the Palestinians exercised it, because gosh-darnit, they picked the wrong leaders. Money and aid was cut off – a situation choreographed by Washington D.C. – in an attempt to strangle Hamas out of the political process.

This blew up in their faces most spectacularly. The attempt to make Hamas unpopular engendered hatred and pure, unadulterated resolve toward the west and by extension, the man they perceived as a marionette of western masters, Abbas. This week, the seething cauldron boiled over. Hamas and Fatah turned their guns on one another, and as it stands now, Hamas is in control in Gaza.

"The two-state vision is dead. It really is," said Edward G. Abington Jr., a former State Department official who was once an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas, whose bouts of vacillation have irritated U.S. officials, yesterday dissolved the Palestinian government in response to Hamas's takeover of Gaza. U.S. officials signaled that they will move quickly to persuade an international peace monitoring group -- known as the Quartet -- to lift aid restrictions on the Palestinian government, allowing direct aid to flow to the West Bank-based emergency government that Abbas will lead.

"There is no more Hamas-led government. It is gone," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the administration must still consult with other members of the Quartet. He said that humanitarian aid will continue to Gaza, but that the dissolution of the Palestinian government is a singular moment that will allow the United States and its allies to create a "new model of engagement."

The evolving U.S. strategy would let the Hamas-run Gaza Strip fend for itself while attempting to bolster Abbas as a moderate leader who can actually govern and deliver peace with Israel. The senior administration official noted that Gaza has no territorial issues with Israel, since there are no Israelis in Gaza, so the Hamas entity there would have no stake in potential peace talks concerning the border on the West Bank.

Referring to Abbas, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters yesterday that "we fully support him in his decision to try and end this crisis for the Palestinian people and to give them an opportunity to return to peace and a better future."

But analysts said yesterday that this strategy of dividing the moderates from the extremists -- which was the core of Bush's 2002 speech -- proved ineffective and may have led to the dilemma facing the administration.

So now, the government has been dissolved, and the Gaza Strip is under Hamas control. Fatah has retreated to the West Bank, and the Bush administration is still supporting Abbas. And a radical Islamic state, committed to the destruction of the Jewish state, exists literally on Israel’s doorstep.

No one has asked me, but if they did, I would say that it looks to my eyes like we should probably bow out. Every damned thing we have done has turned around and bit us on the ass. Beyond encouraging the “Quartet” to get aid and assistance flowing, and maybe send a check.

I am the least religious person you are likely to ever encounter, but I close with a prayer for peace. Besides, it certainly can't hurt. Oseh Shalom, Gaza.

There's more: "Civil War in Gaza" >>