There is a Civil War going on in the Gaza Strip. Let me give you a short history of what led to these problems. In 1948, the British gave up their mandate to govern Palestine and a Jewish state was established on that land by UN decree. Now, the Palestinians who lived there were not thrilled with this, but the nations of the world, being embarrassed by what they allowed to happen under Hitler did it anyway. Palestinians still lived in the areas of Gaza and the West Bank, but that was eventually annexed by Israel for security reasons after being constantly attacked from those territories.
Fast forward to 2005. Israel under Ariel Sharon, unilaterally left the occupied territories and a Palestinian Government began administering to these lands. In January of 2006, Hamas (a terrorist group supported by ... surprise ... Iran and Syria) won the Palestinian elections and took control of the territories. Fatah, the group founded by Yasir Arafat gave up power and became the "major opposition" party. Compared to Hamas, Fatah is considered moderate. The US has been supporting Fatah (money and arms). In March of this year, Fatah was brought into the governing coalition to quell the fighting between the two groups.
Well ... the fighting is no longer quelled. For the last couple of days, Hamas has been over-running Fatah positions and they have been kicking butt. Captured male members of Fatah have been dragged out into the streets and executed (often with their wives and children watching) They have been taken to the top of tall buildings and thrown off . But then again, Hamas is a terrorist organization, so what else did you expect. Did you really expect them to act like a legally elected national government? The infighting between Hamas and Fatah was one of the things giving Israel a break. Now that it looks like Fatah will be wiped out, Hamas can concentrate all its' resources on Israel.
So the breakdown goes like this. Israel will have Iranian backed Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza and Syrian backed Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. Once again they have strong enemies on all sides. Good luck to them.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Palestinian Turmoil Spells Big Problems For Israel
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22 comments:
Just stopping in to say hello... hope your day is going well...
Hey Paul...get to work! Your 1/2 day's not over with yet....
Have a great day and "don't" over do it ok? I sure would hate for you to strain a finger from hitting the shift key too much...hahaha
shibari ... my day is much better now that you popped by ;)
jillie ... what a slave driver you are. You get half days ... why can't I?
It'll never ever end there!
Peace
Paul, the dye is cast.....Hamas has been and is being funded by Syria and Iran just by sheer fire power they can win. And we are saying to Fatar. We will supply you with weapons, but Israel is saying "I don't know?". If Farar gets weapons and lose, Hamas will have more weapons to turn on Israel. I'm acutually surprised that Israel hasn't gotten rid of the prime minister by now. He will end up giving Israel back to the Palestinians. Whatever happened to Trans Jordan???
odat ... you are right, there are only two ways it can end there ... the destruction of Israel or the destruction of the Palestinian people. Neither is acceptable.
tapline ... Hamas is already showing off the weapons it has captured from Fatah (how embarrasing).
This kind of thing just proves how much a cause can drive so much hate towards another group of human beings. Humans who eat, sleep, breathe, love the same way as all other humans, yet because their beliefs towards these areas are different, they are worthy of such disrespect and murder? Now of course, the ones doing the murdering see nothing wrong with it, so their morals are opposed to most others as well, but is this a reason to eliminate them either...
it's just such a very sad paradox.
--snow
snow ... neither of these groups are angels, we supported Fatah because it was the lesser of the 2 evils.
What we all need to be concerned about is the 1.5 million Palestinian civilians that are caught up in this civil war on the Gaza Strip. Humanitarian Aide workers have been pulled from the area because of the fighting, and right now they have to fend for themselves while dodging bullets.
Situation normal, all fouled up. It is snafu again [nothing new]. Fatah and Hamas [two terrorist organizations] killing each other. Fatah's father was Yasser Arafat [which by the way imho is the father of modern terrorism]. But, don't anyone panic, Condi Rice is all over this mini crisis !!!
tlrb
tlrb ... As long as Condi has it under control, Israel can relax ... can you say, "DEFCON 4"
what senseless barbaric acts!
Gaza strip has always been such a pandemonium ever since I can recall!
what man has made of man...
mona ... this is what hate can and will do ... it's unbearably sad.
When you started by saying that you were going to give a little history lesson I thought, can a blog hold that much content? I don't mean that as a criticism, just an observation that this region and in fact these peoples have been at war (using terrorist tactics at times) since the beginning of time.
I do not believe we should sit around and do nothing but it seems that feeding weapons to the enemy of our enemy was never a good idea. We cannot think that there is any short term fix to centuries of misunderstandings, violent acts and religous differences.
If we can help at all it has to be humanitarian and diplomatic, obviously war does not fix it (to that there is a long history of support)
Great post Paul!
these wars will never be won. they will only end with total anayalation of one or both.
you know when i read all the stuff going on in the world i'm glad i live where i live.
m
sarah ... welcome back, I was worried about how I could condense this history down enough so that people wouldn't fall asleep reading it ... two paragraphs was probably not enough, but luckily Israel has only been a nation for 60 years. I felt I had to do a little background in case anyone was unfamiliar with it ... hope it didn't boar you.
mike ... I wrote all this and all you could say was "Great Post, Paul"? ... I couldn't resist
blanco ... I fear you are correct
molly ... Me too :)
Champagne, I am very disturbed to see the picture of that little girl still on some blogs! Has she not been found yet? I hope & pray she has been !!!!
mona ... We all need to pray for the safe return of this little girl, but it isn't looking good.
I just have to say, perhaps it's my nieveity, but...
What in the heck do we "Americans" think that we can "solve" these issues? This goes back to Cain and Able...Straight from the Bible, when God cursed the Isrealites saying they would "never see the promised land"....
~shakes head~
So why are we "sticking' our noses in?!??!?!
~throws hands in air~
superstar ... you have a degree in political science ... so you already know the answer to your question. It's politics . Israel is the only liberal democracy in the region (by liberal, I mean it has freedom of speech, press etc.) and as a Democracy we feel the need to nurture other democracies where-ever they may sprout up. In a way, Israel and has actually had a calming effect on Egypt. Since the Camp David Accords, Egypt has distanced itself from the other Arab countries in the region and is concentrating more on it's economy and people (instead of wasting all that effort to erradicate their neighbor). They still have a long way to go, but they are in better shape than their Arab neighbors.
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