Israel Matzav

Behold, the Gaza Strip Caliphate

DEBKAfile reports on Hamas' plans to turn the Gaza Strip into an Islamist Caliphate - headquartered in the former home of 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen.

Hamas plans to establish a mosque and its government seat at Mahmoud Abbas’ Presidential Guard-security service compound, Muntada, in Gaza City - the last Fatah bastion to fall under Hamas’ five-day onslaught. This will symbolize the Islamist character of the national Palestinian entity supplanting the defeated Palestinian Authority. At least 35 people were killed Wednesday.

Thursday morning, the Hamas Executive Force occupied the building, taking Fatah prisoners in gunfights room after room. Fatah prisoners are paraded in the streets, some reportedly executed there, as Hamas fighters seize their US-made equipment in the building.

Hamas spokesmen poured contempt Thursday on PA chairman Mahmoud’s order to his elite presidential guard to strike back. The force’s commander ordered its troops into battle Wednesday, June 13, but they refused to fight. The Palestinian unity government is no more, says Hamas. It has been overthrown.

Hamas also sneered at Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s assertion that he would propose an international force for the strategic Philadelphi Route in his White House talks next week. Any foreign force will be resisted in the same way as an Israeli occupation army, they said.

Olmert's assertion was a lousy idea anyway.

DEBKAfile also has a chronology of the week's events in Gaza for those of you who are having trouble keeping all the facts and figures straight. In today's entry, they report that senior IDF officers are not pleased with the Hamas takeover.

Senior Israeli officers described the Hamas victory to DEBKAfile as a greater misfortune for Israel than its Lebanon War setbacks. There, Hizballah was forced by Israeli military action to accept a UN ceasefire and international peacekeepers.

Hamas has no such incentive. In the case of Gaza, the winner takes all and can dictate terms. A radical Islamic enclave with a dominant Iranian-Syrian military presence has sprung up unopposed as a hostile reality on Israel’s southwestern border. It has made the Israeli-Middle East Quartet’s boycott an irrelevance.

I disagree with this on several counts. First, this is not necessarily a 'greater misfortune' for Israel than what happened in Lebanon. That depends on whether the Olmert-Barak-Livni government will have the courage to do what needs to be done. Unfortunately, so far there is no indication that the government has found its guts. While even the Euroweenies have announced that they are suspending their 'humanitarian aid' projects, Israel has already said that it will not cut off water supplies to Gaza (for which you can bet that the 'Palestinians' are not paying), that it's 'considering' whether to cut electricity (for which the 'Palestinians' are not paying) and whether to allow 'Palestinians' to cross the border into Israel.

Allowing 'Palestinians' to cross into Israel is particularly dangerous, since Hamas now controls all of the border crossings on the 'Palestinian' side and since it would be inevitable that at least some of the 'Palestinians' who cross would try to perpetrate terror attacks. At the very least, any such crossing should be a through passage to an Arab country. Let's see how many 'Palestinians' Jordan and Syria volunteer to take. Egypt took some Fatah officers who were escaping the fighting:

The Hamas Executive Force completed the seizure of all pro-Fatah Presidential Guard border positions, including the Karni goods crossing and the Sufa, Kerem Shalom and Rafah transit points, after midnight Wednesday night, June 14. Their commander Col. Musbah Basichi and his 60 officers fled to Egypt. At least 35 Palestinians were killed in fighting Wednesday.

What should Israel do? Israel should seal off the crossings from Gaza into Israel completely and let the 'Palestinians' rot. Nothing comes in and nothing goes out on our side. Let the Egyptians deal with them. Unless they start shooting Kassams. Then we can let the helicopters deal with them.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:51 PM