Israel Matzav

Israel to invade Gaza for Abu Mazen's sake?

Now that the 'truce' is officially over and Israel is being bombarded with rockets, the inept Olmert-Livni-Barak government is considering invading Gaza in the middle of an election campaign to try to save Abu Mazen's post-January 9 'legitimacy.' Note to whom the 'Palestinian academic' compares Abu Mazen....

IN THE eyes of Hamas and other Palestinian factions, on January 9 Abbas will become neither the president of the West Bank nor of the Gaza Strip.

According to a prominent Palestinian academic in Nablus, Abbas will lose not only his legitimacy on that day, but also his credibility and right to speak on behalf of the Palestinians.

"Abbas will be no different from dictators [Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak and [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad," he said. "The Israelis and Americans who are supporting Abbas are wrong to think that they can reach any agreement with an unelected leader who can't deliver."

The academic said that as of January 9, the Palestinians will have only one address. "The Hamas government is the only legitimate government, not only because it won the elections [in January 2006], but because it was approved by a majority of the members of the PLC," he said.

The fiasco over the expiration of Abbas's term in office can only be avoided if Fatah and Hamas manage to patch up their differences and reach some kind of an agreement in the coming weeks. But, as things appear at this stage, the two parties are far from reaching any agreement over anything.

In fact, the gap between the two sides appears to be widening, particularly since Egypt failed to end the differences between them in early November. The animosity between the two sides has reached the stage at which each party considers the other to be the real enemy.

Hamas representatives are now openly inciting against Abbas and his top aides by accusing them of "collaboration" with Israel and the US. In some Hamas circles in Gaza, there is even talk of the need to assassinate some senior Fatah leaders in the West Bank, to send a warning message to Abbas, whose forces have been waging a relentless campaign against Hamas supporters there.

Fatah, meanwhile, has begun referring to Hamas as a "terrorist" organization that serves the interests of Iran and Syria instead of those of its own people. Some Fatah members in the West Bank are also talking about links between Hamas and Al-Qaeda - apparently in an attempt to deter the Americans and Europeans from ever dealing with the Islamist movement.

In closed meetings with senior IDF and Israeli government officials, some Fatah leaders have also been urging Israel to launch a massive military operation in Gaza to overthrow the Hamas regime. These Fatah leaders have also expressed their readiness to recruit hundreds of Fatah gunmen in Gaza to help bring down Hamas.

Such an IDF operation might help, temporarily, to divert attention from the row over the expiration of Abbas's term, but in the long term, it would cause grave damage to Fatah's credibility. It would likely lead a majority of Palestinians to rally around Hamas, which would accuse Abbas and Fatah of "conspiring" with Israel to depose a democratically elected government. Nevertheless, there are many officials in Ramallah who are still hoping Israel will do the job for them.

Israel this week sentenced Abdel Aziz Dweik, the Hamas-affiliated speaker of the 'Palestinian parliament,' to an additional three years in jail. Dweik is next in line to succeed Abu Mazen and Hamas had planned on installing him in office on January 9.

Why does Israel continue to back one terrorist organization against another when both are committed to Israel's destruction?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:11 PM