The new terror base
As some of you have probably noticed, I am not posting as much as usual today. This is because I have this funny thing called work....
Here's a 20-page report from Arab affairs expert Ehud Yaari on how turning Gaza over to the 'Palestinians' (effectively to Hamas) has led to the
radicalization of the northern Sinai and its turning into a terror base. Evelyn Gordon argues that the results of the Gaza handover should dictate caution in making any moves to change the current control of Judea and Samaria, because the likely results of handing over Judea and Samaria to the 'Palestinians' would include
destabilizing Jordan.
This is from Yaari:
Today, a significant number of Hamas military operatives are permanently stationed in the Sinai, serving as recruiters, couriers, and propagators of the Hamas platform. A solid network of the group’s contact men, safe houses, and armories covers much of the peninsula … In addition, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other factions have been moving some of their explosives workshops—which produce homemade missiles, rockets, mortars, improvised explosive devices, and so forth—from Gaza to the Sinai in recent months. In many ways, the Sinai has already become a sort of hinterland for Hamas military forces in Gaza. Dual-purpose materials used for the production of explosives are regularly transferred to the peninsula, allowing the group to place a significant part of its military industry beyond Israel’s reach.
And this is from Gordon:
As in Gaza, an Israeli pullout from the West Bank could easily end in a Hamas takeover. True, the Palestinian Authority is protected by American-trained troops, but the same U.S. general, Keith Dayton, trained the PA forces in Gaza, and Hamas routed them in a week during its 2007 coup.
Moreover, like Sinai, Jordan already has both a homegrown Islamist movement and some serious stability issues. Additionally, Jordan is roughly two-thirds Palestinian, and its Palestinian citizens have close ties of kinship and friendship with West Bank Palestinians. Thus, radicalization on the West Bank would likely spread to Jordan quickly if Israeli troops were no longer serving as a buffer between the two.
So if Western leaders think a radicalized, destabilized Jordan is a good idea, they should by all means keep pushing an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. But if not, they should be praying that Israel stays put.
That certainly seems like a fair assessment. And for those who think that it doesn't matter to the West, you may want to go
here.
Labels: Gaza, Jordan, Palestinian Islamization, Sinai
Jewish 'Israeli Arab' actor murdered in Jenin
Jewish 'Israeli Arab' actor
Juliano Mer Khamis was murdered by masked 'Palestinians' outside the theater company he founded in Jenin (northern Samaria) on Monday.
Mer Khamis, 52, was the son of a Jewish mother and an Arab father - a rarity in a land where the two populations almost never intermarry. His split identity fueled a long career as an actor and a vocal activist against Israel's policies toward the Palestinians, with whom he had come increasingly to identify.
But some Palestinians objected to the theater in principle. He reported threats, and the theater was vandalized.
The theater's program director, Samia Staiti, told The Associated Press that she saw the killing. "He was on his way to his car when a masked man stopped him, shot him and ran away."
Staiti said he had received death threats from people in the community who felt he was going against "conservative Palestinian traditions."
"They are trying to kill what Juliano tried to spread - peace and freedom. We will keep on going on," Staiti said.
He starred in several critically acclaimed Israeli films, and also appeared in the 1984 American film "The Little Drummer Girl."
In 2006, he opened an amateur theater company in Jenin, a city that had been torn by violence since the second Palestinian uprising began six years earlier.
With the uprising fizzling out by that point, the company, known as the Freedom Theater, was meant partly as a way of restoring normalcy to the town's youth and opening their minds to the world beyond the harshness of their surroundings.
In the largely quiet years since, Jenin - like much of the West Bank - has become more safe and prosperous, making Monday's shooting all the more shocking.
Mer Khamis was an
Israeli citizen.
Mer-Khamis' mother, Arna Mer, was an Israeli Jewish activist for Palestinian rights. His father, Saliba Khamis, was a Christian Palestinian. Mer-Khamis was born and raised in Nazareth.
...
Based in Israel, Mer-Khamis was affiliated with the local theater in Jenin, established by his mother in the 1980s. In 2006, Mer-Khamis opened the Freedom Theater in Jenin, along with Zakariya Zubeidi, the former military leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades in that West Bank city.
Zubeidi was appointed co-theater director in an attempt to subdue the ongoing threats voiced against both the institution and Mer-Khamis. The theater itself was torched twice in the past, and the threats persisted despite Zubeidei's appointment.
Some of the criticism focused on the fact that the theater offered co-ed activities, despite prohibition in the Islamic moral code.
Objectors were also outraged when Mer-Khamis staged the play "Animal Farm", in which the young actors played the part of a pig, which Islam considers an impure animal.
Mer Khamis said he had planned to stage The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a satire of armed resistance, but shelved the idea after someone smashed the window of his car.
The real story here is that someone (Hamas?) is worried that Jenin isn't Islamist enough. But that's unlikely to get the international media too excited. It's not something for which Jews can be blamed.
Labels: Hamas, Jenin, Juliano Mer Khamis, Palestinian Islamization
As some of you have probably noticed, I am not posting as much as usual today. This is because I have this funny thing called work....
