US law requires that the United States cut nearly all aid to any 'Palestinian government' that includes Hamas and does not fulfill three basic conditions. Speaking to CNN's Candy Crowley today, deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken answered yes when asked whether the US would consider cutting aid in the event that a 'government' including Hamas did not fulfill those three conditions.
Let's go to the videotape.
Recalling Crowley's role in the 2012 Presidential debates, you don't think that question was pre-cleared so as not to ask him flat out whether the US would cut aid, do you?
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone. This post is being set up on Friday afternoon, which is a good thing, because at the actual time it posts, I will probably be cleaning the synagogue up from our Kiddush for my son's Bar Mitzva.
Here is Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, August 10.
1) Embattled democracy
Next week, Mahmoud Abbas will enter the 92nd month of his 48-month term, and now has Yasser Arafat’s record in sight. Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in 1996, running essentially unopposed (his opponent was a 72-year old woman with no political party). In 2004, in the ninth year of his four-year term, he left office on account of death. His second-in-command was elected president less than two months later, running essentially unopposed (Hamas boycotted the election). Abbas is now midway through the eighth year of his own four-year term, almost certain to break Arafat’s record if he can just stay healthy.
My analysis is the following: If Iran becomes a nuclear state, the entire equation in the Middle East will change. In such a case, Syria would have to be steadfast – even if a war of attrition is waged against it – in order to accomplish this goal, because this [nuclear] weapon is meant for Syria too, not just for Iran. The viewers should not interpret this as if Syria is serving an Iranian agenda. This nuclear weapon is meant to create a balance of terror with Israel, to finish off the Zionist enterprise, and to end all Israeli aggression against the Arab nation.
Six people have been arrested and one sentenced to a month in prison for eating in public during the month of Ramadan, according to the official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper. Under Islamic law, eating is prohibited from sunrise until sunset during the entire month. In addition, the Chairman of the PA Supreme Court for Shari'ah Law said PA law should prohibit even non-Muslims and those who cannot fast for health reasons from eating in public during the month. Sheikh Yusuf Ida'is explained: "Our streets are Islamic," and formal legislation should be enacted to "severely punish" anyone who eats publicly during Ramadan. Sheikh Ida'is was appointed Chairman of the Shari'ah court by presidential order of Mahmoud Abbas in January 2012.
On July 27, 2012, Ziad Al-Bandak, an advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud 'Abbas on Christian affairs, visited the Auschwitz concentration camp, laying a wreath at the Death Wall and lighting a candle in memory of the Holocaust victims.[1] The visit was at the invitation of a private Polish foundation promoting tolerance. Several days prior to the visit, he met with Polish Undersecretary of State Boguslaw Winid. Al-Bandak's act sparked furious responses from Hamas and Hamas supporters. The movement's spokesman, as well as columnists on websites affiliated with it, stated that the visit served the interests of Israel, which presents itself as a victim by spreading the "lie" of the Holocaust.
The Shin Bet prevented a series of planned Hezbollah terrorist attacks recently, after a group of Israeli Arabs helped smuggle 20 kg. of high-grade explosives into the country. On Wednesday, eight residents of Nazareth and the town of Ghajar – half of which is in Israel and the other half in Lebanon – were charged in the Nazareth District Court with helping to smuggle the explosives. Most of them are believed to be drug dealers.
Over the years, the IDF sent 15 aid delegations to over 14 countries struck by natural disasters, where IDF doctors set up field hospitals and immediately began their rescue efforts. Overall, medical care was given to more than 2,300 people in afflicted areas, and 220 were saved from certain death.
Four months ago the husband of Suhila Abd el-Salam Ahmed Haniyeh – the sister of Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh – suffered a serious cardiac episode which could not be treated at any hospital in Gaza. He and his wife were taken to the Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva where he received urgent treatment. After being hospitalized in Israel for a week, his condition stabilized and the couple returned to Gaza. Ismail Haniyeh attacks Israel at every opportunity, and the terror group he heads does not recognize Israel’s right to exist.
He is a man very much shaped by his father, and his father’s worldview has helped shape the Israel of today. But there is an opportunity: Benjamin Netanyahu, precisely because he is the son of a man like Benzion, is the only Israeli politician today who could deliver the majority of Israel’s Jewish population to a painful compromise with the Palestinians. He is also one of the few whose endorsement of a deal between Tehran and Washington over the Iranian nuclear program -- a deal that would allow the Iranians to have a supervised civilian program, for instance -- would allay the concerns of even more hawkish Israelis. The average Israeli trusts that Netanyahu would not sell out their interests for a Nobel Peace Prize. Israel’s security depends in part on Benzion Netanyahu- style vigilance and militancy. But it also depends on recognizing that the Jews of today are not the Jews of 1938, and that Jewish history is not preordained to repeat itself forever.
Goldberg achieved the result he sought. He wanted to show that Netanyahu could make peace with the Palestinians and endorse some sort of containment deal to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons without attacking. So Goldberg did. He argues that now that Binyamin Netanyahu's father is now dead, the Prime Minister need not be bound by his father's paranoia. (Early in the article, Goldberg wrote that Netanyahu had dismissed his arguments as "psychoanalysis." I think that Netanyahu had a point.)
But Goldberg ignores that it is the Palestinians that refuse to make a deal or that a nuclear Iran is a real danger and that if sanctions don't work Israeli will be forced to act. Netanyahu doesn't operate in a vacuum. Whether or not there will be peace in the Middle East, is not a function of Netanyahu's actions or reactions, but the actions of other actors in the region.
Read Bibi - son of Benzion by Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik for a straightforward reading of the father's influence on the son, untainted by wishful thinking.
For Benzion Netanayahu, Spanish Jewry’s complacency, and their embrace of a convenient narrative, reveals “man’s natural reluctance to draw radical conclusions which imply uprooting oneself from a comfortable spot.” Just as German Jews “failed to foresee Hitler’s rise to power at any time during the period preceding that rise, so the Jews of Spain failed to notice, even a few years before the expulsion, the mountainous wave which was approaching to overwhelm them.” The failure by one of the greatest communities in Jewish Diaspora history to sense this threat was “nothing short of proverbial.” Now, the son of this scholar leads the Jewish state and must decide how seriously to take the anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic rhetoric of Iranian leaders, as they seek the ability to build a weapon of which the ancient and medieval enemies of Jerusalem and of the Jews could only have dreamed. As it happens, Benjamin Netanyahu has written with reverence of his father’s scholarship, and of its underlying lesson. The Tisha B’av expulsion from Spain, as he sees it, is an eternal warning to Jews that one of the great threats to their wellbeing is their own complacency.
The issue is more fundamental, however, than Abbas’s decision to ignore the latest Israeli efforts. He once demanded a construction freeze, got one for ten months in the West Bank, and ignored that too. He received an offer of a state from Ehud Olmert, who begged him to accept it, and ignored that as well, rejecting the urgings of both Secretary Rice and President Bush. He ignored the personal request of President Obama last year to call off the grandstanding trip to the UN and return to negotiations. He published a New York Times op-ed, replete with distortions, seeking recognition of the “long delayed Palestinian state” not to end claims but to “pave the way” to “pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.”
Abbas does not have the political legitimacy to negotiate a peace agreement, nor the power to implement one even if he did. But the broader policy issue is this: Palestinian political culture has now produced a terrorist tyranny in Gaza and a faux democracy in the West Bank, unable even to hold local elections, lacking the civil, legal, and political institutions necessary to prevent the winner of its Potemkin presidential elections from serving as president-for-life. Why should the U.S. continue to support the creation of an already failed state?
Read the whole thing. I agree. But until Israelis make this same reassessment, Americans have no motivation whatsoever to do so. And most Israelis - from Netanyahu on down - are still afraid to say that the 'two-state solution' isn't going to happen.
With Friday's election deadline passing, Palestinians are growing increasingly disillusioned. An opinion poll published last month indicated that support for Hamas and Fatah has fallen to historic lows, with 50 per cent of respondents saying they would vote for neither party were an election actually to be held.
Their frustration has only been compounded by the Arab Spring, which has left many Palestinians feeling they have been left behind by the democratising tide washing across the region.
Palestinians are keenly aware that while Egypt and others have discovered that real elections are chaotic and often violent affairs, they are being given a genuine choice at the ballot box for the first time.
Not only have Palestinians had that option ripped away from them, they also have a leader who has essentially been in power unconstitutionally for more than three years. Mr Abbas's term officially expired in January, 2009.
Fatah and Hamas have both blamed Israel for their woes but for many Palestinians such protests have a hint of hollowness about them -- and their leaders are aware that popular resentment towards them is reaching potentially dangerous levels.
"The embers of discontent are there and the authorities in the West Bank and Gaza are aware of this, but their reaction has been one of repression," said George Giacaman, a prominent Palestinian political analyst.
The problem is that if they do revolt, it is far more likely that they will become more radical than that they will actually select a government with which Israel can do business.
Forget the polls: If elections were held in the 'West Bank' Hamas would win
Dr. Aaron Lerner of IMRA interviews Said Kanan, of the Center for Palestine Research and Studies. According to Kanan, the polls are all wrong, and if elections were held in the 'West Bank' (Judea and Samaria) today, Hamas would win.
And don't hold your breath waiting for a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation either.
He's starting the eighth year of his four-year term, and the way things are going, he may be staying in office for a long time to come. 'Moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen may cancel the May 4 'Palestinian elections' either because Hamas doesn't really want to kiss and make up with him (his version) or because he fears that Hamas will once again win (Hamas' version).
"If the status quo remains between Fatah and Hamas regarding the reconciliation standstill, the PNA will cancel the elections," an unnamed official in Ramallah told Gulf News on Monday.
“Hamas was forced into unity talks with Fatah after the Arab Spring conditions changed regional realities. Hamas has no real intention for reconciliation,” the official added.
Fatah alleges Hamas prefers the current status quo whereby almost half of the donations received by 'Palestinian' organizations goes to Gaza without their having to fulfill their commitments under the reconciliation agreement.
"Why should Hamas do anything to achieve unity?" the source asked, adding that living conditions are far better in the Gaza than in PA enclaves in Judea and Samaria.
Forgive my nasty comment, but it seems that Hamas wants to reconcile about as much as Fatah wants peace. Why should Fatah do anything to achieve peace when the living conditions are so much better than they were, and the World keeps pressuring Israel no matter what Abu Mazen does?
However, observers say Fatah's motives for cancelling elections may be fear of Hamas gains. The terror organization enjoys a strong position in the polls and could be set to win a major victory should elections be held.
Which terror organization would that be? Hamas or Fatah?
But here's the best part: Someone is finally telling the truth about poor, starving Gaza.
"The government in the West Bank is paying salaries to employees in Gaza, and prices in Gaza are 70 per cent cheaper than in the West Bank," he said. "This is not fair."
The official’s claims run contrary to anti-Israeli assertions that Gaza is a deeply impoverished 'prison camp.' IDF officials note the Karnei crossing is never at full capacity despite all aid requests being met.
Further, residents in Gaza exported surplus aid to east Africa during Ramadan as a part of a larger charity campaign. Local merchants and farmers have long complained that their economic woes are rooted in an inability to export.
IDF officials, however, say they have made extensive efforts to accommodate exports from Gaza, which has expanded to include not only crops, but manufactured goods such as furniture.
Yeah, they're starving in Gaza. And I've got a bridge to sell in Brooklyn.
If there are elections in the 'Palestinian Authority, warns former Fatah minister Nabil Amr, Hamas will win.
Abbas has announced that he would like to hold elections on May 4. However, many Palestinians are skeptical that he would be able to hold the vote, largely due to the ongoing dispute between Hamas and Fatah.
Fatah has come under criticism for failing to draw conclusions from its defeat to Hamas in the 2006 parliamentary election.
Since the Hamas victory, Fatah has failed to come up with a new list of candidates.
Moreover, internal squabbling between Fatah’s young guard and veteran leaders continues to undermine the faction’s credibility in the eyes of many Palestinians.
Last week, Amr and several Fatah leaders held consultations in Jordan to discuss ways of avoiding another electoral defeat to Hamas, as was the case in the last parliamentary vote.
“Yes, we are concerned,” Amr said in an interview with the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper. “Unless the situation in Fatah changes, what happened in the past could occur once again.”
He pointed out that Fatah had lost not only in the parliamentary election, but also in elections for local councils and some unions.
Amr said that an “overwhelming majority” in Fatah believes there’s a need for changes in the faction.
He revealed that several top Fatah representatives have appealed to Abbas to hold an emergency conference to “reorganize the internal affairs of Fatah.”
Amr said there was also growing concern that many disillusioned Fatah members would not vote in favor of their faction in the next elections.
He also expressed concern over the “negative attitudes” voiced by many Palestinians towards the PA leadership.
Referring to the current Israeli-Palestinian talks in Amman, the top Fatah official said that many Palestinians feel that the PA leadership has not been sincere about its true intentions.
He pointed out that in the eyes of many Palestinians, their leaders have abandoned their demand for a cessation of settlement construction.
Not that there's a whole lot of difference between Fatah and Hamas - both want to destroy Israel but they differ on the methods to be adopted - but I'll bet you bought into that mainstream media crap that most 'Palestinians' want peace and a 'two-state solution.' Well, they don't. And they'd rather not discuss it.
Breaking: 'Palestinians' claim US suggests releasing convicted terrorist to compete in elections
I postponed the overnight music video for an hour because this is breaking news that needs to be reported.
If this story is true, and unfortunately I suspect that it is, it shows just how low the Obama administration has sunk.
Palestinian media are reporting based on Israeli sources (not reported yet in any Israeli media that I have seen) that the United States has 'suggested' to Israel that it release convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti (one of the 'heavy' terrorists that Israel refused to release in the 'terrorists for Gilad' deal) from jail so that Barghouti can compete in the 'Palestinian elections' against Hamas (link in Arabic). Barghouti is serving multiple life sentences for murder.
Israeli sources said that the U.S. administration is concerned about the prospects for the victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections in the event of future conduct in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The radio said, the occupation army from those sources that concern the U.S. is increasing in light of certain information received from Arab countries on the determination of the Palestinian president to leave office and not to run for president, opening the door to the Hamas victory, even in the presidential election and full control over the Palestinian situation.
Meanwhile, Israeli sources said that the American delegation discussed the important role during the last few months and down with officials in Tel Aviv, the idea of releasing a member of the Central Committee of Fatah, Marwan Barghouti from prison so that the occupation of the movement's leadership in the face of Hamas in the upcoming elections.
The sources pointed out that Netanyahu rejects the idea of releasing Barghouti, considering it an extension of the late Palestinian leader 'Yasser Arafat' where he helped the two together in planning to kill dozens of Israelis during the second intifada, according to those sources.
The sources pointed out that many mediums, including an Israeli Knesset member Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and former Defense Minister Amir Peretz and some leaders of security agencies and Mossad, the former does not oppose the release of Barghouti, considering him one more Palestinian commitment to peace with Israel.
If he ever had one, Barghouti no longer has any commitment to peace with Israel. Ben Eliezer and Peretz are both Labor party MK's who were both failures as Defense Minister (Peretz should never have gotten the job in the first place). And if Obama is willing to make an outrageous demand like this one during an election campaign, imagine what he will demand if God forbid he is reelected.
Fatah and Hamas have been holding secret meetings in Cairo with a view toward 'reconciliation' and are planning to hold 'elections' in March.
The discussions came on the eve of a planned meeting between PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in the Egyptian capital next week.
Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official in the West Bank, revealed Tuesday that he had held a secret meeting in Cairo with Musa Abu Marzouk, the Syrian-based deputy head of the Hamas “political bureau.”
Al-Ahmed said that he held several meetings with Abu Marzouk “in order to create a positive atmosphere” ahead of the Abbas-Mashaal summit.
The Fatah official voiced optimism regarding the prospects of success of the planned summit saying the two parties have made “good preparations” ahead of the meeting.
He said that Abbas was planning to propose to Mashaal holding new elections in March next year.
The key here is that Fatah has agreed that Salam Fayyad - the only 'Palestinian' who is trusted by the West to handle money - won't be Prime Minister.
'Moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen plans to continue implementing Fatah's reconciliation agreement with Hamas by offering to hold elections in January 2012, according to one of his senior aides, Nabil Abu Rudeineh.
"We're suggesting January, because the law requires 90 days notice," says Abu Rudeineh. He adds that the proposal has been extended to Hamas informally but will not be officially on the table until Abbas meets with Hamas officials, probably early next month in Cairo. Both Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Mashal will be in Egypt this week, but the Fatah chief, whose titles include chairman of the PLO, says the brief visit will be filled by meetings with the military leaders in Cairo. "I don't have time, only one night," Abbas says in an interview. "Maybe next time, by the beginning of next month."
If Hamas agrees, the stage will be set for an overhaul in Palestinian politics, and with it relations with Israel, the United States and a rapidly changing Middle East. The Palestinian Authority will almost certainly have a new president: Abbas, 76, has repeatedly insisted — to TIME as recently as last week — that he will not run for re-election, and has ordained no successor from the rolls of Fatah, the secular movement that long dominated Palestinian politics but is burdened with a reputation for corruption and incompetence. In fact the only previous time Fatah and Hamas faced off in elections, in January 2006 balloting for the Palestinian legislature, Hamas'surprise victory was regarded in no small part as a protest vote against Fatah's unresponsive reign.
...
New balloting would also give Palestinian a working legislature for the first time in years. The Palestinian Legislative Council elected in 2006 and seated in Ramallah has not met since the split between Gaza and the West Bank a year later. During that time, Abbas (whose own term actually expired in 2009) has ruled by fiat, while each faction persecuted the other, with Israeli troops arresting some Hamas parliamentarians on the West Bank. In fact, how Israel would respond to a government that includes Hamas is one of the major uncertainties embedded in any new elections. When the reconciliation was announced, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to pour cold water on it, saying Israel would refuse to negotiate with a Palestinian government that included a faction committed to Israel's annihilation, as Hamas' charter states. But that statement may no longer be in effect after the Shalit deal, which was nothing if not a negotiation with Hamas.
I disagree. Israel did not negotiate directly with Hamas over Shalit, and there is NO support in Israel (at least among Jews) for negotiating with Hamas without the three conditions that have always been attached to negotiating with Hamas: Recognizing Israel's 'right to exist,' committing to honor past agreements and renouncing terrorism. Since destroying Israel through terrorism is Hamas' raison d'etre, there is no chance that it will fulfill those three conditions and therefore electing Hamas will be a dead end for the 'peace process.' Like the New York Times, Time Magazine's Karl Vick cannot understand the difference Israelis make between doing what's necessary to release a kidnapped soldier and negotiating with terror organizations over 'final status.'
But Vick does raise an interesting possibility.
Finally, the prospect of early elections casts a new light on Abbas' demand that Netanyahu make good on a promise by his predecessor as prime minister to release still more Palestinian prisoners in the wake of the Shalit deal. Among more than 5,000 Palestinians still in Israeli prisons is one who polls consistently show winning the presidency of the Palestinian Authority — Marwan Barghouti. In some polls, the Fatah activist wins even if he runs from his cell.
I have my doubts that the Israeli public would support a move to release Barghouti to run against Hamas. We don't see a whole lot of difference between them. Barghouti doesn't have the same (undeserved) 'moderate' aura that Abu Mazen has.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
