There are so many fantasies involved in the fantasy-based policymaking that Bush and Rice are pursuing relentlessly against Israel, it is hard to keep track of them all. Abbas is supposed to be the moderate, who wants peaceful coexistence with Israel. He is supposed to be adamantly opposed to Hamas, and indeed, determined ultimately to eradicate Hamas’s influence from Gaza and elsewhere and bring the whole of the new Palestinian state under the moderate, benign rule of Fatah, whereupon Palestinians and Israelis will live side by side, together in peace, happily ever after.
To get to this Valhalla, of course, Abbas is going to have to pursue armed warfare against Hamas — which is why the Americans and the Israelis have been supplying Fatah with weapons. So when Israel moves against Hamas jihadists, the Israelis are doing Abbas’s work for him. He should thank them.
Instead, he talks about a “crime” against his people. This in itself should be enough to collapse the whole charade, and end this “peace process.” But of course, that “process” will just keep sailing on. Too many legacies at stake.
“Israeli forces kill 18 Palestinians in Gaza,” by Nidal al-Mughrabi for Reuters (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):
GAZA (Reuters) – Israel killed at least 18 Palestinians, most of them Hamas militants, in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, in violence the Palestinian Authority said was a “slap in the face” to U.S. President George W. Bush’s peace efforts.
A volunteer from Ecuador, working on an Israeli kibbutz, or farming community, bordering the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, was killed by a Palestinian sniper near the frontier fence. Hamas claimed responsibility for shooting the man.
The violence, four days after Bush ended a visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank, resulted in the highest number of Palestinians killed in a single day since late 2006. Israel said it mounted the operation to curb rocket attacks from Gaza.
In a statement, the West Bank-based Palestinian government said Israel’s “ugly crimes were a slap in the face” to efforts by Bush and the international community to resume peacemaking that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state.
“There was a massacre today against our people, and we say to the world that our people will not remain silent against such crimes,” said Abbas.
Hamas’s armed wing claimed responsibility for firing rockets into Israel on Tuesday for the first time since the Islamist group routed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah forces to take control of the Gaza Strip in June….