Six Day War II

Only this time, it's not a combined Arab attack on Israel, but rather Hamas and Fatah, the two rival Palestinian terrorist factions, fighting each other. Only it wasn't much of a fight.

The reports started trickling in on....

TUESDAY, 7:57 AM: The who-knows-how-many-ieth Hamas-Fatah "cease-fire" collapses faster than the human eye can blink:

Militants from the armed wing of Hamas have threatened attacks on security positions in Gaza belonging to Palestinian rivals Fatah, reports say.

Hamas-run mosques in Gaza City gave Fatah fighters two hours to leave their positions.

As Drudge likes to say, "Developing...."


TUESDAY, 10:12 AM: Hamas launches a massive attack against Fatah security forces in Northern Gaza, overrunning several bases and other positions:

Hamas launched a full-scale attack Tuesday afternoon against Fatah security bases and positions in Gaza, and succeeded in taking over a number of them, Israel Radio reported.

Hamas-affiliated television said that the organization overtook the entire northern section of the Gaza Strip. After airing the report, the station was attacked by PA security forces and forced to play pro-Fatah songs. ...

Also on Tuesday afternoon, Fatah announced that within several hours, the faction would decide whether to stay in the unity government with Hamas, or leave the Palestinian Authority government altogether, Israel Radio reported.

The announcement coincided with a Hamas attack on the National Security headquarters in Gaza, an incident which followed a recent threat of such action by the extremist Islamic faction. National Security is one of the armed forces affiliated with Fatah.

Thus began the long-hinted and anticipated Palestinian civil war, which is the direct consequence of the elections a year and a half back that handed Hamas power within the so-called "Palestinian Authority" and a cloak of legitimacy both unearned and not left in place by the Hamassians for more than thirty seconds.

But why would Hamas have given a frog's fat leg about democratic legitimacy? They're too radically theocratic to have the patience for Arafat-style guile; they are what they are - Allah's "holy" warriors - and like the old Green Bay Packers' power sweep, they're coming and they don't care if you know it because they don't believe they can be stopped. Indeed, they want those they conquer to know who it is who has beaten them, before the rampaging mass murder begins. More on that later.

It was not an auspicious kick-off to hostilities for Fatah and its chieftain, Arafat protege Mahmoud Abbas, whose biggest bluster was to threaten to withdraw from the "Palestinian Authority" altogether. Like Hamas cares.

Admiral Ed argues:

Let Gaza collapse. We can't stop it anyway, and our efforts to intercede will by definition leave terrorists stronger in the region. Only when Palestinians tire of bloodshed will it end.

Or when Hamas wins.....


WEDNESDAY, 8:48 AM: Hamas consolidates its control over Northern Gaza and prepares to take the rest of the Strip. Meanwhile, its reign of terror against its conquered enemies doesn't waste any time getting started:

Jamal Abu Jadian, a top Fatah commander, fled his home in the northern Gaza Strip Tuesday evening dressed as a woman to avoid dozens of Hamas militiamen who had attacked it. He and several members of his family and bodyguards were lightly wounded.

But when Abu Jadian arrived at a hospital a few hundred meters away from his house, he was discovered by a group of Hamas gunmen, who took turns shooting him in the head with automatic rifles.

"They literally blew his head off with more than forty bullets," said a doctor at Kamal Udwan Hospital.

Yep, gotta love that "religion of peace". Gets ya right here, doesn't it? And here, and here, and here....

Jadian isn't the only one. Hamas intends to liquidate all of the senior Fatah security commanders, and is well on its way to doing so. Which has left Mr. Abbas as the unquestionably weaker horse:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has warned that continuing violence in Gaza risks taking the region to the point of collapse. ...

"Without a ceasefire and stopping of the fighting I think the situation will collapse in Gaza," he warned from Ramallah in the West Bank. ...

Arab League head Amr Moussa said the factional fighting was destroying the Palestinian cause.

A defeated paper tiger spouting delusions from a (supposedly) safe location. Even without being captured and executed, Mr. Abbas has been functionally emasculated, and the "Palestinian Authority" effectively decapitated.

As to the "Palestinian cause," this current unhappy state of affairs has grown directly and inexorably out of the fifteen-year excusion in impenetrable fantasizing known as the Oslo "peace" process.

It bears parenthetical repeating yet again that there is no such ethnicity as "Palestinians," but it is rather an artificial geopolitical designation like "Californians". Even as such the 1920 Balfour Declaration designated what is now Jordan to be the Arab "Palestinian" homeland, with the territory west of the Jordan River as its Jewish counterpart. This League of Nations mandate, inherited by the UN and handled by the British, had a very predictable unfolding, as constant Arab agitating and constant British concessions whittled down the Jewish "homeland," by the time of Israeli independence in May 1948, to a few slivered, discontiguous enclaves. Only by defending themselves against three Arab/Muslim wars of aggression (1948, 1967, 1973) did the Israelis survive and gain sufficient territory to be able to call themselves a "nation" with a straight face, as well as defend themselves in depth to deter any further such attacks.

Put another way, it was only when land was going FROM the Arabs TO the Israelies that the chances for peace improved, as evidenced by Anwar Sadat signing the 1977 Camp David Accords making peace between Egypt and Israel.

In the 1980s, when the Arab/Muslim strategy shifted to a long-term campaign of assymmetrical warfare against the Jewish state (i.e. terrorism), and Yassir Arafat's Fatah-led PLO came to prominence, Israel's battles against it took place in war-torn Lebanon. Then the Reagan Administration recognizes the PLO, and along comes the "peace process" that, Munich-like, proposes to carve up the Jewish State like a roast for the Pals' unworthy benefit. Two Intifadas, a "Road Map," and an unfortunate election later, national socialist Fatah has been crushed by radical Islamist Hamas, and Israel faces new battles inside its own shrunken, war-torn territory.

If this is "peace," and I were a Jewish resident of the Holy Land, I'd be pining nostalgically for the days of perpetual war. At least back then the fighting and dying took place on the Arabs' turf, and the IDF knew how (and the country's leadership was willing) to fight.

Close parentheses. And open another Morrissey quote I can't let pass unanswered:

Without outside intervention, we can expect the PA to wind up as its own two-state solution. Fatah will wind up with the West Bank, and Hamas with Gaza. That will make Gaza a tempting target for another Israeli invasion, as Hamas will certainly use it as a launching pad for more terrorist attacks against Israel. If Fatah holds the West Bank, it would make it much simpler for Israel to roll over Gaza. An even better solution would be to have Egypt do it, and to take back Gaza under its own sovereignty, but Israel would have an impossible task in convincing the Egyptians to do it.

I believe it was the Admiral's original argument when Ariel Sharon withdrew his country from Gaza almost two years ago that this was a brilliant move, since it would force the Pals and their terrorist leaders to put up or shut up about actually getting, having, and running a bona fide state of their own. I argued that the IDF was simply handing over to its deadliest enemies a piece of prime beachfront real estate that they would transform into a resurrected Taliban, with dire national security consequences not just for Israel but also for ourselves and the EUnuchs, as well as the "moderate" Arab autocracies like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. I also insisted that this would be seen by the Pals for exactly what it was: an unforced, craven retreat, one which could only boost the prestige of its most radical faction, Hamas, in the eyes of the Palestinian people.

Looks like Ed owes me a steak dinner. Or would if we'd made that bet. Just as well, I guess, since even if my New York cut were charcoalized, it would still be dripping with blood.


THURSDAY, 6:15 AM: Hamas continues mopping up in Gaza and settles scores with its Fatah rivals, their contempt for whom is made characteristically obvious:

The Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing that has begun referring to Fatah as the "Jew American Army," has given the Fatah-dominated Palestinian National Forces across northern Gaza until Friday evening to surrender their weapons and turn over their posts. The Hamas tactic, which has included broadcasting inaccurate claims from minarets that Fatah posts have fallen, has proved highly effective in prompting outgunned Fatah fighters to flee.

"Jew American"? Man, that's hitting below the belt. Certainly the Fatahas think so:

Among yesterday's dead was a 14-year-old boy and three women, all killed in a Hamas attack on a Fatah security officer's home.

"They're firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We're not Jews," the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station.

Minutes later both men were dragged into the streets and riddled with bullets.

No, you're not Jews. But you're not Islamists, so in your enemies' eyes you might as well be Jews. And you are dead. If you were still alive, I wonder if that might prompt you to do a little thinking. But only after you'd killed all the Hamassians who killed you, and then some Jews, just for giggles, no doubt.


THURSDAY, 6:37 AM: Fatah's remaining forces in Gaza beg the Israelis to rescue them, Dunkirk-like, by sea:

Meanwhile, hundreds of Fatah men asked Israel to help them flee the Gaza Strip through Gaza seaport, one of the last locations in the Strip still held by Fatah Thursday morning, for fear they would be executed by Hamas gunmen if they remained in Gaza.

Yeah, they're Jews. But they've got boats. And the Fatahas can always kill them later.


THURSDAY, 5:20 PM: What is it with the Admiral and his obsession with persuading Egypt to take back Gaza?

The EU has cut off aid to Gaza. Israel will almost certainly close all of the entry points into Gaza, and Egypt might do the same. Hamas will plunge Gaza into total isolation. Within weeks, there will be massive starvation and disease, but no one will trust Hamas to act peacefully after this massive betrayal - and no one will bother liberating Gaza again.

The best chance for the Palestinians in Gaza is to have Egypt annex it once again. Clearly it cannot be ruled by the Palestinians, and the Israelis will not want another 40-year occupation. If Egypt refuses, the only option will be a massive military effort to drive out Hamas, or to simply seal off Gaza and have the Palestinians rise up against them. I'm betting Israel opts for the latter.

First, why in blazes would Hosni Mubarek want that headache? He's got enough problems trying to hold down his own Islamist insurrectionists and will face the same threat from "Hamastan" even without administering a "terrortory" that Ed acknowledges in the same graf is ungovernable.

Second, Ed's not distinguishing between the Palestinian people and their leaders. As in any besieged dictatorship, the former will starve and pestulize, but the latter won't. Through their Syrian stooges the Iranians will make certain of it. Which makes sealing off Gaza instead of re-taking it and annihilating Hamas rank folly.

But after seeing Ehud Olmert take his bumbling hand at playing generalissimo last summer, I'm not taking Ed's bet.

Equally baffling is his implicit endorsement of a "Fatahstan" in Judea and Samaria:

That would allow Israel to boost Abbas in the West Bank, releasing tax funds and alleviating the effects of the international boycott there. It could lead to a lessening of tension between the PA and Israel. It would also make the Gazans see what misery Hamas provides in contrast.

THURSDAY, 8:55 PM: Brother Hinderaker explains why Fatahstan is to Israel the far more subtle, but far greater danger in the long term:

During the Gulf War, Iraqi army units were, in many cases, eager to put down their arms. Frequently, they were looking for someone to surrender to. I believe there was a case when an Iraqi platoon surrendered to a jeep full of journalists. Another time, a group of Iraqis were seen trying, unsuccessfully, to surrender to an unmanned drone that was circling overhead.

This has always struck me as a metaphor for the policy that the U.S. State Department has been pressing on Israel for some decades now: try to find someone to surrender to. Of late, though, it's been getting harder and harder. The Palestinians can't come up with a representative capable of receiving the white flag....

I wouldn't presume to instruct those who are on the firing line in Israel, but [a "two-state Palestinian solution] strikes me as uncomfortably close to looking for someone to surrender to.

The "peace process" bred Hamas. They've seized power in Gaza. What would be to keep them from doing the same thing in the West Bank and finishing Fatah once and for all? Particularly if, as is likely, the Israelis don't want to fight them again? In that case the Jews wouldn't be allowed a choice of to whom to surrender. Heck, they probably wouldn't be given the CHANCE to surrender.

But if, by some miraculous regrowth of mass common sense, Gaza was retaken (on behalf of the "Jew American Army"), wouldn't that, at best, put us right back where we started, with Abbas swindling away the Jewish State instead of bombarding it with rockets and missiles? Until it was sufficiently whittled down and weakened that his Fatahas decided to go for the jugular themselves, Hamas-like? Or 1948-like?

It is as I wrote in my church's monthly newsletter seventeen years ago: Islamists cannot be reasoned with; they cannot be bargained with; they don't feel pity, or remorse, and do not fear death; and they absolutely will not stop - EVER - until every infidel is DEAD.

Or until we - the Coalition in Iraq, NATO in Afghanistan, Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, all of the above against Iran - kill enough of them for a long enough period of time (or even better, a short, intense period of time) that they become convinced "Allah is no longer with them." The IDF crushing Hamas and retaking Gaza would be a good place to start.

Otherwise, we'll be in for the longest, hottest summer yet.