Is The Joke Really On Hamas?

Admiral Morrissey gets a kick out of Hamastan being the target of a terrorist insurgency:

Over the past two months, Fatah has organized a series of peaceful protests against Hamas in the Gaza Strip; thousands of Fatah supporters participated in open-air prayers to protest against Hamas's June "coup."

The protests, which have meanwhile been suspended, led to street clashes between the two parties, seriously embarrassing the Hamas government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

Most of the alleged Fatah operations have targeted security vehicles used by Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip. Following the attacks, the Hamas Ministry of Interior, which is in charge of security in the Strip, instructed all its operatives to check their vehicles before using them and to be on alert for roadside bombs.

"Apparently, Fatah is trying to copy the tactics of the anti-American insurgents in Iraq," said a Palestinian journalist in Gaza City. "It's ironic that Hamas is now describing the Fatah attacks as acts of terrorism."

Khaled Abu Hilal, a Fatah dissident closely associated with Hamas, said the latest wave of bombings was designed to destabilize the situation in the Gaza Strip. Accusing Fatah leaders in Ramallah of instructing their men to attack Hamas, he said: "These crimes reflect the terrorist mentality of the murderers and of those who give them the instructions from Ramallah."

Yeah, I'll acknowledge that it's pretty rich listening to Islamists whining about terrorism directed at them. It's like the old kid's punchline, "Hey, he's not cheating fair!"

But lost amidst the merriment is the fact that Fatah - the non-Islamist Palestinian terrorist faction that the West has all but forgotten is a terrorist faction, and upon whom, consequently, all manner of aid and largesse and trust is being showered - is proving, albeit against Hamas, that they are every bit the terrorists that their Pal rivals are. And if they eventually triumphed over Hamas, regained control of the Gaza Strip, and collected the remainder of the territorial concessions demanded of the Israeli's, would Mahmoud Abbas not have the Jews surrounded himself? Can you say, "Intifada III"?

This is what Ed still doesn't get, and evidently never will: Israel should never have withdrawan from Gaza in the first place. Maybe having a territory to administer has shown Hamas to be less than civically competent - like that's any sort of surprise - but that's not the point. They wanted Gaza as another base from which to bulldoze the Jews into the sea, and eventually into the gas chambers Hitler never finished.

This is why the Israelis need not to "maintain Gaza's isolation," but to retake Gaza and crush Hamas once and for all. They, and certainly not "Gazans" themselves, are the only ones who can do this, just as they, and not "the rest of the world," are the only ones who might conceivably still muster the will.

I said two-plus years ago that running away from the terrorists in Gaza would hand Israel's enemies a "Taliban on the Med". I have yet to see anything that has transpired since that has proven me wrong. Fatah's Gaza insurgency is simply whimsically redundant confirmation.