Recognizing Surreality

For some unfathomable reason, the Israeli government waited over two years after they surrendered a gift-wrapped Gaza Strip to Hamas, nearly two years after Hamas won Palestinian elections, over a year after fighting a war with the Islamist faction, and several months after they expelled their Fatah rivals out of Gaza, before finally designating them "a hostile entity":

The Israeli government has declared the Gaza Strip a "hostile entity" in response to the continued rocket attacks by Palestinian militants there....

Let the sheer obtuseness of that belated declaration sink in for a spell....

....The Israeli decision could lead to Israel cutting off vital water, fuel or electricity supplies to the territory. ...

Stop the tape again. The Israeli government has been serving as the public utility company for its blood enemies, despite the relentless terror war the latter continue to wage against it. What "wised" them up? Perhaps a rocket landing a little too close to a fuel depot or major power transformer? Can't be Hamas being behind on their accounts payable, since all their lucre is tied up in ordnance stocks, and the Jews pay their bills for them anyway.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said his security cabinet had approved the "hostile entity" classification at a meeting on Wednesday morning.

"Additional restrictions will be imposed on the Hamas regime, limiting the transfer of goods to the Gaza Strip, cutting back fuel and electricity, and restricting the movement of people to and from the strip," a statement said.

The sanctions will be implemented "following a legal review" to examine the legal and humanitarian consequences, the statement added.

Ah; so much for these "sanctions". Can't have Gaza Pals suffer for their own democratic choices, now, can we?

That's certainly the view of the ubiquitous Foggy Bottom Arabists, at whose beck & call Secretary of State Condolezza Rice will be engaging in yet another round of "shuttle diplomacy" between the Israelis and Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority this fall. And even that is still not enough in the eyes of Enemy Media "jounalists" and Clintonoid "diplomats" like Dennis Ross whose idea of the "Middle East peace process" was to see how far they could stick their tongues up Yassir Arafat's allimentary canal (diplomatically speaking, of course). As has come out since that old scoundrel's death, there was quite the long line for that particular diversion as it was. And all it produced apart from a smile on Arafat's stubbly, swarthy face was Intifada after Intifada, a particular problem that has improved dramatically in the absence of such "shuttling".

And yet you have to wonder how long even what lull in the "cycle of violence" there is will last given how much just about all parties involved have forgotten the fact that Fatah is still a terrorist gang just as determined to conquer and destroy Israel as Hamas, only via guile rather than blustering zeal

Here's a question the Washington Post asked of "President" Abbas:

[W]ill Israelis agree to go to final-status talks when they are constantly threatened with attacks on their cities?

Last night, [our security forces] seized two rockets. We handed [them] over to the Israelis. We are very worried about these deeds and I think we can put an end to all this. Our security apparatus is ready to stop all kinds of violence.

The indispensible Carolyn Glick cried "bullshit!" in the Jerusalem Post:

The Washington Post published the interview without noting that the story was a total fabrication. The "rockets" that Fatah transferred to the IDF were just a pile of metal pipes which had apparently been used as toys by local children. The IDF had already noted that the rockets weren't real when the Washington Post conducted its interview with Abbas. Unlike Abu Toameh and the Jerusalem Post, the Washington Post and its veteran reporter Lally Weymouth saw no reason to mention that Abbas's anti-terror credentials were based on nothing but lies manufactured by his own propaganda arms.

Why is it that nobody - not the Enemy Media, not the Bushies, not Foggy Bottom, not the Olmerties - is willing to acknowledge that Mahmoud Abbas' nose is, figuratively speaking, so long that he needs a neck AND back brace just to stand upright? To say nothing of the implications of his blatant mendacities? The same reason why the same people and their predecessors were so hell-bent on pretending that Abbas' predecessor was chicken salad instead of chicken droppings: the process. For them it's all about the journey, not the destination. Indeed, the destination - "peace" - is irrelevant, because in reality it is unattainable by the chosen "road," and to the participants the "road" is somehow a destination in and of itself. And they have so much invested in the journey that clarifying where it's actually taking them is, as it were, a place they most definitely do not want to go.

I've never been convinced that the supposed Hamas-Fatah "civil war" this summer was anything but the most elaborate Palestinian "triangle offense" scam yet, designed to cast Hamas as the "bad cop" and Fatah as the "good cop" on whom the West would eagerly shower all sorts of economic and territorial largesse at Jerusalem's expense. If the above developments are any indication, it looks like the plan is working to perfection.