Funding Fatah
News broke last night that President Bush has approved a plan to spend $86 million funding Palestine's Fatah party, primarly so it can increase its security forces to better protect Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Just to get this straight: we are now giving guns to the Palestinians. There is some deeply convoluted political logic behind this (as there always is), and it does not smell right.
The logic seems to be that the U.S. wants to protect Fatah and Abbas from the Iran-backed miliatant party Hamas. Hamas won control of the Palestinian parliament last year in legitimate elections, so they effectively control the goverment. Abbas is the closest thing the U.S. has to an ally in Palestine, so in order to help Abbas cling to his position in the government, and probably his life, we are arming his party.
This is troubling for a number of reasons.
First, Fatah is not an ally of the U.S., neither is Abbas. Fatah is the lesser of two evils. It has conducted terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Israel, and was wildly corrupt under former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat. These are not nice fellows. Yet we are giving them arms, or at least giving them money to buy arms. When the conflict between these two parties is over, we will not go into Palestine and demand those weapons back. No, Fatah will have them or Hamas will get them. So we have basically introduced $86 million worth of guns into Palestine, which is the mortal enemy of our only true ally in the middle east, Israel. Those weapons could be and probably will be used against Israeli forces someday.
Second, this move is greatly motivated by the fact that Hamas is backed by Iran. Thus, the U.S. government's angst over Iran is playing out in miniature in Palestine. This is the old, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," logic, which does not work. This is another attempt to thwart Iran's agenda without actually invading Iran, which the U.S. still might do anyway. The U.S. has practiced this type of meddling all over the world, basically since World War II, to some unpleasant results. It basically goes like this: Bad Guy A starts fighting Bad Guy B for control of Country A; The U.S. really does not want Bad Guy A to take over, so it helps Bad Guy B win, only to discover Bad Guy B is a really bad guy and hates the U.S., only he now has a bunch of weapons that we gave him; The U.S. then pummels Bad Guy B when he starts to get too powerful and starts making the U.S. nervous again. If this sounds familiar, that's because it is going on right now.
The Israeli goverment is ostensibly supporting this move. It does aid their short-term interests of trying to keep Hamas at bay, but in the longer-term it is not going to do them any good. This is a band-aid, that will do more harm than good, if it does any good at all. The fact that Israel supports the move makes it seem like a desperate effort. This seems to be the week for desperate efforts (see Troop Surge, Jan. 11) . What these desperate efforts amount to is the feeling that the situation in the middle east is spinning out of control, even from its previous status as being out of control.
Just to get this straight: we are now giving guns to the Palestinians. There is some deeply convoluted political logic behind this (as there always is), and it does not smell right.
The logic seems to be that the U.S. wants to protect Fatah and Abbas from the Iran-backed miliatant party Hamas. Hamas won control of the Palestinian parliament last year in legitimate elections, so they effectively control the goverment. Abbas is the closest thing the U.S. has to an ally in Palestine, so in order to help Abbas cling to his position in the government, and probably his life, we are arming his party.
This is troubling for a number of reasons.
First, Fatah is not an ally of the U.S., neither is Abbas. Fatah is the lesser of two evils. It has conducted terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Israel, and was wildly corrupt under former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat. These are not nice fellows. Yet we are giving them arms, or at least giving them money to buy arms. When the conflict between these two parties is over, we will not go into Palestine and demand those weapons back. No, Fatah will have them or Hamas will get them. So we have basically introduced $86 million worth of guns into Palestine, which is the mortal enemy of our only true ally in the middle east, Israel. Those weapons could be and probably will be used against Israeli forces someday.
Second, this move is greatly motivated by the fact that Hamas is backed by Iran. Thus, the U.S. government's angst over Iran is playing out in miniature in Palestine. This is the old, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," logic, which does not work. This is another attempt to thwart Iran's agenda without actually invading Iran, which the U.S. still might do anyway. The U.S. has practiced this type of meddling all over the world, basically since World War II, to some unpleasant results. It basically goes like this: Bad Guy A starts fighting Bad Guy B for control of Country A; The U.S. really does not want Bad Guy A to take over, so it helps Bad Guy B win, only to discover Bad Guy B is a really bad guy and hates the U.S., only he now has a bunch of weapons that we gave him; The U.S. then pummels Bad Guy B when he starts to get too powerful and starts making the U.S. nervous again. If this sounds familiar, that's because it is going on right now.
The Israeli goverment is ostensibly supporting this move. It does aid their short-term interests of trying to keep Hamas at bay, but in the longer-term it is not going to do them any good. This is a band-aid, that will do more harm than good, if it does any good at all. The fact that Israel supports the move makes it seem like a desperate effort. This seems to be the week for desperate efforts (see Troop Surge, Jan. 11) . What these desperate efforts amount to is the feeling that the situation in the middle east is spinning out of control, even from its previous status as being out of control.
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