This is the logical consequence of the fraudulence of "Palestinian nationalism". There has never been any such thing. There is no evidence anywhere in the "Palestinian Authority" that anyone there is interested in building a state and running it. In conventional post-colonial scenarios of the Sixties and Seventies, liberation movements used terrorism as a means to advance nationalism. By contrast, Arafat's gang used nationalism as a means to advance terrorism. With him out of the way, it was deluded to assume that the "Palestinian people" would stick with a bunch of corrupt secular socialists with little appeal to anyone other than French intellectuals and Swiss bankers. The Mahmoud Abbas types play well on CNN and in EU subsidy negotiations, but because "Palestinian nationalism" was always bogus it's no surprise that the population of Gaza would seek a real identity elsewhere. In the Islamism of Hamas, they have found it. And, if it causes problems for all those Arab League deadbeats who promoted the pseudo-struggle of the "Palestinian people" for their own ends, well, they should have thought of that before they loosed this particular genie.
Human Rights Watch dénonce "les crimes de guerre" des factions armées palestiniennes
LEMONDE.FR avec AFP
13.06.07
L'organisation de défense des droits de l'homme Human Rights Watch (HRW) a accusé, mardi 12 juin, les groupes armés palestiniens de commettre des "crimes de guerre" contre des civils au cours de violents combats interpalestiniens dans la bande de Gaza. "Le meurtre de civils qui ne sont pas engagés dans les hostilités et l'assassinat délibéré de prisonniers sont des crimes de guerre, purement et simplement", dénonce dans un communiqué Sarah Leah Whitson, directrice du groupe pour le Proche-Orient.
"Des groupes palestiniens armés commettent de graves violations des lois humanitaires internationales", ajoute le HRW. Au cours des trois derniers jours, "le Fatah et le Hamas ont sommairement exécuté des prisonniers, tué des gens non impliqués dans les violences et engagé des affrontements armés (...) à l'intérieur et à proximité des hôpitaux palestiniens", affirme l'ONG.
L'organisation de défense des droits de l'homme cite notamment l'assassinat de Mohammed Swairki, 28 ans, un cuisinier du président du président Mahmoud Abbas. Swairki a été jeté du 15e étage d'un immeuble avec les pieds et les mains liés. Plus tard, des sympathisants du Fatah ont capturé Mohammed al-Rafati, un proche du Hamas, et l'ont exécuté de façon similaire, selon HRW.
What's going on in Gaza is both good and bad. It's good for Israel insofar as it lays bare for the world to see that there is no actual nationalist culture among the Arabs of Palestine. There is a tribal and sectarian culture that, left to its own devices, gives rise to militias that battle for supremacy in Gaza's weak-state environment. There used to be two sources of (loose) control over Gaza: Yasser Arafat and the Israeli occupation. In less than a year they both disappeared. Now there is factional chaos, and this Hobbesian state of affairs benefits Israel in three major ways: in degrading international sympathy for the Palestinians; in galvanizing Israeli public opinion against making concessions to the non-entity that is the Palestinian Authority; and the manner in which the Palestinians are degrading their terrorist capabilities by fighting each other instead of against the IDF and Israeli civilians.
Those are the good things. The bad thing is that groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad are now firmly in the Iranian orbit — IJ is probably mostly funded by Iran, and the mullahs are Hamas' largest donor. That money isn't provided out of ideological solidarity — it is payment for terrorism and jihad. Iran is feverishly trying to build up a network of alliances and proxies to wage its battles for it and to make the Israeli and American presence in the Middle East as costly as possible. So it funds (and in some cases arms) Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the insurgency in Iraq, the Taliban remnants in Afghanistan, and helps prop up the Assad regime in Syria. The boldness of Hamas and IJ isn't just a story about Palestinian civil war — it's a story of continued Iranian cooption of terrorist groups and their battles in the Middle East in a larger war against Israel and America.
For most Palestinians, black-hooded gunmen have long been respected symbols of resistance against Israeli occupation.
Now, frequent internal fighting and lawlessness gripping the Palestinian territories have transformed the militants into no more than gangsters in the eyes of many of those who once saw them as heroes.
"It's very ironic but I'm relieved the Israelis have started a bombing campaign. The gunmen killing each other on the streets were forced to go into hiding," said Mai, a Gaza housewife, referring to strikes aimed at halting rocket attacks on Israel.
Gunmen, who once battled Israeli soldiers in the alleyways of towns and refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, have turned against each other in an on-going power struggle between Hamas and Fatah -- partners in a unity government.
"Many of these groups are now a burden on society. They were created to fill a security vacuum under the pretext of national resistance, said legislator Nasser Jum'a, once a leading member of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
"They then blackmailed people, attacked them and confiscated their freedoms as the weak official security forces failed to punish them," he said.
Jum'a said ordinary Palestinians were so fed up with the armed groups "they now wish the Israeli occupation would take over in Gaza or hope for the return of Jordanian rule in the West Bank" to get rid of them.
