DRAMA IN GAZA
Dave Dolan

The main thing the massive upheaval in the Gaza Strip signals is that there is still far more regional trouble ahead – possibly including the collapse of the
Hashemite regime in Jordan—and it drives the final coffin nail into the imaginary Western-backed Oslo peace process, which was based on the naïve proposition that Arab populations, especially the Palestinians, but later also the Iraqis, are ready for stable, Western style democracy.

The brutal, bloody Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip recently also portends another round of armed attacks upon Israel from Iranian-back forces, including Hamas, Hizbullah and this time probably also Syria. It is also another serious blow to US foreign policy in the region, which has been off course in my estimation ever since President Bill Clinton pushed a skeptical Yitzhak Rabin to shake hands with the weak Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn in September 1993, followed by the Bush Administration’s post 9/11 strategic error to widen the justified war against Taliban forces in Afghanistan with an attack upon Saddam Hussein, which could only predictably bring a Shiite-dominated government to that country. This in turn would predictably further embolden the region’s main threatening Muslim actor, Shiite Iran, and all of its allies, especially Hamas, Syria, and Hizbullah, the Iranian-Syrian puppet Lebanese Shiite force.

I was actually taking a short break on a Tel Aviv beach on Thursday when the main fighting was going on in the nearby Gaza Strip. All day long I could hear something eerily familiar to me—the sound of distant booms coming from the trauma unfolding in the Gaza Strip, located just 35 miles south of Israel’s main urban center.

So now we have an Islamic fundamentalist state, Hamastan, backed by Syria and Iran, not far from Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion airport, and Jerusalem.

The sad, disturbing fact is that a majority of Palestinians around Jerusalem also support the radical, banal thugs, meaning the struggle could easily spill over to those areas as well. This in my opinion is clearly Iran’s hope and intention. Of course, the Israeli government and military are well aware of this ominous prospect, which partly explains why a new, more experienced Israeli Defense Minister was quickly installed this week—the former army general and former prime minister, Ehud Barak. Whether he can focus on the explosive crisis instead of trying to undermine the other Ehud—current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert—remains to be seen.

Neither the Palestinians or Iraqis, nor any other regional Arab people group, are even remotely ready for western style democracy in my on-scene estimation. If we insist that they have a fully “free” vote—as the State Department and others did in 2005, imploring Israeli leaders to allow Hamas to run in the January 2006 PA elections since that was “true democracy,” despite the fact that the elections were set up as part of an Israel-Palestinian peace accord that Hamas totally opposed—radical Muslim groups backed by Iran and Al Qaida will only use such votes as a further tool in their aspirations to strike down all pro-Western regional governments, including in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and of course in Israel. And if the nations insist that Israeli leaders hand over more territory to her determined enemies, such land will only be used to launch further assaults against the only functional democracy in the turbulent Middle East.

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DRAMA IN GAZA Dave Dolan

DRAMA IN GAZA
Dave Dolan