Soccer Dad

Incentives for terror

With Israeli PM Olmert's trip to the United States coming up the United States apparently wants something from PM Olmert.

Israel has yet to respond officially to a US document on movement and access presented in April, even though the plan is likely to be on the table at the White House when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visits there a week from Tuesday.

The document, written by the US security coordinator Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, US Ambassador to Israel Dick Jones and US Consul-General in Jerusalem Jacob Walles, sets deadlines for steps both the Israelis and Palestinians are expected to carry out.

But as Matthew Kalman pointed out last month, these plans are largely irrelevant.

Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton has joined a growing line of American mediators who have come up with intelligent and far-reaching security plans for the Palestinians, only to see their blueprints mown down in a barrage of automatic weapons fire.

Dayton's benchmarks, circulated to Israeli and Palestinian leaders last month, called for a phased easing of restrictions on the movement of Palestinians and their goods, the removal of Israeli checkpoints and the opening of a safe passage across Israel from Gaza to the West Bank. Israel was also to supply weapons and equipment to security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinians were to stop smuggling weapons, explosives and ammunition across the Gaza-Egypt border and to stop firing rockets at Israeli towns from Gaza.

Dayton's plan -- like those of his well-meaning predecessors: former President Bill Clinton, ex-CIA leader George Tenet, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, Gen. Anthony Zinni and onetime World Bank leader James Wolfenssohn -- makes sense on paper as a way to improve Israeli-Palestinian relations. Yet it has proved to be far detached from the grim reality on the ground.

The idea that the Bush Administration would be pushing for any political horizon or advance of the peace process is absurd if not dangerous. A few months ago Saudi Arabia arranged for a ceasefire between Hamas and Fatah. So far, each is showing the same capacity towards observing ceasefires to the other as they have towards Israel.

From today's Washington Post

Fatah and Hamas gunmen resumed intense street fighting Monday in the Gaza Strip after Egyptian efforts to mediate a new cease-fire failed to draw scores of masked gunmen off the streets.

By day's end, at least 13 Palestinians were killed, all apparently members of rival armed groups whose weeks-old truce has again given way to violence.

This latest spike has assumed a more brutal cast than previous factional fighting that has shaken Gaza periodically since Hamas defeated Fatah in January 2006 parliamentary elections. That victory gave the armed Islamic movement, which does not recognize Israel, day-to-day control of the Palestinian Authority and prompted a crippling aid embargo by Western donors against the government.

AFP

Palestinian gunbattles rocked Gaza on Tuesday, killing 17 people in 24 hours as mortar shells slammed into the home of premier Ismail Haniya and the seafront compound of president Mahmud Abbas.

Amid the apparent no-holds barred confrontation, one person was killed and 10 wounded in a shooting at a hospital, while the Palestinian media are also being targeted.

No casualties were reported in either the attack on Haniya's modest home in Shati refugee camp or the sprawling Gaza City presidential compound of Abbas. Neither leader was present when the impacts were reported.

The New York Times

The worst factional fighting in nearly a month raged among Palestinians on Monday, with gunmen reportedly firing at the prime minister’s home and office and violence elsewhere in Gaza leaving at least nine dead.

The death toll made Monday the bloodiest day since a fierce two-week bout of internal violence ended in mid-May. The fighting erupted despite a cease-fire that was supposed to come into force on Monday morning.

Hamas militants killed Jamal Abu al-Jediyan, the most senior Fatah official in northern Gaza, after attacking his house in Beit Lahiya on Monday afternoon. He was “executed with 40 gunshots,” said a Fatah spokesman, Maher Miqdad. Mr. Jediyan’s brother was also reported to have been killed.

Four Fatah loyalists and a member of the Executive Force, a Hamas police militia, were killed in clashes around the hospital in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, according to Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, head of the medical emergency service in Gaza. And in Gaza City, a member of Hamas and a Fatah intelligence officer were killed, Dr. Hassanein said.

The problem is not what Israel has or has not done, this is the result of the tremendous success of Yasser Arafat and the PLO. 40 years ago, Israel was a beleaguered democracy attacked on all fronts by implacable foes.

Historians may argue for years over who actually fired the first shot or dropped the first bomb. But the Realpolitik of Israel's overwhelming triumph has rendered the question largely academic. Ever since Israel was created 19 years ago, the Arabs have been lusting for the day when they could destroy it. And in the past month, Nasser succeeded for the first time in putting together an alliance of Arab armies ringing Israel; he moved some 80,000 Egyptian troops and their armor into Sinai and elbowed out the U.N. buffer force that had separated the antagonists for a decade. With a hostile Arab population of 110,000,000 menacing their own of 2,700,000, the Israelis could be forgiven for feeling a fearful itch in the trigger finger. When Nasser closed the Gulf of Aqaba, a fight became almost inevitable.

Death in Zagazig. It was radio, rather than air-raid sirens, that delivered the full realization of war to the people on both sides. A full hour after the first sirens and some four hours after the attack, Radio Cairo got around to announcing the Israeli air raids, and then the martial music and martial pep talks began. "Our people have been waiting 20 years for this battle," roared Cairo. "Now they will teach Israel the lesson of death! The Arab armies have a rendezvous in Israel!"

After campaigns of terror against friends and foe alike, the PLO was transformed into a national liberation movement fighting for the freedom of its people and Israel was transformed into the aggressor unwilling to make amends.

But the PLO didn't just change the orientation of the world to the Mideast conflict, its leaders did quite well from themselves. Terror wasn't just an extension of war by other means, it was also quite profitable as Daniel Pipes reported in 1983. About 5 to 10 percent of the pay of the 300,000 Palestinians working in the Gulf states is withheld by the governments there and earmarked for the PLO; were all of this money to reach its stated destination (which is not the case), it would provide the PLO with about another $250 million a year. Aid also comes from the farther away, from radical and Islamic groups around the world: in January 1983, for instance, the Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement in Kuala Lumpur gave a check for $80,000 to the local PLO representative. Terrorist activities have also proved a source of funds; the PLO reportedly received $20 million in December 1975 for releasing the OPEC oil ministers it had helped take hostage.

With this capital, the PLO was able to start large-scale business enterprises. In Lebanon, it ran a conglomerate called Samad ("Steadfast") whose 10,000 employees and estimated $40-million gross revenues in 1980 made it one of the country's largest firms. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an organizational member of the PLO, achieved a near-monopoly over steel products in South Lebanon during the late 1970s by importing steel from the Soviet bloc at concessionary prices and paying no import duties (the PLO controlled the ports of Sidon and Tyre). Its factory, the Modern Mechanized Establishment near Sidon, undercut competitors and drove them out of business; then it raised prices and reaped huge profits. Many Lebanese believed that predatory pricing was integral to the PLO's plans to retain control over South Lebanon. In addition to its local investments-a hotel in Lebanon, a chicken farm in Syria-the PLO owns a portfolio of investments in the industrial states, including a disco club in Italy and an airline in Belgium.

The PLO also controlled most of the approximately $30 million a year sent by the Arab governments to the West Bank and Gaza, though on some occasions Arab states themselves became directly involved. For example, Mayor Elias Freij of Bethlehem received $600,000 from Kuwait in 1977, reportedly in exchange for refraining from speaking of peaceful coexistence with Israel.

All in all, the PLO's annual budget in recent years has been estimated at about $1 billion, prompting Time to call it "probably the richest, best-financed revolutionary-terrorist organization in history." Its leaders could enjoy an unusually opulent style of life; on one occasion, three PLO directors lost $250,000 of the organization's money at the gambling tables. If Yasir 'Arafat maintained an abstemious way of life, other of the top PLO brass were notorious for high living; Zuhayr Muhsin, head of As-Sa'iqa, was assassinated while residing in a luxury hotel on the Riviera.

But this has been the problem with Palestinian nationalism. It hasn't been devoted to nation-building. It has been devoted to the destruction of Israel and the enrichment of its leaders.

So now that money is at stake. Fatah and Hamas have turned on each other.
(The cutoff in foreign aid hasn't exactly been crippling as the Washington Post reported. First of all Hamas has been adept at smuggling.

Hamas officials have managed to smuggle more than $66 million in cash through the Rafah border crossing in the past eight months, a member of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government said Wednesday.

But then aid hasn't been cut off despite what the Post credulously reported.

It is a little-known fact that international aid to the Palestinian territories has actually risen since Palestinians elected a Hamas government in January, 2006. According to International Monetary Fund and UN figures, the Palestinian areas received a total of $1.2 billion in official aid in 2006, up from $1 billion in 2005.

America's contribution rose from $400 million in 2005 to $468 million in 2006. Aid from the European Union and other international organizations also increased handsomely, and the UN has called for still greater increases in aid in 2007.

And in a nutshell that is the core of the problem.

Look at the incentives that have been created for the Palestinians: vote for terrorism, get an increase in your foreign aid. The Palestinian areas now receive more than $300 per person, per year, making them the most aid-dependent population on Earth. (The people of sub-Saharan Africa receive only $44 per person per year.)

These incentives allow Hamas to present itself both as the unyielding enemy of the Jewish state--and also as a provider of generous social welfare benefits to the Palestinian people.

What applies now for Hamas, applied to the PLO. As long as terrorism is justified, celebrated and rewarded it won't quit. In fact it will flourish. Rather what's needed is for the free world to take arms against the sea of terrorists instead of removing another checkpoint.

Israel, hamas, terrorism.

Posted by SoccerDad at June 12, 2007 9:06 AM