There are a lot of freelancers doing foreign policy these days, but there is none so reckless as this one:

Britain and other European governments should break from the US over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter told the Guardian yesterday. Carter, visiting the Welsh border town of Hay for the Guardian literary festival, described the EU’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as “supine” and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as “embarrassing”.

Referring to the possibility of Europe breaking with the US in an interview with the Guardian, he said: “Why not? They’re not our vassals. They occupy an equal position with the US.”

Then he went and “revealed” previously unknown “truths” that paint the United States as a party that is playing in bad faith in the Middle East:

Carter said the Quartet’s policy of not talking to Hamas unless it recognised Israel and fulfilled two other conditions had been drafted by Elliot Abrams, an official in the national security council at the White House. He called Abrams “a very militant supporter of Israel”. … “The Quartet’s final document had been drafted in Washington in advance, and not a line was changed,” he said.

Then, for good measure, he inserted himself in electoral politics:

Earlier, Carter, told Sky News that Hillary Clinton should abandon her battle to become Democratic presidential candidate after the last round of primaries in early June.

But that as as nothing compared to the hell he unleashed with another “revelation”:

Jimmy Carter says Israel had 150 nuclear weapons

Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.

His remark, made at the Hay-on-Wye festival which promotes current affairs books and literature, is startling because Israel has never admitted having nuclear weapons, let alone how many, although the world assumes their existence.

After a while, one really does begin to wonder whose side that shitbag is on.  However: it’s pretty obvious that he’s preaching to the European elite choir because he can’t get any traction here at home. And that’s a good thing. Still …

Maybe the New York Times is getting religion (no pun intended) in the face of the financial ruin or perhaps the timing is mere coincidence.

Today, in a shocker, the Gray Lady reveals (a few decades too late) that the Palestinians are running a vicious propaganda campaign against—surprise!—the Jews (all of them, everywhere):

Hamas’s Insults to Jews Complicate Peace Effort

Ya think?

Such incitement against Israel and Jews was supposed to be banned under the 1993 Oslo accords and the 2003 “road map” peace plan. While the Palestinian Authority under Fatah has made significant, if imperfect efforts to end incitement, Hamas, no party to those agreements, feels no such restraint.

Since Hamas took over Gaza last June, routing Fatah, Hamas sermons and media reports preaching violence and hatred have become more pervasive, extreme and sophisticated, on the model of Hezbollah and its television station Al Manar, in Lebanon.

In case any of the NYT’s readers thinks that Hamas’s complaints are legitimate, and that its charter, a “deeply anti-Semitic document” [you get extra points for that, NYT!  ---ed.]  is just politics [e.a.]:

Mark Regev, spokesman for Mr. Olmert, called on “Arab leaders who are moderate and believe in peace to speak out more strongly against extremist elements.” He called the “incitement to hatred and violence standard Hamas operating procedure,” adding, “In Hamas education and broadcasting they turn the suicide bomber who murders the innocent into a positive role model, and they portray Jews in the most negative terms, that too often reminds us of language used in Europe in the first half of the 20th century.”

The “serious question,” he said, “is what ethos are they promoting?”

Why, they’re promoting “resistance” against the eternally evil Jew, dontcha know?  And there are lots of Americans who want the eternally evil Jews of Israel to negotiate with those who look forward to a second holocaust.

Saying it was a “routine” operation, Hamas claimed responsibility for the horrifying attack on a Jerusalem religious school yesterday, in which 8 students were killed:

ABC News reports:

An emergency worker who was one of the first on the scene described how the shooting was still going on in the building when he arrived. He told ABC News that when he got inside he discovered a horrific scene with many of the young religious students lying on the ground, covered in blood, some of them clutching their books.

“There was lots of blood over there,” he said. “It was a terrible scene to look at – they were all young guys in there.”

Amnesty International, while condemning the attack, warned Israel not to retaliate:

“The Israeli authorities must adhere to international humanitarian law and human rights standards in any action they take in response to last night’s attack, even though that attack demonstrated a disregard for the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.

“Abuses by one side, no matter how serious, cannot ever justify abuses by the other side,” said Smart.

AI’s spokesperson seems to forget that, well, Jews are not Christians. Jews don’t believe in turning the other cheek.

However, since the biens-pensants of the world make such a fetish about the nobility of turning the other cheek, the Israeli government has decided to do what they have never done before—distribute photos from the scene of the crime, where their martyred young men died for their religion.

Israel has decided to take advantage of Thursday’s bloody terror attack in Jerusalem in order to launch an aggressive campaign against Hamas.

Yedioth Ahronoth has learned that the political echelon instructed the Government Press Office to distribute the shocking images from the yeshiva shooting worldwide, including pictures of holy books perforated with bullets, a blood-stained praying shawl and the terrorist’s body inside the yeshiva.

I await the world’s outrage.

Yes, the Israelis—strong, mighty, and militarily powerful though they are—can be and are victims of Palestinian aggression.

The Times (London) describes one view of the situation:

While many Gazans resent the rocket fire – which they acknowledge ultimately causes them far more harm than Israel – most are too afraid to stand up to Hamas and its thousands of devoted gunmen. Those who criticize the rocket-launchers are quickly branded traitors, a dangerous epithet in a lawless area racked by nationalist violence.

Hamas for its part is playing a game of brinkmanship, baiting Israel with its rockets and counting on nationalist sentiment to make Gazans back them when Israel attacks with deadly force.

The people of Gaza are caught in between two sides. Isolated economically and diplomatically, Hamas’s leaders appear to be trying to emulate Hezbollah’s 2006 withstanding of an Israeli onslaught while still continuing to fire their rockets, which brought the Lebanese wide-ranging support on the Arab street.

The Israeli response to this aggression was fierce and deadly over the weekend, as reported by the BBC:

On Saturday, at least 60 Palestinians were killed in one of the bloodiest days of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in years.

The death toll from Israeli air strikes included at least 25 civilians, including nine children and three women.

The other fatalities were Palestinian militants - the majority of them from Hamas, the Islamic movement which controls Gaza.

Laura Bialis, living under rocket fire from Gaza, describes how it feels.

Saturday, Noon:
Helicopters. I get online. I can’t help it. What does it say in the news. Thirty-three qassams from yesterday until now. Twenty-six people killed in Gaza, including some civilians. Several IDF soldiers injured.

I look at the press from the West and get very angry. Its mostly about their injuries. Another article about Palestinian protests about our attacks. This is ridiculous. If there were no rockets raining on us the IDF wouldn’t have anything to do there. I don’t like the way we are portrayed. We don’t want this war. They are dragging us in. What can we do? There are rockets raining on us daily. But in the media we look like the aggressors. It feels so unfair to be sitting here and reading that. My entire perspective has changed. I used to think that Israel needed to take care of how it looked to the western world — that we can’t look like monsters. Now I know it doesn’t matter. They will paint us however they want. I just can’t read the news anymore, it makes me too angry. We need to move forward with our lives, protect ourselves. The government has a responsibility to protect its people. The question is, what is the best way to do that?

Indeed: what is the best way to do that?

I don’t know. No one knows.

We might as well get used to it, because I think we’re going to be hearing stuff like this for a long time:

Egyptian FM threatens to break Palestinians’ legs if they breach border again

He blamed Israel for the humanitarian crisis and hardship that Gaza is experiencing, and for “responding to the Palestinian (Hamas) missiles with collective punishment.”

He also criticized Hamas for launching those missile attacks, describing the confrontation as a “laughable caricature” resulting in self-inflicted wounds.

Ridicule is not what Hamas wanted to hear:

Sami Abu Zuhri … called [the remarks] “inappropriate” and said he did not believe they reflected the official Egyptian stance.

We’ll see, I guess.

The Egyptian Sandmonkey is back to blogging, I see. He’s got a message for his government:

PLEASE

SECURE

THE 

BORDERS, 

BITCHES 

..before anymore bad shit happens!

That is all!

More from the Sandmonkey here and here.

From the Israeli perspective, things aren’t much better, of course. Ynet reports that the IDF has found evidence of Hamas having adopted Hezbollah-style tactics for using its rocket lauchers in Gaza to attack Israel indiscriminately.

Off in cloud cuckoo-land is Tony Blair, complimenting the Palestinian Authority for starting to get its shit together.

I guess he believes desperately in Fatah’s Abbas. Hamas, however, has a different message:

Hamas rejects Abbas proposal to broker cease-fire with Israel

And that’s because, at Iran’s urging, Hamas is now declaring all out war on Israel:

Israel can expect a wave of suicide bombings inside its 1967 borders, not just the West Bank, Hamas’ representative in Iran said Wednesday. The announcement came as Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip launched a barrage of Qassam rockets into Israel. …

[Israeli] Defense officials told Haaretz they view the announcement as a significant change because it comes from the organization’s representative to Tehran - which has in recent weeks been pressuring Hamas to escalate hostilities against Israel.

None of this is good.

Nobody can say that Hamas isn’t determined. But this doesn’t look like an organization seeking justice for displaced people, does it?

While we’re enveloped in campaign excitement, the rest of the world goes about its business. Some three days after Palestinians blew their way through the border with Egypt, Egyptian soldiers are reportedly fleeing rather than confront the problem and close the border.

The BBC explains the problem:

Egypt is in a bind. It did not want the border breached.

The Egyptian government despises and fears Hamas. It fears opposition forces within Egypt, including religious fundamentalists, being strengthened by Hamas ideology.

But equally, Egypt does not want to be seen directly as “Gaza’s jailer”. So closing the border, amid scenes of Arab fighting Arab - Palestinian stones against Egyptian riot shields - is also very unwelcome.

Israel has moved to suggest that any failure to close the border by Egypt would justify Israel in handing over responsibility for the future welfare of the people of Gaza to Egypt - neatly ridding Israel of a problem, and the source of so much international criticism.

That will not happen, but the Rafah border breach and the extraordinary scenes of a mass Palestinian breakout for shopping or simply for fresh air may yet have profound political effects on the entire Middle East peace process.

Here are the two things that might happen, according to the BBC:

The downside could be a hardening of attitudes on all sides, further complicating or poisoning the climate for concessions in the dialogue which US President George W Bush is hoping to accelerate.

The upside could be a realisation that the present situation in Gaza, and the split between Hamas there, and Fatah in the West Bank, is utterly unsustainable.

What will happen?

Stay tuned. But not to the MSM.

The Times (London) declares that Hamas just had the biggest propaganda coup in its history:

As tens of thousands of Palestinians clambered back and forth between the Gaza strip and Egypt today, details emerged of the audacious operation that brought down a hated border wall and handed the Islamist group Hamas what might be its greatest propaganda coup.

Hamas, which took control of the coastal territory last June after a stand-off with Fatah, has denied that its men set off the explosions that brought down as much as two-thirds of the 12-km wall in the early hours.

I agree that Hamas’s exploits and the rushing of the crossing into Egypt of an estimated 350,000 Palestinians doesn’t make for a pretty picture for the Israelis. But it’s only propaganda if it has an effect on the desired party. And we all know that the American media—presumably, those are the folks that Hamas wants to impress—are obsessed with only one thing: the campaign for the American presidency. We know this because they barely bothered to cover Bush’s Middle East trip.

Nevertheless, Newsweek and Time also both declare this a PR victory for Hamas, and seem to be pulling for Hamas over both Israel and the United States to boot.

Meanwhile, the MSM barely pauses its campaign coverage—except when they’re descending ghoulishly on the body of a strapping 28-year-old actor, who died in SoHo yesterday, as ETP’s Rachel Sklar reports [e.a.]:

Cable news, too, reported on Ledger’s death — though only Fox covered it in the 5pm hour (MSNBC stuck with “Hardball” and CNN with “The Situation Room,” both of which seemed to stick with the Hillary/Obama spat and Thompson non-candidacy). We’ll see how those ratings stack up (indicator: The Ledger story was last night’s most-viewed clip on MSNBC, and #3 on CBS). …

The New York Times also covered Ledger’s death yesterday via its “City Room” blog; today’s comprehensive article by James Barron had no less than fourteen people listed as contributing reporters. …

The three nightly newscasts all ran segments covering Ledger’s death, with varying degrees of sensationalism: ABC teased it at the top of the broadcast with “First word is it could be drug related” and CBS’ website described the situation as “what authorities suspect is a drug-related death”; NBC stayed away from the cause of death in the tease and written description, and Ann Thompson noted that “police are looking at the possibility of an overdose,” noting the presence of bottles of “prescription drugs [and] non-prescription drugs.”

Though the day started out with the fed rate cut, Dem debate and Oscar nominations, the day’s big story was about Ledger’s death — and traditional media outlets could only run to catch up with the internet, particularly TMZ which, as usual, posted anything and everything in order to completely flood the zone. (Though I noticed the TMZ guy on with Greta Van Sustern didn’t correct her when she said TMZ had broken the story; from the looks of it, that one goes to Radar.) Not like we need any more indicators that the nature of the news cycle has changed, but this is once again evidence that the internet has muscled out the traditional media in covering — and driving coverage of — high-profile stories like this. For good or ill.

It’s definitely for ill, Rachel, if it excludes coverage of, you know, the news we actually need to know. But so it goes …

Is anyone surprised that Iran’s new nuclear “negotiator” turns out to be … well, to say he’s “intransigent” would imply that he could eventually be moved off his position in order to advance the West’s ”dialogue” with Iran. But that’s not the case:

The first hour-and-a-half of the London meeting was described as a monologue, with Jalili speaking about the will of the Iranian people to support uranium enrichment, theology, God, even his doctoral thesis, according to several officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules.

“Jalili said, ‘Everything in the past is past, and with me, you start over,’ ” an official said. “He said, ‘None of your proposals has any standing.’ ”

When Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said that he was under the assumption that there would be continuity in the talks, Jalili told him that was wrong. After the meeting, Solana abandoned his habitual optimistic stance, telling reporters that he was “disappointed.”

Remember that quote from a year ago—that dealing with Iran was like playing chess with a monkey, because he wouldn’t follow your rules?

Well, here we are a year later, says the NYT:

Iranian Pushes Nuclear Talks Back to Square 1  

The hard-line position from the Iranian side was clear confirmation that Iran would not compromise on this issue, the French official said, adding, “We have in front of us the real Iran.”

An official involved in the talks put it even more bluntly, “We can’t do business with these guys at this point.”

This lesson about Iran is being learned the hard way by the Europeans, who, unlike certain hot-tempered Americans, are predisposed to dialogue.

Who knows what will come of these “negotiations” with Iran. “Talks” are going nowhere fast.

Meanwhile, there’s a growing chorus of calls for Israeli engagement with Hamas.

That proposal is shot down here by Noah Pollak.

Agence France-Press reports thatA’jad scolded Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah for consorting with the enemy:

“I wish the name of Saudi Arabia was not among those attending the Annapolis conference,” Ahmadinejad told the king late Sunday, according to state news agency IRNA.

“Arab countries should be watchful in the face of the plots and deception of the Zionist enemy,” he added.

Focusing on “the Zionist enemy” of course detracts attention from the actual state of affairs that has Iran in a tizzy:

The Islamic republic — which has made non-recognition of Israel one of its main ideological themes — has been left isolated by the attendance at the meeting of its chief regional ally Syria as well as Saudi Arabia.

This is the second time in two years that the major Sunni players in the Middle East have signaled their intense displeasure with Iran and its acolytes and clients. An interesting development.

update: I note that Eric Trager is rooting around to find out what the sudden turn of events running up to Annapolis means.***

As I write, at

9:45 AM ET, November 26, 2007

this story is nowhere to be found on Memeorandum, and it’s buried on p. A 11 of the dead-tree NYT, but it’s could signal a turn of fortune in the Middle East, too.

It looks like Condi Rice has managed to land not only Saudi Arabia but now also Syria for the heretofore mirage-like conference at Annapolis:

The Annapolis meeting, a major initiative pressed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will begin negotiations on a peace treaty to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while simultaneously committing Israel and the Palestinians to carry out long-postponed obligations contained in the first stage of the 2003 peace plan known as the road map.

The presence of major Arab countries, now including Syria, is meant to provide Arab sanction and support for the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to make the concessions required for peace.

The NYT’s Steven Erlanger doesn’t allude to the implications, but this is huge. This means that Syria is allowing itself to be “peeled away” from Iran, leaving Hamas minus one sponsor.

The Israeli spokesman clarify what’s at stake here:

Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, said, “The Saudi and Syrian presence is very important and is an American success.” While the Syrians are not sending the foreign minister — a diplomatic distinction that has meaning — Ms. Eisin said that from Israel’s point of view, the rank of the representative was much less important than the Syrian presence.

“Hamas is appalled, which is why we have reason to be satisfied,” Ms. Eisin said.

About the results of the meeting, Ms. Eisin said, “We’re hopeful but not optimistic.”

Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, noted that Syria had agreed to cancel a planned “anti-Annapolis summit” meeting and attend instead. “If the idea of the meeting is Arab-Israeli dialogue, Syria matters,” he said. “It would be even more positive if this were an indication of a change in Syria’s orientation” — away from Iran and toward the Saudi- and Egyptian-led Sunni Arab consensus.

There is a steaming pile of bullshit about Rice’s supremely important role in this accompanying article in the NYT,  but even if you can believe only a tenth of what’s in the piece, there’s no question but that this is a coup.

I hate to sound optimistic, but I begin to see on the horizon a loose but fully international alliance that includes Muslims, Christians, and Jews—and it so happens that it’s a disruption of the so-called “Shia arc.”

At the very least, it seems as if a page is being turned.

————-
*** Trager writes:

Over the past few weeks, consensus has continually held that little should be expected from the Annapolis conference, which opens tomorrow. Op-ed after op-ed and poll after poll have dictated that Israeli and Palestinian leaders are too weak, if not too far apart in their positions, for any meaningful progress towards peace to take place.

Yet it’s hard to reconcile the notion that Annapolis is little more than an impressive photo op with the serious diplomatic capital that Arab states have invested in it. Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia announced that it would send Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, marking the first time that the Saudis are participating in talks with Israelis present. Representatives of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen will also participate. Indeed, the Annapolis conference has achieved such profound legitimacy that Syria—believing that it risked regional isolation by not attending—announced that it would send its deputy foreign minister.

Two rabbis from the Wiesenthal Center are outraged that the precious words of Hamas representatives were recently published on the op-ed pages of the L.A. Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post:

Consider Hamas’ summer hot streak. Not only has it driven Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas out of Gaza, threatened Israeli civilians and bombarded fellow Palestinians, but it has scored the ultimate media trifecta. First, the New York Times and the Washington Post simultaneously ran Op-Ed articles by Ahmed Yousef, a senior leader of Hamas who defended his group’s bloody putsch in Gaza. Now, the Los Angeles Times has opened its Op-Ed page to Hamas political bureau deputy Mousa Abu Marzook for his insidious take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I agree with the rabbis that there’s no need for the editorial boards of American newspapers to give those We will never recognize Israel *** Hamas shitballs a platform so that they come off sounding reasonable, which they are not, as their shitball actions and behavior prove time and again.

But haven’t the rabbis heard? Newspapers are dead. Today’s op-ed is tomorrow’s Already Been Masticated^TM blogospheric flotsam and jetsam. Onward with the project of gaining supporters—i.e., PRopaganda^TM—at Feiler Faster speed.

————-
*** One of many such statements was delivered by the deposed “prime minister” Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last December:

“We will never recognise the usurper Zionist government and will continue our jihad-like movement until the liberation of Jerusalem,” Mr Haniyeh told thousands of Friday prayer worshippers at Tehran University in Iran.

But in Gaza, “weekend” means different things to Hamas and Fatah, which in turn means, naturally, that gunfire erupted over the dispute:

GAZA, July 5 (Reuters) - Palestinian civil servants said they came under gunfire from a Hamas-led force as they tried to report for work on Thursday, which Hamas has decreed a day off. …

Guidelines for the working week by President Mahmoud Abbas’s emergency government set Sunday to Thursday as working days with a Friday/Saturday weekend.

But the Hamas-led government, which Abbas dismissed after the Islamist movement seized Gaza in a civil war three weeks ago, has set a Saturday-Wednesday working week.

[[video removed from http://youtube.com/watch?v=ic7H-xqXlp8 ]]

updated twice below 

As I predicted when Johnston was kidnapped (a story I started following when it happened and which I tracked through its many ebbs and flows when the MSM did not), Hamas has lost no time freeing him and grabbing credit for it:

The leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, said Johnston's freedom showed his Islamist movement had brought order to the Gaza Strip, where it seized power in a bloody coup last month.

He said: "We have been able to close this chapter which has harmed the image of our people greatly. The efforts by Hamas have produced the freedom of Alan Johnston."

Meshaal regrets the episode:

"We had expressed our regret in the name of the Palestinian people at the abduction of the respected journalist Alan Johnston, which represented an offence to our people.

"Today we celebrate with Johnston’s family, the BBC and our people the freedom of Alan Johnston,” Mashaal said.

I eagerly await Alan Johnston's mash note to Hamas.

UPDATE 1:  That was quick. CNN just carried part of a news conference with Ismail Haniyeh and Alan Johnston. Anderson Cooper was the height of caution as he discussed the live footage with his colleage Ben Wedeman. Cautiously, Cooper reminded the audience that of course Johnston was still in the hands of Hamas and that he was in front of the camera with the "dismissed" Palestinian prime minister.

Then the camera and mic stayed on Johnston, and Cooper and Wedeman fell silent as Johnston talked about how he had feared for his life, how he thought this would go on and on, how his abductors felt quite comfortable with their situation until a few weeks ago, when Heroic Hamas took control of Gaza and provided safety and security to all its people blah blah blah.

To which CNN's Wedeman enthused that Johnston was obviously no worse for the wear, because he was talking so volubly–and Wedeman got all excited about his scoop, now "confirmed" by Johnston, that Johnston's kidnappers were somehow in league with Fatah.

And so does CNN act as the eager public relations representative of Hamas.

Is everyone comfortable with that? I'm not. Because the MSM seems to have learned nothing since Jill Carroll, swathed in full hijab, was "interviewed" by Iraqi intermediaries upon her "release" from captivity in Baghdad.

This is what I mean when I say that it's not the content of the stories that makes "hard news." A "report" on Alan Johnston's release such as the one by Ben Wedeman, which serves to smear Fatah on Johnston's say-so and on Hamas's behalf, isn't hard news. It's sensationalism. 

UPDATE 2: Here's a link to the AC 360 transcript, which isn't complete as of this writing (the show just ended). 

Gabriel Schoenfeld on what we might expect in Gaza:

When Israel withdrew from the security zone it had established in southern Lebanon in 2000, there were numerous predictions, noted the Israeli analyst Gal Luft in 2003, “that the radical Shiite group Hizballah, whose forces had relentlessly attacked the occupying Israeli troops, would close up military operations and henceforth focus solely on Lebanese domestic affairs.”

But what actually happened? First, wrote Luft, Hizballah declared that its “objective was the liberation of the entire land of Palestine and the destruction of the ‘Zionist entity.” It then seized control of the entire buffer zone that had been occupied by Israel and turned it into “a de facto state within a state.” Hizballahland” was what Luft christened this territory as he pointed to the fact that the terrorist organization had “managed to amass an impressive stockpile of weapons, including 10,000 rockets and missiles capable of hitting a quarter of Israel’s population.”

That was 2003. By 2006, Hizballah had 20,000 rockets and missiles, and its depredations led Israel and Lebanon into a massive and bloody war.

What lies ahead for Hamastan? It is of course conceivable—anything being conceivable—that the newly empowered Hamas leadership will move in the direction of pragmatism; that is what our own pragmatic logic suggests they should do. But perhaps these Islamic radicals operate under a different system of reasoning. The spectacle of the losers of the Gaza power struggle—their fellow Palestinians—being tossed from fifteen-story buildings and shot in the knees before being shot in the head suggests that sometimes it is not only history that goes in cycles, but illusions about history as well …

Haniyeh is feeling the heat, apparently.

Martin Indyk understands why:

The failed state of Gaza that Hamas controls is wedged between Egypt and Israel. Its water, electricity and basic goods are imported from the Jewish state, whose destruction Hamas has declared as its fundamental objective. One more Qassam rocket fired from Gaza into an Israeli village and Israel could threaten to seal the border if Hamas did not stop its attacks. Hamas would then have to reach a meaningful cease-fire with Israel or seek Egypt’s help meeting the basic needs of the 1.5 million Gazans. Hosni Mubarak’s regime turned a blind eye to the importation of weapons and money that helped ensure Hamas’s takeover. But would Egypt allow on its border a failed terrorist state run by an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood with links to Iran and Hezbollah? Or will it insist on the maintenance of certain standards of order in return for its cooperation?

Whatever transpires, Gaza has become Hamas’s problem. It’s a safe bet that the real attitude of Abbas and Fatah is: Let Hamas try to rule Gaza, and good luck.

This turn of events would free Abbas to focus on the much more manageable West Bank, where he can depend on the Israel Defense Forces to suppress challenges from Hamas, and on Jordan and the United States to help rebuild his security forces. As chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and president of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas is empowered to negotiate with Israel over the disposition of the West Bank. Once he controls the territory, he could make a peace deal with Israel that establishes a Palestinian state with provisional borders in the West Bank and the Arab suburbs of East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza could compare their fate under Hamas’s rule with the fate of their West Bank cousins under Abbas — which might then force Hamas to come to terms with Israel, making it eventually possible to reunite Gaza and the West Bank as one political entity living in peace with the Jewish state. It’s hard to believe that such a benign outcome could emerge from the growing Palestinian civil war.

Yes, it’s very hard to believe that a benign outcome is possible. Which is why I don’t believe it for a minute.

Posted: Sun, 03 Jun 2007

The AP reports that the Islamist-extremist intimidation campaign is now out in the open and in full flower. Female Palestinian TV broadcasters are now in the line of fire:

A Muslim extremist group threatened to behead female TV broadcasters if they don’t don strict Islamic dress, leaving the women terrified and marking a further downward spiral in Gaza’s anarchy.

The threat to “cut throats from vein to vein” was delivered by the Swords of Truth, a fanatical group that has previously claimed responsibility for bombing Internet cafes and music shops.

The new threat was the first time the organization targeted a specific group of people, and adds to a growing climate of extremism, fear and suspicion in Gaza.

The Jerusalem Post provides more details:

Members of the group are also responsible for splashing acid in the face of a number of young women who had been accused of “immoral behavior.” The Righteous Swords of Islam is one of three al-Qaida-affiliated groups that have popped up in the Gaza Strip over the past two years.

PA officials in Ramallah told The Jerusalem Post that the presence of the extremist groups in the Gaza Strip would “eventually lead to the transformation of the Palestinian territories into a Taliban-style entity.”

According to one official, “The day will come when we will miss Hamas. These are extremely dangerous groups that are trying to take Palestinian society back to the Dark Ages.”

The threats being issued are very specific and very close to home:

The group warned that its members would strike with an “iron fist and swords” against the women who are refusing to cover their faces. “We will destroy their homes,” it announced. “We will blow up their working places. We have a lot of information about their addresses and we are following their movements.”

The leaflet concluded by threatening to “slaughter” the women for allegedly spreading corruption in Palestinian society by appearing on the screen with their faces uncovered.

“The administration and workers at Palestine TV should know that we are much closer to them than they think,” it added. “If necessary, we will behead and slaughter to preserve the spirit and morals of our people.”

This extremism is familiar to Iranians and Afghanis, both of whom have been brutalized by fundamentalists. Now it has come to the Palestinians.
Somehow I don’t think a “binational state”—i.e., the one-state solution to the Israel/Palestine problem—is the magic cure. Three writers crocodile-feeders at The Nation do, however.

I first posted about BBC correspondent Alan Johnston in mid-March, when he was kidnapped in the streets of Gaza. I had expected his abduction to catch the attention of the MSM, since he was one of their own. Instead, except for many, prolonged protests held by Palestinian and British journalists, there has been a troubling silence. (You can follow all my posts about Johnston here. You can read a few posts about kidnapping as the terrorist tactic du jour here, here, and here.)
Until today. The group holding Johnston released a propaganda video:

He is wearing a red sweatshirt and reading out what appears to be Palestinian propaganda denouncing Israel and the Middle East policies of Britain and America. He appears calm and without any visible injuries.

His voice, familiar to many BBC listeners and viewers from his 16-year career with the corporation, is measured. He says he is “in Gaza”. …

During a three-minute speech, Mr Johnston accuses Britain and the US of causing suffering in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, and for “occupying Muslim lands against the will of the people in those places”.

He starts to give a message to his family but is cut off. Subtitles then appear on the video, saying: “The BBC refused to take this message to his family”.

Naturally, the family is relieved to have this sign of life from Johnston, although no one can say when the video was shot. But this isn’t anything like relief for the family—it’s extended agony:

Norman Kember, 76, a British peace campaigner held hostage for more than four months in Baghdad in 2005, said the video was designed to cause “maximum stress” to Mr Johnston’s family and the Government.

He drew comparisons between the orange suit he was given to wear during videos and Mr Johnston’s red sweatshirt. He said: “I think the idea was to show the parallel to Guantanamo Bay and put the maximum stress on the Government and relatives.”

The British government is well aware of that:

The video was condemned by the Foreign Office for the distress it caused the family and Tony Blair used a press conference at the end of his African tour to call for the kidnappers to release Mr Johnston, who passed his 45th birthday in captivity.

Also calling for the release of Johnston is Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian “prime minister” of Chaos and In-fighting.

“We are renewing our demands of the men, the abductors of the British journalist, to protect him and not to harm his life and to immediately release the journalist,” Haniyeh said after Friday prayers in Gaza City.

“This is an action that does not serve Islam, does not serve the Palestinian cause, and does not serve those who have abducted him.”

Johnston’s kidnappers would surely disagree. It serves them just fine as a recruitment tool for the wretched, dispirited youth of Gaza, who have been failed by two successive generations of their “leaders” (and failed, too, by two successive generations of Israelis, who have been unable to collectively rise above the massive hatred and violence engendered by their reclaiming the Jews’ ancestral homeland). These young men were once ripe for the picking by Hamas. Now that Hamas has also failed them, they’re ripe for the picking of by Qaeda.

You can read all about it here in the NYT. Read it and weep.

This recent wave of abductions of Westerners in the region began with the June 2006 kidnapping by Palestinians of the Israel soldier Gilad Shalit. (At the time, I held Hamas responsible for an act of war; now we know it was this shady Army of Islam group that was responsible, and that they’re not under Hamas’s, or Fatah’s, control—which is part of the problem in Gaza) It was followed a month later by the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah—they’re not Palestinians, they’re Lebanese, and this happened in a different region: in the north of Israel. Second Lebanon War followed in August.

And now I feel like I belong on the Daily Show. Still with me? Good.

Anyway: The same Palestinian group (the al Qaeda-inspired Army of Islam) that snatched the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit last June snatched the BBC correspondent Alan Johnston this March.

In between, there was the abduction and release (after a forced conversion to Islam) of two Fox journalists in August 2006.

I think you get the picture: there’s chaos in Gaza—so much chaos that Hamas begins to look moderate compared to the al Qaeda-inspired nihilist thugs doing these freelance operations, from kidnapping to setting fire to Internet cafes. And the prospect of anyone on the Palestinian side following a “road map” to peace with the Israelis is brought into relief as the deeply cynical and totally ludicrous political theater it is. What negotiated agreements could hold up under chaos, and when no one group among the Palestinians has the monopoly on the use of force?

Also: remember that there have been no Western journalists in Gaza since Johnston was abducted. The Palestinian journalists operating there must be under tremendous pressure and risk in this deeply uncertain political climate. Freedom of the press is the last thing that al Qaeda-type thinking tolerates. These journalists are very brave people, but we cannot know the extent of what is happening.

Keep your eye on this situation. It’s very dangerous indeed.

And spare a thought not just for Alan Johnston but also for the American hostages being held in Iran.

Some headlines can stand by themselves—they don’t need to be followed by a story.

Hamas blames world, Israel and Arabs

But here’s the story anyway:

The international community, Israel and Arab countries are to blame for the current inter-Palestinian fighting in the Gaza Strip for failing to life [sic] an economic siege on the Palestinians, a senior Hamas official said Wednesday.

The remarks by Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau, came as fighting renewed between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza early Wednesday when Hamas gunmen stormed the home of a top Fatah official in Gaza City, killing five bodyguards inside, Palestinian security officials said.

The Saudis just paid off the Palestinians to the tune of $1 billion to get their house in order.

In Yiddish, they’ve got a word for this “you owe me” attitude from Hamas. Perhaps you’ve heard it?

Fucking Chutzpah.

As if that weren’t enough, they’re also trying to provoke Israel into invading Gaza, to take the heat off themselves.

If it weren’t so pitifully transparent, it would be sad.

While everyone in Israel is angling for position now that Olmert has gotten a 0% popularity rating and Nasrallah is singing nyeh nyeh nyeh boo boo, I’m watching Gaza to see what’s going on among Israel’s putative partners for peace.

Here’s what’s going on: al Qaeda (or someone affliated with it, or involved in al Qaeda-type thinking) is pressuring Hamas, as evidenced by a Guardian story about abducted BBC journalist Alan Johnston. Apparently Haniyeh is in negotiations with Johnston’s kidnappers [e.a.]:

 The letters from Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh have sought to “clarify to these people [the kidnappers] that this issue doesn’t serve the interest of our people, and the Muslims,” said the aide, Ahmed Youssef. …

Youssef said the kidnappers had not demanded any ransom and suggested they were a militant Muslim group.

“Money is not the issue. The issue is an incorrect understanding of Islam, how to deal with foreigners in general, an incorrect understanding of Islam among some,” he said.

Youssef declined to discuss the kidnappers’ identities or ideology. “Any discussions about it will harm this issue,” he said.

 For what it’s worth, Abbas also released a quote:

“We know where the journalist is, and we want to preserve his life and we want to save him, and this needs time,” Abbas was quoted as saying by the official Wafa news agency.

They seem to be afraid to say anything more for fear that Johnston will be killed by his kidnappers.

You’ll note that just a couple of days ago, al Qaeda was publicly provoking and goading Hamas. From a story published in the L.A. Times:

An Al Qaeda leader called on the Palestinian group Hamas to fight Israel with “bombs and fire.”

“Where is revenge, where are the bombs, where is the fire?” Abu Yahya al-Libi asked members of the military wing of Hamas in a video posted on a website used by Islamist militant groups.

Al Qaeda views Hamas as a moderate group that has compromised the rights of Palestinians for political gains.

A war of words between Hamas and al Qaeda has been going on for a while. Here’s one story from mid-March:

Hamas to al-Qaeda: Stop baseless accusations

 

Fury in Hamas after al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri ‘eulogizes’ the movement, saying it has surrendered and betrayed its principles. Hamas: ‘We will not forsake a single grain of the sand of Palestine’

Here’s another story from mid-April:

‘Al-Qaeda operating in Gaza’

 

PA security officials say global jihad group targeting Palestinian leaders, secular Muslims

Al-Qaeda is operating in the Gaza Strip and previously attempted to assassinate Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other top leaders from Abbas’ Fatah party, according to Palestinian security officials.

Can it be any more obvious that al Qaeda is operating with total impunity in Gaza, where there are currently no Western reporters?

Can it be any more obvious that al Qaeda took Johnston hostage as leverage against Hamas, which has been deemed to be not sufficiently Islamic to suit al Qaeda? that al Qaeda is now trying to hijack the Palestinian cause, for its own ends?

I last wrote about “al Qaeda-type thinking” in Gaza a few weeks ago. That phrase ran in both the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune on April 16.

No one has picked up on it since. Because they’re afraid that Johnston will be killed by his kidnappers. That’s how terrorism works: it’s extortion.

I’m sorry to be back to blogging. It was so much nicer to lose myself in the sights of downtown Manhattan for my impromptu photo project.

But no one else is writing about this—there’s a virtual news blackout—so it falls to me to document what I’ve been able to put together.

It’s coming up on five weeks since the BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was kidnapped in Gaza and there is still no movement on his release. His parents made a heart-wrenching plea the other day, and the director general of the BBC went to meet personally with Abbas, who claimed that Johnston is “safe and well” but had nothing else to say.

Simon McGregor-Wood, the Jerusalem bureau chief for ABC News, writing in the Independent, has plenty to say about the situation:

The kidnapping of Alan Johnston, the BBC’s Gaza reporter, has shocked the community of foreign journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also having a devastating impact on the coverage of the story. … But ever since Alan’s disappearance, fewer and fewer of us have dared to go.

There have been reports of armed gangs turning up at the local TV production offices in Gaza looking for more foreign journalists to kidnap. That has scared many of us. The Western consulates, including the British one, continue to issue dire warnings and discourage us from going. The danger of further abductions seems real enough.

As if that weren’t bad enough, there’s this:

Until recently, Alan’s BBC colleagues were staying in Gaza working for his release. Now they have pulled out, fearing for their own safety. In the five years I have been here, working for ABC News, the situation has never been this bad, the threat against foreign journalists so real.

And then he gets into the gruesome details—Gaza, which a few weeks ago looked like a great story for journalists because of the very dramatic conflict between the various Palestinian factions, has turned frightful:

Ever since the Israelis pulled out their settlers and soldiers in the summer of 2005, Gaza has provided the battleground for competing Palestinian factions and ideologies. It is the home of Hamas and the place in which the very character of the Palestinian national movement is being fought over. Far from becoming the model of a future Palestinian state that some optimists hoped for, it has become a lawless and chaotic place and, by definition, a compelling story.  …

The environment was certainly hazardous and several reporters were caught in crossfire, and there were some isolated cases of intimidation. But this was all in the realm of manageable risk. The kidnappings are different - Alan’s in particular.

It is thought that the group responsible for the Fox abduction may also be behind Alan’s disappearance, and may be of a different calibre. But there has been no claim of responsibility and, as far as we know, no demands made and no negotiations started to secure his release. Talk to different Palestinians and you get different theories as to why Alan is still being held. But most think his fate has become entangled in wider internal political struggles, and is no longer simply about cash, jobs for the boys or some new guns.

When seasoned war correspondents in the Middle East get scared, it’s time to stand up and listen. Gaza is completely out of control, there is no Western press there to report on it, and all the while Abbas and Olmert are encouraged to make nice.

And Frank Rich thinks he wrote about the Greatest Story Ever Sold. Yeah, right. That’s because he only focuses on homefront political theater.

From Google News at 8 a.m.:

‘All efforts’ in hunt for BBC man
BBC News, UK - 1 hour ago
Every possible effort is being made to secure the release of BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston, a Palestinian presidential aide has said. …
Reporters without borders calls for speedy release of BBC journalist Indian Muslims
Captors to free abducted BBC reporter soon: sources People’s Daily Online
PA police may have helped snatch BBC reporter Jerusalem Post
IFEX - Post Chronicle
all 44 news articles »

I missed this, but a couple of days ago, CNN’s Ben Wedemen posted a “behind the scenes” column. He’s “chilled” by the kidnapping of his professional colleague Johnston. He also says that kidnapping has become a way of life in Gaza:

On more than one occasion [Johnston and Wedeman] talked about the danger of kidnapping. Alan’s attitude, and mine, was usually to treat the phenomenon as an unfortunate inconvenience, as a potential danger, but something that was becoming a fact of life there. Both of us saw Gaza as an intriguing, tragic place, where we were often met with generosity and openness from people who, given their circumstances, might have been expected to be hostile. …

I am hoping Alan emerges from this nightmare without too many psychological scars. He is a very easy-going, soft-spoken, good-humored, amiable person — someone who takes his job seriously and takes the time to listen to every point of view. If anyone is well-equipped to endure, it’s Alan.

Wedeman also describes reality on the ground—as he sees it—in Gaza:

Gaza is a small, cramped and crowded place where it’s hard to keep a secret from anyone, where everybody knows everybody. Most Gazans are aghast every time a kidnapping takes place, and few will make excuses for the kidnappers. Kidnapping goes completely contrary to traditional Arab values of generosity and kindness to strangers. But it’s become a fact of life. In recent trips, my Gazan friends have insisted that they accompany me back to my hotel after work or after a get-together. They say it’s out of courtesy, but I’ve always suspected it’s really out of concern. [e.a.]

Obviously, that traditional Arab value of kindness to strangers doesn’t apply to Israelis. There are currently three Israeli kidnap victims being held for ransom by Arabs, which Ben Wedeman shamefully fails to mention:

Gilad Shalit

Ehud Goldwasser

Eldad Regev

Khalil Hamra

Palestinian journalists hold posters of kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston during a protest calling for his release in front of the parliament building in Gaza City, Tuesday, March 20, 2007. Johnston was kidnapped last week in Gaza City and no group has yet claimed responsibility.

The photo above accompanies a depressing piece about the internal strife in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah, now that Arafat-era “strongman” Mohammed Dahlan has been put in the driver’s seat to oversee security. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Even more depressing, there is nothing new to report on the Alan Johnston story.

I was glad to see that ETP’s Glynnis MacNicol picked up on the story in a long post. Too bad she got her facts wrong about “Gilead” (much, much more frequently known as Gilad) Shalit. If you’re going to go “deep in the weeds,” *** you gotta know what you’re talking about.

It was not the kidnapping of Shalit that “ostensibly launched last summer’s Israeli attack on Lebanon.” [!]

The kidnapping of Shalit (and murder of two other soldiers), on top of continual Hamas-sponsored rockets lobbed into Israel, was what sparked an Israeli offensive into Gaza (which is to the south of Israel) in June 2006.

Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah, the terrorist organization dug in on its northern border, in Lebanon, started in mid-July 2006, three weeks later, after Hezbollah kidnapped two other Israeli soldiers (and killed three ) in a cross-border raid that violated Israel’s sovereignty. That was the casus belli of that conflict, which today was given its offical name: the Second Lebanon War. (I don’t much like the sound of that. Whenever they start counting wars, knowing it’s only one of a series—of indefinite length—it makes me nervous.)

————

*** I read that expression on Matt Yglesias’s blog today—twice in once post—and googled it, because I’d never heard it before. What I dug up was really interesting—with more than enough meat for another post. But who knows when I’ll ever get to that, so here’s the short version.

Googling “deep in the weeds” led me to Language Log (which I haven’t visited in waaaaaay too long)

Do six uses of a phrase in two years [May 2004 to May 2006 --ed.] count as “quintessential”? Well, I’ve observed before that a word or phrase may only need to be repeated a couple of times in order to seem characteristic of a writer or speaker, if the use in context is striking enough. In this case, five of the six TPM uses of “deep in the weeds” are used to introduce a post, as part of a ritualized warning to the reader that the content will involve a level of detail that some may find excessive.

In comparison, the phrase “deep in the weeds” has never been used on Language Log, on Language Hat, on the Volokh Conspiracy, on Crooked Timber, etc., although these blogs are more often deep in (what some might consider) the intellectual weeds than not

TPM, where Josh Marshall has used it a lot, is where Yglesias (who used to write under the TPM Cafe banner) must have picked it up.

We’re all Professor Donald Foster wannabes now. (He unmasked Joe Klein as “Anonymous,” the author of Primary Colors, the highly unflattering insiderish 1996 roman a clef about the Clintons. Foster has also gotten some wrong.)

(updated with a link, and clarified)

The fate of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, kidnapped in Gaza nine days ago, is still unknown. Tension is beginning to mount, though, judging by the headlines on Google News:

Hunt continues for BBC reporter
BBC News, UK - 2 hours ago
Efforts are