A New Thread fot the Current Israel/Palestine/Lebanon mess

So it's all gone fairly awry in Lebanon these days (again). My girl's dad's going on a 3 month holiday there starting Thursday.

Saudi Arabia has advised its citizens in Lebanon, especially families living there, to leave the country immediately due to the security situation, several Saudi nationals said on Saturday.

The United States had said on Thursday it deployed the USS Cole off the Lebanese coast because it was concerned about the political deadlock in Lebanon, provoking criticism from Hezbollah and Syria.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/01/AR2008030101289.html

i assumed the revive was going to be about the stepped-up gaza attacks

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804

The Gaza Bombshell
After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.
by David Rose April 2008

"self-defeating" is debatable -- if your intention is to make sure that only the most extreme elements of your opposition survive, thus making your unapologetic eradication of them defensible, the strategy of strengthening hamas has been brilliant

i.e. that was the american strategy in vietnam and nicaragua, to name just two examples

So you're OK with this?

xpost

hold on, how has David Rose written that in the future? :-)

OTM! Maybe it hasn't happened yet!

i don't pretend that i'm saying anything controversial or original here!

I think it is fairly public knowledge that following the Hamas election victory the USA and its allies decided that Dahlan could be Abbas' hatchet man, and that the best thing to do with Hamas was to exclude them from power and then shut them down by force. The only problem with this strategy is that Dahlan is rubbish and the forces at his disposal were an undisciplined rabble who would have been hard pressed to shut down a pub on saturday night.

"self-defeating" is debatable -- if your intention is to make sure that only the most extreme elements of your opposition survive, thus making your unapologetic eradication of them defensible, the strategy of strengthening hamas has been brilliant

-- Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 12:17 (1 hour ago) Link

I'm not sure I follow your argument - you think Israel/The US backed Fatah in order to strengthen Hamas?

Because I would assume it would be much better politically for Israel to have a more *moderate* regime in place that felt dependent on US/Israel backing, and not having the internal political pressure of Israeli civilians feeling their government can't protect them from rocket attacks.

I don't think Israel's goal is the "eradication" of the Palestinians (if that's what you meant). I think Israel wants to keep the Palestinians relatively powerless and maintain its ability to unilaterally dictate the terms of any agreement or lack thereof.

a Fateh commander is quoted in the linked vanity fair article saying, "Since the takeover, we’ve been trying to enter the brains of Bush and Rice, to figure out their mentality. We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves their overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise."

this grants a certain cunning to bush and condi that they may not deserve, but as i mentioned above, it fits with past u.s. tactics in places like nicaragua and vietnam. the goal in those places was NOT to preserve "moderate" or reasonable political structures and movements, but to sabotage them, leaving only extremists, who could then be bribed or eliminated with a minimum of outcry.

i don't know what israel's actual goals re: palestine are, but the facts on the ground are that palestine is being slowly ground into dust by the israeli military with every passing day. there are few viable civic organizations left in palestine and it the very idea of "palestine" itself is losing its coherence.

The Fatah guy quoted sounds a bit like he is falling into the usual kind of conspiracy theory thinking that people in the Middle East are apaprently mad for. He is also doing that thing of assuming that everything happens because the USA wants it to happen.

I reckon that the USA-Israel alliance in fact hoped that Fatah would crush the Hamas government militarily and then happily sign a spectacularly one-sided treaty with Israel. That this has proved an unrealistic goal should not be a surprise, given the surrealism of so much US policy in the Middle East.

but as i mentioned above, it fits with past u.s. tactics in places like nicaragua and vietnam

I'm not saying you're wrong, but what particular U.S. tactics in Nicaragua and Vietnam are analogous to supporting the faction you actually want to lose?

Unlikeliest headline ever:

Cheney hears Palestinian complaints

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080323/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cheney

fuk:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080509/ap_on_re_mi_ea/lebanon

Pretty crazy. One thing I have heard is that Hezbollah are deliberately only fighting the Sunni militias, as the Druze are too hard core and they want to leave the Christians alone.

Way to help the peace process, retard monkey boy.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7010958242

I hope one day to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the forces of Evil.

So this is why Bush is saying all the wrong things: please attack us again, terrorists, so we can keep the white house & attack Iran!

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2008/051608_rumsfeld_tape.htm

Rumsfeld On Tape: Terror Attack Could Restore Neo-Con Agenda

(ok, it's on prisonplanet, but I did think about the same thing when I heard there was a Bin Laden reaction to his speech - that that is exactly why the GWB speech happened)

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/fun-and-games-w.html Same thing from Wired blogs

Is there a reason this is on the Israel thread?

Who knowss. But apparently in Lebanon the Hezzers did try it on with the Druze, and the Druze did turn out to be too hardcore. Or so I read on some guy's blog.

Since when have the Druze been hardcore?

Jumblatt has been a turncoat for a while, no?

xxxpost: it's all connected & stuff, but yeah, sorry

In any case, you could read that Rumsfeld quote a few different ways. He could have meant "What we need is another attack," but he could have also meant "When the inevitable next attack comes it's going to change people's attitudes." Still makes me a bit queasy though.

oh god, i'm dreading the inevitable emails i'm gonna get from my 9/11 conspiration theory friends...

Since when have the Druze been hardcore?

you mess with them, you dead.