Saturday, February 03, 2007

WHAT CAN WE DO?

"What's happening here in Palestine is good only for Israel, but what can we do?" asks a Hamas supporter in today's Melbourne Age article Hope gone, Palestinians turn on each other (the belated article on the broken ceasefire is the product of an anonymous author).

(Meanwhile, Ed's safely out of the way and back in TA or Jerusalem writing about the sleaze in Israeli politics)

What can the Palestinians do?

They can stop asking such stupid questions and stop dreaming of destroying a neighbouring state for starters.

They can stop playing the propaganda blame game against Israel and start doing positive things for their people.

They can start learning lessons from their past failures.

The Palestinians could have built a decent civil society in Gaza when the Israelis left the entire Gaza Strip in 2005. Instead they did nothing to prevent (indeed both Fatah and then Hamas encouraged) the firing of rockets at Israeli towns and villages across the border.

They could have used the vast international funds available to them to develop their economy instead of to smuggle tons of arms to continue the fight against the Jews.

They could have left intact the hothouses bought for them by well wishers to start an economy that would have gainfully employed large numbers. Instead they destroyed them and left the area bare and desolate.

They could have lived up to and honoured their obligations under the Road Map they signed in 2003 - allegedly "without reservations". They could have kept their written promise to disarm and arrest terrorists and to end incitement against Israelis instead of repudiating it before the ink had dried.

To the dismay of most of the world, they did nothing other than continued on with their futile "armed struggle" - a viscious and hateful campaign of propaganda aided and abetted by their media friends who helped put them where they are now - with hope gone.

The media buddies like O'Loughlin still don't get it.

The big O recently ended an article on the situation before the last farcical ceasefire laying the blame for Hamas' failure to revive the Palestinian economy on Israel - "Israeli closures of Gaza and West Bank checkpoints have left it unable to implement promised economic and administrative reforms." [here] In all probability, he really believes this to be true.

But O'Loughlin has never produced any evidence whatsoever that Hamas had any real intention when elected of reviving the Palestinian economy either in the West Bank or in Gaza or whether Hamas even tried. Where were the plans, where were the policies?

After all, the Israeli closures of Gaza and the West Bank checkpoints haven't prevented the Palestinians from building up the arms and weaponry that we see on our television screens paraded around Palestinian streets by Hamas and Fatah goons. They haven't prevented the production of the Quassam rockets fired daily at Israeli homes across the border from now unoccupied territory into areas that were never "occupied".

So what's stopping the Palestinians from developing a decent civil society?

Perhaps it's the fact is that Hamas has one simple, discrete platform and that's contained in its Charter ("Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it"). And the same can be said of the other armed terrorist groups.

Ed would do well to read the Charter one day if he wants to discover why, at present, the Palestinian people have no hope.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You have succinctly stated what needs to be said about this conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The consistent aim of too many Palestinian Arabs throughout the past century has not been to advance their own civil society but to annihilate any Jewish trace from the land.

There have been countless opportunities to establish a Palestinian Arab State peacefully alongside the Palestinian Jewish State (which its founders called "Israel") but none have been grasped by the Palestinian Arab people. Instead they opted for war and violence - a violence that started well before the UN voted to establish two states in 1947.

That is why there is such a contrast between life in Israel - and that includes the life of Jew and Arab alike - and life in the Palestinian territories.

The Jews hold very high the value of sanctification of life over death, of creativity, productivity, the use of the mind and its application to the betterment of human kind.

There are Palestinians who want to live decent lives but they have been overpowered by those who seek to uproot and annihilate another people and their creative efforts.

Of course, this is not unique to Palestine. You will find it elsewhere in our region as well.

Those who act as cheerleaders for such negative values are indeed doing these people no good whatsoever and only give them further excuse to go on killing.

Anonymous said...

We really can't do all that much.

O'Loughlin and the Age have a particular mind set about Israel and the Palestinians and you'll never change that Mr. Post.

Anonymous said...

Alternatively, the Australian supporters of Hamas can start killing the Australian supporters of Fatah (and vice versa) until they are all deported back to Sunny Gaza.

Anonymous said...

The Age has long ago given up being a disinterested reporter on events in the Middle East.

I myself, have disengAGEd from the newspaper by cancelling my subscription.

Anonymous said...

Where are the human rights people in Gaza when you need them?

Over the past week we've seen indiscriminate gunfire in hospitals, a university, mosques and residential areas. The electricity supply of Gaza has been knocked out and people aren't safe to walk in the streets.

Bloody hell, why are they allowing the criminals from Hamas and Fatah to get away with these human rights atrocities?

Anonymous said...

The Palestinians (that motley collection Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians)didn't just destroy the greenhouses and leave the area bare. They added insult to vile injury by digging tunnels in them through which weapons were smuggled - to attack Israel naturally.
Thes egrenhouses had already served as places of employment for some Palestinians. I remember an interview with a couple of (Pali)employees who were not happy that the Israelis were leaving Gaza because they would their jobs.
Wonder if Hamas devised a pension plan.