News from the New Party

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Palestinians killing each other: Israel blamed

The recent violence in Gaza and the West Bank between the Fatah organisation and Hamas have caused many deaths and injuries among the Palestinian population. While Fatah and Hamas have nominally been sharing power in the Palestinian Authority, the so-called "unity government" has never been more than a fig-leaf attempting to disguise a bitter power struggle between the two camps. This struggle has now erupted into open warfare.

It is notable, yet somehow predictable, that much western reporting has sought to blame not the combatants themselves for the violence, but the State of Israel. Which side in this conflict does Israel support, one may well ask? Is Israel supplying the weapons with which the two Palestinian groups are attempting to slaughter each other? In what way, precisely, is Israel responsible for the misbehaviour of two groups which are implacable enemies of Israel itself?

The argument, such as it is, goes something like this. The treatment which the Palestinians have suffered over the past forty or sixty years at the hands of Israel has been so appalling that the Palestinian people have become brutalised. The gangsters of Hamas and Fatah are the creation of Israel and the further suffering caused to Palestinian civilians is not to be laid at the door of the Palestinians themselves. Of course, this is nonsense. So-called "progressive opinion" cannot countenance the possibility that the crimes of Palestinians might be the responsibility of Palestinians. We are supposed to treat the Palestinians as innocent children, incapable of any form of moral judgement or responsibility for themselves, unaccountable for their own actions, and the eternal victims of the machinations and persecutions of the Jewish state.

The moral idiocy of this view ought to be obvious. Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's Middle East correspondent, opined on BBC radio on Wednesday that only a multi-level international agreement involving Israel itself could bring peace to the region. He neglected to speculate on how this might be achieved, or with which gang of Palestinian thugs Israel may be required to negotiate this peace settlement. The Palestinians are currently demonstrating with magnificent thoroughness that they are not willing or able to govern themselves. The idea of an independent Palestinian state is a non-starter when the main political forces in the territory are turning their guns on each other. There can be no peace process until the Palestinian side has demonstrated that it is in a reasonable condition to negotiate. Until such time the efforts of Palestinian apologists to scapegoat the Israelis, the Americans or even the British for the shortcomings of what passes for the Palestinian political establishment can only be regarded as absurd, ridiculous and pathetic.

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Palestinians killing each other: Israel blamed