How Hamas came to power in Gaza
Daniel De Groot at openleft does a quick breakdown of this Vanity Fair piece from April 08. It’s the eternal question as to whether the Bush Administration was just stupid or insane- I’d guess a bit of both.
It’s clear that Olmert and Barak think that they can decapitate Hamas- my guess is to set the table for a Fatah resurgence and a new “peace” initiative guided by the new American Administration. I also think, as I said on the show yesterday- Ehud Barak thinks a “victory” in Gaza will help his Kadimah party in the upcoming election. The latter might work but read the Vanity Fair piece - if history is any measure, even if Hamas is “destroyed” the chances of a more extreme militant and hostile group emerging from the ashes seems to be around 100%.
UPDATE: J-Street, the pro-Israel, pro-peace pac has a petition sign here.
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Kadima is not Ehud Barak’s party, he is the leader of the Labor Party. Kadima is led by Tzipi Livni, before her by Ehud Olmert (and by Ariel Sharon before his stroke). They are all in the governing coalition though, and I bet they all thought this would help them.
Herzog- yes, you are correct Barack is labor, poor phrasing on my part- his only hope to stop Netanyahu is with the Kadima coalition
Chris Hedges
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081229_party_to_murder/
Sam, you may also want to have a look at
http://tonykaron.com/2008/12/31/understanding-gaza/
the latest from Tony Karon’s excellent blog, Rootless Cosmopolitan. The last graf is the killer:
“soon enough, this bloody mess will end in another cease-fire, having hardly changed the political equation in Gaza at all — much to the chagrin of the Bush Administration, the Israeli government and the regimes in Cairo and Ramallah who are quietly cheering Israel’s assault in the hope that it fatally weakens Hamas. That cease-fire will end rocket fire on Israel, but will also likely require the opening of the border crossings into Gaza. If so, that’s an outcome that could have been achieved without the killing of close to 400 people. And my money says that this cynical show of force by [Ehud] Barak and Tzipi Livni won’t even stop Bibi Netanyahu from winning Israel’s February election. The killing in Gaza, in other words, even by the most cynical measure, has been utterly senseless.”
Karon is pretty sharp. But lord help us if Bibi’s Likud wins power again in Israel.