Hamas wins in Gaza

UPDATED
Welcome to Hamastan

Hamas captures Fatah security HQ

Hamas militants have seized the headquarters of their rival Fatah's Preventive Security force, tightening their control over the Gaza Strip.
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Hamas also seized control of the town of Rafah as it targeted security and political command centres across Gaza.

Meanwhile, the top Palestinian umbrella group, the PLO, has recommended that the unity government be dissolved and a state of emergency declared.

The road to Hamastan

Hamas may pull back from a final showdown in Gaza, forcing Fatah to sit down and negotiate. But some predict a total split between a “Hamastan” in Gaza and a West Bank ruled by Fatah. No Israeli leader—including Ehud Barak, the former prime minister, who this week won the Labour party’s primary election and could return to power next year—will feel any pressure to talk peace with a Palestinian leadership that is so definitively divided

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred:

If Hamas wins the civil war, their ideologies and beliefs will no longer be camouflaged. we will know how to deal with these same ideologues that supported Saddam Hussein. If the PA wins the civil war, they will have to make some serious choices, or the cycle of internal violence will repeat itself. The only thing that is certain is that neither the western democracies or Israel will allow for another 40 years of Arafat type obfuscation, double talk and hypocrisy from the Palestinians.

Betsy poses a few questions:

"We want them to vote and vote and vote again" on Iraq, said a senior Democratic senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss party strategy. "They are going to have to vote on Iraq until they are sick of it."

The tougher-talking Reid is taking a decidedly harder line on Iraq at a time when anti-war activists are stepping up their criticism of Democratic leaders for not forcing a quick end to the conflict in Iraq.
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Remember that these are the same sorts who kept pushing for "peace in the Middle East" by forcing Israel to pull out of the Gaza and the West Bank. Well, Israel unilaterally did just what was advised and pulled out of Gaza. And it descended into chaos with Hamas and Fatah conducting their own civil war. Hamas has now won in Gaza giving Iran their little terrorist puppet state there on the borders of Israel and Egypt.

Do Harry Reid, the Democrats, and his blogger pals think that there would be any different fate if we just pulled out of Iraq now? Do they want to see Iraq becoming like Gaza except with more territory, more possible victims, and all that oil that can be used to fuel more terrorism abroad?

Oh, and by the way, how does Nancy Pelosi, diplomat at large, think about her pals in Syria now that they've assassinated another democracy leader in Lebanon? With the assassination of members of the anti-Syria majority in the Lebanese parliament, Hezbollah is trying to literally exterminate that majority. Does she still think that the path to peace travels through Syria?

That is, does she willingly continue to be a pawn?

Update: Hamas Takes Gaza- Executes Fatah Members In the Streets

Update 2, Via LGF, Video: Murderous Hamas Rampage in Gaza

Victor Davis Hanson: Gaza — It’s All Our Fault: Blaming America on CNN is all the rage



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A friend's question

Yesterday I attended a lecture at the university where a very high-ranking PLO official presented himself as a victim of Israel. The material introducing this man specified that the speaker

served from 1978 to 1981 as a staff member in the office of Yasser Arafat, former chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, in Beirut, Lebanon

This self-proclaimed victim of Israel lives a life of privilege, lecturing across the world on the Palestinian cause. He socializes with the elites, wears fine clothes, and travels in style. Some victim.

The lecturer believes that Arafat

was a great man, undeniably one of the greatest of the second half of the twentieth century

Arafat, who basically invented airplane hijackings and suicide bombings, whose evil and venality can be matched by few.

But the lecture was not surprising.

What surprised me was how many people in the audience of 300 nodded in agreement to his statements. We're talking about an audience at a very rich town, listening in a large, well-appointed hall in one of the foremost universities in America. That audience applauded for nearly two minutes after the lecture was finished.

There were people there I know. People who are well-informed. People who supposedly know about the Middle East. People who take time to attend lectures and read on the subject. People who go to church. Those people were applauding a Christian whose father is buried at a Catholic cemetery but who nonetheless defends a monster who saw nothing wrong in weaponizing children to kill the people of the only democracy in the region.

Those were the people applauding the speaker.

So this morning, when Sigmund, Carl and Alfred, who is a good man, and a friend, asked in his post,

Does anyone seriously believe that the pious and noble words, spoken with such reasonableness in European languages by the Palestinians, can disguise their continued refusal to accept Israel's existence?

I couldn't help but remember yesterday's pius and noble words, spoken with such reasonableness in heavily accented English by a terrorist apologist, and I remember the hundred or so people nodding in agreement to those same words.

And I have to answer my friend's question, and say, yes.

That two minutes' applause opened my eyes.
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Update Kesher Talk has two posts of interest Working on mysteries without any clues
and Meet the new PLO diplomat

Update, Friday, January 18 If you really are Afif Safieh