Why doesn't Mahmoud Abbas get condemned for having a militia? His party's terror branch, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, has just threatened to assassinate Hamas leaders.
There can be extreme reactions to losing an election, but Fatah's long sulk takes some beating. Since the result in February they've been in talks with Israel and the US about destabilising the Hamas government.
It's one thing for the Quartet to reject Hamas's election. It's another for Abbas to reject the judgement of the same voters who put him into office.
Israel are backing Abu Mazen in his war on Hamas, after all they used to have to kill Hamas leaders themselves.
"I hope that Fatah wins, since I salute anything that will weaken Hamas," Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, a former defense minister, told Israel public radio.
"For years, I have thought that we should provide direct aid to Abu Mazen (Abbas), since it's necessary to do anything to reinforce the moderates," he argued.
Ah yes, the moderates. Condoleezza Rice is in the Middle East just now talking to the "forces of moderation" which includes Abbas, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Talk about supporting "democratisation" has been swept aside by Washington in favour of supporting "moderation".
Dr Rice wants a coalition of Arab countries to counter Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran. As I said recently, the dividing lines in the Arab world are well set up between the occupiers & friends on one hand, and the resistance to them on the other.
Here is a quick run down of the democratic credentials of US puppet regimes in the Middle East versus the democratic credentials of recently Israeli-attacked Lebanon and currently under Israeli-attack Occupied Palestine
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=11024>Bush at the UN: Annotated
by Stephen Zunes
My favourite comment by Stephen, is the one about the runner-up to Mubarak in the Egyptian Presidential election getting a 5 year jail sentence after the elections were over - that'll teach them, next time there is an election, not to get in the way!
And as I was saying over at one of my other favourite blogs
http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/>Peacepalestine
What we are seeing at the moment, in Occupied Palestine, is the re-establishment of the traditional US model for its Global South-Third World client regimes -
This is no more than just a re-run of Occupied Palestine under the late great Yasser Arafat -
ie
a huge internal security force, to use as buffer between the dregs of humanity, who currently refuse to follow their US-Israeli orders, and insist on voting for who they please - rather than voting for the local US favourite who will be the recipient of US largesse to distibute among their willing lackeys and US-Israeli lickspittles
The only thing that will be different this time around from the last is that, when push came to shove, the great Yasser Arafat refused to sell his own People out at Taba -
- I doubt Abbas has such morale scruples or even the patriotism of the great Yasser!
Posted by: joe90 | 05 October 2006 at 10:50 PM
Yes, that's an interesting shift in lingo. Without the facade of being for democracy, the Western interventionism takes a more sinister appearance altogether.
Posted by: Sohaib | 06 October 2006 at 12:37 AM
Ahoy there mateys!
Rats try to help captain keep their s(t)inking ship afloat!
http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=11651&CategoryId=5>The Rebellion Against U.S. Policy
By
Patrick Seale 07 Oct 2006
It seems these 'moderate' Arab regimes are trying to tell the fundamentalist western jihadi extremists of the US government how to run their emprire more effectively....
...American blundering in the Middle East has reached such catastrophic levels that even the most moderate and pro-American regimes are being moved to abandon their usual caution and speak out in alarm...
And here was me thinking it was all the fault of Oriental extremists holding hands with western left-wing extremists, but no, I was foolish to think that because..
...[Arab] "moderates" are united with "extremists"...
So,
if 'moderates' aren't against 'extremists', that can only mean that the US-Arab Puppet Regimes are lining up with the various Resistence Movements against their legal owners and occupiers of their property, the investers and shareholders of Wall Street!
Posted by: joe90 | 11 October 2006 at 05:21 AM