Thursday, July 31, 2014

Political Islam politics

"CAIRO — Battling Palestinian militants in Gaza two years ago, Israel found itself pressed from all sides by unfriendly Arab neighbors to end the fighting.

Not this time.

After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.

“The Arab states’ loathing and fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu,” the prime minister of Israel, said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington and a former Middle East negotiator under several presidents.

...Although Egypt is traditionally the key go-between in any talks with Hamas — deemed a terrorist group by the United States and Israel — the government in Cairo this time surprised Hamas by publicly proposing a cease-fire agreement that met most of Israel’s demands and none from the Palestinian group. Hamas was tarred as intransigent when it immediately rejected it, and Cairo has continued to insist that its proposal remains the starting point for any further discussions.

...At the same time, Egypt has infuriated Gazans by continuing its policy of shutting down tunnels used for cross-border smuggling into the Gaza Strip and keeping border crossings closed, exacerbating a scarcity of food, water and medical supplies after three weeks of fighting.

“Sisi is worse than Netanyahu, and the Egyptians are conspiring against us more than the Jews,” said Salhan al-Hirish, a storekeeper in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. “They finished the Brotherhood in Egypt, and now they are going after Hamas.”" [my bolding]

-NYT

10 comments:

Trooper York said...

They better watch out. Obama will cut off their funding with an executive order.

deborah said...

Better to hang together than hang separately.

ricpic said...

Or the Sissi regime. WhaddaIknow.

deborah said...

Amazing article, creeley, thanks.

"Ravid continued, “What Kerry’s draft spells for the internal Palestinian political arena is even direr: It crowns Hamas and issues Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with a death warrant.”

And that is really the crux of the issue. The crowd at Haaretz is far more wedded to the PLO and Mahmoud Abbas than it is to the government of Israel. And the administration’s support for Hamas exposed the PLO as an irrelevance."

Glick doesn't say it, but a weakened PLO/Abbas is a boon to Israel, esp now they are protesting by the thousands.

Amartel said...

creeley23 said "Obama and Kerry have succeeded in doing the impossible. They have united the left and the right in Israel, as well as forced Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Israel into the same uneasy bed to oppose Hamas."

This was completely inadvertent. Neither one of these spokesmodels is competent to develop such a strategy. Their version of diplomacy is standing around looking diplomatic while posing with poor brown people and collecting IOUs from rich brown people. Diplomacy is not "smart" if you have to label it "Smart Diplomacy" in order for people to call it "smart diplomacy."

But now watch as they, and their hacks, leap to claim credit for bringing neighbors together across religious lines.

Amartel said...

In other media hackery news:

"On September 10, 2001, Clinton was speaking to a group of about 30 businessmen in Melbourne, including Michael Kroger, the former head of the Liberal Party in the Australian state of Victoria. The event was recorded with the former president's permission, according to Kroger, but the audio never released -- until Wednesday night, when Kroger appeared on Sky News with host Paul Murray to unveil it. Kroger said he had forgotten about the recording until last week.

[Ooops, ah furgawt.]

"At the event in Melbourne, which took place not long after the end of Clinton's term in office, the former president was asked about international terrorism.

"And I'm just saying, you know, if I were Osama bin Laden -- he's very smart guy, I've spent a lot of time thinking about him -- and I nearly got him once," Clinton is heard saying. "I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn't do it."

(See Ace of Spades blog for more.)
Also, Kandahar is not a "little town" and I doubt that he would have had to kill everyone in Kandahar to get bin Laden. He just passed on the opportunity because it wouldn't be diplomatic.

deborah said...

Clinton wanted to treat terrorism as a police matter.

Lydia said...

Here's Bill Clinton going full throttle against Chris Wallace about his administration’s actions/inactions re Osama bin Laden. I don't believe I've ever seen such a full display of his Lyndon Johnson–type intimidation tactics. Hillary really pales by comparison.

Amartel said...

I remember seeing that at the time and thinking he was really worried about something to get that red in the face and blustery.
Wallace was really taken aback. Now we know.
What we should have known years ago.
Just in time to put another torpedo into the already foundering Hillary! candidacy.

deborah said...

Thanks for the vid, Lydia. That's a keeper.