Tuesday, June 19, 2007

As somebody who is neither a fan of Fath nor of Hamas, I am quite shocked to read and see Fath supporters and `Arafat proteges in the Arabic media expressing outrage over Hamas' behavior in Gaza. What kind of charade is that? Fath has been engaged in killing and torturing Palestinians since Fath came into the PA and `Arafat set up his collaborationist regime in Gaza and West Bank. You read `Arafat intellectuals in the Arabic press talking about new taboos being broken in Gaza. Taboos? Those were broken by the Dahlan gangs in the mid-1990s when Israel assigned roles (with `Arafat approval) to the collaborationist gangs to punish (to kill and torture basically) all those Palestinians who were opposed to Oslo (and that included leftist Palestinians who were opposed to Oslo). For Dahlan gangs to complain about blood in Gaza is like Mr. Bush complaining about wars around the world. And to see Yasir `Abd Rabbush speak in the Saudi media: this is the man with the least integrity in the Palestinian national movement. The joke in Lebanon was that `Abd Rabbuh (and Bassam Abu Sharif in the PFLP) were more under the control of `Arafat than under their own organizations at the time. Both had a well-earned reputation for corruption. Can `Abd Rabbuh tell us how much "the fence" outside of his house in Ramallah cost Palestinian tax payers? Just as the thuggery and corruption of the warlords in Afghanistan led to the rise of Taliban, the thuggery and corruption of Fath led to the rise of Hamas. But the most ironic scene has been tho row of Fath officials appearing in Saudi media expressing their concern or their outrage over the religious ideology of Hamas: I am sure that the secular Saudi government will have deep sympathy for those Fath officials who wrote the playbook of exploiting religion in public life.