Coup in Gaza?
At his indispensable blog "Rootless Cosmopolitan", Tony Karon gets to the core of what's happening in Gaza at the moment: a hard coup engineered in Washington and effected by Gaza's own Pinochet, Mohammed Dahlan.
An excerpt:
"only [a US] Administration as deluded about its ability to reorder Arab political realities in line with its own fantasies — and also, frankly, as utterly contemptuous of Arab life and of Arab democracy, empty sloganizing notwithstanding — as the current one has proved to be could imagine that the Palestinians could be starved, battered and manipulated into choosing a Washington-approved political leadership. Yet, that’s exactly what the U.S. has attempted to do ever since Hamas won the last Palestinian election, imposing a financial and economic chokehold on an already distressed population, pouring money and arms into the forces under Dahlan’s control, and eventually adapting itself to funnel monies only through Abbas, as if casting in him in the role of a kind of Quisling-provider would somehow burnish his appeal among Palestinian voters. (As I said, their contempt for Arab intelligence knows no bounds. )"
"But while the hapless Abbas is little more than a reluctant passenger in Washington’s strategy .... Mohammed Dahlan is its point man, the warlord who commands the troops and who has been spoiling for a fight with Hamas since they had the temerity to trounce his organization at the polls on home turf."
"Dahlan’s ambitions clearly coincided with plans drawn up by White House Middle East policy chief, Elliot Abrams — a veteran of the Reagan Administration’s Central American dirty wars — to arm and train Fatah loyalists to prepare them to topple the Hamas government..."
Read the rest here.
What we're witnessing now is not just civil war but also the attempted overthrow of a democratically elected Palestinian government, not four years since Blair and Bush announced their grand vision to spread democracy in the Middle East. The strangulation of Gaza, which I've written about previously, prepared the ground for this. The current violence may well turn out to be the culmination of that strategy.
More on this from Paul Woodward. And for the Palestinian perspective, see Rami Almeghari and Laila El-Haddad.
An excerpt:
"only [a US] Administration as deluded about its ability to reorder Arab political realities in line with its own fantasies — and also, frankly, as utterly contemptuous of Arab life and of Arab democracy, empty sloganizing notwithstanding — as the current one has proved to be could imagine that the Palestinians could be starved, battered and manipulated into choosing a Washington-approved political leadership. Yet, that’s exactly what the U.S. has attempted to do ever since Hamas won the last Palestinian election, imposing a financial and economic chokehold on an already distressed population, pouring money and arms into the forces under Dahlan’s control, and eventually adapting itself to funnel monies only through Abbas, as if casting in him in the role of a kind of Quisling-provider would somehow burnish his appeal among Palestinian voters. (As I said, their contempt for Arab intelligence knows no bounds. )"
"But while the hapless Abbas is little more than a reluctant passenger in Washington’s strategy .... Mohammed Dahlan is its point man, the warlord who commands the troops and who has been spoiling for a fight with Hamas since they had the temerity to trounce his organization at the polls on home turf."
"Dahlan’s ambitions clearly coincided with plans drawn up by White House Middle East policy chief, Elliot Abrams — a veteran of the Reagan Administration’s Central American dirty wars — to arm and train Fatah loyalists to prepare them to topple the Hamas government..."
Read the rest here.
What we're witnessing now is not just civil war but also the attempted overthrow of a democratically elected Palestinian government, not four years since Blair and Bush announced their grand vision to spread democracy in the Middle East. The strangulation of Gaza, which I've written about previously, prepared the ground for this. The current violence may well turn out to be the culmination of that strategy.
More on this from Paul Woodward. And for the Palestinian perspective, see Rami Almeghari and Laila El-Haddad.
Labels: Democracy, Israel/Palestine, US Imperialism
posted by David Wearing at 6:56 AM
2 Comments:
Good and informative post. Keep on blogging.
thanks, John
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