PJ MEDIA
by Rich Baehr
September 4, 2014
World Shudders as Israel Declares 988 Acres of the West Bank State Land
Some conventional wisdom about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is easily debunked. One such bit of nonsense is that Palestinians have or will turn on Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank after the losses in the recent fighting with Israel. After suffering over 2,000 casualties, seeing 32 tunnels destroyed, and losing two-thirds of its rocket inventory by firing them with little effect or having them destroyed by Israel, the perception is that Palestinians, deep down, have had enough, and see no benefit from the Hamas strategy of confronting Israel every two years.
Of course, this theory suggests that anything any Palestinian in Gaza believes or desires has anything whatsoever to do with who governs the territory, and in what fashion. If you subscribe to the notion that all politics is local, then Hamas is now stronger than ever. That seems to be the message explaining why Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is now by far the top choice to become the head of a unified PA-Hamas government, securing a 61% to 32% victory over Mahmoud Abbas if elections were held today. Most remarkable is that support for Hamas has soared in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), which escaped the fighting. Palestinians in the West Bank are demonstrating that resistance is easy to support when someone else, somewhere else is fighting and getting hit. This “courageous” support for Hamas from Palestinians in the West Bank mirrors the “courage” shown by Hamas leaders who hid below ground while allowing the locals to be killed as human shields.
Of course there is an easy explanation out there for Hamas’ popularity, and the lagging support for Abbas, Fatah, and his Palestinian Authority. That would be the purported “land grab” by Israel in the West Bank, all of 988 acres, which naturally will destroy the chances for peace and reconciliation and the two-state solution. Muslim extremists can massacre people in one country after another in the Middle East and Muslim world, but Israel taking land it already controls to build houses, pending any legal challenges (got that?), is the ultimate threat to the survival of the world…….
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