Unfortunately they have nothing so support for Hamas is their only option at this point. Outside help (Arab and Western) financially and politically is their only salvation. The fact that Arafat is gone can only help.
imo, outside financial and political help is what's killing them. Gaza is a welfare squat. The Pals have had billions in aid and even the current boycott is merely squeezing the flow a little, not cutting it off. The direct aid to the PA in Gaza is cut, but NOT the UNWRA money (about $300 million/year), not the aid to other UN agencies, not the money to NGOs, not the money that's going to the PA finance minister and getting passed around under the tables, and let's not even get started on what's being passed in from the Saudi charities and Iran.
There is just no way that Hamas could sustain its current course of action for even a week if they weren't getting huge flows of money. There is very little economic activity going on in Gaza, and there are over a million people to feed. This jihad requires huge resources.
Oh, I nearly forgot. Gaza receives some large percentage of its electricity and water (nearly 50% I think) from Israel for free.
Don't you find it discouraging that this current administration has done little to further the resolution of this destabilizing conflict? If stabilizing the ME is their ultimate goal don't you think that the resolution of this conflict is an absolutely essential prologue?
You have already nearly agreed with me that Arafat prevented the resolution when he was alive (Abu Mazen is little different imo just so weak everybody knows he cannot implement any deal) and the Arab countries want the conflict to continue. Yet you persist in speaking as if the Bush administration had some magic leverage they could use to resolve the conflict that they just haven't done. The Bush administration only has leverage on Israel, they can't make the Arab world want to end the conflict.
So what magic rabbit did you Bush expect to pull out of a hat? Bush saw how much effort Clinton put into it, and how badly he was rewarded. Don't you think Bush could see that the same Arab leaders who demand that he solve the Israeli/Pal conflict before anything else, were pouring gasoline on the conflict themselves?
Isn't the Israeli/Pal conflict just a symptom of the wider and deeper problems of the Middle East and a smokescreen the Arab regimes hide behind? After all, you seemed to acknowledge that the countries want to continue the conflict for their own internal reasons.
You won't cure problems emanating from Cairo and Damascus and Riyadh and Tehran by negotiations in Jerusalem. That's why Bush decided to start with Baghdad instead.
Think about it. Your position is showing many internal contradictions between the conditions you acknowledge are true and your unchanging premises that assume quite different conditions. |
