Israel: Uncompromising Losers

[Valin]

Strategy Page

February 13, 2020:

The Fatah rulers of the West Bank continue to call for violence against Israel but have not tried to get another major terrorism effort going, One reason for this is that since 2000 Israel has defeated all Palestinian attempts to launch and sustain a terror campaign. Another, less publicized reason, is that the Israeli soldiers and police operations in the West Bank are mainly about keeping the roads safe for Israeli settlers and eliminating terrorist groups before they can carry out major attacks anywhere. This includes Hamas efforts to attack Fatah. For obvious reasons Fatah does not like to talk about this but it is a beneficial side-effect of the Israeli security forces in the West Bank.

That protection comes from sources outside Israel as well. Today an American cybersecurity firm revealed that it had discovered a Hamas hacking campaign against senior Fatah officials, which had some success in gaining access to their smart phones and the ability to read email, texts and much more. Hamas may have had help from Iran in doing this as the Iranians have, after Israel, the most capable Internet hacking capability. This quiet Hamas attack on Fatah won’t change much because the two groups continue to hate each other and are only united in their mutual obsession with Israel.

The “Israel Must Be Destroyed “ Palestinians are encouraged by the growing anti-Semitic violence in the West over the last decade. Ignoring the fact that most of the increase comes from the growing number of Moslem migrants in the West, the anti-Israel attitudes are real. This is the result of a major Palestinian effort to demonize Israel and convince many nations that Palestinians are victims of Israeli oppression. The Palestinians hope all this will eventually result in economic and other sanctions against Israel by Western nations. Anti-Semitic activity in the West is an indicator that there is growing hostility towards Jews and Israel. The one problem with this Palestinian tactic is that more Western politicians and aid (to Palestinian) donors are becoming aware of the decades old Palestinian internal propaganda campaign that calls for the destruction of Israel, not a peace deal. Palestinian leaders are having a hard time explaining this double dealing. Worse, the Western awareness of the real Palestinian attitudes towards Israel renders useless any peace plans that leave Israel as an independent Middle Easter nation with a Jewish majority. To themselves Palestinians take it for granted that they only solution to their disagreements with Israel is for Israel to be destroyed. Many Arab nations have concluded that this is not practical, especially when Arab states are facing a serious Iranian threat, something they share with Israel. As a result Arab governments are establishing economic, military and diplomatic ties with Israel. These Arab governments must also deal with their own radical factions that will never accept Israel and want the Jewish state destroyed. This “radical faction” problem is nothing new in the Arab world, especially since Islam appeared 1,500 years ago and included acceptance of “radical factions” and violent intolerance of other religions in their scripture (the Koran). The inability to deal with the radical faction and intolerance problems has crippled Arab economic, scientific, diplomatic and military progress ever since. Non-Arab Moslem states, most famously Turkey and Iran, worked out ways to cope with and control the radical faction problem. But in the late 20^th century both these nations encountered renewed problems with the radical faction problem. For several decades now Arabs have been openly seeking solutions to the radical faction curse but progress has been slow.

The Other Curse

The Middle East has long been recognized as one of the most corrupt regions on the planet. The extent of this corruption c an be seen in the international surveys of nations to determine who is clean and who is corrupt. For 2019 the least corrupt nation in region was UAE (United Arab Emirates), which ranked 21st out of 180 nations in international rankings compared with 23^rd in 2018..................(Snip)