Who Believes Palestinians' Economic Progress Will Help Bring Peace?

MK Binyamin Netanyahu said it, right? And he's been taking flak for it ever since.

But he wasn't the first to say it.

George Mitchell said it a year ago, in an interview in November 2007. Yes, it was President Obama's envoy to the Middle East who declared:

"Political and security measures can’t succeed in any sustainable way unless a very high priority is also given to economic issues.... economic improvement ... has to be front and center, an integral daily part of the process or else the process can’t gain the necessary support of the people in the societies that are engaged in conflict.... I believe, in every conflict situation people need physical security, they need political freedom, they need personal dignity. In the end what people need most of all are jobs. Economic growth, job creation, to give people opportunity, hope, create a sense of meaningful participation in society."

And here's what Netanyahu said in November 2008 to a Knesset committee, according to Ha'aretz:

Israel intends "to advance peace talks with the Palestinians, in order to gain a stable, safe, and prosperous peace." The Likud leader also vowed that Israel will "continue diplomatic negotiations and we will advance the 'economic peace' whose goal is to bring the rapid development of the Palestinian economy and to prepare public opinion for a real agreement. The economic peace is not an alternative for peace talks but will help guide a winning process. We have seen this in the world, quickened economic development has helped form the conditions for peace and the resolution of conflict," Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu was strongly criticized for his economic plan.

In an article entitled, "The Emptiness of Netanyahu's 'Economic Peace' Plan," Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher wrote, "Economic benefits for Palestinians are as intrinsically good for them as for any people, but they, like economic punishments, offer remarkably little substantive input to the peace process."

Fadle Naqib, the acting director of MAS, the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute, claimed that Netanyahu's plan was racist and bound to fail. "If you improve the economic situation this will not solve the problem," Naqib told the bitterlemons.org website. "As a matter of fact, this is an idea we've heard many times before. We've heard it from Israel and we've heard it from other governments and international bodies. It contains an element of racism. It says basically that the non-white people, the third world people, the Muslim people and the colored people do not behave according to principles, they behave according to instincts and if you feed them they will do whatever you want them to do. ... I have not seen any situation where the economy has solved a political problem."

What do the Palestinians and Netanyahu's critics in Israel have to say to George Mitchell's economic prescription?

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The George Mitchell Appointment: The Tactics of "Symmetrical Negotiations" May Not Work in "Asymmetrical Conflicts"

By Lenny Ben-David
Reprinted from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

President Barak Obama's appointment of former Senator George J. Mitchell as Middle East envoy was warmly received in Washington, Jerusalem, and Ramallah. Over the years, Mitchell, a respected judge, legislator and negotiator, has been tasked by presidents to broker a peace agreement in Northern Ireland, explore paths to peace in the Middle East, and even chair a commission to investigate steroid use in Major League Baseball. "The Conciliator" was the apt moniker given to Mitchell by one British newspaper.

The Middle East that Mitchell will confront today is much changed from the one he wrestled with eight years ago. And the parties to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict bear little resemblance to the antagonists he dealt with in Northern Ireland.

Mitchell chaired the "Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee," mandated by a Sharm el-Sheikh summit in October 2000 to investigate the outbreak of the "al-Aqsa Intifada" one month earlier and to recommend ways to stop the violence. His committee, which also included Senator Warren Rudman and three European statesmen, presented its findings to the new Bush administration on April 30, 2001. Its recommendations were then incorporated into the April 2003 " Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," drafted by the Quartet of the UN, European Union, United States, and Russia.

In 2003, Mitchell distilled his vision of the Middle East conflict: "Palestinians will never achieve a state if Israel does not have security. Israel will never get sustainable security if the Palestinians don't have a state." Based on his experience in reaching the Northern Ireland "Good Friday" peace agreement, Mitchell expressed his belief in 2003 and again in December 2008 that "there is no such thing as a conflict that can't be ended."

The Mitchell Report was seen as an "even-handed" document, reflecting the fact that the committee was directed by President Clinton to "strive to steer clear of any step that will intensify mutual blame and finger-pointing between the parties....The Committee should not become a divisive force or a focal point for blame and recrimination but rather should serve to forestall violence and confrontation and provide lessons for the future. This should not be a tribunal whose purpose is to determine the guilt or innocence of individuals or of the parties."

As a result, the committee attempted - even at the risk of straining credibility - to split the blame for the crisis. "Some Israelis appear not to comprehend the humiliation and frustration that Palestinians must endure every day as a result of living with the continuing effects of occupation," the report wrote. "Some Palestinians appear not to comprehend the extent to which terrorism creates fear among the Israeli people and undermines their belief in the possibility of co-existence."

Humiliation is rarely fatal; terrorism usually is.

While the Mitchell Report did not blame Israeli Prime Minister Sharon for the outbreak of the Second Intifada, nonetheless, it sought to evenhandedly spread the responsibility for the violence, ignoring the evidence of Palestinian incitement. In response to Israeli claims that the violence was planned by Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, the committee declared, "[We were not] provided with persuasive evidence that the PA planned the uprising. Accordingly, we have no basis on which to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the PA to initiate a campaign of violence at the first opportunity."

Subsequently, the real causes for the violence were exposed by a Palestinian minister in Yassir Arafat's government. Palestinian Communications Minister ‘Imad al-Faluji admitted in the Lebanese daily al-Safir on March 3, 2001: "Whoever thinks the Intifada broke out because of the despised Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque is wrong....This Intifada was planned in advance, ever since President Arafat's return from the Camp David negotiations." Even earlier, al-Faluji had explained that the Intifada was initiated as the result of a strategic decision made by the Palestinians.

The Intifada's premeditation is seen in the training and indoctrination of 25,000 Palestinian youth in summer camps even while Arafat was engaged in negotiations at Camp David.

The Mitchell Report's Recommendations

In its recommendations to the two sides, the Mitchell Committee could not ignore Palestinian terrorism and the Palestinian use of civilians as human shields. It issued these recommendations:

The PA should make clear through concrete action to Palestinians and Israelis alike that terrorism is reprehensible and unacceptable, and that the PA will make a 100 percent effort to prevent terrorist operations and to punish perpetrators. This effort should include immediate steps to apprehend and incarcerate terrorists operating within the PA's jurisdiction. The PA should prevent gunmen from using Palestinian populated areas to fire upon Israeli populated areas and IDF positions. This tactic places civilians on both sides at unnecessary risk.

According to the committee, Israel's transgression - and there had to be one to balance Palestinian sins - was its settlement activity. "The Government of Israel," the committee recommended, "should freeze all settlement activity, including the ‘natural growth' of existing settlements."

Two years later, the Roadmap would cite the Mitchell Report in its call for a settlement freeze in Phase I of the Roadmap. "Israel also freezes all settlement activity," the drafters instructed, "consistent with the Mitchell Report" (emphasis added).

Israelis objected to the draconian call for a freeze. Sharon asked Secretary of State Colin Powell, "What do you want, for a pregnant woman to have an abortion just because she is a settler?" Moreover, Israelis objected, the freeze - never mandated in the interim stages of the Oslo Accords - would serve to reward the Palestinians' terrorism.

A Changed World Since the Mitchell Report

The Mitchell Report was drafted relatively early in the Palestinian Intifada, when it was believed by some that the Palestinians' violent outbreak was actually a spontaneous reaction to Prime Minister Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000. As mentioned above, the world today knows otherwise.

The committee was appointed before the al-Qaeda attack on September 11, 2001, and the revelation of hostile international Islamic terrorism. The report was issued prior to the capture of two weapons-laden ships bound for Gaza - the Santorini in May 2001 and the Karine A in January 2002 - and the surfacing of proof of the grand battle Arafat was planning against Israel. (The Grad rockets, explosives, mortars and anti-tank weapons on the ships would find their way into Hamas arsenals in Gaza five years later through tunnels from the Sinai Peninsula.)

By 2003, George Mitchell was refocusing his attention on the threat of terrorism. In a commencement address at MIT in June 2003, he stated, "Our committee's report was very tough on terrorism. We branded it morally reprehensible and unacceptable. It is also politically counterproductive. It will not achieve its objective. To the contrary, with each suicide bomb attack, the prospect of a Palestinian state is delayed. Such tactics also are destructive of Palestinian civil society and the reputation of the Palestinian people throughout the world."

Nevertheless, Mitchell repeated at MIT his opposition to Israel's settlement policies, in keeping with the "long-standing opposition to the government of Israel's policies and practices regarding settlements. That U.S. opposition," he continued, "has been consistent through the Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush administrations; just as consistent has been the continued settlement activity by the Israeli government."

The U.S. position toward settlements, of course, underwent a major change under President Bush in April 2004 when he assured Prime Minister Sharon: "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." The universal interpretation of Bush's letter was that settlement blocs would remain under Israeli sovereignty.

Lastly, the 2001 Mitchell Report was issued years before Hamas' coup in Gaza and its open fealty to Iran. Hamas remains dedicated to Israel's destruction. Its alliance with Iran and its affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood mark Hamas as an enemy of moderate Arab regimes such as Egypt and Jordan. As such, Hamas cannot be compared to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which wanted to throw the British out of Northern Ireland, but had no aspirations to capture London. Moreover, while the IRA had limited international contacts, it was not a part of a European-wide network and was not backed by a petrodollar-rich, oil-producing country like Iran, which was also on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons, and thereby emboldening its regional surrogates. In short, Mitchell will be conducting diplomacy under completely different strategic circumstances than he did in the 1990s. Indeed, Hamas may prove to be a fatal flaw to Mitchell's axiom that "there is no such thing as a conflict that can't be ended."

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LeFrak City in Gaza

by Lenny Ben-David

Gaza is the "most overpopulated few square miles in the whole world," wrote veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk in a recent dispatch in the British Independent. Both Israel's Army Radio station and Al-Jazeera's English television reported that "Gaza is the densest populated area in the world." But the claim is simply not true.

About 9,713 Gazans are crowded into each square mile of the strip's total 147 square miles, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But there are denser areas in the world such as Singapore (18,645 people per square mile on 241 sq. mi. of territory) and Hong Kong (18,176 per sq. mi. on 382 sq. mi.).

Population density needs not translate to abject poverty and political unrest. Singapore and Hong Kong are situated along maritime trade routes and their per capita GDP surpasses $42,000. Gaza, however, despite its Mediterranean shoreline and an estimated $4 billion in offshore natural gas reserves, tallies only $1,100 per capita. Surely, Israel's siege of the hostile Hamasland chokes Gaza and is a major factor in its astronomical unemployment. But, Gaza is not necessarily destined to remain a "rubbish dump of destitute people," to use Fisk's words.

Presumably, Israeli military planners and international diplomats are already deliberating options for Gaza's future when the terrorist regime is replaced by Egyptians, the Palestinian Authority or the few Hamas-affiliated non-terrorists who can be found. A priority - perhaps the highest priority - should be a major international construction effort to build mega-housing projects in Gaza. Despite the claims of overcrowding, large areas are available for construction.

Where? On the ruins of Gush Katif settlements, relatively large areas that were expropriated by Hamas and Palestinian militias and used as bases until IAF bombers razed them. During the fighting, the area of the former Netzarim settlement and IDF base, situated at a crucial crossroads south of Gaza City, reportedly served as a temporary base for an estimated 150 tanks. Three other areas suitable for such housing projects include the area of the former Dugit and Nisanit in northern Gaza, a short distance from the Erez industrial zone; the ruins of Kfar Darom near the Kissufim crossing in the center of Gaza; and the southern beach areas surrounding the former Neveh Dekalim that could also serve as the location for a major Gazan resort.

New Yorkers are familiar with Levittown, the planned community built 60 years ago by Levitt and Sons that churned out 30 homes a day. Today, the community consists of more than 17,000 homes and 50,000 residents, all located on just 6.9 sq. mi. with a population density of 7,700 people per sq. mi.

For some of the Palestinians in Gaza, a redesigning of Levittown-type single-family housing may be appropriate for clan life. For other Gaza residents, more appropriate may be high-rise projects like the 20 high-rise buildings of LeFrak City (pictured) in Queens, or Starrett City in Brooklyn with its 5,800 apartments in 43 buildings of eight-20 stories.

A mega-housing project in Gaza will provide thousands of jobs, a major infusion of investment and the concomitant infrastructure for water, desalination, sewage, electricity and transportation. Until they were expelled, Israelis in those Gazan settlements constructed a lucrative hothouse enterprise, growing vegetables and flowers for export. American investors, including Bill Gates, purchased the facilities for the Palestinians only to see them plundered and destroyed. Perhaps the enterprise can be reestablished in areas adjacent to the new housing.

The project will require a shift in Palestinian thinking. Twenty-five years ago the Palestinians vehemently opposed Israeli attempts to build new housing for refugees. The descendents of refugees who live in crowded camps make up one-third of Gaza's 1.5 million residents and are wards of UNRWA. They are directed and determined to return only to their ancestral homes in Israel. Those refugees who claimed to have come from Askalaan/Al-Jura may have moved just 20 miles "down the beach" from present day Ashkelon, but decades of propaganda fired their refusal to be rehoused.

In the mid-1990s I visited high-rise apartments under construction in Gaza with U.S. Agency for International Development and European assistance. The apartments proved that Palestinians were willing to move into American-style apartment buildings. The apartments were large and designed for Eastern customs and lifestyle; for instance, both Western and Arab-style commodes were featured in every apartment. I was intrigued by the many subterranean floors which appeared to be formidable bunkers until I learned that the buildings were designated for Palestinian leadership. I was pleased to see the efficient and on-schedule construction of the American-funded buildings. Congress had made the aid conditional on payments to a third-party management authority, not to the corrupt Palestinian Authority. The European construction, free of such restrictions, was far behind schedule.

Hundreds of tons of cement have been poured in Gaza in recent years for Hamas bunkers and subterranean tunnels. Tens of millions of dollars have been invested in tunnels from Sinai and for the weapons that came through them. Perhaps soon Gazans will have the opportunity to use the cement and money for rebuilding lives, not destroying them.



This article appears in the January 21, 2009 print edition of The Jerusalem Post.

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Israel, Dirty Harry and Bob Dylan

Internet surfers of the Op-Ed postings this morning (January 8) hit anti-Israel shoals in the New York Times and Washington Post. Three Op-Ed writers – Jimmy Carter, Roger Cohen and Nicholas Kristof – paid perfunctory lip service to Israel’s right to defend its citizens, but then they trivialized Israel’s casualties and complained that the rockets didn’t warrant Israel’s tough response.

Carter: “Although [Israeli] casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years) Sderot was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions… We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved.”

Cohen: “But what of the intolerable Hamas rockets on Sderot, the 20 Israelis killed by those rockets since 2005 (four of them in the current violence)? … Yes, there has to be a response to Hamas, but this is the wrong one…. I have never previously felt so despondent about Israel, so shamed by its actions.”

Kristof: “Israel’s right to do something doesn’t mean it has the right to do anything. Since the shelling from Gaza started in 2001, 20 Israeli civilians have been killed by rockets or mortars, according to a tabulation by Israeli human rights groups. That doesn’t justify an all-out ground invasion that has killed more than 660 people.”

Kristof has the chutzpah to tell Israel what it should have done instead. Bomb the tunnels, he suggests, or even better “would have been to ease the siege in Gaza, perhaps creating an environment in which Hamas would have extended the cease-fire.”

In other words, the war was Israel’s fault. Kristof’s call to “create an environment” for Hamas is usually called appeasement.

Herschel Cohen and Robert Zimmerman

My mind whirled: where did I hear such a spineless argument before? Where had I witnessed such a bunch of unprincipled namby-pambies? Then I remembered a frustrated Californian cop I met 25 years ago. I’m sure he was an Israeli named Herschel Cohen who had changed his name to Harry Callahan. He hated departmental paperwork and procedure. On the force he was nicknamed “Dirty Harry” because, as his partner explained, “They call him ‘Dirty’ Harry [because] he gets the shit end of the stick every time.” Isn’t that enough proof that Harry was an Israeli?

When Herschel/Harry beat to a pulp a serial rapist-murderer who was released on a technicality, he was admonished by the District Attorney:

Where the hell does it say you've got a right to kick down doors, torture suspects, deny medical attention and legal counsel. Where have you been? Does Escobedo ring a bell? Miranda? I mean, you must have heard of the Fourth Amendment. What I'm saying is, that man had rights.
Callahan: Well, I'm all "broken up" about that man's rights.
District Attorney: You should be. I've got news for you, Callahan. As soon as he's well enough to leave the hospital, he walks. ...
Callahan: And who says that?
District Attorney: It's the law.
Callahan: Well then, the law is crazy!

Today, Herschel’s bosses would probably demand that he use a Taser to subdue a perp on angel dust, and if he had to shoot he had to use a small caliber gun and shoot to wound.

But Harry would never follow those orders. He would use his .44 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world, [that could] blow your head clean off.”

Dirty Harry was certainly not loved, but he was respected in his neighborhood. Yes, he got shot and beaten up, but he survived.

Respect for the Bully

Harry Callahan probably had one atypical eight-track cassette in his car– a Bob Dylan album, Infidel. And Harry would listen to only one song on that cassette: Neighborhood Bully. It was – and is – a strong, defiant defense of Israel. Here are two stanzas:

Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back,
he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Click to hear Neighborhood Bully. Click here to read the lyrics.

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Hamas' Favorite Fauxtographer and Crocodile Tears for Terrorists

Khalil Hamra, the AP "fauxtographer" who provided last week's picture of a "wounded" Gaza man next to three apparently healthy toddlers in a hospital, has snapped again.

The lead picture in dozens of newspapers today, including The Washington Post, showed a teary teen and this caption: "Palestinian relatives of Hamas militant Sami Lobad, who was killed in an Israeli missile strike, react during his funeral in Beit Lahiya. (Khalil Hamra-AP)

"Hamas militant" is newspeak for a terrorist. If Sami Lobad is identified as a dead "militant" killed in the last week, then he was either firing rockets at Israel's civilian population or was a bodyguard of master terrorist Nizar Rayyan, or was a Hamas fighter dedicated to Israel's destruction.

The world would be a better place if pictures of dead terrorists' mourners were not distributed by a major news agency or reproduced in Western newspapers.

Khalil Hamra's specialty appears to be photographing keeners at funerals. Here's another one of Hamra's shots from last month, with a portrait of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin looking down upon the scene:

Caption: Palestinian relatives of Hamas militant, Mohsen Al Qedra, react during his funeral in the family house in Khan Younis, Nov. 13, 2008. Al Qedra and three other Hamas militants were killed Wednesday as Israeli troops and Palestinian militants fought with missiles and mortars. (Khalil Hamra)

On November 12, the day before the funeral, Israeli paratroopers discovered Palestinian gunmen attempting to infiltrate into Israel from Gaza. Four of the gunmen, equipped with Kalashnikov guns and grenades, were killed. Presumably Al Qedra was one of them.

The AP photographer's online portfolio indicates that he also takes portraits of Palestinian babies and little children. Dead ones, of course. This blog will not reproduce the ghoulish and inciting pictures.

Other blog postings on Gaza:

Why Hasn't Israel Used Its Artillery in Gaza Yet?
Israel Is Also Facing Iran across the Gaza Border
Here Comes the Hamas Propaganda Attack

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Why Hasn't Israel Used Its Artillery in Gaza Yet?

Claims that Israel “massacred” or “slaughtered” innocent Palestinians are bald-faced lies.

Israel takes unprecedented precautions to avoid hurting innocent civilians. Gazan civilians actually received telephone calls from the IDF last week warning of impending attacks. Even master terrorist Nizar Rayyan (pictured right), the Hamas military commander killed in Thursday's air raid on his home, received a warning to evacuate his family. He refused, preferring martyrdom for his family over life. Rayyan once dispatched one of his own sons to carry out a suicide bombing. Few tears are being shed for Rayyan, especially in the Palestinian Authority who Rayyan hated as much as he despised Israel.

All of the attacks on Hamas until now have been carried out by the Israel Air Force, but frankly, it just doesn’t make any sense. All targets within Gaza are within range of Israeli artillery or MLRS rockets. Artillery shells are much cheaper than air-delivered bombs and missiles. Artillery can be directed against targets 24/7 and are not limited by bad weather. Send up a plane to hit a Hamas target in Gaza, and the pilot and a $35 million plane are both at risk.

There is only one reason for artillery not being used: It is not as accurate as an attack from the air. Civilians could be hit.

If Israel meant to “massacre” innocent civilians, it certainly has the means. The IDF can eradicate Hamas fighters and anyone within a mile radius without jeopardizing its soldiers. But Israel has repeatedly put its soldiers in harm's way in order to protect Palestinian civilians. Evidence the 23 IDF soldiers killed in close quarter combat in Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. Blasting away at the alleyways of Jenin with artillery or tank fire would have spared their lives but would have killed countless civilians. The military tactics of Russia, Syria or the Palestinians simply do not exist in the IDF playbook.

To recall, during the Chechen war in the 1990s the Russians carpet-bombed Grozny. Russia allegedly fired missiles into the Grozny market and a local maternity ward. The Syrians are known for playing according to “Hama rules” -- named for a Syrian stronghold of Moslem Brotherhood supporters. Hama was pulverized by Syrian tanks and artillery for three weeks in 1982 resulting in the death of anywhere from 7,000 to 30,000 people. Don’t forget Hamas itself. The Islamic organization made suicide bombings a science, targeting buses, pizza shops and restaurants. During its war with Fatah last year, Hamas threw Fatah enemies off of hi-rise apartment buildings; others were spared when they were only "knee-capped." Last week, Hamas gunmen roamed hospital corridors in Gaza executing their enemies.

When Israel launches its ground assault against Hamas, tragically Palestinian civilians will be hurt or killed. Israel’s government, citizens and soldiers will regret each and every one of them.

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Israel Is Also Facing Iran across the Gaza Border --What's at Stake

Those 40 km missiles Hamas is unleashing against Israeli cities are certainly not the “amateur rockets…nagging the residents” of Israeli cities, as a Palestinian journalist recently wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. And Hamas may still surprise Israel with longer-range missiles.

The press calls the rockets “Grads” or “Katyushas,” the Russian name given several generations ago to the original Soviet-made surface-to-surface missiles. Today, it would be more correct to label some of the missiles by their real name, the “Arash,” the name given to them by their Iranian manufacturers. The long-range 120 mm mortars (pictured) raining down on Israel are also Iranian in origin. The mortars are equipped with auxiliary motors to increase their range from six to ten kilometers, reports the IICC think tank.

The Jerusalem Post reports today that the longest range Grads were manufactured in China and that some of them were smuggled to Hamas via Iran. Visitors to Sderot's rocket heap (like Mr. Obama above) can view Iranian-made weapons.

Earlier this year both the Iranian Arashes and mortars were fired from Gaza with deadly results. In February 2008 the mortars were fired at Kibbutz Sa’ad; in June the mortars were used against Kibbutz Nirim, killing one and wounding four, and in November, eight soldiers were wounded by such a mortar at Nahal Oz. The Arash missiles were fired against Ashkelon on several occasions during 2008.

The Long History of Palestinian-Iranian Cooperation

The Islamic Republic worked closely with Yasser Arafat for decades, particularly after the Oslo agreements granted Arafat a foothold in the Palestinian territories. Arafat’s relationship with Ayatollah Khomeini predates the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Former CIA senior officer Robert Baer details the Iranian-Palestinian relationship in See No Evil, The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism. “Arafat had put his entire worldwide terrorist network at Iran’s disposal,” Baer pointed out. “Having been forced out of Beirut in 1982 by the Israelis, he had handed it over lock, stock, and barrel to the Iranians for safekeeping.”

The liaison between Arafat and Iran was maintained by none other than master terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, a former member of Arafat’s Force 17, the mastermind of anti-American bombings in Lebanon, the man behind the bombings of Israeli and Jewish institutions in Argentina, and the alleged chief planner for the 2006 Hizbullah war against Israel. Mughniyeh met a just end when he was killed in his car by a bomb in a Damascus suburb in February 2008.

Iran undertook a major operation to supply weapons to the Palestinians. Click to see the massive inventory of the Santorini and Karine-A ships captured by Israel in 2001 and 2002, including dozens of Arash missiles and hundreds of 120 mm mortars. After the capture of the ships, it can be assumed that Iran dispatched new arms shipments which made their way to Gaza through the Sinai tunnels and other seaborne smuggling efforts. Shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles and the anti-tank Saggers were also captured on the ships, and they too are presumably now in the Palestinian arsenal and will be used against Israeli aircraft and tanks.

Was the Islamic University in Gaza also an Iranian Base?

When Israeli air force jets bombed the Islamic University in the Gaza, the BBC declared that “a significant cultural symbol for Hamas” had been hit. It is evident that the university was also a major part of Hamas’ weapons development and storage network.

“The Islamic University was used as a base for Hamas gunmen,” a Fatah [Fatah, not Israeli!] spokesman told the New York Times in February 2008. “We didn’t attack the university because it was a university, but because gunmen were firing from there.”

A year earlier, Fatah-affiliated security officers captured an Iranian general at the school. They claimed he was “supervising the manufacturing weapons and explosives for Hamas,” according to Yediot Ahranot. “The source told Ynet that the expert was in charge of several labs in the university, mainly chemistry labs in which he trained Hamas activists, most of them women, manufacturing the explosives. At least five Iranian citizens were arrested during a raid at the Islamic University, a Hamas stronghold in Gaza City. Hundreds of weapons and a lathe for the production of Qassam rockets were seized in the raid. The Palestinian source added that at least 20 women, some of them students, were arrested in the labs supervised by the Iranian expert, who was mainly involved in developing shells and rockets, but also explosives. “

The Islamic University in Gaza was also a center for Hamas recruitment and training, according to other accounts.

If and when Israeli ground troops enter Gaza they will encounter extensive Hamas bunker and tunnel systems. Hundreds of Hamas tunnels from the Sinai keep Gaza armed and fed. Two years ago tunnels were used to attack an IDF unit and capture Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. But it should be recalled that the use of tunnels and extensive bunkers were tactics taught by Hizbullah and the Iranians. In July 2006, a garrulous officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard revealed to the Arabic publication Sharq al Awsat that Iranian diplomats smuggled North Korean experts into Lebanon under the guise of "domestic workers." They joined "hundreds of Iranian engineers and technicians… to build a 25 kilometer [!] tunnel." The officer did not reveal the location but bragged "each opening in this [tunnel] measures 12 to 18 square meters, and has a mobile floor and a semi-mobile ceiling. Each four openings are connected by a passage that allows fighters to pass easily [from one opening] to the other."

Israel is not facing a ragtag band of Palestinian thugs. (One silly analyst actually rejected the Israeli claim of “self-defense.” The Gaza war is the confrontation of “a state and a networked organization,” she wrote, “like the US Army fighting the Salvation Army.”)

No, this confrontation is yet another round of Israel versus Iran and its proxies. It is a lengthy war fought in the open in Gaza and Lebanon and fought in the shadows in attacks against Israeli and Jewish institutions in Buenos Aires, or against the weapons supply routes between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah, or in the assassination of a master terrorist in Damascus. In such a war, cease-fires can only be a temporary respite, at best, not a basis for peace.

Michael Young, the editorial editor at the Beirut Daily Star, provides this perspective from his precarious perch:

"What we see developing in the Middle East is an accelerating counterattack by non-state actors such as Hamas, Hizbullah and the Islamic Jihad, all backed by a rising Iran, against the majority of Arab states committed to a negotiated peace with Israel. Manipulating the emotions that the fate of the Palestinians invariably release among Arabs, Tehran above all, but also the militant Islamist groups, are attempting to redraw the regional balance of power through a normalization of the armed struggle against Israel and a delegitimization of Arab states opposed to this."

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