The Gaza Bombshell

The April issue of Vanity Fair reports that it has "obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the US and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams to provoke a Palestinian civil war."

The magazine adds that the plan "was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America's behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically-elected Hamas-led government from power."

A great irony here is that Israel originally (covertly) helped Hamas when it was first founded in the late 80's, on the grounds that a religious extremist movement would help undermine the PLO. (sounds vaguely familiar...,) - it is ironic that the Israeli leadership [and, we can add, the US leadership as well] is now supporting the PLO in the hope of undermining Hamas.

Both policies - Israel's initial support for Hamas and this latest US effort to undermine it - have been disastrous as far as Israeli security is concerned. The article in Vanity Fair concludes:

"It is impossible to say for sure whether the outcome in Gaza would have been any better-for the Palestinian people, for the Israelis, and for America's allies in Fatah-if the Bush administration had pursued a different policy. One thing, however, seems certain: it could not be any worse."

The more things "change" - the more they just seem to stay the same....,