A new buzzword: Hamastan

The tragic events in Gaza are devastating to the Palestinian cause. The sight of Hamas gunmen dragging out a well-known Fatah hardman, shooting and stomping on his body is yet another disgraceful scene. No Palestinian should be fighting others while the zionist enemy chuckles at the success of its strategy. Both sides have disgraced the Palestinian cause. Chillingly, a new buzzword is already doing the rounds in zionist and US pro-zionist circles: Hamastan. Virtually every editorial mentions this word. Almost every editorial states that in Gaza now there is 'nobody to deal with'. One wonders if this is an indication of what they wanted all along. The zionists now have even more free reign to bomb, murder and kill people in Gaza using the simple pretext of 'destroying terrorist infrastructure'. The signs already look ominous. The US tactic of funding their own man Mohammed Dahlan has paid off. They provoked the power struggle that culminated in the sickening scenes on the streets of Gaza. Not only did they fund Dahlans security and intelligence apparatus but they allowed smuggling of weapons to Hamas as a dual strategy knowing that Hamas was a superior fighting unit. At the very least now they have an open excuse to keep the people of Gaza isolated, starving and sorrounded. The following article in the Washington Post illustrates the current thinking process in Washington:

The evolving U.S. strategy would let the Hamas-run Gaza Strip while attempting to bolster Abbas as a moderate leader who can actually govern and deliver peace with Israel. The senior administration official noted that fend for itself. Gaza has no territorial issues with Israel, since there are no Israelis in Gaza, so the Hamas entity there would have no stake in potential peace talks concerning the border on the West Bank.

Referring to Abbas, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters yesterday that "we fully support him in his decision to try and end this crisis for the Palestinian people and to give them an opportunity to return to peace and a better future."

But analysts said yesterday that this strategy of dividing the moderates from the extremists -- which was the core of Bush's 2002 speech -- proved ineffective and may have led to the dilemma facing the administration.

Note how they say Gaza has 'no territorial issues with Israel'. Well, there is the small matter of the territory being sorrounded, blockaded and the water, electricity being controlled by Israel. Plans to cut off the electricity are already being discussed, although they deny that water will be cut off as well. They envisage aid to the PA in the West Bank but make no mention of the expanding occupation, the wall nor the expulsion of people from their homes in Jerusalem, Hebron and elsewhere. The editorials are as blinkered as ever pointing to Fatah's acceptance of Israel whilst denying that Hamas has repeatedly accepted the two state solution based on the 1967 borders. Now they want the Israeli and US governments to throw a few scraps towards Abbas so that they can again pretend that they are interested in peace and to provide another fig-leaf for the occupation. Alvaro de Soto revealed in his leaked report the constant bullying of the UN, the US obsession with preventing criticism of Israel and for promoting the violence between Fatah and Hamas. Indeed the US envoy twice declared in meetings that "I like this violence." This is not civil war but the political equivalent of cock fighting sponsored by the US. This was not a failure of policy for them but a calculated and cynical success.