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David Rose’s Gaza Bombshell is getting a lot of play in the media and deservedly so. It is an investigative piece that uncovered secret and not so secret government documents authenticating a State Department plot to engineer what Elliot Abrams at the time called a “hard coup” against Hamas in the aftermath of its election victory. Rose also interviewed key players on all sides of the story including defanged neocon officials, Israeli spymasters, Palestinian enforcers, and Hamas officials. It’s a great read. Just hearing the two-faced David Wurmser turn on his former Bush Administration colleagues is worth the price of admission. But candor like this does make you wonder whether sour grapes more than a concern for ‘getting it right’ may be his motivation:
Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.
Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says.
The botched plan has rendered the dream of Middle East peace more remote than ever, but what really galls neocons such as Wurmser is the hypocrisy it exposed. “There is a stunning disconnect between the president’s call for Middle East democracy and this policy,” he says. “It directly contradicts it.”
It’s astonishing that Condi Rice was inveigling Arab governments to pony up the money to fund this Bay of Pigs fiasco in the making because our own Congress rightly resisted providing arms to Fatah for fear they would end up in the wrong hands. Rose quotes an expert saying that she may not have violated any laws in what she did. But as the Vanity Fair journalist notes–this thing has Iran contra written all over it. It has the guns, the shady go-betweens, the dirty money from third countries. The only thing it doesn’t have is the clueless, Alzheimer’s-ridden president (Reagan) who can’t seem to remember anything about it when asked to testify about the deal. Instead we have George Bush!
The timing of the publication of this story couldn’t be better as Hamas’ steely resistance to Israeli military might and an international blockade puts it once again in the central spotlight. Rose shows unequivocally that Fatah was hopelessly corrupt and incapable of mounting any serious resistance to Hamas, let alone a coup to eradicate the latter from the political scene.
This should be a lesson for Condi Rice today as she vainly attempts to cobble together a viable Israel-Palestine policy while ignoring an indispensable player, the very same one she tried to overthrow a few years ago. Gaza Bombshell calls into question the Bush Administration’s desperate clinging to a discredited Fatah as it’s ticket to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. If Mahmoud Abbas couldn’t get his own house in order as documented in this article, why will he be any more likely to bring home the bacon (pardon the inapt figure of speech) with a peace agreement?
One thing I don’t understand is why Rose fails to acknowledge that Conflicts Forum reported virtually the same story in January, 2007, Elliot Abram’s Uncivil War–that is fourteen months ago. The only difference is the latter story was based on a report of a meeting Abrams held with Palestinian businessmen and not on the richer trove of documentary evidence Rose dug up. But at least Rose could’ve acknowledged the work that came before him. Would he even be writing this story were it not for Conflicts Forum which, as far as I know, was the first English-language source to write on this?
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Tags: condi-rice-hard-coup-against-hamas, conflicts-forum, david-rose, elliot-abrams-uncivil-war, gaza-bombshell, vanity-fair
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Tony Karon of Rootless Cosmopolitan had written about the Fatah warlord Dahlan in May 2007, describing him as a “Palestinian Pinochet” – unfortunately, this perceptive piece no longer remains on his website. The gist of the methodology however, was for Bush to send arms to the warlord Dahlan – these armaments were intercepted by the Hamas, and the attempted Fatah-led coup was largely foiled, although even the seizure of the US-provided coup-weaponry did not prevent an outbreak of violence, which was largely reported by the mainstream as Hamas-led, rather than being a Hamas-led response to a US-Fatah warlord collaboration.
In June 2007, Dahlan twice attempted to assassinate Haniyeh, as well as leading the coup attempt against the Hamas. By the time Dahlan launched the coup against the Hamas, Haniyeh emphasised that his beef was with Dahlan, and not with the Fatah rank-and-file. Attempts by Abbas to declare a state of emergency required the signature of Haniyeh (Prime Minister). Mainstream reported the Hamas as attempting the coup (rather than the warlord Dahlan) – of course, we should remember that a democratically elected government cannot launch a coup, rather, the US-armed warlord Dahlan launched a coup against the democratically elected Hamas. The divide-and-conquer strategy backfired, and is indeed a shameful act from the US government, whom I feel do not have the interests of either Israelis or Palestinians at heart. Everything that the US does to attempt to weaken the Hamas, only strengthens it, from arming warlords to launch coup, to leading the shameful sanctions against a trapped Palestinian populace in Gaza.
It is long overdue to hold unconditional negotiations with the Hamas government. Their leaders prayed in the Synagogues of Gaza, forbidding their destruction as ‘Houses of G-d’, and yet it was out-of-control youths, possibly led by some of the warlord-clans who, possibly not even Hamas supporters, who destroyed them, and whom the mainstream media filmed and used against the newly elected Hamas government.
If Shas and the National Religious Party can exist as a legitimate political parties within the Knesset, then so can the Hamas exist as legitimate political party within the Palestinian Government. If Israel allows national religious movements, intent on removing Palestinians from their lands, then tell me, what kind of hypocrisy is it that would place the ridiculous conditions upon the Hamas as a precursor to negotiating a lasting piece.
I meant ‘peace’ and not ‘piece’ in my last comment, but perhaps that was a freudian slip – e.g. pieces of land for peace.
Yes, Tony has done good reporting on this. But Conflicts Forum’s piece came out even earlier in January, 2007.
I found that piece from May 2007: Palestinian Pinochet Making His Move?
Ah, yes, and so I see – yes, the US has broken the law in an attempt to forment civil war. I remember the reception by the ordinary Israeli at the time, upon hearing of the cache of arms sent to the warlord Dahlan – was ‘What, are they crazy, Fatah in Gaza are corrupt – at least we had a ceasefire that lasted with the Hamas.
I believe it thoroughly possible to negotiate a lasting, meaningful peace with the Hamas – and that is why the US are so against them, for they’d lose Israel as it’s bargaining chip in it’s own wargames were peace to descend on that tiny strip of land.
Both Israelis and Palestininians would be better off without the US and the Arab states being involved in their internal affairs.
“Everyone blamed everyone else,” says an official with the Department of Defense. “We sat there in the Pentagon and said, ‘Who the fuck recommended this?’ ”
– Natan Sharansky recommended it, as i recall.
Wow!
Well this is a bombshell indeed…
wurmser’s got some chutzpah complaining about US policy being anti-democractic, when the Clean Break document he co-authored for Bibi called for installing a Hashemite king on Iraq.