Investor's Business Daily, June 14th, 2007
Middle East: Most of the world is under the impression that Hamas has won the Palestinian civil war. But the real winner is the militant Islamic regime in Tehran, which is running a proxy war against Israel.
Six days and 100 or so unnecessary killings after the fighting began, Hamas has taken virtual control of the Palestinian territory in the Gaza Strip, a thin ribbon of land in western Israel that borders Egypt.
Islamist gunmen have been seen celebrating their victory, waving Hamas flags and shooting their rifles into the air, seemingly pleased they've murdered the brothers they feel were standing in their way.
Somewhere Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Persian mullahs who run that country are smiling.
Hamas, also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, is heavily funded, trained and armed by Iran, a terrorist nation that shares an ambitious goal with the terrorist organization: the destruction of Israel.
Hamas, which last year ended four decades of Fatah party rule in the Palestinian territories by winning seats in the Palestinian Parliament, has been nearly as brutal with its Muslim brothers as it has been with Israel, which it has bedeviled with deadly violence for decades.
In the process of seizing the Gaza Strip, as well as security and intelligence facilities in Gaza City, Hamas has killed dozens of Palestinians, some of them civilians, others members of Fatah, which vainly tried to resist the takeover.
For its effort at defending itself, Fatah has been severely punished.
Reports Thursday said Hamas executed Fatah officials one by one in front of their families in the streets of Gaza City. These murdered men are members of an organization that shared power in the Palestinian territories in what was supposed to be a unity government.
In another incident, Hamas fighters cornered Jamal Abu Jadian, a high-ranking Fatah commander, in a hospital. They took turns shooting the wounded man in the head, Israel National News reported. After more than 40 bullets were pumped into him, there wasn't much left of his head.
But it's all in a good cause, Hamas officials will tell themselves. A few Palestinian martyrs had to die so that many more Jews can die.
By capturing the Gaza Strip and ousting the more moderate, Western-supported Fatah party, Hamas will have a stronghold from which it can increase its attacks on Israel, which, until recent elections in Iraq, had been the only elected government in the Middle East and the only genuine ally the U.S. had in that region.
A year ago, Israel was embroiled in a short war with Hezbollah terrorists who provoked a fight from their viper pit in Southern Lebanon. With Hamas raging in Gaza and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed terrorist group, sitting on its northern border and itching to fight, Israel is now within Tehran's pincers.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have suggested that an international force be deployed in Gaza to prevent further violence. But that seems unlikely. When was the last time the international community or the United Nations hustled to the aid of the Jewish state?
Besides, a Hamas official has already rejected "any dispatch of foreign forces to the Gaza Strip." It would be difficult to find an elected or government official anywhere in the world in our politically correct, the-Palestinians-are-always-right climate willing to send troops to the area against Hamas' wishes.
The reality that Israel's 2005 pullout from Gaza might not have been then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's best decision is now coming into focus. At the time, with the Fatah party firmly in control of the Palestinian Authority, it might have appeared to be prudent.
It's too bad that it has taken the deaths of innocents and a predatory presence ravenously eyeing Israel from almost within its borders to bring that truth home.
The only thing that could save the Sharon decision now is if Israel's leadership treats Gaza like a state and responds as it would if it were attacked by a neighboring country. That could settle the problem rather quickly.
