Cap Phantom

Gaza’s slow slide into the network of weapons smuggling tunnels built under its foundations has now turned into a headlong rush into hell.

Heavily armed factions now battle each other in a deadly civil war for political power and control of the billions of dollars in humanitarian aid and reconstruction funds flowing into the territory by courtesy of the European Union and the United Nations.

200 people have been killed and almost 2000 injured so far this year as a result of this rapidly escalating internecine violence that now has sucked Israel in once again, as scores of Kassam rockets continue to be fired indiscriminately into civilian centres in Israel from a well stocked arsenal smuggled into Gaza through Egypt.

Israel’s unilateral evacuation from Gaza in August 2005 was intended to signal Israel’s readiness to find a peaceful solution to competing claims by Jews and Arabs to sovereignty in Gaza and the West Bank.

Instead we are now witnesses to scenes of death and violence in Gaza that no one could have predicted when the world’s broadcasting networks showed their images of thousands of distressed and anguished Israeli soldiers and police removing 7000 crying and in some cases defiant Jews from their homes and livelihoods after a presence of almost forty years.

Certainly the trashing and eradication of the Jewish presence in Gaza, the continued violence against the Jewish State and the hatred and incitement of Gaza’s civilian population against Jews were foreseen by many, as Israel was roundly criticised in many quarters for acting unilaterally as it did.

But no one could have reasonably expected to see Arab killing Arab in Gaza in an unending cycle of violence over the past twelve months.

It is pointless to assign blame for Gaza’s failure to grasp the baton handed to the Palestinian Authority by Israel. Others can and will no doubt do so as the situation continues to worsen.

However, having dropped the baton and allowed Gaza to reach the stage of lawlessness it now has, the Authority has shown itself to be a lame duck without any power or authority to conclude any kind of agreement with Israel on Gaza and the West Bank.

The late Abba Eban, Israel’s first Ambassador to the United Nations, famously said in 1973:

“The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”

The Palestinian Authority has become the latest example of that most apposite statement.

As the carnage continues, those supporters of the Palestinian Authority and its President Mahmoud Abbas – the 22 Arab League States, America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – look on and, as usual, wring their hands, say a lot, but as usual do nothing to stop it.

They continue to promote and cling to the two state solution formulated by them in 2002 and 2003 that remain unimplemented in even the slightest detail and have no prospects of ever being successfully concluded – as if nothing has happened in the meantime.

They place their faith in Abbas being able to deliver the Palestinians on those completely flawed plans – totally ignoring the shift in power caused by the ascension of Hamas in Gaza that calls for Israel’s total destruction.

They still fail to understand that the only negotiating address in Gaza today is Prime Minister Haniyeh of Hamas. No amount of fiction or make believe by the Arab League, the Quartet or Israel for that matter can possibly change that current reality.

Abbas does not have enough power to fill his fountain pen let alone put his signature on any agreement with Israel that he can enforce.

Perhaps as they ponder their next step the Arab League and the Quartet should carefully heed the less quoted words of Abba Eban which appeared in Newsweek on 2 December 1974:

“But in addition to warnings about the futility of war should we not reflect together on the availability of peace? Palestine comes into modern history as a region extending on both sides of the Jordan, comprising the present sovereign territories of Israel and Jordan and the administered areas of the West Bank and Gaza. Of this original Palestine, 80 per cent became an exclusively Arab domain through the separation of Transjordan from Palestine.”

Jordan has always been and still continues to be the only negotiating address for anyone interested in seeking a solution to the West Bank and Gaza between Israel and the Arabs.

Division of the West Bank and Gaza between Jordan and Israel is the only possible outcome that has any reasonable prospect of success.

In an interview published in the Khaleej Times on 11 October 2006, King Abdullah of Jordan declared:

“I really think that by the first half of 2007 we might wake up to reality and realise that the two-state solution is no longer attainable, and then what?”

Until the Arab League and the Quartet understand and act on this reality, the graveyard will continue to grow in Gaza and ultimately and unfortunately extend to the graveyards in the West Bank and Israel.

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Bill Clinton was neither the first musical president of the United States nor the only one. Both Harry S. Truman and Richard Nixon were excellent piano players.

People were surprised to learn that the former President, Bill Clinton, plays the saxophone. But, several other Presidents of the United States of American were musically gifted, as well.

There are many former presidents who knew how to play instruments. They include:

* John Quincy Adams, who played the flute

* Thomas Jefferson, who played the violin, cello and clavichord

* Abraham Lincoln, who played the violin and harmonica

* John Tyler, who played violin

* Benjamin Franklin, who played both the violin and guitar

* Ronald Reagan, who played the harmonica

* Chester Arthur, who played the banjo

* Franklin Roosevelt, who played the piano

* Richard Nixon, who played both the piano and accordion

* Harry S.Truman, who played piano

* Woodrow Wilson, who played the violin.

Quite a few political leaders in the USA and abroad have been music lovers and accomplished instrumentalists. This supports the empirical belief that there is a relationship between intelligence and music.

Harry Truman once said about his music, “I missed being a musician, and the real reason I missed being one is because I wasn’t good enough.” He was president from 1945 to 1953.

The one who encouraged his love of music, reading, and history was his beloved mother, Martha Ellen Young. The young Truman was taught piano first by his mother, and then by a music teacher she hired to give the boy two lessons a week until he gave it up. Each day, Truman said, he awoke at 5:00 a.m. and practiced for a couple of hours before going to school. His mother showed disappointment when he decided, at age 15, to stop playing. His lessons became too expensive for him to continue, so Truman stopped taking them.

In 1945, his spouse announced that it was time for him to stop playing the piano. This was because someone published a picture of him playing the piano with an attractive, young Lauren Bacall perched on top of the instrument. At that time, Truman was Vice President, and the country was aware that he was a skilled pianist. He was known to have proficiently played music from famous composers including Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin, just to name a few. Many people believed he could only play music like “Missouri Waltz”, but in reality he didn’t care for that type of music.

Actually, Truman thought about becoming a concert pianist when he was young. Even though he did not pursue his dream, he always kept a piano in his homes. For the rest of his life, Harry S. Truman played the piano for his friends, but he also played because it gave him a sense of peace. Former President Richard Nixon performed for Harry Truman once while making a visit to the White House.

In one of his most often quoted statements about his piano playing skills, Truman said that his choice was to be either a politician or a piano player in a whorehouse. He joked that there was very little difference. Other sources quote him as saying, “More than likely, if I hadn’t been President of the United States, I’d have ended up playing piano in a bawdy house.” His statements prove how much he loved to play the piano.

Gazan Arabs have no one but themselves to blame for voting Hamas into power and allowing Hamas to destroy their lives in the traumatic manner that has suddenly befallen them in the past week.

This inevitability was on the cards from the day Gazans freely – and overwhelmingly – elected Hamas to power in Gaza’s municipal council elections on 28 January 2005 giving Hamas a solid power base and stranglehold in 77 out of the 118 seats contested.

Emboldened by Israel’s total – and unilateral – withdrawal from Gaza on 12 September 2005, Gaza’s population immediately went on a rampage burning synagogues and communal centres left behind in Gaza by the 8000 Jews who had built them over the previous four decades whilst also destroying the productive green houses and agricultural lands created out of desert by the departing Jewish farmers.

Gaza’s exclusively Arab population had by then come to regard Hamas as the party that could really deliver Israel into Islamic hands and wipe the Jewish state off the map as the Hamas Charter so clearly declared. Hamas claimed the credit for Israel’s withdrawal and promised more to the crowds that thronged the Hamas rallies to celebrate Israel’s retreat.

Hamas had by then already carried out thousands of terror attacks killing 425 Israelis and wounding 2,233 others since 2000. Between 1993-2005 Hamas had been responsible for sending 113 suicide bombers into Israel to deliberately target, murder and maim civilians in places like restaurants, buses and shopping centers.

Hamas certainly practised what they preached and Gaza’s civilian population were now prepared to vest Hamas with even greater political power in Gaza.

193000 Gazans gave Hamas that green light on 25 January 2006 in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections whilst 174000 Gazans supported the incumbent ruling party – Fatah. Hamas ended up winning 74 seats overall whilst Fatah could only win 45 seats.

Gazans had made their choice undeterred by the fact that Hamas had been declared a terrorist organization by America, the European Union, Australia, Canada and Israel.

Fatah certainly only had itself to blame for its 2006 stunning electoral defeat having allowed Hamas to contest those elections in breach of the Oslo Accords that Fatah had signed in 1995 which stated:
“The nomination of any candidates, parties or coalitions will be refused, and such nomination or registration will be cancelled, if such candidates, parties or coalitions 1) commit or advocate racism, or 2) pursue the implementation of their aims by unlawful non-democratic means.”

The ensuing havoc and political schism between Hamas and Fatah following Hamas’ huge win saw Gaza being effectively taken over by Hamas whilst a large number of the 174000 Fatah supporters and their families fled to the relative safety of the West Bank to escape the purge of Fatah members occupying positions of power within Gaza’s political echelons. Others were not so lucky and died in the internecine strife that followed.

Entrenched in power in Gaza, Hamas did not embark on nation building. Instead it engaged in a massive build up of rockets smuggled through an extensive network of tunnels running under Egypt and into Gaza whilst continuing to manufacture its own home grown versions for indiscriminate dispatch into Israeli population centres.

Gazans were willing partners to this murderous enterprise making their homes the exit points for newly constructed tunnels whilst actively assisting in the assembling and manufacturing of an arsenal of rockets and mortars that seemed infinite in the number available to be fired at Israel.

Israel absorbed many attacks and responded to others by blockades, embargoes and limited incursions into Gaza which had little effect in stemming the almost daily barrages. Each retaliatory action by Israel was met with huge protests and demonstrations by tens of thousands of Gazans.

No voices of protest or warning were heard or raised in Gaza at its Government’s precipitate action. Some may argue this was caused by fear and that the population had become captive and hostage to its new rulers whose dreams of driving Israel into the sea had overwhelmed its primary responsibility to advance the well being and development of its own constituency.

Suffering became the norm as electricity, water and fuel supplies were cut by Israel.

“Humanitarian crisis”, “collective punishment” and “breaches of international humanitarian law” became the international chants to confront Israel and comfort the Gazans as their leaders – duly emboldened by this limp response – persisted with their sworn declaration to kill as many Jews as they could.

Renewal of an uneasy six months’ truce mediated by Egypt in June 2008 was spurned by Hamas. The truce period had enabled a build up of rockets with a far greater range than had been previously been employed. It was time for the rocket game to begin in earnest once again.

Israel however had had enough and has now responded like never before. The destruction visited on Gaza’s institutions of power, its Hamas foot soldiers, rocket launchers, network of tunnels and rocket and mortar arsenal are yet to be publicly revealed. Hamas has not been bowed and has indicated its intention of continuing its suicidal program by firing more rockets far deeper into Israel than previously thought possible.

Gazan Arabs are now having their electoral decisions sheeted home to them in no uncertain fashion. Whilst the Palestine Liberation Organisation may have been foisted on them in an undemocratic fashion in 1964, the embrace of Hamas in 2005 and 2006 was decidedly the opposite.

Rescuing the Gazans from the disastrous consequences of their political choices involves the removal of Hamas.

Replacing Hamas with Fatah is not really a viable alternative. Fatah has shown itself to be totally incapable of reaching a peaceful accommodation with Israel after 15 years of fruitless negotiations. Both organizations are total political write-offs.

The only possible solution involves Egypt reassuming control over Gaza as it did between 1948-1967. This time there will have to be one fundamental difference – Gaza and its citizens must embark on the road to peace with – not seek the destruction of – Israel.

Redrawing the boundary between Israel and Egypt to incorporate all of Gaza and its citizens in Egypt’s sovereign territory is a commonsense approach that now urgently requires the support of the Arab League, the other Islamic States and the remainder of the international community to make it work.

It can – and must – happen if the suffering and despair of the Gazan Arabs are to be ended.

This solution does not –thankfully – involve rocket science although removing Hamas first probably will require its judicious use by Israel in a directly targeted and surgical manner.

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