IF PUMMELLING THE GAZANS INTO REJECTING HAMAS DOESN’T WORK, TRY BRIBING THEM.

Not content with attempting to bomb the Gazans into rejecting Hamas, now they’re going to try and buy the Gazans into rejecting Hamas.

The Israelis tried to destroy Hamas by deliberately bombing the Gazan people together with their homes, their means of industrial and agricultural production and by destroying their utilities infrastructure. The Israelis literally tried to terrorise the Gazan people into rejecting Hamas as their government in an effort to get the people to support the far more compliant Fatah movement that currently controls the West Bank under the tenuous leadership of Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. Their attempts, however, despite the destruction and the massive and horrific casualties, failed miserably.

Now, in the light of that failure, Israel’s bankers, the US government, has followed up very conveniently with plan ‘B’. US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is offering a massive bribe to the Gazan people of around a billion dollars, but with a catch; only the Palestinian Authority gets to spend it on reconstructing the Gaza. The aim, quite blatantly, is to ‘sideline’ Hamas.

Apart from wanting to sideline Hamas, one has to wonder what makes Secretary Clinton believe that Fatah are the right people to give this money to. For years Fatah have been known to be corrupt to the core; indeed, it was as much Fatah’s corruption that gave Hamas victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections in the first place. The Gazan people know that if Abbas and the Palestinian Authority get their hands on the money, very little of it will actually end up rebuilding the Gaza.

One of the reasons Hezbollah’s popularity increased in Lebanon after the 2006 Israeli attack against the Lebanese people, and despite the carnage the Israelis inflicted, was Hezbollah’s massive effort in reconstruction. However, Hamas has not been in the same position as Hezbollah and has been hamstrung in their efforts to attempt to rebuild the Gaza due to the blockade by Israel. What little money Hamas had tried to bring into the Gaza, money raised by donations to the Gazan people, to help get the economy going was stolen at the border between the Gaza and Egypt by the Egyptian authorities.

This blatant attempt by the US to get the Gazan people to abandon Hamas will be as much a failure as the Israelis attempt to bomb them into rejecting Hamas. Surely now it must be obvious to the leaders of the world that if there is going to be any headway at all then Hamas must be included. But, of course, we know exactly what Israel’s true intentions are; nothing less than the destruction of not just Hamas but also the Palestinian people in the Gaza as part of the process of creating a Greater Israel that includes the Gaza Strip for colonisation by Israelis only.