Watering the desert

 

 

There must be some weird pleasure in ‘sleeping with the enemy’ that makes Israel do it again and again. If earlier it was Yasser Arafat, propped up to counter the Hamas, now it is President Mahmoud Abbas who Israel is strengthening to tackle the more extremist faction in Palestine. Th e new development is that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has coaxed the Bush administration to shell out $100m from the frozen Palestinian Authority funds to give Abbas. Olmert also convinced Egypt to provide the Fatah faction with a large consignment of arms including 200 AK-47 rifl es, 20,000 magazines and two million bullets worth around $12m. In addition, millions of dollars have been released to help Abbas defeat the Hamas.

Th e strategy is simple: engage the Palestinians in an internal battle and let them kill each other rather than bombing innocent Israelis. A sound strategy, especially when the world is condemning Israel for gross violation of human rights. It makes sense for Olmert to shift the focus of Hamas away from Israeli territory to people within their own community. “Israel would achieve its goal of not only creating a wider wedge in the enemy camp, but would also be able to annihilate the socalled extremists without using its own soldiers”, Dr Girijesh Pant, Chairperson, Centre for West Asian and African Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, told TSI. Th is appears cool. Except that weapons have a nasty way of popping up. What Israel is supplying today to hurt Palestinians could well be used to target Israelis later. It’s odd: the more Israel fi ghts, the less it seems to win. Long drawn battles cannot be solved by creating a Frankenstein’s monster.

Th e problem is that Palestinians are too willing to kill each other. Th ey forget that progress is in construction, not in destruction. Th e way to do it is talk. Talk till something gives. Th e Hamas and Fatah should see the good in each other and join hands for peace. Lest they should have no people or no land to fi ght for.