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Palestinian Arabs Doing Violence to Own Cause

[New York Sun] Youssef Ibrahim - The Lebanese government has asserted that the Fatah al-Islam gang fighting its army is no more than a band of Syrian hired guns bent on disrupting Lebanon's latest effort to set up an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. UN investigators have ascertained that virtually all of the defendants prosecutors are likely to name are Syrian officials, including President Assad, his brother, and a brother-in-law, among others. What makes our Palestinian Arab brethren gravitate constantly toward the lowest possible denominators? After the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993 offered a chance for much of the gang leadership to return to the West Bank and Gaza, it took Arafat's crew less than two years to alienate even the most die-hard Israeli doves. Suicide bombings led to checkpoints, which led to two intifadas, thus ending the Palestinian Spring. Shortly after Prime Minister Sharon pulled the Israeli army out of Gaza in the summer of 2005, handing the Palestinian Arabs their own territory to govern for the first time ever, they quickly transformed it into a "Mad Max" arena of shootings, kidnappings, and lawlessness. Similarly self-destructive impulses were seen in Lebanon this week, as Fatah al-Islam gang members made their way back to their camp - from a bank robbery - with the Lebanese army in hot pursuit. As you read this, the-bank-robbers-turned-freedom-fighters are likely shooting at the Lebanese army in the name of a free Arab Palestine. Sadly, this is the sort of bankruptcy the Palestinian mind has come to. When the Tripoli episode is done, and internecine fighting among the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza resumes, the world will have moved further away from any sense of commitment to the Palestinian cause, and so will other Arabs.
2007-05-24 01:00:00
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