As Israeli soldiers search for
weapons-smuggling tunnels and IAF fighter planes target rocket launchers
in the Gazan terror swamp, there is a growing chorus in the Israeli
media talking up the need to dry up the terrorist cesspool. Rather than
making do with treating the symptoms of the disease that goes by the
name "Hamas," but also being rid of the causes of the illness itself.
Recently there are a growing number of signs
that Israelis have come to their senses and understand what we are
dealing with is a malfunction in the main valve, which incites and
expedites the motivation for murder while streamlining huge funds to
build a large Islamist emirate for Hamas in the violent Gaza Strip.
While still somewhat tardy, Israelis have
finally managed to pinpoint the source of the problem -- the flow of
cash and indoctrination originating in Qatar. This largesse allows Hamas
to purchase arms form Iran and other terror havens. Still, the root of
this malady remains, and the protective sheath around it -- including
the United States -- is preventing those who wish to nip this illness in
the bud from doing the job.
This is the third military operation in which
IDF exterminators have gone in to disinfect this malarial swamp.
Nonetheless, it continues to spawn new maggots. The useless argument
raging in Israel pits those who support a withdrawal and a cease-fire
while keeping a weakened Hamas in power, against those who believe that
the re-occupation of Gaza must be completed and that Hamas must be
destroyed. There are even those who are demanding that an alternative
Palestinian leadership be permitted to rule Gaza.
Those who believe that it is possible to
negotiate with Hamas have yet to read the Islamist organization's
charter. They have yet to internalize its statements, declarations, and
murderous intentions. Those who in their ignorance demand that
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ride into Gaza on the
turret of an IDF tank and be installed as the ruler there have forgotten
how the PLO was brutally evicted from the Strip in an unprecedented
wave of violence in 2007.
Ever since Israel's disengagement from Gaza,
the world anticipated that the sheer volume of investments from Qatar,
Saudi Arabia, and other Arab governments, combined with assistance from
the United States and Europe as well as the windfall generated by Hamas'
industry of underground smuggling tunnels would help turn Gaza into the
Singapore of the Middle East.
"When people have it good, they have something to lose; then they won't agitate for war," so the popular saying went.
This errant approach led to international
pressure on Israel to lift the siege, enabling the flow of dollars,
weapons, cement, fuel, and components used to make explosive devices
into the Gaza Strip.
Hamas has poured massive funds toward
procuring the means to destroy Israel. These means were made possible by
the political, financial and ideological backing from the emirs of
Qatar. Nearly everything that the Palestinians in Gaza managed to import
came either from the tunnels or from the border crossings opened by
Israel -- everything, except for the fairy tales being disseminated by
the Israeli Left, which has spoken of peace and dialogue and economic
prosperity as the basis for stability and co-existence.
Meet the partner
Throughout his tortuous relationship with
Israel, Mahmoud Abbas has steadily continued to move closer toward the
murderous Hamas regime, the same organization that just a few years ago
brutally killed his own people. The Palestinian leader's popularity was
at an all-time low, but the recent crisis has provided a bit of comfort.
It is an open secret that the unity government
he formed was a foolish attempt to create the illusion of a "united"
Palestinian Authority. The goal was to attain the necessary diplomatic
and political status that would have enabled the PA to unilaterally
declare statehood in defiance of Israel.
Hamas, for its part, wanted to ensure an
infusion of $30 million from Qatar as part of the terror funding and
regular support it has received (along with the Islamic Movement in
Israel) over the years.
Immediately after the formation of the unity
government, Hamas tried to kidnap Israeli civilians and win the
Palestinian elections scheduled six months from that time. It hoped to
ride the wave of popularity similar to that which it enjoyed in the wake
of the Gilad Schalit swap.
Its plans went awry. The Jewish teenagers who
were kidnapped were murdered. The IDF smashed Hamas' infrastructure in
the West Bank. The Hamas members who were freed from prison in the
Schalit deal were re-arrested and again jailed. This is where the story
takes a dramatic turn, the part of the narrative in which Hamas'
missiles and tunnels went into action, aiming their murderous intentions
at us.
Now we have Abbas running around like a
chicken without a head, shuttling from Qatar to Cairo, meeting with
Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal and Ramadan Abdullah, the
Islamic Jihad emissary. Abdullah realized that the Islamist nature of
Hamas and his organization dovetails perfectly with the global Islamic
terrorist landscape, essentially rendering them an enemy of Egypt. Now
the Islamic Jihad official wishes to emphasize that he is not part of
the global jihadist network, but is rather focused on liberating
Palestine.
In his public appearances, Abbas seeks to
justify Hamas' struggle against occupation and continues to hold the
title of president of a Palestinian unity government. As part of his
efforts to bring about a cease-fire (which nobody in Israel sought),
Abbas' government is demanding the opening of Gaza's border crossings,
the release of the Hamas members who were freed in the Schalit deal and
re-arrested last month, and the release of Palestinian prisoners which
Israel pledged to free as part of the four-phased mass pardon during
peace talks with the PA. It is as if nothing has happened since then.
The good Palestinian boys want to start the game from the beginning,
while expecting a prize.
In a presidential address he delivered this
week in Ramallah, Abbas threatened to pursue legal action against
Israeli war criminals.
"If there is no quiet in Gaza, there won't be quiet anywhere," he said.
Meanwhile, Yasser Abed Rabbo, a PLO official,
made a dramatic speech in which he implored representatives from all of
the Palestinian factions to converge in Cairo for a fateful meeting in
light of the enemy's actions. With a partner like this, who needs
enemies?
This Kafkaesque state of affairs will most
certainly be pleasing to the left-wing activists in our midst. This
terror conglomerate comprising the liberators of Palestine, led by
Abbas, whose henchmen have committed countless atrocities and war crimes
against Israeli civilians, is now accusing Israel of genocide. It
wishes to see Israel tried in The Hague for war crimes.
Abbas is ignoring the fact that as the head of
a "united" Palestinian government, he is directly responsible for the
murder of the three teenagers near Hebron, the terrorists who emerge
from their dens and illegally enter Israeli territory, and the missiles
that are fired daily with the goal of killing Israeli civilians.
We ought to remind Abbas that as the head of
the Palestinian unity government, he is also responsible for the war
crimes committed by Hamas against Palestinian civilians who are being
exploited as human shields, this at a time when Israel did all it could
in order to warn and dissuade Palestinian civilians from crossing the
line of fire.
Whoever pinned their hopes to a new generation
of Palestinians could not have helped but be floored by the success of
the PLO and Hamas educational systems. Postings on the Internet and
social media gave expression to the hate-filled and violent attitudes
with which the Palestinian youth have been inculcated.
The streets of Palestinian cities were filled
with demonstrators thirsty for Jewish blood and support of continued
Hamas missile shelling of Israeli towns. Fortunately, the IDF denied
Hamas the opportunity to do serious damage through its two main outlets
-- the air and the tunnels. As such, it rendered Qatar's plans useless.
The barrel and the match
During an appearance on the news program
entitled "Gaza Fights," which airs on the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera
network, CEO Sahifat al-Arabi spoke on behalf the Qatari Emir Tamim bin
Hamad al-Thani. He bitterly branded Egypt's president, Abdel Fattah
el-Sissi, an infidel and collaborator with Israel on the siege of Gaza.
During the program, the network's Gaza
correspondent reported that Al-Jazeera staff members in Gaza evacuated
their offices after an Israeli aircraft fired two warning shots in their
direction. The emir's spokesperson said that despite Israel's threats,
Qatar will continue to maintain its commitment to help Hamas "and all of
the other freedom-fighting organizations in the Arab and Islamic world,
from Sudan to Lebanon."
The Qataris essentially acknowledged their
role as the bank for global Islamic terrorism, the enablers of
incitement as practiced by the Muslim Brotherhood and its leader, Sheikh
Yusuf al-Qardawi, as well as that of al-Qaida, Hamas, ISIS, and the
other Islamic terror movements active in our region. This was known even
when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was a senator.
"Qatar can't remain a U.S. ally on Monday when
it sends money to Hamas on Tuesday," Kerry said in 2009. Classified
documents exposed by WikiLeaks prove that the Americans knew the Qataris
were involved in financing al-Qaida. Despite this revelation, Kerry
tried to "push" Qatar on us as a credible broker of a cease-fire in lieu
of Sissi's Egypt. He did this knowing that Qatar incites and funds
terrorism committed by the Muslim Brotherhood against the Egyptian
regime, which continues to seek stability in the wake Hosni Mubarak's
ouster.
There are those who say that the inconsistent
American strategy is motivated by weapons sales and large-scale
financial investments. There are those who believe that the Americans
have become completely dependent economically on Qatar. These ties were
frowned upon by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the other moderate
Sunni Gulf states who recalled their envoys from Qatar, which has been
eager to sow discord and incite.
As is customary in Arab tradition, Qatar
recently sent emissaries to Saudi Arabia to "vouch for" Hamas in the
eyes of the Egyptians. Qatar needs to be careful. Whoever hides behind a
canister of gasoline should not play with matches.
In its provocative, anti-Semitic program
"Murdering in the name of the country," Al-Jazeera continued its line of
Israel-bashing by providing a retrospective of the targeted killings
that the IDF has carried out over the years. The information provided in
the program should have taught the leaders of Qatar that it would be
best if they ceased their continued entanglement with Israel.
Trying to save their hide
The emirs of Qatar have their hands on the
terror spigot. Similar to the story of King Midas, who turned everything
he touched to gold, the al-Thani family is sitting on a gold mine. The
Qataris have no skills or positive attributes to offer. Their good
fortune is entirely due to the fact that they were born atop natural gas
fields that the West drilled for them.
The Qataris rake in revenues of hundreds of
billions of dollars a year, which go straight into the coffers of one
small family that rules over a rinky-dink country. It is difficult for
the al-Thani family to live on such a large pile of gold when all around
them are millions of hungry, despair-filled Muslims who are constantly
searching for ways out of their destitution.
Qatar does not seek to heal the world. Rather,
it wishes to safeguard its fortune in the face of threats all around.
In light of its concerns over Iran's growing power, it has become "an
Iranian agent." It finances al-Qaida and mediates in disputes between
the United States and the Taliban.
Qatar essentially paid off the Islamist
radicals in their midst so that they would go blow themselves up in
other parts of the world, far away from the al-Thani family. Since Qatar
is also a problem for the moderate Muslim countries in the region --
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates -- it is using
America as its insurance policy against all of these countries as well
as against Iran.
Just as Qatar found ways to counter the
influence of the moderate Arab states and is using Hamas to do the same
against Israel, there is concern that these governments could look for
their own clients who would help them take aim at the al-Thani family
and render Qatar one large burning natural gas field.
It would be best for the Qataris to be alert, and to watch their backs.
