Yeah --- this may be the SHORTEST thread I ever started. Just discovered that what happened 7 months only seems to have lasted about one month..
Abbas’ sanctions on Gaza are bad news for both the Palestinians and Israel
It was simple logic: Egypt managed to get the bitter rivals in one room, but demanded that they avoid discussing the biggest obstacle—handing the security control over the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority and disarming the military wings.
So the organizations’ leaders sat around one table in Cairo and then in Gaza, shook hands, raised them in the air with a big smile, posed for photographs and promised that this time it’s for real, that this time it will work out. But the elephant in the room was too
big,
It took Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas only several days to declare from every stage that the Hezbollah model in Lebanon would not be duplicated in the Gaza Strip. Different Palestinian officials asserted in closed briefings that not a single worker in Hamas’ security apparatuses would be incorporated into the Palestinian security apparatuses. Hamas, for its part, presented a very simple model: Anything above the ground would be under the Palestinian government’s responsibility, and anything underground would be under Hamas’ responsibility. Make no mistake—the word “underground” doesn’t refer to the tunnels alone, but to everything that has to do with the organization’s military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
But plans are one thing, and reality is another thing. Hamas did hand the control over the crossings to the PA, dismantle its front posts near the Erez and Karni crossings and give the PA control over the Rafah Crossing (which remained almost permanently closed), and the Palestinian government ministers in Ramallah did receive control over their ministries in Gaza, at least on paper—but that’s more or less where it ended.
Signs of escalation
Many believed that from this point, the reconciliation process would slowly die down, but then two explosions occurred: A physical explosion in the form of a roadside bomb that was detonated near Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s convoy, and the second explosion in the form of Abbas’ verbal attack on Hamas at a Palestinian leadership meeting in Ramallah. Not only has Abbas failed to lift most of the sanctions he imposed on the strip before the reconciliation agreement, but last week he even announced he would step up the measures against Gaza and Hamas. Further sanctions in the current unstable situation in the Gaza Strip will clearly deepen the crisis and the civilians’ distress. Ending the reconciliation agreement on a violent note is bad news for the Palestinians, but for Israel too.
Indeed, the security forces have been the division since 2007 and that problem has its roots going back to Oslo. The security forces were established to be under the authority of the president but under the ultimate control of Israel. These forces regularly violate domestic and international law and the rights of the Palestinians. They give no security to the Palestinians.
These are the forces that Hamas ran out of Gaza in 2007 and they really do not want them back.
Those PA security forces had TOTAL control of the major Pali cities before the Civil War. And the courts that went with them. With very little interference from Israel. That's WHY Israel in 2004 started the process to give COMPLETE authority in Gaza. Of course, that was a disaster when Hamas turned from a welfare org into a warfare org.
And the PA SINCE THEN has been right along side Egypt, Jordan, Israel and much of the world in ISOLATING and PUNISHING Gaza.
