CAN’T HEAR YOU

CAN’T HEAR YOU

The last few weeks in Gaza’s northern farm town, Beit Hanoun, have come to resemble the recent war in Lebanon, culminating with air strikes on a residence that killed 18 members of an extended family. This was arguably another Quana. In the last few weeks we have seen low flying Apache helicopters shooting missiles, tanks blasting homes, men of a certain age rounded up for interrogation. We see on television, infrastructure destruction and the end to civil life. Israel, angry at not stamping out Hezbollah, is trying the same tactics on Hamas. Dutifully, as if a puppet of Olmert with the Israeli military Haniyah supplying the pretext, a Qassam rocket was fired on Siderot and occasionally further north toward Askelon.
Why would Haniyah and Hamas keep firing these taunting yet ineffective homemade missiles inviting the very same Israeli response? Possible answers are: To be a “war president” like our own. To divert the Palestinians from establishing a legitimate state. To show strategic sympathy with Hezbollah, the Iraqi resistance, and the Taliban. Or possibly to provoke international intervention. Let’s explore the last option as it may be the key to understanding Palestinian thinking.
Haniyah has been calling for an international force to observe and protect the Gazan Palestinians for some time. Arafat did this too. For decades, after every military defeat by the Israeli’s he begged and beseeched the U.N., the Arab League or anyone else to help him. His final plea, in the form of a last act aria, was Jennin. Arafat fully expected a NATO airlift to arrive in Ramallah to stop the fighting, conduct a swift inquiry and punish the Israelis in a war crime tribunal. Of course this was just more Arafat fantasy. Televising the Palestinian dream of slaughter-by-suicide-bombing of Jews in Israel, celebrating Passover was even too much for European stomachs. So there was no international intervention, and Jennin was no longer a haven for criminals waging crimes against humanity.
Fast-forward a few years later. Let’s take a tour of the world’s ears, the ears that Haniyah expects to hear his plea for intervention. The United States unleashed a hornets nest of barbarity in Iraq. The humanity of Muslims could not be lower in the minds of American citizens. The primitive butchery, the religious hate, the bloodshed has not earned Muslims credit in the eyes of most Americans. In England, one quarter of Muslim youth who support jihad are subjected to West Bank style pre-emptive raids in the East End suburbs of London. France has its own Intifada as well. Street clashes in the banlieue between baton wielding police and Muslim thugs resulted in the incineration of cars and buildings. Photos from the fall of 2005 documenting the unrest are interchangeable with photos of Bethlehem over the last few years. Denmark too is fighting its own citizens who are murdering cartoonist and filmmakers, while the Spanish have arrested dozens of suspected terrorists who were planning more murder and mayhem.
In the Muslim and Arab world discord both within and between countries could not be greater. After igniting anti-Semitic hatred as cover for economic and political failure the Mubarak regime has hit a wall. The Muslim brotherhood is a greater threat to Egypt than it is to Israel. If the Egyptians had extra soldiers, certainly they would have sent them to Red Sea resorts to stop Muslim bombers from wrecking the last hope for foreign exchange.
The gulf state oil giants are shaky from their own Whabbi stoked insurgency. While they look over their shoulder, their enemy possesses nuclear arms and has a thirteen century long religious grudge, coupled with a Mandahi minded worldview. Haniyah knows that these ultra rich gulf oil Arabs, his fellow Ulema members, spend more money grooming their beloved horses than sending aide to Palestinians. Frankly, to paraphrase Rhett Butler “they don’t give a damn.”
Further east it is even stranger. While Muslim fanatics in Preshawa are marching for Palestine, the Pakistani army is dropping thousand pound bombs on Madresses in the territories. This is occurring, two weeks after a peace treaty was signed between the tribesman of the Northwest and the Islamabad government. That lasted a long time! Talk about “Hundas,” it was only ten days, not the prescribed 10 years as contained in the Koran. Clearly, Musharraf had to send a message to Whabbi interlopers with designs on assassinating him and destabilizing Afghanistan. That alone was enough.
That is a very brief thumbnail sketch of the world Haniyah is calling out to. Except for the expected Israeli hatred of London’s Guardian and a few perfunctory remarks by the E.U., clearly no one is listening. Three after the Israeli attack in Gaza, over a hundred men, women and children were slaughtered with praise from Allah all over Iraq. If Haniyah listens carefully all he will hear back is his own echo, the world is fighting its own Muslims everywhere and won’t be distracted.