Barry Rubin
GLORIA Center
18 June '10
A reader asks: What is the West's strategy regarding the Gaza Strip. Good question.
The strategy is to relieve the alleged "humanitarian" issue as soon as possible and quiet everything down. Without thinking through the consequences, the idea is to return the Gaza Strip to as normal a situation as possible in economic and social terms. There is broad recognition of Israel's right to keep out arms and military equipment but doubts about extending the sanctions much beyond that.
To put it bluntly, Western countries are not becoming consciously favorable toward Hamas. They will continue to isolate it politically and deny it arms. The problem is that they do not understand how their policy will: strengthen it, ensure decades of totalitarian rule for Gaza and suffering of the people there under a repressive dictatorship; make future wars unavoidable; make an Israel-Palestinian peace impossible; and subvert Egypt, too.
Essentially, this is not an issue about Israel but one about Hamas, the revolutionary Islamist movement, and the Iranian regime's ambition to dominate the Middle East. The arguments here are so obvious that the only way to prevent people understanding them is to keep them largely out of the mainstream media.
If you give money to Gaza, even to non-Hamas recipients, it will benefit the regime. If you let in non-weapons' equipment in many categories, the regime will take a large portion. If you let in luxury goods, the regime will use it to buy support.
There is no strategic dimension in Western thinking, no sense of what the West wants to happen in the Gaza Strip. Does it want Hamas to survive? Does it understand the implications of that?
There is no recognition of the following points:
(Read full article)
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