US Meddling To Blame For Gaza Crisis

Courtesy Of: IslamOnline
16/06/2007
02:00:54 PM GMT

CAIRO - The US intervention in the Palestinian affairs and categorization of Palestinian factions into moderates and extremists are partly to blame for the Gaza chaos, the intensifying power struggle between Fatah and Hamas and left plans for a unified Palestinian state up in the air, American analysts said Friday, June 15.

"The less we try to intervene and shape Palestinian politics, the better off we will be," Robert Malley, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the International Crisis Group, told The Washington Post.

"Almost every decision the United States has made to interfere with Palestinian politics has boomeranged."

Almost three years ago following the death of veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat , US President George W. Bush stood in the White House's Rose Garden and laid out his vision for the Palestinians and called for democratic elections for future leadership.

But democracy brought Hamas to power in a shock win to the US administration, Israel and the West, which all tried their best to marginalize Hamas and slapped a crippling economic boycott of its government.

Washington organized a financial boycott of the government, in an effort to showcase Abbas as a moderate alternative in his role as president.

Well-placed sources had further told Reuters that the US and EU backed the training of Fatah's troops in Jordan to reinforce Abbas in any showdown with Hamas.

"Ever since Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections last January, President Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel have done everything they could think of to isolate Hamas and far less than they might have to help Fatah's most important remaining leader, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas," The New York Times said in its editorial on Friday.

"Seventeen months later, Hamas is that much stronger and Fatah is that much weaker. With the pretense of joint government now shattered, the Palestinian power struggle is certain to continue, even to intensify," it added.

...Alvaro de Soto , the outgoing UN Mideast peace envoy, said on Wednesday that the unquestioning subservience of the UN and the international community to the US and Israeli interests had handicapped all efforts for peace in the Middle East and added insult to Palestinian injuries.

In his 53-page report, the seasoned diplomat regretted that the UN and the rest of the Mideast Quartet, Russia and the EU - have become a "side-show" and "pretty much a group of friends of the US ."