Thursday, November 15, 2012

Palestinians are now reaping the bitter fruits of their own miscalculations

Amongst the many calamities which have befallen the Palestinian people one of the worst ones is being systematically led by incompetent and corrupt leaders with no strategic vision and a true knack for always choosing the wrong side in a conflict.  From their misguided alliance with all kinds of unsavory terrorist groups in the 1970s, to their support for Saddam, to their naive participation in the Oslo Accords, to today completely misguided support for the NATO-Wahabi insurgents in Syria - the Palestinian leaders seem to never miss an opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot.

The fact that the Israelis have successfully split the Palestinians into three separate groups (Israeli citizens vs West Bank residents vs Gaza residents) is certainly the most glaring example of how easily the Palestinian elites can be manipulated.  And each time, there is hell to pay by the Palestinian people for such mistakes by their leaders.

Look at the situation in Syria.  What have the Palestinians done to themselves this time?  By siding with the NATO-Wahabi insurgency, they have essentially turned against Hezbollah and Iran, their only true friends in the region.  In contrast, the Israelis have carefully succeeded in completely isolating Hamas and now they can afford to safely bomb and kill as many people of the Gaza strip as they want.

And what can Hamas do in retaliation?  Fire some rather useless rockets at Israel and hype the rhetoric about "opening the Gates of Hell" for Israel which, of course, is utter nonsense.  The truth is that the Israeli Iron Done does a halfway decent job shooting down many Palestinian missiles and even when the Palestinian missiles actually succeed in killing a Israeli family (like what happened today), it only serves the political agenda of the Israeli government.

In May of this year I wrote a piece I entitled Clueless Arab and Palestinian leaders and pundits: "¡Que se vayan todos!" expressing my despair and disgust with the Palestinian leadership.  Since May, things only got worse, and innocent Palestinians are dying again as a direct consequence of the mistakes and miscalculations of the Palestinian leaders.  And this really begs the following question: how many more Palestinians will have to die before the Palestinian people realize that they are led by a clique of completely incompetent leaders which do not make things better for the Palestinian people, but only worse, much worse.

The Saker