A marriage made in hell

So Molotov and Ribbentrop are alive and well and living in Gaza and Ramallah. The pact between Fatah and Hamas is of course a marriage of convenience, forged solely to help fool the world into accepting a de facto state of Palestine. If such a pact were to last, then of course it would mean the end of Mahmoud Abbas and the economic and social progress that has been made in Ramallah and environs; these would be replaced by the Iranian satrapy of Hamastan, political dissidents thrown off the tops of tall buildings and women subjected to sexual terrorism and Islamic subjugation.

The fact is that Ramallah wants Gaza to be part of ‘Palestine’ like it wants a hole in the head. The point of the exercise for Abbas is merely to finesse the sticky question of whether ‘Palestine’ will include Gaza, and thus enable Whitehall, Foggy Bottom and Brussels to pretend that Hamas has now decided to stop being genocidal fanatics and become instead liberal democrats keen to show off how many friends they have on Facebook (just like all those nice al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood rebels in Libya and Egypt). But instead Hamas would swallow the PA, and Ramallah would kiss goodbye to the good life it has been belatedly discovering is distinctly preferable to never-ending war and economic and social enslavement.

Meanwhile, there are already calls from members of Congress to end US funding of the PA because of this pact, on the grounds that it is unconscionable for American money to be used to subsidise Hamas because of its open ambition to destroy Israel and the genocidal Jew-hatred of its foundational Charter (it’s a shame the same objections are not made to using western money to fund the incitement by PA-controlled media, preachers and teachers to hate Jews and murder Israelis, but let’s skip lightly over that for now). Germany’s Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has reiterated his country could never deal with Hamas; U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said it would only back a Palestinian government

‘on terms which promote the cause of peace…Hamas, however, is a terrorist organisation which targets civilians.’

Far from leveraging a state of Palestine, this pact could in fact mean therefore that such a state runs headlong into the sand -- even before Abbas drives it into the cul-de-sac of a unilateral declaration that destroys his ability to bargain over its terms. Could it be that, to paraphrase the immortal words of Abba Eban about the Arabs in general, the Palestinians are demonstrating once again how they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity?

Of course, a significant faction within Whitehall, Foggy Bottom and Brussels has been pushing for years for Hamas to be brought in from the cold, on the basis that there can be no solution without it. In fact, Hamastan would more likely only lead to a Final Solution. The idea that genocidal fanatics+genocidal pragmatists=Jeffersonian democrats and peace in our time in the Middle East is merely the morally debauched anti-reasoning which passes for educated opinion in the west.