Hamas and Fatah

When Hamas won the Palestinian Authority election at the end of January, one of its leaders (who wanted to remain anonymous) stated that Hamas would not be giving up its goal of destroying Israel.

Now Fatah, with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade as its military arm, has announced that it intends to be the primary terrorist organization going after Israel. This is from today's WorldNetDaily, and this similar article is from Tuesday's WorldNetDaily.

Fatah tried to behave nicely while they were in power, but now they don't have to. They've obviously seen that the Palestinians want the destruction of Israel, so they're going to out-Hamas Hamas itself by ramping up the violence and declaring a third intifada. They must be thinking that they'll get the reins of power back (and all the foreign-aid cash coming in) this way.

At the same time, Israel looks as though it has a death wish, because it's still planning to withdraw from the West Bank. Because of the geography in that region, this would give the Palestinians easier access (closer targets for their rocket attacks) to Israeli cities as the disengagement progresses. Even though Israel's plans include a buffer around Jerusalem, that buffer looks awfully tiny, and Jerusalem looks awfully vulnerable.

An image comes to mind from some old movie I saw long ago. The hero, face-to-face with an enemy, bares his chest over his heart and hands the enemy a knife. After some thought (and temptation), the enemy chooses not to kill the hero. This baring of the chest is what Israel is doing with their unilateral withdrawals from some of the 1967-won territory. Unlike the movie, though, Israel's enemy wouldn't hesitate to plunge the knife--they've already said as much.