This link has been bookmarked by 2 people . It was first bookmarked on 20 Sep 2007, by John L. Knight.
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05 Jun 09
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"But look what Hamas is doing in Gaza." That is the standard response in the West Bank to reports about the offensive being waged by the Palestinian Authority (PA) against Hamas activists.
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Information cannot be obtained through torture, the official said. According to him, Palestinian intelligence has succeeded, in the last few months, in uncovering - without torture - many details about the activities of the illegal Hamas Executive Force in the West bank and about plans to attack PA officials.
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one large difference stands out: the acts of repression by Hamas in Gaza and the violation of basic civil rights there are given relatively wide media coverage in Israel and abroad. Similar actions by the PA in the West Bank, however, are hushed up.
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The reason for this oversight is basically political. The negating of freedom, arrests and intimidations fit the definition of Hamas as an Islamic terror organization, but not the respectable, Western, appearance of the Ramallah leadership under PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayad
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According to the current Israeli and American interpretation, Abbas and Fayad are capable of reaching a "compromise" (more correctly, a surrender) with Israel. That is to say, an arrangement of a state of enclaves, intersected by settlements (or, alternatively, "a state with temporary borders").
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Ignoring the PA's campaigns of repression is a repetition of past mistakes. It means a denial of the fact that Hamas has won its popularity not because of its religious-political vision, and that the dual reason for its victory at the polls has not disappeared: The PLO failed in the negotiations to achieve political independence; at the same time, its internal administration is tainted by a lack of caring for its people and by seeing mainly to the interests of a limited stratum of society. This stratum owes its comfortable status to the adherence to a tactic of failed negotiations with Israel, over a non-solution.
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20 Sep 07
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n these mirror images, one large difference stands out: the acts of repression by Hamas in Gaza and the violation of basic civil rights there are given relatively wide media coverage in Israel and abroad. Similar actions by the PA in the West Bank, however, are hushed up.
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In reality, however, the legitimacy of the PA leadership stems from its compliance with the U.S. standard for an acceptable Arab regime.
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