Greetings global watchers, and sorry for my week long hiatus. While reporting on the events in Gaza, I was invited to a Hamas hookah house party…which was a total blast. Literally! An Israeli airstrike brought the whole house down. What a rush! By the time I was unburied from the rubble and sobered up, Egypt had resealed the border so it took me a little time to sneak back across to a Jordanian internet café. Long story short, we need to finish our Gaza story…

So where the hell did I leave off? Oh yes, Fatah friends and Hamas Haters…and now we can point out how this situation has played out in the current border breech debacle. Since Hamas kicked Fatah out of the Gaza Strip, Israel and all its western allies (namely the US) have basically tried to make life a living hell for Hamas. Why? To get them the hell out of power because they refuse to recognize the right of Israel to exist, and therefore cannot play a part in the peace process. In other words, due to Hamas’ political ideology, Israel and ‘Team West’ simply cannot interact with them at all, cannot give them an ounce of legitimacy at all, and cannot play ball with them at all…not even for a backyard pick-up game of Nerf! And since Hamas also uses suicide bombers and keeps lobbing homemade rockets over the wall into Israel, they are labeled as terrorists…and thus most western governments do not want to negotiate with terrorists. It should be noted that the rockets that Hamas lobs over the wall are about as tactically effective as lobbing over Nerf balls.

So how are Israel and Team West trying to crush Hamas? Why, by crushing the entire Gaza Strip of course! That is how this whole current mess started. Israel (with complicity from the West) slapped down the entire area with an embargo seven months ago, sealed off the borders, cut off the electricity and stopped all movement of virtually all goods and services. This was done for two reasons: 1)To punish Hamas and further demonstrate that the West hates them, and 2) To punish the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip so badly that they would turn on Hamas and stage some sort of coup. Everyone already knew #1….and #2 simply didn’t really happen. And Israel and Team West really hates that #2 didn’t happen….but don’t we all hate when an expected #2 doesn’t happen? My advice: eat more bran!

This ‘starving out’ of the Gaza Strip really reached a fever pitch as the Israelis (again, with complicity from the EU and the US) started shutting off the power about a month ago. And this fever pitch of desperation brings us back full circle to the events of two weeks ago—people got so desperate in Gaza that they blew a fucking hole in the wall on the Gaza/Egypt border, and spilled out en masse to buy food, fuel, smokes, and some more Nerf footballs. That’s it. That’s why it happened. And for two weeks, Egypt has largely allowed this to go on, trying more to control the flow of folks as opposed to outright stopping them. However they just did rebuild and secure the wall two days ago…so the wall breach is officially over, for now.

But this Gaza ‘break-out’ of course defeated the whole point of the embargo, and it seriously pissed off Israel, the US and most in the EU. And who suffered the brunt of this rage? Egypt of course! Egypt has been stuck right in the middle of this shit storm, and everything they do pisses someone off! How so?

Here’s how: Egypt is an Arab state and as such has sympathies for the plight of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, which is why they allowed the wall breach to go on for so long without going ape shit and shooting people. In fact, most of the Arab world was glad to see Egypt easing the situation for the Gaza folks by letting them re-supply. But of course the soft stance that Egypt took totally pissed off Israel and the US, which has been beating them down and badgering the Egyptians to re-seal the border as fast as possible. Why should Egypt do anything those countries say? Because they are a huge US ally, and the #3 recipient of US foreign aid…that’s why! Egypt has also signed a peace agreement with Israel, and therefore is kind of an ‘ally’ to them as well…although that definition may be pushing it just a little.

To appease the US and ‘Team West’, Egypt has made moves to tighten the flow of people, and it eventually did rebuild and seal the wall on Wednesday of this week…but of course that pissed off all the folks in Gaza, as well as pissing off a lot of Arabs across the entire Middle East that interpret this as Egypt sucking up to America. Well, yeah, kind of I guess, but what else are they to do? Completely open the border altogether? Hmmm….some have suggested just that, and in fact there is some speculation that maybe Egypt should just take over the entire damn Gaza Strip and make it part of Egypt! Dig:

How to Turn Gaza Over to Egypt

However, Egypt has put forth a resounding ‘Hell-freakin-no!’ to that idea already. They want to get out of this shit storm as fast as possible, and many Egyptians are plenty pissed that anyone would even suggest that they fully adopt this bullshit situation to fix on their own. Why the hell should they fix the fucking mess that 60 years of Arab-Israeli hi-jinks have created? Our main man Hosni Mubarak don’t want to touch that shit! In fact, Egypt is basically pushing for ANYBODY to come take over this border area from them, so they can get out of the middle of the mayhem. They have even put forth a proposal for the Fatah controlled Palestinian Authority in West Bank (remember them?) to take over security at the border…a move which you should have instantaneously predicted would totally piss of Hamas:

Egypt wants PA back on Gaza border

Egypt boosts troop security along border with Gaza amid alleged Hamas’ kidnapping threat

So now Hamas is pissed at Egypt, the Arab World is not happy with Egypt, and the US/Israel still don’t think Egypt is doing enough to control the border. Damn! Egypt just pisses everybody off, no matter what they do! Sucks to be Egypt!

And the future? Not hard to predict…it is already upon us. Shit, shit and more shit to come for the Israelis, the Gaza inhabitants, and anyone who is trying to work for a single ‘Palestine’ state solution. And we won’t have long to wait to see my predictions come true, as things are turning even nastier, even faster than usual:

Israel-Gaza Fighting Escalates

Cycle of violence continues in Gaza

Tensions in Gaza escalate

A Coming Hamas-Israel War?

So the Gazans feel that their backs are against a wall and that the Israeli embargo will starve them all to death, so they feel compelled to act with violence. Hamas apparently sanctioned a suicide bomber to blow up people in Dimona on Monday, and Hamas also continues to fire rockets into southern Israel on a regular basis. This infuriates Israel, which in turn decided to make the embargos even more harsh, and also to conduct air strikes in Gaza. Senior officials in Israel are now discussing the possibility of targeting all Hamas politicians. All these moves further isolate people in Gaza and make them feel that there backs are against the wall which compels them to act with violence…wait a damn minute! This is one of those vicious circle deals! This really sucks!

Full-on war is coming to this place my friends, and coming soon. I stand by the prediction I made back in the summer: the two-state solution is totally dead—meaning that the idea of a peace process between a state called Israel and a state called Palestine can no longer happen, since Palestine itself is fractured. The Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip will never reunite with the Fatah-controlled West Bank. But something is going to happen. Probably something shitty. I look for Hamas to continue to piss off Israel, which will inevitably lead to a full military invasion of Gaza by the Israelis….and I’ll even give you a sudden flash of brilliance that occurred to me on how they will do it: Watch for a fully funded Fatah army to lead such a charge, or certainly be there to mop up and take over once Israel levels the place. Just an instinct on my part, but it is no guesswork that Fatah is already being funded and vamped up by Team West to ultimately control this territory again, and from past blogs you should know why!

Some of you may be asking: “But Plaid, why doesn’t the UN just come in and take over this mess?” That is an excellent question that is worthy of another blog, perhaps you would like me to visit the UN Security Council and ask them personally?….or would you like me to head to some other hotspots to see what’s up…maybe Kenya?…maybe Chad?…maybe a XXX nightclub on the outskirts of Amsterdam? I am your humble servant my friends, so drop me a line on this blog decide where my next adventure will take me…

Until then, Party in Plaid.

-PA