Eye on the Middle East Jul/Aug 2011
A different atmosphere has emerged in Egypt since President Hosni Mubarak’s departure. The Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Iran are no longer viewed with disdain; and Hamas has an office in Cairo. In fact, Cairo recently hosted secret talks between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority’s (PA’s) Fatah, two long-standing rivals that now claim they have created a unity government.
Fatah is headed by Mahmoud Abbas and considered by Israel and the West to be a legitimate peace partner. Hamas, on the other hand, is a ruthless terrorist organization that refuses to recognize Israel’s existence and states in its charter, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it….There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.”
Abbas’s willingness to team up with Hamas shows how weak he is and what measures he will take to stay in power. The alliance bodes nothing good for Israel.
FOX News Middle East correspondent Reena Ninan said a new Pew research poll reveals “more than 50 percent of Egyptians want the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt to end.”
Arutz-7 has reported that a new map by the pro-Israel Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI) “shows that a Hamas-Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority state, with or without all the borders the PA demands, would leave all of what would remain of Israel within Katyusha missile range.”
The map was created by Mark Langfan, a New York attorney and expert on military and strategic issues, who has frequently appeared at congressional committees on Capitol Hill.
“A Hamas-Fatah PA state would allow the Hamas terrorist organization, whose stated aim is the destruction of Israel, to deploy Iranian and Syrian-supplied Katyusha missiles near all Israel urban centers,” the news service stated.
Arutz-7 said the AFSI map points out that 70 percent of Israel’s population and 80 percent of its industrial base are located in the coastal region that includes Netanya and metropolitan Tel Aviv. Furthermore, “Jerusalem would be within easy range of Jericho, where the PA army is trained on a United States-funded base by American military officers. Be’er Sheva already has been attacked by Grad Katyusha missiles from Gaza, as have been Haifa and the Galilee.”
David Horovitz, editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, wants to know: “Where is the outrage? I waited for the global condemnation for the Palestinian Authority and its president for choosing to tie their fate to an organization ideologically bent on wiping out the Jewish state.” The answer to Horovitz’s question is that there was no outrage, only silence.
So far, the Obama administration “has only stated that it is ‘studying’ the new agreement,” Arutz-7 said, while, in typical fashion, “former U.S. President Jimmy Carter stated he thinks it is a great idea.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted to the news from Cairo by telling the PA it “must choose peace with Hamas or with Israel; not both.” He knows that an alliance between the PA and Hamas is certain to crush any vestiges of hope for a peace agreement.
When King Solomon was faced with the awesome task of ruling Israel, he asked the Lord for wisdom. In the reality of today’s Middle East, we hope that Israel’s leaders will take a page from Solomon’s book and ask God to grant them His guidance and wisdom so that they are able to protect the tiny Jewish nation.
