Europe in the Middle East / Comment
After Bush's Speech, Tony Blair Would Be Well Advised to Stay Home
27/07/2007 By Henry Siegman
President Bush:
“In Gaza, Hamas radicals betrayed the Palestinian people with a lawless and violent takeover.”
The facts:
The Palestinian people were betrayed not by Hamas, whom they elected to run their government in the first truly democratic elections in the Arab world, but by Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who, with a typically colonial mindset, planned to overthrow the Palestinian people’s democratic choice by financing and arming Fatah, the party that lost the elections.
The terms employed by Bush - “aggression”, “lawless” and “betrayal” - accurately describe Bush’s unsuccessful effort to get the party expelled by Palestinian voters to carry out a putsch against Hamas, the party that won.
Hamas outflanked the would-be insurrectionists, led by Mohammed Dahlan, Gaza’s leading warlord and Abbas’ national security adviser, and expelled him and his militias from Gaza.
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Keywords
Conflict Gaza Strip and West Bank Israel MEPP Middle EastBio author: Henry Siegman
Henry Siegman is president of the U.S./Middle East Project, a program of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) for the past 14 years and, as of September 2006, an independent policy institute. He is also a research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Mr. Siegman's areas of specialization include Arab-Israel relations, the Middle East peace process, U.S. Middle East policy, and interreligious relations.
