It is often assumed that "men of violence" always wear masks and brandish weapons, but those who stand on the sidelines and cheer the fight are also men of violence, none more so than Assistant Secretary of State and US Envoy to the Middle East, David Welch.

"I like the violence" -- these were Welch's words when fighting erupted between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza earlier this year. Welch may be in a less celebratory mood right now, but not because the violence is worse -- simply because his side (a small faction inside Fatah) is losing.

The fact that the Bush administration has been instrumental in trying to foment a Palestinian civil war has been clearly documented by Conflicts Forum, but since the press in Washington has been too timid to dig in to this story, it has largely been ignored.
...
Today, a State Department spokesman said:

We have called on others in the region to express their support for President Abbas and those Palestinian moderate political elements who have foresworn the use of violence and who have an interest in reaching a political settlement with Israel via the negotiating table and we're going to continue to support those elements and we're going to continue to support President Abbas.

Yet clearly, envoy Welch has far less interest in who foreswears the use of violence than who wins. And what seems remarkable is that Welch would shamelessly display his credentials as a man of violence in the company of those who would take offense at his blood thirst.
http://warincontext.org/2007_06_10_archive.html#2369796006009353298

More here, on a previous "State Dept." thread:
http://tinyurl.com/2545ek

Administration "policy" has gone well beyond incoherence, cognitive dissonance, etc., and has entered the condition that Sydney Blumenthal calls "the fugue state":

Bush's foreign policy has descended into a fugue state. Dissociated and unaware, the president and his administration are still capable of expressing themselves as if it all makes complete sense, only contributing to their bewilderment. A fugue state should not be confused with cognitive dissonance, the tension produced when irreconcilable ideas are held at the same time and their incompatibility is overcome by denial. In a fugue state, a trauma creates a kind of amnesia in which the sufferer is incapable of connecting to his past. The impairment of judgment comes in great part from a denial of distress. Bush's fugue state involves the reiteration of a failed formula as though nothing has happened. So he proudly reasserts the essence of his Bush doctrine: Our acts are independent of other countries' interests. And he adds new corollaries: Other nations must forgive our unacknowledged mistakes even if we threaten their national security. To this, Bush overlays cognitive dissonance: Our policy is working; it just needs more time. Thus the incoherent becomes coherent."

Perhaps it's crass to point it out, but whatever - I predicted that Hamas was more likely to win than Fatah. Fools.

Hamas nearly wins control of Gaza has further details for those so inclined:-)

_{"George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," Shmuley Boteach}

Secret UN report condemns US for Middle East failures
Envoy's damning verdict revealed as violence takes Gaza closer to civil war

The highest ranking UN official in Israel has warned that American pressure has "pummelled into submission" the UN's role as an impartial Middle East negotiator in a damning confidential report.

The 53-page "End of Mission Report" by Alvaro de Soto, the UN's Middle East envoy, obtained by the Guardian, presents a devastating account of failed diplomacy and condemns the sweeping boycott of the Palestinian government. It is dated May 5 this year, just before Mr de Soto stepped down.

The revelations from inside the UN come after another day of escalating violence in Gaza, when at least 26 Palestinians were killed after Hamas fighters launched a major assault. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the rival Fatah group, warned he was facing an attempted coup.

Mr de Soto condemns Israel for setting unachievable preconditions for talks and the Palestinians for their violence. Western-led peace negotiations have become largely irrelevant, he says.

Mr de Soto is a Peruvian diplomat who worked for the UN for 25 years in El Salvador, Cyprus and Western Sahara. He says:

· The international boycott of the Palestinians, introduced after Hamas won elections last year, was "at best extremely short-sighted" and had "devastating consequences" for the Palestinian people

· Israel has adopted an "essentially rejectionist" stance towards the Palestinians

· The Quartet of Middle East negotiators - the US, the EU, Russia and the UN - has become a "side-show"

·The Palestinian record of stopping violence against Israel is "patchy at best, reprehensible at worst"

Mr de Soto acknowledges in the report that he is its sole author. It was meant only for senior UN officials, and its wording is far more critical than the public pronouncements of UN diplomats. Last night, Mr de Soto, who is in New York, told the Guardian: "It is a confidential document and not intended for publication."

In January last year, the Quartet called on the newly elected Hamas government to commit to non-violence, recognise Israel and accept previous agreements. When Hamas refused to sign up to the principles, the international community halted direct funding to the Palestinian government and Israel started to freeze the monthly tax revenues that it had agreed to pass to the Palestinians. Several hundred million dollars remain frozen.

Mr de Soto, who had opposed the boycott, said this position "effectively transformed the Quartet from a negotiation-promoting foursome guided by a common document [the road map for peace] into a body that was all-but imposing sanctions on a freely elected government of a people under occupation as well as setting unattainable preconditions for dialogue".
(more...)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2101677,00.html

Entire report by de Soto here:

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2007/06/12/DeSotoReport.pdf

Gaza: Another Mess Made in U.S.
Coming, as he does, from Fox News, Tony Snow is obviously a deeply cynical fellow, but this takes some beating: Asked to comment Wednesday on the bloodbath in Gaza, he answered: “Ultimately, the Palestinians are going to have to sort out their politics and figure out which pathway they want to pursue — the pathway toward two states living peaceably side-by-side, or whether this sort of chaos is going to become a problem.”

Everyone following the conflict in Gaza knows full well that the reason for the violence is not that Palestinians have not “sorted out their politics” — they’ve made their political preferences abundantly clear in democratic elections, and later in a power-sharing agreement brokered by the Saudis. The problem is that the U.S. and the corrupt and self-serving warlords of Fatah did not accept either the election result or the unity government, and have conspired actively ever since to reverse both by all available means, including starving the Palestinian economy of funds, refusing to hand over power over the Palestinian Authority to the elected government, and arming and training Fatah loyalists to militarily restore their party’s power. Unfortunately, after three days of some of the most savage fighting ever seen in Gaza, that strategy now lies in tatters. Fatah is, quite simply, no longer a credible fighting force in Gaza, where it has long been in decline as a credible political force.

But Snow’s cynicism is hardly unexpected. Back in January, I wrote:

In the coming weeks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will cluck regretfully about the violence unfolding in the Palestinian territories as if the chaos in Gaza has as little to do with her as, say, the bizarrely warm winter weather in New York. And much of the U.S. media will concur by covering that violence as if it is part of some inevitable showdown in the preternaturally violent politics of the Palestinians. But any honest assessment will not fail to recognize that the increasingly violent conflict between Hamas and Fatah is not only a by-product of Secretary Rice’s economic siege of the Palestinians; it is the intended consequence of her savage war on the Palestinian people – a campaign of retribution and collective punishment for their audacity to elect leaders other than those deemed appropriate to U.S. agendas. Moreover, the fact that the conflict is now coming to a head is a product of Rice’s micromanagement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s political strategy – against his own better instincts.

Rice’s siege strategy was premised on the belief that the economic torture of the entire Palestinian population would either force the Hamas government to chant the catechism of recognizing Israel-renouncing violence-abiding by previous agreements (again, Israeli leaders have to giggle at that one!) — or else, preferably, force the Palestinian electorate to recant the heresy of choosing Hamas as its government in the first place. Frustrated by the failure of this collective punishment to produce the desired results — and mindful of the need to quickly reorder Palestinian politics in order to satisfy the urgent need of the increasingly marginal Arab autocracies that Washington seeks to mobilize against Iran — she has stepped things up a notch, cajoling the hapless Abbas to take steps to toppled a government democratically elected only 11 months ago and beefing up the forces of the Fatah warlords dedicated to taking down Hamas in order to restore their own power of patronage.
...
But the confrontation under way has assumed a momentum of its own, and it may now be beyond the capability of the Palestinian leadership as a whole to contain it. If that proves true, the petulance that has substituted for policy in the Bush Administration’s response to the 2006 Palestinian election will have succeeded in turning Gaza into Mogadishu. But it may be too much to expect the Administration capable of anything different — after all, they’re still busy turning Mogadishu into Mogadishu all over again.

This analysis was echoed by Haaretz’s Danny Rubinstein, who writes:

“The recent events we have been witnessing in Gaza are actually the disbanding of Palestinian rule. The primary reason for the break-up is the fact that Fatah, headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, has refused to fully share the PA’s mechanism of power with its rival Hamas - in spite of Hamas’ decisive victory in the January 2006 general elections.

“Fatah was forced to overrule the Palestinian voters because the entire world demanded it do so. The United States, the European nations, most of the Arab leaders and, of course, the State of Israel, warned Fatah not to share power with Hamas.

“And so, after the Israeli pullout, instead of becoming a model for Palestinian self-rule, Gaza turned into the exact opposite. Matters have come to the point where Hamas operatives attempted all through Monday and Tuesday to take by force what they believe they rightfully deserve. “
...
he administration’s response when Hamas was elected in January 2006 echoed Brecht’s mocking of the East German leadership in 1948: “The people have lost confidence in the party? Well, then, why not dissolve the people and elect another?” It was widely warned that Hamas was an intractable reality, that the U.S. should engage with rather than try to ignore or eliminate. I wrote in February of last year,

The administration that proclaims its mission as spreading democracy now seeks to punish the Palestinians for using their votes to get rid of a corrupt and decrepit regime (that happens to be headed by a U.S. ally). Shades, here, of Kissinger’s rationale for the coup in Chile: “We can’t stand by and let a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” The Bush people are so tragically out of touch with the reality on the ground that they spent the weeks before the election funding desperate last-minute projects by local Fatah candidates in the hope of saving their hides. The effect was probably just the opposite: Hamas was only too pleased to point out that these were America’s candidates, knowing that in Palestinian eyes that’s a kiss of death.
...
Still, given their spectacular inability to comprehend the reasons for their defeats in the Palestinian territory, I don’t expect the U.S. to begin engaging pragmatically with the reality of Hamas as an indispensable component of the Palestinian leadership. Instead, given the endless capacity for self-delusion of the people running U.S. Middle East policy, I fully expect to see the U.S. rush resources to Egypt where Dahlan can be reunited with his scattered forces in preparation for his next historic role — at the head of a “Bay of Pigs” type invasion of Gaza.

http://tonykaron.com/2007/06/14/gaza-another-mess-made-in-washington/

Ah, yes, our Condi...again, what are we to make of the Ian Welsh "God bless Condi" thread?

The commentator Abdulbari Atwan, writing in the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi offers his assessment (via the essential Badger at Missing Links):

It is clear that Hamas fighters control Gaza and the remaining pockets of resistance will be surrendered within a fews days if not hours, Abdulbari Atwan writes. Fatah leaders have fled to safety in Cairo, and there isn't any motivation for their people to continue defending positions that are now without significance. The urgent question now is what will Hamas do once it has full control and has purged all of its enemies, and what will the million and a half Gazans do?

How will Hamas go about providing food, water, electricity, control of the border-crossings, dealing with the international community, provision of security, basic civil administration, fuel distribution, and all the events of daily life that are suddenly their responsibility following another collapse of general and preventive security?
(details follow)
...
Then, having assigned to the Palestinian leadership their full share of blame in this, Atwan continues and concludes as follows:

The days to come will be days of terror for everyone. The world that isolated Palestine, starved it, and refused to rrecognize its elected government, bears its share of the responsibility for what has happened, because it was incumbent on it to give Hamas a chance to govern, and it didn't do so. Even after Hamas compromised and gave up the important cabinet positions to Fatah, the blockade continued, on the orders of Israel and under pressure from the United States.

Gaza will gradually turn into a small failed state, and in failed states, large or small, extremism always develops and gathers strength. There is one hope for an exit from this terrifying situation, and it is if Hamas were to behave like Hizbullah, managing Gaza in an organized and rational way, providing a system based on discipline and fairness. The reason we are skeptical about this possibility isn't because it isn't possible, but because it will not be permitted to do so.

The security collapse in Gaza, threatening to spread to the West Bank if it hasn't already, raises some of the same old themes from the pre-1967 period: namely a confederation with Jordan [for the West Bank] and abandonment of Gaza to its chaos, because no one wants it, not even the Egyptians or the residents of Gaza themselves, having lived this state of terror under one roof with their brothers who are their enemies.

http://arablinks.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-next-for-gaza.html

"Creative chaos" has spun completely out of the US's control, and it seems more and more likely that Israel will again have a go at Hezbollah in Lebanon, and perhaps one can't even exclude Syria as a military objective, given the views of hardliners both in the Olmert government and in Washington.