With friends like these...
Gordon Brown is in his own mind a genuine and lifelong friend of Israel. But just like that other genuine friend of Israel Tony Blair, where his heart leads him in the Middle East his brain somehow fails to follow. Brown’s particular type of tunnel vision is to see every problem as an economic phenomenon, and the Middle East impasse is no exception. So he thinks that if the Palestinians are offered economic opportunities, their own self-interest will lead them to beat their rocket-launchers into greenhouse frames. That’s why he said in Bethlehem today that
economic prosperity was the key to peace, and urged an easing of Israeli travel restrictions in the West Bank that have hindered commerce. He promised British support in developing housing, industrial parks and small businesses.
Of course, the idea that poverty and unemployment create Arab terrorism is historical illiteracy of the first order. It is Arab terrorism that has created poverty and unemployment. More aid has gone to the Palestinians than to any other people on the planet; the first thing the Arabs of Gaza did when Israel departed was to smash all the greenhouses the Israelis had left them to help with their economic development; before 2000, GDP was rising faster in the disputed territories than anywhere else in the Arab world and only went backwards because the Arabs of the territories are less interested in economic prosperity than in killing Jews. The only reason, after all, for the Israeli travel restrictions is to stop more Arabs killing any more Israelis. Worse still, Brown (who also visited Israel) said that the
West Bank barrier erected by Israel was ‘graphic evidence of the urgent need for justice for the Palestinian people’ and an end to the occupation of Palestinian land.
No, Prime Minister; the wall in Bethlehem is graphic evidence only of the fact that on the other side of it Arabs are still trying to murder Jews, who after 60 years of the attempt to destroy their legitimate homeland require justice from the world in holding the Palestinians to account for almost a century of anti-Jewish aggression.
Brown was speaking at a press conference with PA President Mahmoud Abbas. It is to Abbas’s PA that Brown has pledged an additional £30 million of British taxpayers’ money. Yet it was Abbas who lauded the child killer Samir Kuntar -- who smashed in the skull of four year-old Israeli Einat Haran after shooting her father Danny in the back in front of her -- as a martyr. It is Abbas who has said he will never agree to Israel being a Jewish state. It is Abbas’s Fatah which sponsors terrorism against Israelis through its Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades.
Brown said he supported those who understand that
the prospect of prosperity encourages people that the return to violence is something that is an unacceptable price to pay, and something that should be rejected.
On the contrary – his move delivers the clear and unmistakeable message that violence pays dividends.
Brown trotted out the standard British government line that the Palestinians should have their own state. It is however only the presence of Israel’s military which is currently preventing Hamas from taking over in the West Bank. If a state of Palestine is created and Israel thereby leaves, within a short space of time Abbas and Fatah will be history and Palestine will become Hamastan -- or even worse. For behind Hamas are yet more extreme Islamist groups. The Qassam Brigades, the ‘military’ wing of Hamas, has denounced its own leadership for
drifting away from the path of jihad and engaging in the political process with the Western-backed Palestinian authority
and goes on to
pledge solidarity with the global jihad and asks that al-Qaeda lend its support to their military effort.
Elsewhere in Gaza, another group of ultra-radical Islamists who subscribe to the global jihad have told Der Spiegel that their numbers are growing:
So far, Hamas has done what it can to keep the Salafis under control. They know the ultra-radicals are just waiting to take over Hamas’ position of leadership. ‘They are traitors,’ Abu Mustafa says of Hamas. ‘Compared to us, they are Islamism lite...Hamas is like a block of ice in the sun,’ he says. ‘Every minute they get smaller -- and we get larger.’
If a state of Palestine arises, these are the people whose murderous activities British taxpayers’ money will end up subsidising. Brown is egged on down this most foolish of roads by the British Jewish businessman and his close adviser Sir Ronald Cohen, who preaches the message that Palestinian prosperity=peace in our time with evangelical zeal. Someone should take Sir Ronald aside and teach him the facts of life – and death.