A CounterPunch Special Report
Thoughts on the Attempted Murder of Palestine
A Must Read
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
Former CIA analyst
""Coup" is the word being widely used to describe what happened in Gaza in June when Hamas militias defeated the armed security forces of Fatah and chased them out of Gaza. But, as so often with the manipulative language used in the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel, the terminology here is backward. Hamas was the legally constituted, democratically elected government of the Palestinians, so in the first place Hamas did not stage a coup but rather was the target of a coup planned against it. Furthermore, the coup -- which failed in Gaza but succeeded overall when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, acting in violation of Palestinian law, cut Gaza adrift, unseated the Palestinian unity government headed by Hamas, and named a new prime minister and cabinet -- was the handiwork of the United States and Israel......
On the other hand, Zionism is unquestionably under assault these days. Increasing numbers of commentators and politically aware individuals are finally beginning to recognize that the oppression, the atrocities that Israel has been committing in the occupied territories for the last 40 years, are not some kind of aberration but are merely a continuation of a campaign of ethnic erasure begun in 1948. Ariel Sharon himself described the conflict with the Palestinians that began with the second intifada in 2000 as "the second half of 1948." The late Israeli historian Tanya Reinhart recognized this reality and noted in her 2002 book Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 that as far as Israel's political and military leaders are concerned, "the work of ethnic cleansing was only half completed in 1948, leaving too much land to Palestinians." This leadership, she said, "is still driven by greed for land, water resources, and power," and they see the 1948 war as "just the first step in a more ambitious and more far-reaching strategy."......"
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