Hamastan and Red Zoneistan

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"......The relentless destruction of Iraq is mirrored by similar devastation in Gaza. Twelve years of US-imposed, United Nations-approved sanctions literally destroyed Iraqi society. Western sanctions are meant to do the same to Palestinian society.

In Iraq, "shock and awe" was the coup de grace. Gaza has suffered myriad smaller "shock and awes" for years. In Iraq, the real blowback will only manifest itself when the "sanctions generation" - who grew up seething in anger, sickness and deprivation - starts deploying its anger with the help of new technologies. The current stage, though gruesome, is just an apprenticeship.

Worse: it's in fact irrelevant, as far as imperial strategy is concerned. Blowback is already factored. The Bush White House's ends justify the means. These include the largest US Embassy on the planet, the military mega-bases as the "eyes and ears" of the Middle East-Central Asia "arc of instability" and, it is hoped, an Iraqi oil law to legalize the plunder of Iraq's wealth.

As much as Washington invented a civil war in Iraq, it has also invented a civil war in Gaza. With crucial interference, among others, of US Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, a notorious neo-con, Fatah militias were trained by the US, the so-called Fatah Badr Brigade was nurtured by Jordanian intelligence, and all these unsavory characters were dropped into Gaza to destroy the popularly elected Hamas government.

The US in fact killed the Saudi-sponsored Mecca agreement between Fatah and Hamas (and the Saudis have not uttered a single peep). Blowback in this case was fast (Hamas prevailed, at least for now). Anyway, Israel's ends - no possibility of Palestinian union - have been achieved. And once again, using the same old divide-and-rule methods; let's sit back and watch all those Arabs killing one another.

Gaza is a gulag. The West Bank is a series of unconnected ghettoes. Baghdad is now a gulag. Iraq has been reduced to a series of unconnectable ghettoes. Palestinian land is being stolen. Iraqi oil will be stolen. "Terrorist" Gaza has been already downgraded to Hamastan. The Red Zone - that is, real Baghdad - is actually Red Zoneistan.

US-Israeli-approved Fatah may get some crumbs in the West Bank. Blair - not popular on the Arab street - will be the West's "peace envoy" to seal the deal. No wonder London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi, in an editorial, stressed that the only possible reception for Blair's next visit to Palestine should be embodied by tomatoes and rotten eggs.

Planet Gaza is a technical model of repression developed by Israeli know-how, implemented by the Pentagon in Iraq, and then redeveloped for reapplication in Gaza. It may, and it will, be deployed in other parts of the world that do not "behave"."