COLUMN: 06-20-2007

What is happening in Gaza is reprehensible, but the fact of the matter is that the Bush Administration's position is only fanning the flames. To call the Fatah party "moderate" and extend aid after their recent behavior is absolutely unacceptable. During the time Fatah was in power, corruption ruled and all of the Fatah leaders were pocketing a significant portion of the money intended for the Palestinian people. As a result, Hamas overwhelmingly won national elections a year ago and came to power and Fatah has been fighting a civil war to retake power ever since. Both groups have clearly shown their worst as their thugs have been killing each other and civilians as they fought it out. Supporting Fatah now is absolutely the wrong thing to do.

Looking back over the past 40 years, it was Fatah's bad behavior that caused it to be expelled from Jordan and then Lebanon before being exiled to Tunisia in the 1970's. It was only brought back into influence during the Oslo accords as the western powers and Israel attempted to co-opt the legitimate Palestinian uprising of the 1980's by bringing in these exiled Palestinian "leaders" whom they thought they could control. Fatah needs to be repudiated and re-exiled, which would leave the Palestinian people to form true grass-roots parties to run their government, instead of the current policy of supporting a corrupt regime, which only leads a direct reaction of moving to extremism by opposition groups.