More Palestinian Empty Threats
This Time on Security Coordination
by Khaled Abu Toameh • March 21, 2016 at 5:00 am
- For Abbas, security coordination with Israel is indeed "sacred": it keeps him in power and stops Hamas from taking over the West Bank.
- Abbas cannot tell his people that security coordination with Israel is keeping him on the throne. That is a topic for Israeli ears only.
- So what are the threats to end security cooperation about? Money. Here is Abbas's take-home to the world: "Send more money or we will cut off security cooperation with Israel."
- Halting security coordination with Israel would spell both his end and that of the PA in the West Bank. The international community is simply hearing a new version of the old bid for yet more political concessions and yet more cash.
Abbas to the world: "Send more money or we will cut off security cooperation with Israel."
Left: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas with French President François Hollande. Right: Abbas with top European Union officials Federica Mogherini and Jean-Claude Juncker.
Left: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas with French President François Hollande. Right: Abbas with top European Union officials Federica Mogherini and Jean-Claude Juncker.
The Palestinian Authority's endless threats to suspend security coordination with Israel are a carefully crafted bluff designed to extort more funds from Western donors, scare the Israeli public and provide a cover for its refusal to talk peace with Israel.
Many Palestinians say these threats are also intended for "internal consumption" -- namely to appease Hamas and other radical factions and to refute charges that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is betraying its people by "collaborating" with Israel.
Hamas has conditioned "reconciliation" with President Mahmoud Abbas's ruling Fatah faction in the West Bank on Fatah ending all forms of security coordination with Israel. Hamas clams that the security coordination is directed mostly against its members and supporters in the West Bank.
Cuba and Obama's 'Axis of Evil'
America Rescues Dying Dictatorships Which Then Try to Destroy It
by A.J. Caschetta • March 21, 2016 at 4:00 am
- Just as the Soviet Union did not subsidize Castro's tyranny for the good cigars, so too Iran and North Korea are less interested in old weapons and luxury goods than in the one thing Cuba has always offered to America's enemies -- physical proximity. The USSR used Cuba as a forward operating base in the Cold War. Why would Iran and North Korea not do the same?
- Iranian and North Korean scientists have been openly cooperating on so many projects that Iran, if it is not already doing so, will likely evade IAEA inspections by testing its weapons in North Korea.
- A medium range missile fired from Cuba could reach most of the US. Cuba would also be a good launch point for an EMP attack on the US.
- Obama's diplomatic engagement with Cuba's octogenarian dictators will ensure that the island prison stays in business. Like Iran, Cuba has been flaunting its tyranny since Obama's outreach, with 8,616 political arrests in 2015.
President Barack Obama shakes hands with Cuban dictator Raúl Castro during the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, on April 11, 2015. (Image source: White House/Pete Souza)
When George W. Bush used the term "axis of evil" to describe Iran, Iraq and North Korea in his 2002 State of the Union speech he was derided from all sides. Post-modernists and others among whom ideas of good and evil are quaint but obsolete, sneered that Bush was a simplistic thinker. Others, who agreed that threats to their existence might be evil, seemed less troubled by the ethics than by the accuracy of the term "axis."
Bush, by linking these three nations, was accused of misunderstanding that members of an axis work together. As Iraq and Iran were mortal enemies, so went the argument, there was no evidence of cooperation.
