To Provoke a Palestinian Civil War

March 3, 2008

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)
The Gaza Bombshell

Posted by b on March 3, 2008 at 16:29 UTC | Permalink

Comments

This is “old news” for those following events in the Levant, although I can’t recall where E. Abrams was first explicitly cited in connection with such machinations (it could well have been here at MOA). To those who don’t believe that U.S. Mideast policy should be thoroughly conditioned (if not completely determined) by the Israeli rightist parties it comes as no surprise, but also produces no little anguish. It also seems to be the case that some major escalation of Mideast tension is “on order” just in time to have a useful bearing on the U.S. presidential election. Should that election go badly for the Likud-Kach-Israel-Beitanou’s American auxiliaries (difficult as that may be to image given the pathetic posturing of the “serious” candidates, the escalation in progress would also serve to “create new facts on the ground” and further tie the hands of any would-be peacemakers. All in all, it looks like a win-win situation for the neocons, who can safely bet on the knee-jerk “rally around the flag” reflex in the face of wider
hostilities in the Middle East. Long before they arrived on the scene, it was an axiom that “no one ever lost an election by underestimating the intelligence of the electorate”, and that truism is, in process of being confirmed once again, since those few candidates rash enough to talk sense have been effectively marginalized.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Mar 3 2008 17:00 utc | 1

On further reflection, it seems to me that these allegations were made
in the Lebanese press several months ago, and reported at such places
as Joshua Landis’s Syria Comment blog or other sites monitoring
the Arab press. Still, it’s better late than never that the U.S. public
at large has a chance to meditate upon their significance. It will, alas,
quite likely produce the sound of one hand clapping.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Mar 3 2008 17:05 utc | 2

Impeach the bastard!

Posted by: IntelVet | Mar 3 2008 17:07 utc | 3

Clinically!…
“The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves,” Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defence minister, told army radio.
Shoah is the Hebrew word normally reserved to refer to the Jewish Holocaust.
As Alice Miller shows, trauma means silence. Collective trauma and collective silence means there is no one to stop the next Shoah.
“…Hamas is leaving us no choice,” the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, told the senior figures…”
Perhaps this is inevitable, but that makes it no less revolting.

Posted by: citizen | Mar 3 2008 17:14 utc | 4

Hannah, you may be thinking of the so-called “Action Plan” of Feb 07, leaked to the Jordanian paper AlMajd in April 07 and summarized from there by me and by Conflicts Forum. The Vanity Fair article is much broader and more detailed, spelling out a lot of what was only implicit in the AlMajd document, and nailing the whole dirty-war story to the Bush administration in a way that the reading document alone could only suggest.
By coincidence I mentioned the AlMajd document in a post today in connection with a parallel to the Iraq situation (some links there).

Posted by: Badger | Mar 3 2008 17:17 utc | 5

from the page 7

Jaberi pauses. He spent the night before our interview awake and in hiding, fearful of Israeli air strikes. “You know,” he says, “since the takeover, we’ve been trying to enter the brains of Bush and Rice, to figure out their mentality. We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves their overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise.”

Posted by: annie | Mar 3 2008 17:19 utc | 6

This may be an opportune thread in which to crosspost something I’ve been meaning to share for a year or two, but just got around to typing up:
On Conspiracy Theories
Appendix B of Kofsky’s book on the inflation of the Soviet threat concocted by US officials and CEOs to boost aircraft sales out of the post-war slump: Harry S Truman and the War Scare of 1948
What is the difference really, between a “covert op” such as trying to destabilise Palestine into civil war, and a “conspiracy”? in each case there is a secret, shared on a “need to know” basis between a group of people sworn to a kind of Omerta, engaged in an activity that is intended to cause harm to others and which might cause public outcry were it revealed. In one case it is called “covert intelligence work” and has the blessing of the elite of some nation or other, in another case it is called “criminal conspiracy” and doesn’t have their blessing, and in the case where their approved criminal conspiracies are in danger of exposure, they cry “tin foil hat conspiracy nutters” to divert attention.
As Kofsky says, many conspiracy theories (particularly the most grandiose) really are a bit nutty, but that doesn’t mean that real conspiracies (like this one against Hamas) don’t exist…

Posted by: DeAnander | Mar 3 2008 17:23 utc | 7

@Hannah – it is old news for people who have followed the reporting in Haaretz, by Badger and elsewhere. But the documentry evidence is now much harder and as a big VF story will get a much wider readership.
Rice will be in Israel next week – she’ll have to do some public ‘xplaining …
I wonder why the Israelis have so suddenly retracted from Gaza last night just a day after everyone there said the fight would go on without pause. Did the White House get a tip on the publishing date of the VF story and Rice ordered Olmert to stand down for now?

Posted by: b | Mar 3 2008 17:55 utc | 8

National governments wage war, run covert operations, employ extraordinary rendition and used enhanced interrogation techniques on unlawful enemy combatants.
Non-government groups commit terrorism, run criminal conspiracies, kidnap and torture innocent people.
We have always been at war with ~~Eastasia~~ language.

Posted by: Stoy | Mar 3 2008 17:55 utc | 9

stoy!

Posted by: annie | Mar 3 2008 18:18 utc | 10

We have always been at war with ..language.
reminds me of democracy now’s interview w/edward peck someone here recently linked to.

they asked us to come up with a definition of terrorism that could be used throughout the government. We produced about six, and each and every case, they were rejected, because careful reading would indicate that our own country had been involved in some of those activities.
….
the terrorist, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.

Posted by: annie | Mar 3 2008 18:24 utc | 11

sorry, here’s the link

Posted by: annie | Mar 3 2008 18:27 utc | 12

Policy – nothing new; Source – yes, that’s encouraging. (Vanity Fair’s editor best be sending his children to Episcopalian Schools in NYC, rather than Jewish.)
I heard interview w/Frances Boyle, the superb int’l lawyer on Flashpoints w/in last year. Turns out he had been PLO attorney during crucial negotiations. He said top people assumed Arafat was poisoned ‘cuz he refused to go along w/plans to generate Palestinian Civil War.

Posted by: jj | Mar 3 2008 19:57 utc | 13

just in case some of you missed it…
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia tell citizens to GTFO of Lebanon
Kuwaiti citizens living in Lebanon received urgent messages on their mobiles saying that “all Kuwaiti citizens are asked to evacuate Lebanon as soon as possible.”
This sort of move rarely signals an outbreak of peace and stability.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 3 2008 20:16 utc | 14

Hannah K. O’Luthon:
To those who don’t believe that U.S. Mideast policy should be thoroughly conditioned (if not completely determined) by the Israeli rightist parties it comes as no surprise
I didn’t read anywhere in that article that this was Israel’s idea. Like I said before the mouse does not tell the elephant what to do. Israel did not want the elections. Did you check out the latest Israeli poll where 80% of the population thinks there should be dialogue with Hamas?
Even in that article, revealing as it is, it fails to mention how the Palestinians seen on TV are always waving M-16s around. They didn’t get those from Egypt.
This reminds me of Garth Porter’s excellant article on the origin of the laptop on Iranian nucleur activety supplied to the MEK by Israel. He doesn’t know how the Israelis obtained this information but Larry Franklin pleaded guilty for passing info about Iran to Israel. Coincidence?

Posted by: Sam | Mar 3 2008 20:24 utc | 15

ELF! elf!!! terror terror terror!!!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 3 2008 20:35 utc | 16

The Day the Earth and Sky Traded Places
Gazan Holocaust

Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit who bellowed that if it were up to him, Israeli soldiers going into Gaza should shoot “everything that moves” like babies and toddlers, grandfathers and mothers, orange trees and wasted-away donkeys pulling cartloads of rotten vegetables; like flowers and seabirds, chickens and goats, rats and cockroaches. A scorched-earth policy will suffice. They’ll create their apocalyptic wilderness and will call it peace.
No one needed Sheetrit to legitimize the strategy of creating oblivion from hell. Untermenschen who can be denied food, water, fuel, electricity, medical supplies, the right to leave and return home, the right to not to die in an ambulance that without the proper permits, the right to their own land and their own nationhood precisely because they are lesser human beings can also be picked off one by one or in groups or in families or because they are “militants,” or all of the above, who deserve no fair hearing, due process, photographs, names, headlines, stories, grief or televised tear-jerker funerals to commemorate their sacrifices.

but forget that, RICIN RICIN RICIN!! Terror Terror Terror, ELF elf!!! Terror at home!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 3 2008 20:51 utc | 17

Revisit “The Welch Club”… Same Culprits .. same MO … same goals..
http://friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com/2007/05/inside-narh-al-bared-and-bedawi-refugee.html

Posted by: GPC | Mar 3 2008 21:55 utc | 18

Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit who bellowed that if it were up to him, Israeli soldiers going into Gaza should shoot “everything that moves”

he got his way, then.

Posted by: ran | Mar 4 2008 3:05 utc | 19

I followed that link three times…each time Windows closed. I went to Vanity Fart through Google – the window closed with no notice.

Posted by: waldo | Mar 4 2008 12:37 utc | 20

hi Waldo
worked fine for me, I’m on Linux/firefox, but I strongly bet that’s not really the issue
THIS IS being carried in mainstream US media.

Posted by: boxcar mike | Mar 4 2008 13:46 utc | 21

Carried in the mainstream media = me humming “ode to joy”
off topic: Ubuntu linux is really really easy and does everything i need except movie editing

Posted by: boxcar mike | Mar 4 2008 13:48 utc | 22

“What is the difference really, between a “covert op” such as trying to destabilise Palestine into civil war, and a “conspiracy”?”
Conspiracy is genesis and planning, while covert ops are the action through to completion
True for destabilizing Palestine or surprise birthday parties
I have been called a conspiracy nutter simply for distrusting government
there is a thing called “Open Movie Editor” for Linux, fwiw

Posted by: jcairo | Mar 4 2008 14:49 utc | 23

Speaking of conspiracies:
Here’s an article I had linked to here a long time back…I thought it was quite “out-there” at that time. Based on the VF reporting, this seems to be pretty factual now:

Mohammad Dahlan, former Palestinian security minister, allegedly talked about killing former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Did Dahlan talk about slaughtering Arafat?

Posted by: SimplyLurking | Mar 5 2008 1:50 utc | 24

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