Let’s do a little reading between the lines here. The AP has a three-hanky story on how the mean ol’ Israelis are shutting off the Gaza fuel supply, just because Hamas is allowing terrorists to fire over 2000 rockets into Israel over the past twelve months. Witness the horrors:
Service stations across the Gaza Strip shut off their fuel nozzles. Tens of thousands of people have no fresh water because pumps can’t run. Hospitals parked ambulances, and bicycles are the new favored form of transportation.
A month-old Israeli reduction in fuel shipments to Gaza is hitting the seaside territory hard. And things could get worse – seeking to punish Gaza’s Hamas rulers further, Israel is waiting for court approval to reduce the electricity supply as well.
The measures are the latest in a series of sanctions that Israel has imposed since the Islamic militant group violently seized control of Gaza in June and allowed near daily rocket attacks on Israelis. Israel, which considers Hamas a terrorist group, has declared Gaza a “hostile entity” and closed the borders, halting almost all trade.
Okay. That’s the lede that makes it into everyone’s World News section in the local paper. Here’s what didn’t make it in:
The gasoline and diesel reductions, from 15 percent to 75 percent of normal supplies, have hit Gaza’s water system as pumps run out of fuel. The shortages have been compounded by Gaza’s 30 private fuel companies, which halted deliveries this week to protest the Israeli cutback.
Fed up with the finger pointing, Gaza’s gas station owners this week stopped serving the public, saying they were caught in the middle.
Gas pumps were covered in blankets, plastic bags or signs declaring: “No fuel. No diesel.”
“We are the ones who are suffering the beating and the losses,” said Mahmoud al-Shawa, a member of Gaza’s association of station owners.
Did you catch that? The Gazan fuel dealers deliberately shut down their pumps and stopped fuel deliveries. But that’s not all. The Gazan oil companies refused to accept shipments of Israeli fuel as a “protest” against Israel cutting supplies.
Palestinian petrol distribution companies refused to receive the amount of fuel from Israel’s Dor company as a form of protesting the Israeli reduced its fuel supplies to Gaza.
Palestinian said on Sunday that most of the service stations in Gaza Strip have run out of fuel, especially the diesel as Israel started to reduce Gaza fuel deliveries.
The Union of petrol stations owners said in a statement that the Gaza Strip needs 350 thousand liters of diesel everyday while Israel wants to allow only 90 thousand liters in.
And what, exactly, is the reasoning behind this “protest”?
The union said the local petrol companies have refused to receive what Israel is sending “in order not to be partners in punishing the Palestinian people because these quantities are insufficient.”
The Palestinians have never refused to cut of their noses to spite their faces, and this is a prime example of that. But more to the point, there is no such thing as a spontaneous protest in the Palestinian territories. There is no way the union would refuse to accept fuel shipments on their own. Count on it, this is Hamas trying to make the world weep for Gaza.
I think the world seems to be getting a bit tired of the game. Only about 60 versions of this story were on Google News. The Misery Of The Gazans seems to be slipping in popularity.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 12/08/2007 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention updated throughout the day…so check back often.
It really is self-destructive behavior. You wonder what’s next–letting sewers back up and spread disease because they’d rather spend the money on weapons to kill Israelis? Oh, wait…
The Arabs of Gaza are at war with Israel, they say so themselves. Why should Israel deliver fuel, or anything else, to enemies at war with them, indeed enemies who intend genocide against Israel’s Jews and have made no secret of that goal?
If the outside world really wanted to help the Palis, and not to do down Israel, they would force the Arabs to resettle those who are outside the PA. Within the PA and Gaza they would organize an international government of outsiders, the EU for example since they are supposedly so concerned about the Palis and shovel so much money to them. A substantial military force would be needed to enforce authority there; model it on the French Foreign Legion. All Palis would be disarmed and terrorists put down. Then the rest of the population would be given the opportunity to work, and if they did not want to work they could starve. The financing of this project should come from the Wahhabist Entity and other oil tick Arab states; let them give zakat there instead of to terrorists.
It will not happen of course. The Palis’ only value to anyone else is as a stick to beat Israel with, and aside from that their “Arab Brothers” regard them with contempt and disgust, and treat them worse than the Israelis do. Certainly they have killed more of them than the Israelis have.
Someone should remind them that the very AIR they breath is also breathed by JEWS!
They should all hold their breath as a protest to this Jewish abuse of their very air!
This is a perfect metaphor for the negotiating tactics of the Palestinian Authority. If they don’t get everything they insist on in their maximalist demands, they walk away from negotiations altogether.
“Negotiations” in their lexicon really means: a timetable for acceptance of these demands. It does not include so much as a gesture on their part towards Israel.
Why? Because they don’t want what they demand. They want their demands rejected so they can claim their resistence is justified by Israeli intransigence.
If Israel voted tomorrow to give back all the land taken in 1967, including Jerusalem and the Golan, the Arabs would reject it! The only demand they would accept as fulfilling their requirements would be “the right of return”.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam! Furthermore, I think, they should all be returned to the sand they drifted in from.
Gee, isn’t that what the anti-global-warming environmentalists want for the rest of us?