Why read the NYT or Ha’aretz …

when you could have gotten the scoop from Elder of Ziyon.

via memeorandum

Ha’aretz reports:

Hamas seizes half the fuel Israel sends to the Gaza Strip and uses it in part for its military wing’s vehicles, Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials said Thursday. 

Israel cut off the only source of fuel for Gaza’s 1.4 million people Thursday after Wednesday’s deadly attack on the only fuel transfer point into the territory.

But Israeli defense officials indicated that the cutoff would not last past the weekend.

Nir Press, commander of the military liaison unit for Gaza, said Hamas takes about half the fuel transferred to the Gaza Strip.

Hussein al-Sheikh, a PA official, told Haaretz that Hamas seizes some 400,000 of the 800,000 liters of diesel transferred to Gaza weekly and intended for uses such as generators, hospitals, water pumps and sewage pumps.

 

Israel Matzav reacts

That fits right in with the attack on Nahal Oz, doesn’t it? And soon, we will see televised pictures of Gazans sitting in darkened rooms with their curtains drawn in the middle of the day, won’t we?

 

The New York Times reports about another consequence of last week’s terror attack:

The Israeli incursion came after militants from Gaza broke through the fence on Wednesday and attacked the Nahal Oz fuel depot, the transfer point from which all fuel is piped from Israel into Gaza. Two Israeli civilians employed by the company that supplies the fuel were killed in the attack. Fuel deliveries into Gaza were temporarily halted, but were expected to resume after the weekend. 

Israel holds Hamas responsible for the attack, since it controls Gaza, although three smaller groups claimed joint responsibility. Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told a gathering of his supporters on Thursday that Hamas “will not be able to continue to act against Israel’s citizens as it acts today.” He would not elaborate on the cryptic threat but added, “The state of Israel will stand behind the things that I said.”

 

Again reading Elder of Ziyon would have clued Isabel Kershner in that it wasn’t just Israel that holds Hamas responsible, but Hamas claims credit for “softening” Nahal Oz with mortars. (Even if they didn’t claim credit, mortars are very loud. The authorities, such as they are in Gaza, had to be aware of them being fired and didn’t stop them. As such, at the very least, Hamas was at least implicitly complicit. But as EoZ observed, the complicity was explicit.)

The Spine wonders what Israel’s thinking by absorbing the terror attack, publicizing the information about Hamas stealing the fuel and nonetheless planning to resume fuel shipments early this week! Maybe Israel Matzav needn’t worry about those darkened rooms.

As I noted last week, the protests over gas seemed a bit convenient prior to the attack on Nahal Oz. So does Solomonia

Very clever. Keep the fuel, blame it on the Jews, increase resentment, stage strikes for a compliant international press. It’s a sales job at home and an export all at once.

 

This is one more example of how the media distorts things in ways to make war more likely.

Hamas stealing fuel for its own purposes, isn’t so novel. When Fatah was in charge of Gaza, its henchmen were capable of using fuel for their own purposes at the expense of the citizenry. Eleven years ago Ha’aretz reported:

The fuel sector is an excellent example of a particularly profitable monopoly. Residents of the territories consumer 40 million liters of fuel per month. Under Israel’s administration, by far the largest share of the market was dominated by Pedasco, jointly owned by Israel’s large fuel companies (Paz, Delek, and Sonol). The company sold gasoline and oil to 65 private stations throughout the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The stations’ Palestinian owners leased their equipment from Pedasco.Pedasco had contracts for supply with the station owners through beyond the year 2000. Under the economic agreement between the Authority and Israel, the Authority pledged not to interfere with contracts between Israeli suppliers and Palestinian customers that had been signed before the signing of the Paris protocol. Promises are promises, and reality is reality. On October 18, 1994, the underlings of Jibril Rajoub, chief of the Authority’s preventive security forces, informed all service station owners that they may not accept fuel from anyone except Dor Energy. Two days later, armed emissaries of Rajoub blocked the entry of Pedasco tankers into the territories of the Authority.

The service station owners sent a letter to the Authority requesting that they be permitted to continue working with Pedasco. Rajoub turned down the request. Eli Halahmi, former CEO of Pedasco: “After the Authority consolidated power in the territories, Rajoub took over and announced that henceforth service station owners would be required to pay an additional tax, at a rate based on their daily sales. Preventive security’s `fuel patrol’ takes daily measurements at the service stations and checks the differences in the balances of the black gold between the morning and the evening.”

 

Hamas isn’t really less corrupt than Fatah. It might not be that the leaders of Hamas seek to enrich themselves as much as the leaders of Fatah did (and probably still do) but they do divert resources at the exepnse of those they purport to govern. Maybe the fact that they use those resources to attack Israel instead of enriching themselves makes them selfish, but not less corrupt.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.