Proxy War II or how to create a civil war

For the past several months there has been an ongoing debate in Washington as to whether or not there is a civil war in Iraq. The violent struggle for power between various factions in Iraq probably meets the dictionary definition of “war between geographic or political factions of the same country”. Since we were so successful in creating a civil war in Iraq, it seems that we have turned our attentions elsewhere. This summer in our proxy war with Iran in Lebanon we succeeded in creating conditions for a civil war there. Two for two; lets try for a hat trick in the Palestinian territories. We can have another proxy war with Iran and in the process create a civil war between Hamas and Fatah. Since Hamas won the parliamentary elections earlier this year, US policy has been to isolate the elected government of Hamas and support President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party. Political support for Fatah from the west did not succeed in driving Hamas from the government so we are upping the ante. The Bush administration has recently asked Congress for tens of millions of dollars to provide arms to the Fatah security forces/militias in the growing conflict with Hamas security forces. (This seems a little odd since it has been the armed wings of Fatah who have carried out the attacks on Israel in the past year) At the same time Iran has committed to support the Hamas militias. (Proxy War II – In this case only Palestinians get to die.) We are also working with Jordan to bring the Badr Brigade from Jordan to the Palestinian territories. The Badr Brigade is a Jordanian trained army affiliated with Fatah and its return would shift the balance of power in favor of Fatah. The conditions are certainly right in Gaza for a Palestinian civil war. Amira Haas, a Haaretz correspondent who is a daughter of Holocaust survivors and the only Jewish Israeli journalist to live in the Palestinian Territories, recently wrote these troubling words. “The experiment was a success: The Palestinians are killing each other. They are behaving as expected at the end of the extended experiment called ‘what happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings in an enclosed space like battery hens.’” (To see then entire article click here)