RUTHFULLY YOURS

Dahlan will be functioning under the watchful eye of Hamas, which will remain the real de facto and unchallenged ruler of the Gaza Strip. Hamas is willing to allow Dahlan to return to the Palestinian political scene through the Gaza Strip window. But he will be on a very short leash.

Dahlan’s presence in the Gaza Strip will not deter Hamas from continuing with its preparations for another war with Israel.

Dahlan will find himself playing the role of fundraiser for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip while Hamas hides behind his formidable political shoulders.

Mohammed Dahlan is an aspiring Palestinian with huge political ambitions. Specifically, he hopes to succeed Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Knowing this, Abbas expelled him from the ruling Fatah faction in 2011. Since then, Dahlan has been living in the United Arab Emirates.

Hamas, the Islamist movement that has controlled the Gaza Strip for the past decade, used to consider Dahlan one of its fiercest enemies.

As commander of the notorious Preventive Security Service (PSS) in the Gaza Strip in the 1990s, Dahlan was personally responsible for the PA’s security crackdown on Hamas. On his instructions, hundreds of Hamas activists were routinely targeted and detained.

The enmity was mutual; Dahlan too considered Hamas a major threat to him and the PA regime in the Gaza Strip.

Dahlan’s contempt for Hamas knew no limits. On his orders, Hamas founder and spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin was placed under house arrest.

Two other senior Hamas officials, Mahmoud Zahar and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, were repeatedly detained and tortured by Dahlan’s agents. At one point, Dahlan ordered his interrogators to shave the two men’s beards as a way of humiliating them.

During and after its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas targeted Dahlan’s PSS and loyalists. Some were killed or incarcerated, while many others were forced to flee the Gaza Strip to Egypt and the West Bank. For many years, Dahlan was at the top of Hamas’s most wanted fugitives. No longer.

Erstwhile enemies, Dahlan and Hamas today have a common foe: Mahmoud Abbas. They seem about to join forces to repay him for the humiliation they have suffered at his hands.

Dahlan has long sought revenge for Abbas’s decision to expel him from Fatah and prosecute him on charges of murder and embezzlement. Dahlan will never forgive Abbas for dispatching security officers to raid his Ramallah residence and confiscate documents and other equipment. On that day, Dahlan slunk out of Ramallah.

Dahlan found refuge in the United Arab Emirates, a wealthy Gulf country whose rulers seem very fond of him. He receives millions of dollars from his Gulf hosts. Until today, Abbas regards Dahlan, who was once an intimate associate, as his main enemy.

Exile has been good for Dahlan. Thanks to the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, Dahlan has amassed enough power and money to become a major player in the Palestinian arena.

In the past few years, he has succeeded in building bases of power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, largely with the cash that he has been providing to his loyalists and others.

More importantly, Dahlan has succeeded in building a personal relationship with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who also seems rather partial to him. While this relationship has alienated Abbas, Hamas sees it as an opportunity to rid itself of its increased isolation in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas’s predicament has been exacerbated by the continued Egyptian blockade on the Gaza Strip, specifically the closure of the Rafah border crossing, and a series of punitive measures taken by Abbas in recent weeks.

Hamas and human rights groups hold Abbas personally responsible for the deaths of the children and the possible deaths of other patients in need of urgent medical treatment not available in Gaza Strip hospitals. One human rights group went so far as to call for the International Criminal Court in The Hague to launch an investigation against Abbas.

In a move of mind-bending irony, we are witnessing a Palestinian president waging war not only against Hamas, but also against the two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip — while Israel continues to provide the Palestinians living under Hamas with humanitarian aid.

That is the standard operating procedure of the man who lied straight to the face of President Donald Trump, by claiming that he had stopped incitement against Israel and was promoting a “culture of peace” among his people. Will the last sick Palestinian child please stand up?

Palestinian children are the latest victims of the power struggle between the two rival Palestinian factions, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas has declared war on the Gaza Strip as part of his effort to prompt Palestinians living there to revolt against the ruling Hamas administration. It appears that Abbas and Hamas are determined to fight to the last ill Palestinian child.

Abbas is hoping that a series of punitive measures he has taken, which include reducing electricity and medical supplies and cutting off salaries to many Palestinians, will lead to the collapse of Hamas, paving the way for the return of his PA to the Gaza Strip. Abbas has had a grudge against Hamas ever since the Islamist movement expelled his PA and loyalists from the Gaza Strip ten years ago.

Abbas’s war on the Hamas may seem justified. Nonetheless, it smacks of hypocrisy and is accompanied by a smear campaign against Israel.

Instead of accepting responsibility for their punitive actions against Hamas and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Abbas and his PA are falsely trying to put the blame on Israel. They are telling their people and the rest of the world that Israel bears the full and sole responsibility for the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. This, of course, is a wide-eyed lie as well as another blood libel against Israel.

The attempt to put the blame on Israel should be seen in the context of Abbas’s ongoing incitement against Israel. Moreover, Abbas is trying to drag Israel into his continuing conflict with Hamas, which is a purely internal Palestinian affair. Israel had nothing to do with Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007. Two years earlier, Israel had totally withdrawn from the Gaza Strip, leaving Abbas’s PA fully in control of the area. Within two years, Hamas had overthrown the PA and seized control of the Gaza Strip, including Abbas’s house.

Abbas’s loyalists in Gaza hardly resisted Hamas. Most of them simply surrendered to Hamas or fled to Israel and Egypt. It was thanks to Israel that many of Abbas’s senior officials were able to run from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. Were it not for Israel, they would have been dragged to the streets of the Gaza Strip and publicly lynched. Many PA operatives were thrown from the top floors of buildings.

What, then, is spurring this switch? Why has Abbas suddenly decided to take a series of drastic measures against Hamas and his people in the Gaza Strip, ten years after the Islamist expulsion?

According to his aides, Abbas is fuming over Hamas’s recent decision to establish an “administrative body” to run the affairs of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Abbas seems to view the move as driving a nail into the coffin of any PA-Hamas reconciliation.

He is also apparently deeply worried that his political rival, Mohamed Dahlan, and Hamas are close to forming an alliance against him. In recent days there have been reports that Hamas may allow Dahlan to return to the Gaza Strip to head a new Palestinian government that would be funded and backed by some Gulf countries and Egypt, all of which are disillusioned with Abbas.

Mitchel [Mitch] Flint is 94 year old. He is a frail 94 but strong and with all faculties. Mitch is a living legend. He is a member of a group of volunteer pilots, of foreign nationalities who were recruited by Israel to help her fight her Independence War when the nascent Jewish state found herself attacked by 5 Arab nations in 1948. Without these pilots Israel could have lost the war!

When I once asked Mitch why he took the risk he said, “Someone had to do it!”

Well, yesterday, at the Four Seasons Hotel, in Beverly Hills California, we, a small group of family and close friends, celebrated Mitch’s 94th birthday and we all look forward to celebrating his 95th birthday, in Israel, when Israel celebrates her 70th birthday, in 2018.

A book “Angels In The Sky”, about these brave pilots 140 in number, is about to be published and a film by the same name is being produced.
Angels in the Sky: The Birth of Israel Air Force (2017)

Product Details

Angels in the Sky: How a Band of Volunteer Airmen Saved the New State of Israel
Oct 3, 2017
by Robert Gandt

On June 5, 2017, the United States Senate approved Resolution 176, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, and reminded us that “there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Jerusalem for 3 millennia.” This legislative initiative was preceded by the Jerusalem Embassy Act (Public Law 104-45), on November 8, 1995, which indicated that “Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel” and that the American Embassy, currently in Tel Aviv, at the will of the president of the United States, may be relocated to Jerusalem.

President Trump has followed the path of his predecessor presidents: he has chosen not to honor the intent of the Jerusalem Embassy Act, nor his campaign promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, for fear of alienating already hostile Middle Eastern nations and populations, so as to float his personal peace plan.

Lest we forget, only fifty years ago, war was forced upon our loyal Middle Eastern ally, Israel, by her neighboring nations (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq). Their clearly stated aim was to drive Israel’s young and old, helpless and able-bodied, Christian, Muslim and Jew, into the sea, and then to take for themselves all that the people of Israel had labored to build in their relatively tiny state.

At the time, every nation of means turned her back on the mixed multitude of Israelis being threatened. The United Nations security force was asked to withdraw from the Sinai and did so without protest. The United States, fearing the Soviet response, hid under the covers.

Without the help of her friends, the odds of Israel’s survival was minimal at best. Yet when push came to shove and with everything to lose, Jews and other people of conscience came from abroad to take a stand with their threatened brethren. Together, they helped thwart a massacre. Within hours, Israel’s pre-emptive air strike neutralized Egypt’s jets, while her ground forces overcame the might of more numerous opposition armies, in just six days, before a cease-and-desist action was organized.

Jerusalem became a unified city, reaffirmed as Israel’s eternal capital. All faiths were subsequently guaranteed perpetual, unobstructed, and protected access to their holy sites.

Yet, every six months, since November 5, 1995, a presidential waiver to delay the move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem was utilized, sidestepping the original intent of Public Law 104-45, on the grounds of unidentified national security issues.

Meanwhile, the United States has not become a more respected nation abroad, except with Israel. The Middle East is clearly less stable. The Palestinians have repeatedly capitalized on America’s failure to act responsibly towards her friend, Israel, by expanding their self-serving demands. Furthermore, they have not chosen to put aside their perpetual hatred of Israel and Jews so as to concentrate on building the infrastructure necessary to support a separate state for their children.

Unrealistically, American presidents stubbornly adhere to a vague dream of peace that the Palestinian leadership does not apparently share, and a succession of American presidents has seen fit to diplomatically punish an ally, Israel, by denying her the same diplomatic status any other nation’s capital currently enjoys: hosting the embassy of the United States.

With the current administration’s willingness to employ cruise missiles as necessary, I am not so sure that the feared Palestinian repercussions will become a reality should the American Embassy be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Israel stands alone in the Middle East, as a proud nation with shared American values, and without fear for being so. This status alone should be rewarded with the embassy move.

For over 40 years, the Golan Heights has been one of Israel’s quietest regions. Israel liberated the Golan Heights during the 1967 Six-Day War and successfully repulsed a Syrian attempt to retake the Golan six years later. Since that time, Israel has transformed the Golan into an oasis of sorts, drawing tens of thousands of tourists yearly.

Those fortunate enough to visit the region marvel over its natural beauty and tranquility. But the outbreak of violence and civil war in Syria has resulted in periodic spillover with errant shells, fired by pro and anti-regime forces, landing in open spaces across the border. In some circumstances, the fire is purposeful though this only occurs on rare occasions and those foolish enough to engage the Israel Defense Forces usually pay for their misdeeds with their lives.

In November 2016, an ISIS cell which opened fire on Israeli troops patrolling the Golan Heights border was liquidated in short order by accurate tank and aircraft fire. At least four ISIS terrorist were reportedly killed. ISIS got the message (it has been reported that they even apologized) and since that occurrence, there have been no repeat incidents initiated by the terror group.

Since the start of Syria’s civil war, fire directed from the Syrian side of the border has claimed one fatality, a 15-year-old Israeli Arab youth who was travelling with his father near the border. The incident occurred in June 2014. His father, a civilian contractor who was working in the area, was injured. Immediate counter fire quickly dispatched those responsible.

Israel has informed the Syrian government through indirect channels that it will not tolerate violations of its territorial sovereignty whether purposeful or not, and would respond forcefully to any violation, however slight. This robust Israeli doctrine was put into practice on June 24 and June 25.

In the first occurrence, several shells landed on the Israeli side of the border after fighting broke out between Assad loyalists and Sunni insurgents. Hikers near the vicinity were evacuated as a safety precaution. Israel’s response was immediate and devastating. Two Syrian tanks and a heavy machine gun outpost were obliterated. The IDF released aerial surveillance of the strike and accurate hits were clearly visible. Syria acknowledged the death of two of its soldiers during the attack.

Less than 24 hours later, several Syrian projectiles landed on the Israeli side of the border drawing once again, a furious Israeli military response. Two Syrian artillery pieces and an ammunition truck were destroyed in the second Israeli strike.

In response to Israel’s defensive measures, the Assad regime issued a banal threat incorporating the usual hysterical rhetoric stating that Israel would be held responsible for any repercussions that may ensue. The Syrian army announced that Israel would face “serious consequences if it repeats similar aggressive actions under any pretext.”

But it is difficult to take Assad’s threats seriously. His army is a mere shell of its former self. Attrition, defections, draft-dodging and desertions have taken their collective toll on Syrian troop strength. It is believed that the Syrian army consists of roughly half of its pre-war strength of 300,000. Without the presence of Russia and Iranian-backed proxies like Hezbollah, the Assad regime would have collapsed long ago. Given his mounting problems, the last thing the embattled regime needs now is a war with one of the world’s strongest militaries.

There is a long history of Israeli-Palestinian peace processing. Some things have ‎been largely the same in every cycle. Israel has at different times offered a little ‎more or a little less land for a Palestinian state. There have been minor shifts in ‎the Israeli offers made on Jerusalem, so as to accommodate a Palestinian desire for ‎a capital there. Israel has shown some flexibility in addressing the refugee issue ‎through family reunification in Israel in a limited number of cases, with the great ‎number having a new state as their home if they want it. At times American and ‎third party involvement in the negotiations was significant, and at other times, ‎largely absent.‎

The Palestinians have for the most part made the same demands year after year. ‎The borders are to reflect the 1949 armistice lines. The Palestinian capital will be ‎in east Jerusalem. The refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars and their ‎descendants shall have a right of return to Israel or to a new Palestinian state. ‎Jews now living within the new borders of a Palestinian state must leave or accept ‎the law of the new state. All Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails are to be ‎released. This is a formula guaranteed to produce a stalemate and a breakup in ‎talks.‎

Israel has demanded recognition that it is a Jewish state, and the Palestinians ‎have never accepted this formulation. After all, if a new Palestinian state were ‎created, but Israel was required to absorb millions of refugees, it would become far less of a Jewish state. The Palestinians, much ‎like Iran, do not accept the permanence of Israel. The creation of Israel has always ‎been considered a nakba, a disaster. While Iran has threatened missiles and ‎nuclear weapons to reach its desired outcome, the Palestinians seemed to rely on ‎demographic shifts and terrorism to eventually break down Israel’s will to resist. ‎The now much higher Israeli Jewish fertility rate (more than three children per woman of child bearing ‎age, about the same as for Israeli Arabs and West Bank Arabs), along with the ‎Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, have significantly extended the horizons for when ‎this supposed demographic advantage for the Palestinians in places where both ‎people reside would be realized.

A new round of peace processing is underway, this time the Donald Trump version, ‎spearheaded by Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt and Senior Adviser to the President Jared Kushner. The early signs are that ‎things have not changed among the two parties. Things may have changed, ‎however, on the American side. The Trump administration has been fighting the ‎lawfare, and propaganda efforts Palestinians and their allies routinely push at the ‎United Nations and other international organizations. Nikki Haley, the new ‎American ambassador to the United Nations, has been the most vocal challenging ‎the obsession at the U.N. with condemning Israel and its behavior. The administration in its meetings with Palestinian officials in Washington and ‎Ramallah have demanded an end to incitement against Israel and a ‎cutoff of Palestinian Authority payments to families of terrorists, many of whom have or had American blood on their hands. These ‎payments are a significant dollar amount when compared to total American aid to ‎the Palestinian Authority but are very popular among Palestinians, who see the ‎jailed Palestinians or those killed in terror attacks as noble resistance fighters and ‎heroe. A threat of an aid cutoff would likely result in a sham multistep process ‎to provide an appearance that the program has ended, when it will in fact continue ‎to fund the families. Already there are hints about the PA contributing to a social ‎welfare organization that, among other tasks, continues the payments to the same ‎families on the same schedule. ‎