Readers in Council,
The Japan Times,
5-4, Shibaura 4-chome,
Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023
The news from the Gaza Strip during the week of June 11-16 describing infighting between the Fatah and Hamas factions is a perfect demonstration of the primary reasons for the failure of Palestinians to realize statehood for themselves. Palestinians are their own worst enemies, and it is not America, the American government, American foreign policy, Israeli Jewish settlement or defense policy that are the primary impediment to the realization of Palestinian dreams. It is the kinds of chronic factional fighting summarized in “Hamas militants take hold of Gaza,” (June 16, 2007) that amply demonstrate a deep incompetence among Palestinians to organize and maintain a functioning society - to say nothing of a civil one. Of course, critics of Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy will zealously maintain that those are primarily responsible for maintaining conditions of poverty, dependence and hopelessness among Palestinians which are the underlying causes of violence there, described as “chaos” in recent news accounts. But that would be wrong, because in the matter of operating a government and vying for statehood the Palestinians give every indication of being independently incompetent.