Friday, June 15, 2007

Palestine's Party of God

Matthew Levitt describes how Hamas is likely to emulate Hezbollah. "Hamas will look north to Lebanon’s Hezbollah (Party of God) for a working model of a militant Islamist group that balances its political, charitable, and violent activities."

Unlike Western strategy, which wants a pre-identified "exit strategy" in place from the beginning of any operation, Iran has followed a model which seeks to sink deep roots into its targets. By slow degrees it acquires methods, contacts and experience which work very well within its setting. In that respect it resembles the European colonial efforts of the 18th and 19th century where the West's approach is similar to that of the episodic Viking raids on distant coasts.


These methods have worked so well there is some fear that they will spread onto the West Bank. Clearly, the method of combining Islamist ideology, "networked insurgency" methods and astute political action are proving more than a match for the old-style strongmen of the Middle East who rely upon the Nasser and Soviet style methods of the secret police and censorship. New technologies have substanstially undercut the effectiveness of those old repressive measures. Ironically, those who have put their faith in "realism" by upholding the despotic regimes in the Middle East as an alternative to bringing democracy to it are ceding the field to organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.

4 Comments:

Blogger allen said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

6/15/2007 05:44:00 PM  
Blogger allen said...

It is difficult for me to say I like Hamas, but there is one thing I do like: Hamas is right in your face. This makes people like Dr. Rice look absolutely and quite rightly stupid, for all their dissimulation. For all that, Hamas may be the salvation of Israel - an implacable, unrelenting enemy, who Israel cannot buy off for a season or placate with tidy bits of land for peace.

6/15/2007 05:45:00 PM  
Blogger RWE said...

Dennis Ross says that Hamas is committed to the imposition of Sharia law. Hezbolah has had to step carefully around this aspect, since I doubt there is any Arab country in the Middle East less likely to embrace Sharia than Lebanon - but in Gaza, Hamas can be all but unfettered when it comes to embracing Sahria. Or they would be - except - for the people in Gaza, who seem to be about as religious as the customers of a cowboy bar on Saturday night. This could get far more interesting.

6/15/2007 06:29:00 PM  
Blogger Harrywr2 said...

Hamas is following the model of AlQueda in AlAnbar. 18 months after declaring the "Islamic State of AlQaim" in AlAnbar...the Welcome mat for AlQueda has been withdrawn by th people themselves(with a little help from their old enemy The Great Satan).

The "Little Satan" should take note. Contain Hamas in Gaza until the Palestinian people themselves decides that the "Jews" are actually better than Hamas

6/16/2007 01:15:00 PM  

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