I was a defensive tackle on my High School football team. Whenever there was a pass play I had one simple task, get to the quarterback before he threw the ball and try to separate his head from the rest of his body. After a few plays like that, the quarterback usually decides that maybe passing is not the best "career decision"Sometimes a quarterback would wise up before he started seeing little pink elephants, he would throw a screen pass. For those of you who are not familiar with the nitty-gritty details of American football, a screen pass preys on a defensive lineman's ego. When the play starts, the offensive linemen who are supposed to keep you away from the quarterback only half-heartedly block you --just enough to make you think that they are trying. The defensive guys like me break through them believing that we are just crushing them and race for the quarterback...of course it is all a set-up----the offensive linemen are just letting you through so they can block for the runner who has just caught a pass two feet behind you--and if done right it leave very few people between that runner and a touchdown. The screen pass is the ultimate football scam because it turns your strength into a weakness. Today the Palestinians are doing the same thing to the United States and Israel.
Abbas and his Hamas buddies are using our strength and turning it into a weakness. Both Israel and the US desperately want peace. For Israel a real peace would culmination of the Zionist dream a Jewish State living in peace with its neighbors, no longer having to deal with homocide bombings and sending her young to die in wars. For the US its a chance to show the Arab world that we are the Leaders of the Free World and we are looking to create stability in the region. Nice thoughts but the problem with it all is that Abbas is calling a screen pass.
Working on our desire to get to that peace plan, they are preying on our egos, Olmert and Bush really believe that they are the ones to solve this problem---their diplomatic and creative thinking will get to the ultimate goal that they want so much----Peace.
What they don't see is that runner right behind them. Those negotiations between Fatah and Hamas both want to control the entirety of a Palestinian State, both know they can't do it alone. So while the US and Israel are giving Abbas tons of cash and the latest in military armaments, Fatah and Hamas are slowly making peace with the other and planing to share the gifts and the military toys. Their goal however is not a touch down...its the destruction of the Jewish State.
A screen pass can kill a defensive tackle. That is, unless he sets aside his ego and realizes that when things happen a little too easily, its has nothing to do with his strength its all a setup. Anyone can fall for a screen pass the first time, but by the third or fourth time you have to be looking for it. Abbas is setting us up for a screen pass today, just like he did with Sharon. Before Abbas, the murderous Arafat ran the same play. Its time for Israel and the United States to start learning and to begin to look for the trick play.
One More Sports NoteThe cracks are already showing in yet another blind Western attempt to impose Western notions of order on the Arab Middle East. On Monday the alternative-media scoop site Debkafile had PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas “in secret talks with Hamas ahead of Abbas’ Jericho meeting with Olmert Monday—and behind his back.”Abbas’s Double Game
By P. David Hornik
FrontPageMagazine.com | 8/9/2007The scoop went on to say that
Mahmoud Abbas’ close adviser, Jibril Rajoub, is holding secret talks with the Gazan Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad.
Broad influential circles in Fatah. . .criticize as shortsighted and destined to be short-lived Abbas’ policy of separating the West Bank from Gaza and boycotting Hamas.
This falling away of support for Abbas in his own movement throws further in doubt the US-Israeli strategy of putting all their Palestinian apples in his West Bank basket, as manifested in American dollars and Israeli concessions on security.
The article further refers to the “dim view of [this] process” in Israeli defense circles including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and notes that a key intelligence official told the relevant Knesset committee on Sunday that “the West Bank was the next Fatah-Hamas arena of conflict…and Fatah has no chance of standing up to Hamas there, any more than it did in Gaza. Abbas’ forces are completely dependent on the Israeli army to keep Hamas in check.”
By Wednesday the same tidings, more or less, had graduated to the lead story of the mainstream Jerusalem Post, with the headline “Fatah, Hamas said to be moving toward reconciliation” topping a report by Arab-affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh. “Fatah and Hamas officials,” he wrote,
said Tuesday they are conducting secret talks in a bid to patch up their differences following Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip.
The revelation came less than 24 hours after Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during their meeting in Jericho he had no plans to talk to Hamas….
Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Tuesday he was prepared to step down to pave the way for the resumption of the Hamas-Fatah talks…. [He] told Palestinian journalists he was convinced it was only a matter of time before the two parties returned to the negotiating table.
As the “driving force behind the mediation efforts” Fatah officials named one Muhammad Jassem al-Saqer, “a Kuwaiti national and speaker of the Arab Parliament.” In other words, a top official from one of the purportedly “moderate,” “pro-Western” countries included in the Bush administration’s proposed major arms sale to Saudi Arabia and five other Gulf states.
Also pitching in is an old U.S. competitor: “Noting that Abbas had visited Moscow recently, [another Fatah] official said the Russian government had made it clear to Abbas that President Vladimir Putin was keen on resolving the crisis between the two parties.”
Meanwhile Fatah, talking behind the scenes to whomever it wanted about whatever it wanted including parties like Hamas and Russia, talked openly as usual to its Israel supplicants about its need for—more prisoner releases and more guns. In his Monday meeting with Abbas, the ever-compliant Olmert reportedly “promised to release more security prisoners”—the freeing of masses of convicted terrorists from Israeli jails having at all times been a basic demand of the allegedly moderate Abbas.
And on Wednesday, at the same time as the Jerusalem Post led with the abovementioned “Fatah, Hamas said to be moving toward reconciliation,” Haaretz’s English website featured—wouldn’t you know it, “PA presses for arms shipments said needed to stave off Hamas.” It seems that
Less than two months after Hamas tattered [Fatah] rule in the Gaza Strip…the Palestinian Authority—under Fatah leader Chairman
Mahmoud Abbas—is once more requesting large shipments of weapons, ammunition and armored vehicles.
This time, the PA is seeking Israel's approval for shipments from Egypt and Jordan. . . . Israel has not yet answered and has reservations about some of the requests.
One might hope so, sinceThe new Palestinian wish list includes armored cars, jeeps, machine guns, several thousand rifles plus millions of rounds, bullet-proof vests, stun grenades and additional combat gear. The PA argues that it needs weapons to preserve Fatah’s rule and to deal with coup attempts by Hamas…. [The Palestinians] are relying, among other funds, on an $80 million grant that the United States had recently granted the PA’s security forces .. . .
Jerusalem's reservations pertain primarily to the armored cars.... Israel had already allowed then PA chairman Yasser Arafat to operate several such armored vehicles following the Oslo Accords of 1993. They were later destroyed by the Israel Air Force after the second intifada erupted in September 2000.
Abbas’s game is clear enough: milk the Israelis and Americans for whatever you can get, meanwhile keep building your intra-Arab and international alliances. What is less clear is how the elected officials of the world’s last two fighting democracies can keep buying the same moonshine, indulging their Fatah-fetish again and again by building and rebuilding this fundamentally anti-Israeli, anti-Western terror organization until the next debacle.
Most of the New York City subway system was back in service by this evening’s rush hour after a fierce morning storm disrupted transit service throughout much of the region and unleashed a rare and destructive tornado that whipped southwestern Brooklyn with winds of up to 135 miles an hour
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