STOP. THINK. :

Iran's Hamas Strategy: Radical Shiites back radical Sunnis with the aim of destabilizing the Middle East. (REUEL MARC GERECHT, 1/07/09, Wall Street Journal)

Born in the 1980s from the ruins of the Palestine Liberation Organization's corrupt and decaying secular nationalism, Hamas is a grass-roots, Sunni Islamist movement that has made Shiite Iran a front-line player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Before Hamas, the mullahs had financed the Palestine Islamic Jihad, whose holy warriors became renowned suicide bombers. But Islamic Jihad has always been a fringe group within Palestinian society. As national elections revealed in 2006, Hamas is mainstream. [...]

With Hamas, Iran has the opportunity to make amends. The mullahs have a chance of supplanting Saudi Arabia, the font of the most vicious anti-Shiite Sunni creed, as the most reliable backer of Palestinian fundamentalists. Even more than the Lebanese Hezbollah, which remains tied to and constrained by the complex matrix of Lebanese politics, Hamas seems willing to absorb enormous losses to continue its jihad against Israel. Where Saudi Arabia has been uneasy about the internecine strife among Palestinians -- it has bankrolled both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas -- Iran has put its money on the former.

Although Fatah, the ruling party within the Palestinian Authority, may get a second wind thanks to the excesses of Hamas and the Israelis' killing much of Hamas's brain power and muscle, it is difficult to envision Fatah reviving itself into an appealing political alternative for faithful Palestinians.

Mr. Gerecht somehow fails to consider the obvious policy implications of his own quite sound analysis. By backing the "corrupt and decaying secular nationalism," and futilely at that, Israel and the US are objective enemies of the Palestinian people, who quite sensibly prefer the "appealing political alternative" for the faithful.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 7, 2009 12:12 PM