I did a similar post to this one yesterday, but it was lost in the quagmire of the usual hotel(I’m travelling at the moment, and am staying at a hotel in Washington, DC) Internet access. There will be trackbacks at other sites I linked to, that lead to the since-deleted post that this one replaces.

So, yesterday Mahmoud Abbas claimed he had things under control in the Gaza Strip

The chaos at the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt has been brought under control, according to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
“I think that the Palestinians are perfectly in control,” Mr Abbas said during a visit to the Rafah crossing.

Perhaps that was merely an indication of a profoundly distorted sense of reality at work, perhaps it was just a small fib to facilitate the opinion of the rest of the world that all is hunky dory in Gaza.

Whatever.

It’s difficult to believe that this could be even a remote possibility, considering that the man and his Fatah government couldn’t curtail terrorism, assuming he’d even wanted to, which I doubt, in the infinitely less stressful conditions that existed before the Israelis’ Gaza pullout. I say ‘less stressful’ because at the time, there weren’t thousands upon thousands of Palestinians on the move like a thundering herd of animals, looting, burning synagogues and generally acting like…well, animals.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the chaos in Gaza is still going great guns, and the Israelis are in overdrive implementing security measures, the job a major challenge as they’ve long since learned that they can’t depend upon the Palestinian Authority to be of any help. You know, the folks all those western leaders, including our own President{I’m sorry to say as I’m a Bush supporter on most issues and would vote for him again if he could run again}, apparently believe are somehow qualified to manage their territorial affairs of state.

Israel increased the security checks being conducted along the northern border of the Gaza Strip Friday, at the Karni goods crossing and the Erez crossing in northern Gaza, in an attempt to stop weapons and drugs from being smuggled to Gaza from Egypt.

“The aim is to set up a no-man’s land which Palestinians will be barred from entering,” a Defense Ministry official said.

I’ve blogged on this before, and my opinion hasn’t altered one iota: Israel’s ceding the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians and the rest of the world giving the PA vast sums of money over the years do nothing to promote peace in the Middle East.

Giving them Gaza sends them a message that terrorism works, and that increasing same will get them an entirely Muslim, Jewish-free country over time. They made this plain at the outset of the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, when Hamas and friends acknowledged their victory and vowed to terrorize even more. Yet the evacuation continued and the funds are to keep flowing.

Thus far, more of the money(taxpayers’ dollars, pounds, francs, pesos, etc. from the U.S. and elsewhere) given to the Palestinian Authority seems to have found its way into the personal coffers of the late and unlamented-by-most Mr. Arafat and his Fatah cronies or been invested in weapons and explosives with which to murder Jewish civilians and any other soft targets who just happened to be in the immediate vicinity, than to bettering the lives of those Palestinians who simply want to live in peace and watch their children grow up.

All in all, the terrorists of Hamas, al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Islamic Jihad and the rest are getting a great deal. A geographic subdivision all their own in which to stockpile weapons and explosives, congregate pretty much openly without fear of arrest as they plan and assemble the logistics for terror attacks within Israel and then stage these attacks, plus the financing, courtesy of yours and my tax dollars, to bankroll them. What a bargain!

To make self defense even harder for Israel, Gaza borders Egypt, and that country has long been one of the major ordnance conduits for Palestinian terrorist organizations. Despite any promises the Egyptians might make to secure their borders against a flow of arms to the Palestinians, they are an Arab country and Israel knows better than to place any aspects of their security in that quarter — so they’ll have to secure the Gaza-Egypt border themselves.

Israel has promised to deal “harshly” with the Palestinians in Gaza should the strip become a source of continued terrorism, and given the terror the Jews have had forced upon them by the Palestinians, I have no compunction about saying that when this inevitability occurs, the positive aspect will be that whatever the Israelis do, they won’t have to worry about any Jewish collateral damage in the Gaza Strip.

In Jewish World Review, Diana West asks What have we paid for with Palestinian handouts?
They say you get what you pay for. But what exactly have we paid for? As recently as Sept. 2, according to Palestinian Media Watch, the PA’s “Voice of Palestine” was sermonizing against “heretical” America, exhorting the Muslim faithful to attack Americans in Iraq — just the latest instance of anti-U.S. propaganda carried on PA-run radio. A few weeks ago, the PA’s so-called Ministry of Culture released its “Book of the Month,” a collection of poetry honoring murder-bomber Hanadi Jaradat. This “Rose of Palestine” killed 29 Israeli Jews and Arabs at a crowded Haifa eatery in October 2003, back when such carnage was still shocking. Palestinian Media Watch also noted a PA government newspaper report about female Hamas terrorists — photographed holding American-made automatic rifles.

All of which should make us wonder: Have we paid for a “peace process,” or have we financed holy war (jihad)? Have we supported a “peace partner”? Or have we just helped create a terrorist state?

I believe a grave error has been, and is continuing to be made, and that the result will be the engenderment of exponentially more violence between Israelis and Arabs than we have seen since 1973.

On a lighter note, Vinnie of Vince Aut Morire fame suggests an alternative location for a Palestinian state and, for those of you who plan to travel in the Middle East in the near future, a list of useful phrases that might make your trip more enjoyable.