Hama, Hamas, Hamatus

I worked really hard on that title, so don't think I'm just being cute. I worked the hell out of that free translation service!

Anyway, drama in Gaza, and Abbas decides to can the government? Sense in that? All suggestions/opinions being considered.

I'd think this was a real disaster if it seemed that a Hamas-driven takeover of Gaza would actually be problematic. I mean, Ireland has been at this how long? And in the middle east, they've been at this how much longer?

All I'm saying is that, maybe it's not such a bad thing. Violence is unfortunate, but perhaps the only way to bring about a unified Palestinian community that is prepared to do whatever it has to to bring about a globally recognized state.

Politics in this little corner of our world are so complicated, and I hate to allocate fault, because everyone is at fault. And where do you start?

It would be easy if one day a bunch of Jews had gotten together and just decided to infiltrate Palestine, massacre everyone, and set up camp - but it didn't happen exactly like that.

It would be easy if, one morning in 2005, a bunch of angry former Palestinians decided they were going to walk over to Israel and start killing as many people as they could.

And neither of these imaginary scenarios even takes into account the outside elements:
is Israel a US operative?
is Abbas kowtowing to the West?
is Hamas a terrorist organization?
is Iran funding all this chaos?

If I had the time and a postdoctoral grant (hint, hint), I could probably follow the money from today back and figure out EXACTLY why the governments and individuals involved in this debacle made the specific choices they made. And I still could not assign the fault to anyone in particular.

But as outsiders, what do we do?

For one thing, we can stop assigning good- and bad-guy roles to the groups involved - we do this with language subtly and with imagery not-so-subtly at all.

We can also take US funding out the equation, so that when the political winds inevitably change and we find ourselves on the wrong team, we can absolve ourselves from a time-limited, value-prejudiced course of action.

I have more suggestions. Each one more insane than the next.