US/Israeli Role in fomenting civil war in Palestine

The below is from an excellent journalistic source FAIR. In the below, they have analyzed (1) the role of US and Israel in causing the violence in Gaza; rather than discussing this externally imposed impetus for violence, the dominant discourse in the US is “Arabs killing each other over Jewish land” and (2) the silence of the US press in informing the public of (1).   

‘I Like This Violence’
Censoring the U.S. role in Gaza’s civil war
By Seth Ackerman

The big story from the Middle East last June was the factional fighting in Gaza that ended in a victory for the Hamas party and the routing of forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement. The violence made the front pages of the major papers—the New York Times (6/14/07), Washington Post (6/14/07), the Los Angeles Times (6/15/07)—and the cover of Newsweek (6/25/07). The overall message was simple: As the Washington Post’s Scott Wilson described it (6/15/07), the episode represented “a sharp escalation in intensity, brutality and ambition on the part of Hamas forces.”
As for the events that led up to Hamas’ takeover and the Bush administration’s role in them, these were hardly a secret—at least for the specialists who follow politics in the region closely. But Americans who rely on the mainstream media for their news were left in the dark as reporters did their best to keep any hint of the crucial background out of their coverage.

The facts are no mystery. The previous February, Hamas and Fatah had joined together in a national unity government in an effort to put an end to street fighting and factionalism within the Palestinian administration (Extra!, 9–10/06). The announcement of the power-sharing agreement, forged under Saudi auspices at a summit in Mecca, was greeted with nearly universal relief: “In the streets of Gaza, Palestinians broke out in celebration as the agreement was being announced, with members of Hamas and Fatah firing into the air,” the New York Times reported (2/9/07).
Over the months that followed, reports rolled in of weapons being shipped to Fatah forces with an Israeli green light (Ha’aretz, 12/28/06); the arrival in Gaza of hundreds of fighters trained under U.S. auspices in neighboring countries (Washington Post, 5/18/07); and a White House request for $83 million from Congress to finance “non-lethal aid” to Fatah forces (AP, 1/19/07).

In Israel, it was obvious what was going on. Ha’aretz’s chief diplomatic correspondent, Akiva Eldar, noted (4/24/07) that “arming the [pro-Abbas] Palestinian Presidential Guard is part of Elliott Abrams’ plan to bury the Mecca agreement.” (See The Return of Elliott Abrams)
If any proof were needed that the U.S. was trying to foment a civil war, it arrived just as the violence in Gaza was reaching a crescendo—in the form of an internal report by Alvaro De Soto, the U.N. envoy to the Quartet, that was leaked to the London Guardian (6/13/07). In De Soto’s report, the full text of which can be found at the Guardian’s website, the Peruvian diplomat wrote:

The U.S. clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas —so much so that, a week before Mecca, the U.S. envoy [presumably Assistant Secretary of State David Welch] declared twice in an envoys’ meeting in Washington how much “I like this violence,” referring to the near–civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because “it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas.”

To summarize: At a moment when violence in Gaza was a top story in the world media, it was disclosed by a U.N. diplomat who worked closely with the U.S. that a leading American policymaker in a private meeting had openly rejoiced at the violence and saw it as proof that American policy was working.

The complete article here.