"We Have Never Seen Anything Like This" | Victor Davis Hanson
Palestinian Society in a Shambles
Bankrupt - despite $40 billion in American aid.
The two Palestinian polities in Gaza and in the West Bank, are both in an advanced state of deliquescence. Their disastrous condition is discussed here: “Palestinian Society Sinks into Shambles,” by James Sinkinson, JNS.org, August 10, 2023:
Palestinian society is in disarray.
In two major West Bank towns—Jenin and Nablus—the Palestinian Authority has lost control, and rogue gangs rule the land. Last week, thousands of Gazans protested in the streets—risking brutal backlash from the Hamas regime. Meanwhile, talks in Egypt meant to reconcile the PA and Hamas after 17 bitter years have again hopelessly failed.
The PA’s authority no longer extends much beyond Ramallah. In both Jenin and Nablus, the terror groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, along with a half-dozen newer groups supported with money and weapons by Iran, and all of them opposed to the PA, share — and vie for — control. No one group has yet managed to control either city.
All this takes place as the Biden administration tries to pressure Israel and Saudi Arabia into a “normalization” deal contingent on concrete steps toward a Palestinian state. Both sides are resisting.
No surprise: Despite billions of dollars in “welfare” from the United States, Arab states and the European Union, Palestinian institutions are in a death spiral. Both the PA and Hamas lack political stability or security control, their economies are bankrupt, the two rival dictatorships cannot reconcile and neither has a vision for statehood, let alone peace … other than the destruction of Israel….
The Palestinians have received from the United States alone more than $40 billion in aid. But this has not prevented the PA from being nearly bankrupt, with much of that aid money siphoned off by massive corruption, and mismanagement of resources. Mahmoud Abbas now shares, with his sons Tarek and Yasser, a family fortune of $400 million. The corruption in Gaza is even greater, with just two Hamas members, Khaled Meshaal and Mousa bin Marzouk, having accumulated fortunes of $2.5 billion apiece. As a consequence of such corruption, many of the donors that once provided money to the Palestinians have drastically decreased, or ended altogether, their aid. The rich Arab states of the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have been particularly dismayed with the Palestinians. Hamas, they realize, is merely the local representative of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is implacably opposed to their family monarchies. And the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas has exhausted them with his constant demands for money. In 2018, the Saudi Crown Prince, exasperated with Abbas, told him to “take whatever deal the Americans offer.” The two Palestinian economies, in Gaza and the West Bank, are both suffering from high unemployment, sinking GDPs, and a high debt-to-income ratio. The only bright spot for the Palestinian economies is Israel’s willingness to increase the number of work permits to a historic high, to above 200,000,which allows that many Palestinians to work in Israel and the settlements where they earn from two to five times what they would receive from Palestinian employers — assuming that there were work to be had in Gaza and the PA-run territories.
The Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank remain at daggers drawn; the latest attempt, by Egypt, to have Hamas and the PA reconcile ended in a complete failure. And the political instability is not merely the result of the enmity between Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank, but also within both areas, with other parties involved. Hamas rules despotically in Gaza, but faces a challenge to its rule by the PIJ. And in the West Bank, where the PIJ fought recently against the IDF in the Jenin camp, while Hamas failed to support it, that terror group now presents itself as the new standard bearer of Palestinian “resistance.” The recent protests by thousands of Gazans against Hamas show that the terror group no longer instills fear in the populace as it once did. In the West Bank, the PA has lost effective control everywhere but in Ramallah and Jericho. Elsewhere in the West Bank, Hamas and the PIJ contend not only with the PA’s Fatah, and with each other, but also with new groups, such as the Lions’ Den, that have appeared, to challenge not only the Israelis but also the older Palestinian terror groups, that are perceived, accurately, as riddled with corruption and nepotism.
The ordinary Palestinians distrust the despots who rule over them. They have seen how both Hamas and the PA have remained in power by arresting, imprisoning, and sometimes murdering, those who oppose them. A recent example was Nizar Banat, whose criticism of Mahmoud Abbas’ corruption was judged so effective that Abbas had his goons beat Banat to death.
In Gaza it is the same story, with Hamas, which expelled or murdered hundreds of Fatah men in 2007, has continued to murder its domestic critics, beginning most famously with Osama Atallah, who, in 2009, was tortured and then killed by Hamas militants.
According to the latest poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 80% of Palestinians want 87-year-old PA President Mahmoud Abbas to resign. An Arab News/YouGov poll indicates 63% of Palestinians feel underrepresented by both Hamas and Fatah, the two most powerful Palestinian factions. In fact, just 11% have confidence in Fatah, while only 19% have confidence in Hamas.
The Palestinians are overwhelmingly opposed to both the PA’s Fatah and to Hamas.
At the same time, the majority of Palestinians—71%—support the formation of armed terrorist groups like Lions’ Den. In addition, 52% of Palestinians support continued “armed struggle”—more terrorism—against Israel….
The Palestinians are becoming more supportive of violence, and ever less ready to make a compromise.
Hamas faces a major challenge from the PIJ in Gaza, while the PA has been losing control in the West Bank not to one, but to a half-dozen, terror groups, including Hamas, the PIJ, the PFLP, and the Lions’ Den.
The PA has all but ceded control of Jenin and Nablus in Samaria (northern West Bank) to armed terrorist gangs. Last month, Israel conducted a large-scale raid in Jenin to neutralize its terrorist infrastructure and halt murders of Israeli civilians. While Israel temporarily cleaned up the PA’s mess, the rebels will surely regroup….
The Jenin operation was conducted solely against PIJ. Hamas showed just how deep is its rivalry with that group by not lifting a finger to help it against the Zionist enemy. And the PIJ has subsequently been making much of that failure by Hamas, insisting that it alone deserves to be seen as the leader of the “resistance.”
REPORT: Biden Admin Welds Arizona Border Wall Gates Open
A media report revealed that Biden administration officials welded border wall gates open near Lukeville, Arizona. The open gates allow migrants to freely walk through the border wall and into the Arizona desert.
Border Patrol officials admitted responsibility for a decision to weld open flood gates in sections of border wall near Lukeville, the New York Post reported. The admission reportedly came after the agency attempted to blame other federal agencies for the action that allows thousands of migrants to freely cross into what is now the nation’s busiest border sector.
The Tucson Sector led the nation in migrant apprehensions in July. The apprehension of nearly 40,000 migrants represents an increase of nearly 136 percent over July 2022. The sector is in second place in year-to-date apprehensions following the arrest of nearly 274,000 migrants — an increase of 59 percent over the same period last year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports.
“We thought the agents were going to say something to us,” an Ecuadorian migrant told the Post. “But we just got in.”
A Cuban migrant added, “It was so easy to get into the United States. Nothing like our trip through Mexico. That part was difficult. I thought there was going to be more security.”
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The gates were installed in the border wall construction to allow monsoon-season floodwaters and migratory animals to pass through.
“High water flow combined with excessive sediment and debris buildup can stress or comprise the design integrity of the barrier,” CBP officials told the Post.
However, National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd told the New York newspaper that the Mexican cartel human smuggling intelligence apparatus quickly discovers these gaps in the wall and exploits them for profit.
“Because the cartels are constantly surveilling what we do, the moment something gets left open, it gets exploited,” Judd explained. “In this particular case, it exploded almost immediately, which shows you how adept the criminal cartels are at exploiting any weakness at any time that we show them.”
Judd added that the gates “should never open up.”
The New York Post article contains multiple photographs of the welded-open gates and migrants crossing through at will. One photo shows a steel spike in the ground welded to the gate to keep it open.
In June, Tucson Sector agents apprehended an average of 821 migrants daily. In July, that number increased to approximately 1,200 migrants per day. During the first two weeks of August, unofficial Border Patrol numbers obtained by Breitbart Texas show a continued increase to 1,483 migrant apprehensions per day.
Bob Price is the Breitbart Texas-Border team’s associate editor and senior news contributor. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.
Anybody notice what went on at the Darien Gap this weekend?
A picture is worth a thousand words, so let's cut to the chase:
Google Translate:
Images from this weekend in the Darien Jungle. A hostile route to flee from the chavista hell of Venezuela to the US. Have you ever wondered why you haven't seen NOT A SINGLE DOCUMENTARY about the largest human exodus of the current century (7.1 million people)?
So contrary to Joe Biden's claim that the border surge is ended and he's got the crisis all under control, it appears that more Venezuelans and migrants of other nationalities are lining up to make their way into the U.S.
It's an astonishing spectacle, given that the Darien Gap is probably the most dangerous land route on the planet, or at least ones. Loaded with snakes, jaguars, poisonous frogs, pirates, smugglers, kidnappers, thorns, toxics and quicksand, anyone who'd want to cross through that place is obviously out of their minds.
But they look sane enough. What's incentivizing them to undertake this dangerous journey through the swamps, mud and jungles is the knowledge that if they can make it to the U.S. through its southern border, they will be permitted to stay.
And based on what's known now, they certainly are calling it right.
Today's New York Post shows just one of several reasons why this is the case, with its front-page tweet:
That's an astonishing story, too. Border Patrol agents, acting on orders from their superiors, have literally welded the gates of the border open, on the laughable premise that certain endangered antelope need to cross over to the other side as part of their natural habitat. That has given the migrants a free land-based crossing near Tucson with none of the rigors of crossing the Rio Grande. The Post notes that the migrants discovered the crossing very quickly, and Border Patrol sources explained that this was because the cartels control the border and surveil its activity closely in order to take advantage of vulnerabilities. This was a freebie for them, and undoubtedly a profitable one, given that the observed migrants crossing in appeared to be well-heeled tourists from places like China and India, who had thousands of dollars to pay in "crossing fees" to cartels. Once in, all they need to do is hop on to transport to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or other cities of their choice and be offered free housing, food, education and medical care from the receiving sanctuary cities. Arizona had been offering that service and may still be doing it, and the federally financed NGOs have reportedly done so, too. The state of Texas certainly does. Which is a pretty good deal for migrants whether rich or poor, no matter where they hail from.
The migrants pictured in the original tweet are from Venezuela, which is a socialist regime that has followed the Cuba model through mass impoverishment in the name of "equality." They may take that open border route if they can pay the cartels, or other smuggling routes that are considerably rougher. But once in, they won't be sent back and that's all they're thinking of.
The Biden administration has crowed a lot about getting the border under control through its CBPOne app, which requires migrants to file their asylum claims from outside the U.S. through the app and get waved through, or sometimes actually bussed in from Central America courtesy of the federal government. There have been 30,000 slots allocated through this system with each requiring a sponsor in the U.S., who could be an unvetted illegal immigrant already present in the U.S. For those without sponsors, though, that's read as an incentive to come on in, too, because the border will be less crowded with them.
Which may explain why we are seeing what we are seeing at the Darien Gap -- a border surge importing the poverty and socialism of the third world even more intensely than what we have seen in the recent past. Far from solving the border crisis, it appears to be intensifying.
For the Biden administration, the only priority so far has been to keep the Fox News cameras away from the spectacle. And make a few laughable claims that illegal border crossers will be "subject to U.S. immigratiom law." But this hasn't stopped blue cities, which are left holding the bag and the bill, from noticing.
Right now, there seems to be open warfare between the blue city mayors and the Biden administration, around who is to pay for these migrants. Based on the blue cities' own bad policies, that includes paying for continuously rising demands for free food and housing which helps incentivize the surge. In New York City alone, that's 60,000 people, which is a lot of money to be spent on cleaning up after Hugo Chavez's disaster in Venezuela that could be spent on other things. Ten thousand a month are reportedly coming in. Two million illegal migrants have been allowed in on Joe Biden's watch as Biden employs catch and release and now literally leaves the gate wide open. That doesn't include 600,000 gotaways, who are often in the criminal element that must evade detection from the Border Patrol.
The migrants are massing at Darien and flying into Mexico from other places and nobody seems to know how to stop this. Enforcing the laws and shutting the border gates might do it, but to Biden, that's a bridge to far -- he can't do that any more than blue cities can end their free rides for incoming migrants -- which means the problem will only get worse.
This explains why even Democrats among the voting base have come to the conclusion that mass unchecked immigration is a major problem now. That says something.
Image: Twitter screen shot
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