Middle East Logic

Read the following quote very carefully.  Please let me know when you're finished:

Gaza hospitals will run out of drugs and fuel for generators within a few days unless Israel eases the border blockade it imposed to curb Palestinian rocket attacks, international organizations said on Monday.

You're done?  Good.  Now, does this make any sense at all to you?  Hamas maintains perpetual artillery fire into Israeli towns across the border from the Gaza Strip; the Israelis - rather than simply retake Gaza, eradicate Hamas, and be done with it, which is its own separate folly - seal off the Strip and attempt to starve Gazans into doing the IDF's fighting for them, and "international organizations" demand that Israel relent and resume subsidizing their bloodthirsty terrorist attackers.

I see head-scratching!  Excellent!  Now let's look at another quote:

Palestinian officials have warned the standoff could harm U.S.-spurred efforts with Israel to reach a peace deal this year. ...

Oh, really?  Golly, what a tragedy that would be, huh?  Without a "peace" deal with the enemy that continues to attack it militarily on a daily basis, where would the Jewish state be?  At war?

By "Palestinian officials" I assume is meant the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which, last I heard, was also an enemy of Hamas after the latter drove the former out of Gaza altogether in last summer's much-balleyhooed "civil war".  Logic would lead one to believe that Fatah, as a co-belligerent with Israel against Hamas, would have at least an obligatory level of sympathy for their "partners in peace" and direct condemnation at Hamas for provoking this "standoff".  Could it be that Fatah is not so antagonized by their Gazan counterparts as they led us to believe?  Could in fact Fatah and Hamas be playing the ultimate game of "Good Cop/Bad Cop", or the usual Palestinian "triangle offense" in order to once again manipulate the Bush Administration and the EUnuchs into bulldozing Israel into another capitulation?

Well, today the Israeli government lifted the Gaza blockade - "temporarily".  I think you can draw your own conclusions.

Please let me known when you're done.