This weekend, Hamas utterly destroyed a group of Al-Qaida supporters. The rumble in Rafah wasn't the Palestinian Altalena moment I had in mind.
The idea refers to the Altalena affair of 1948. During the War of Independence, Yitzhak Rabin and the Haganah — acting on orders from David Ben-Gurion — destroyed an arms ship belonging to Menachem Begin and the Irgun. More than 30 Jews, mostly from the Irgun, died that day.
Begin's refusal to resist the Haganah is widely credited with preventing Israel from possibly sliding into civil war. The Irgun was eventually absorbed into the Haganah to create the Israel Defense Forces. Israel had, what Mahmoud Abbas would describe as — with a twinge of jealousy –"one authority, one gun."
During Oslo's headier days, who would've predicted an Altalena moment between radical Muslims and even more radical Muslims?
