	Generational Dynamics
	Forecasting America's Destiny ... and the World's

\| HOME \| WEB LOG \| COUNTRY WIKI \| COMMENT \| FORUM \| DOWNLOADS \| ABOUT \|

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 13-Jun-07
Palestinian road to civil war escalates another step

Web Log - June, 2007

Palestinian road to civil war escalates another step

Gunfights escalated to larger military actions in northern Gaza on Monday and Tuesday, as a Hamas-linked militia unilaterally declared "the northern Gaza Strip a closed military zone" under its control. The result is an important victory for Hamas, leading Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ office to accuse Hamas of plotting a coup. Hamas, for its part, has accused Fatah of trying to assasinate the Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

According to Debka, Hamas threw its entire 15,000-strong Executive Force armed with mortars, RPGs, heavy machine guns and grenades into the bid to conquer the Gaza Strip, whereas Fatah commanders’ desperate appeals to Mahmoud Abbas for reinforcements drew nothing but a futile call for a ceasefire.

Since I started writing about the Arab/Jewish problem in 2003, the Israel/Palestine region has been almost a textbook case for Generational Dynamics analysis. I said that the region would descend again into war, replaying the extremely violent genocidal war between between Arabs and Jews in the late 1940s, following the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel, and that this war probably begin around two years after Yasser Arafat's death. It's now been about 2½ years since Arafat's death, and the Palestine region has gotten measurably worse almost every day since then. It now appears increasingly likely that the scenario leading to a new genocidal war between Arabs and Jews will begin with a Palestinian civil war.

According to BBC, "There's only one rule in Gaza, the rule of the gun. They're tearing Gaza apart in a vicious battle for power which is fueled by calls for revenge."

I listened to various pundits on BBC and CNNI, and they stated their various opinions, each one blaming one or more of the following:

Fatah
Hamas
Israel
European Union
United States

In other words, nobody has the vaguest idea what's going on, or why things don't settle, why the Palestinians don't seem to want a Palestinian state, why the Palestinians are fighting each other, and what to do about it.

Rarely do you hear about a "peace process" anymore. We've had several years of "peace process," but each cease-fire, each compromise, each "unity government," each Palestinian election has just brought increased violence.

None of the pundits made the obvious generational connection.

Not a single pundit mentioned that the average age of the people in the densely populated Gaza Strip is 16, meaning that Gaza is being run by children with guns and missiles.

Some pundits mentioned that militia groups are not being controlled by their Fatah or Hamas leaders, but none connected that to the ages of the people in the militia groups.

You know, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. If the Gaza is packed to the gills with people, and if the median age of the people is 16, and if they have plenty of guns and missiles coming in from Egypt, and if the only people they have to listen to are people they hold in contempt, because every attempt to compromise with the Israelis has always brought what they perceive as more intransigience from the Israelis, then why should they do anything other than what they're doing.

There's another thing too. The tiny Gaza String has 1.5 million people packed into it, and the population is growing at 4.7% per year, one of the highest rates in the world. (It's 0.9% per year for the U.S.)

So, let's suppose that, by some miracle, the Palestinians and Israelis agree to a peace plan, and move ahead with a Palestinian state. What happens after that? Where are those 1.5 million people going to go? Poverty is enormous, and there's no room left for much more growth. How long can Gaza keep growing at 4.7% per year before civil war breaks out anyway, or war with the Israelis breaks out anyway? That's the thing that no one thinks of -- "peace" doesn't mean "peace forever"; it just means "peace for now." And it still doesn't preclude war later.

So the demographics of the situation mean that war is coming no matter what happens.

It's also worthwhile making a generational comparison with Iraq, as I've done before.

Gaza is in a generational Crisis era, meaning that it's "attracted toward war." Iraq is in a generational Awakening era, meaning that it's "attracted away from war."

We've seen the situation in Gaza get worse every day, but the situation in Iraq has been getting better.

As I wrote a few months ago, the Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq. This is exactly what you'd expect during an Awakening era. Al-Qaeda is an outside group, consisting of terrorists from countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan, which are in generational Crisis eras. They're bringing war INTO Iraq. The Iraqis cooperated for a while, because they don't like the American "occupiers," but now they've been turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq because, after all, it's killing many Iraqi's and few Americans.

Now the latest news is that the Sunni insurgency is fighting al-Qaeda. According to one Iraqi parliamentarian close to the Sunni insurgency, "We have three enemies. Enemy number one is al-Qaeda, enemy number two is Iran, number three is the Americans."

So we're still number three, but at least we aren't number one.

And Iraqi Shia aren't even on the list. Despite the political hysteria in the U.S., Iraq has never been in a civil war, and never can be, because a crisis civil war is impossible during a generational Awakening era. (It's possible to have a non-crisis civil war, but it always ends quickly in an Awakening era.) That's what it means to say that Iraq is "attracted away from war."

But Gaza is different. Gaza is in a generational Crisis era. In Gaza, the path to civil war is getting worse. The Palestinians are "attracted TO war," not away from war.

I've been doing these Generational Dynamics analyses for over four years. I've written over 700 articles for this web site, most of them containing specific predictions, and all of them are still available for anyone who wishes to go back and read them, to see what I said.

But you can see with your own eyes what's happening. In Gaza, in a Crisis era, the civil war is getting worse; in Iraq, in an Awakening era, any move in the direction of civil war quickly fizzles.

As I've said many times before, I challenge anyone to find any web site or pundit in the world with a better predictive record than this web site. No one has found one because none exists. There is no better predictive methodology than Generational Dynamics.

What I wrote in 2003 is still just as true today: The Palestine region is headed for a new genocidal war between Arabs and Jews, replaying the genocidal war of the late 1940s. This war will pull in other nations from the region, and eventually will pull in the U.S. in support of Israel. It will lead to the Clash of Civilizations world war, if that war hasn't begun previously. We can't predict the exact time frame or the exact path to this result, but the final result is 100% certain. (13-Jun-07) Permanent Link
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Donate to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

Web Log Pages

Current Web Log

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 13-Jun-07 Palestinian road to civil war escalates another step

Web Log Pages

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 13-Jun-07
Palestinian road to civil war escalates another step