The cold light of day in Gaza

I think the holdouts in Gaza are screwing up big time: Allison Kaplan Sommer is probably not alone in saying the exploitation of children and melodrama are causing her losing sympathy for them real fast, and the IDF/police are now busy removing nasty barriers to get to the last group.

But the Palestinian leadership is doing much worse.  Debka quotes Abu Mazen as saying:

We are marking a h historic celebration. Israel’s Gaza withdrawal was bought by the sacrifices of the Palestinian people and the blood of its martyrs.

And according to Wafa, selected Palestinian editorials are writing such things as:

...our people who have been suffering occupation, colonization and Apartheid Wall are capable of making calibrations in a way that shows our people's interest and looking for other areas of freedom without looking back to the past chaos.
  .
  What is required is to recall the "blood of martyrs" in order to support the law and democracy in light of the forthcoming legislative elections and moreover looking at Gaza sea not only for its fish but also for its transparent blue water.

and

...all should know that Israeli withdrawal from Gaza Strip was a unilateral Israeli withdrawal but with some security, political and economic aspects, simply because of immense pressures resulted in the Intifada of the entire Palestinian people.
.
This victory is because of the sacrifices of the Palestinian people as a whole, including children, women and elders.

These editorials - and let's not kid ourselves here - express what the Palestinian leadership wants its people to believe, namely that terrorism works. 

I don't know if Mazen is an idiot or a coward, or both, but it's as if he wanted to prove that these demonic "settlers" were right in claiming that Sharon's redeployment plan only encourages more terrorism.

Now, I know what leftwingers will say to this.

They'll say that Palestinian rhetoric is always high-handed, but that the moderate, pragmatic forces among them are strong and silent, and Mazen needs to placate Hamas, PIJ, and more radical factions within Fatah, etc., etc.

In other words, they'll want us to believe that we shouldn't judge what the Palestinian leadership wants by its words (rejectionist, consistently) or actions (at best, passive; at worst, murderous), but what some people think they are likely to do if only conditions were right.

Am I the only one who thinks this is insulting to the Palestinians? That somehow, Palestinians, among all the people in the world, are incapable of enlightened self-interest, that their words and actions are always driven by a perpetual state of anger, much like a fevered person who can't become coherent until the fever breaks? 

It ain't going to be pretty once the redeployment is over.  Egypt may allow weapons into Gaza, but not a lot of people out.  Israel will now have a "border" with Gaza, and it will be pretty similar to any serious checkpoint between two countries at war with each other (think Checkpoint Charlie, or crossing points between North and South Korea). Mortars, sniping, rockets, etc., from Gaza at Israeli targets will be punished severely.  The added pressure on Palestinians to take responsibility for their own society may result in a civil war.

I hate to be cynical, but the best thing Israel can do right now is to keep the separation clean, to make it clear to the world that Palestinians in Gaza are responsible for creating - or destroying - their own society.  Israel has washed its hands of it, and the meaning of self-determination will become very clear.