Civil war: A do-it-yourself guide...

Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority's scapegoat-in-chief, so deeply abhors the prospect of a Palestinian civil war that he cannot bring himself to attack Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Chin up, Mr Abbas: civil war is the sine qua non of nationhood. Permit me to try to sell you on the merits of having a civil war of your very own. Think of a civil war not as a luxury, but as an investment.

It is unpopular these days to draw attention to the merits of violence, particularly the sort that inevitably entails "collateral damage", that is, the slaughter of innocents. Progress supposedly brings us non-violent conflict resolution. Au contraire. The faster the world changes, the more people find themselves left behind, and the more people are left behind, the more diehards are willing to fight to the death.

Real nations, as opposed to romantic visions of nations, have no room for irredentists and other rejectionists. They need the sort of people who show up on time, pay dues to a respectable political party and get along (if grudgingly) with the neighbors. Having a civil war is de rigeur. All the right people do it. It shows that the prospective nation has the grit to sort out its own problems.

The truth, Mr Abbas, is that no one will take you seriously until you have your own civil war. Most of your neighbors have had one, some quite recently. Egypt killed about 2,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1999-2000. Turkey has had two recent civil wars, counting the war with left-wing extremists of 1975-1980 (2,800 dead) as well as the campaign against the Kurds.

The former Yugoslavia is a poster-child for civil wars. Greece had an especially nasty one in 1947, and Cyprus racked up 5,000 casualties during 1975-1980. Another 4,000 died in the 1989 Romanian uprising against Nicolae Ceaucescu, and 1,000 have died in the past decade of civil war in tiny Moldova.

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Your neighbors the Israelis had their own civil war in 1948, although it lasted only 10 minutes. Then prime minister David Ben-Gurion's artillery sank the arms ship Altalena with future premier Menachem Begin on board. The Altalena belonged to the opposition Irgun, which responded by placing its armed forces under Ben Gurion's command. The Israelis then proceeded to win their war of independence, at your expense.

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How expensive will your civil war be? It's only a good-faith estimate, but I would guess that 20,000 would do the trick for Palestine, provided that you act quickly. It seems like a lot, but remember that Jordan's late King Hussein killed more than that number of Palestinians (at least according to your own Palestine Liberation Organization estimates) during "Black September" of 1970. Wait, and the bill could be much bigger.

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EH29Ak02.html