So Who's The Navigator For The Road Map?

This morning, while I was pulling MapQuest directions for a delivery at work, I surfed on over to the Jerusalem Post and found this article and thought to myself "Here's a story only a conspiracy theorist could love." So I emailed myself the link, so that I would be able to write something about how far fetched the satire was.

Now that's not to say that there isn't duplicity in the dealings in the Middle East, God only knows there is. It's just that at first blush, it all just seemed too fanciful to be true.

But tonight, as I was rereading it again, I started trying to really poke hole in the espoused theories. But I found it really difficult to do so, as while they were all extreme theories, there was a logic behind them. I don't think that Bush or Sharon are playing the Arabian Nights game, but I do believe that Abu Mazen might be and Hamas most certainly is.

Hamas is definitely playing everyone for the fool. Which I find really to be amazing since they aren't even a party to the Road Map. But they have positioned and parlayed themselves into a power broker spot and they are exploiting it to the max.

Hamas, not Bush, not Sharon, is propping up Abu Mazen. If Hamas says Abu Mazen goes; he goes. Bush and Sharon don't hold that kind of sway over the Palestinian Authority. Hamas is the real power in the territories now.

And it's not is if they're using their power for peaceful ends. The ceasefire was agreed to in order to give Hamas an opportunity to retrench and rearm in anticipation of the next wave of attacks on Israel. And now it looks as if they will succeed in upping the ante for the next time round.

The J-Post article was almost the conspiracy theorists perfect dream. It still may be. Hamas is playing a duplicitous game. Do Bush and Sharon or even Abu Mazen have what it takes to untangle the web of lies?