January 12, 2009

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, Arutz Sheva, Jan. 12, 2009

Former United States Foreign Service Officer Norman Olsen has blamed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for misguided policies that he and his Gaza activist son say put Hamas in power.

Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, Olsen and his son Matthew also revealed that the U.S. State Department is so deeply involved in the Palestinian Authority that it financed Fatah in its election campaign against Hamas.

The senior Olsen worked for the Foreign Office for 26 years, including four years in Gaza as a counselor for the American Embassy in Tel Aviv.

“Hamas never called for the elections that put them in power. That was the brainstorm of Secretary Rice and her staff,” he and his son, who runs peace programs, wrote in the Monitor Monday morning.

Olsen maintained that Rice and her aides “had apparently decided they could steer Palestinians into supporting the more-compliant Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction through a marketing campaign that was to counter Hamas’s growing popularity.’

Reflecting the traditional career diplomat view, he added that Rice’s policy ignored “continued Israeli settlement construction, land confiscation, and cantonization [of the West Bank [Judea and Samaria -ed.” (Continue Reading this Article)