O.U.R.A.I.M

VIDEO: PRES OF IRAN IN LEBANON - IRANIAN EXPANSIONISM, OR THE END OF zIONISM/iMPERIALISM IN SIGHT?

2010-10-19T22:00:00.002+01:00

A NEW MIDDLE EAST, BUT NOT THE ONE BUSH AND CONDI WERE BLABBERING ABOUT

2010-10-19T21:59:00.002+01:00

Syria’s Diversified Options

This was written six months ago and recently published in Political
Insight.

A sigh of relief blew across Syria when the Bush administration was
retired. Bush had backed Israel’s reoccupation of West Bank cities,
described Ariel ‘the Bulldozer’ Sharon as “a man of peace”, given
Syria two million Iraqi refugees and an inflation crisis, and blamed
Syria for the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafiq
al-Hariri. Veiled American threats of “regime change” scared the
Syrian people – who observed the blood rushing from neighbouring Iraq
– almost as much as they scared the regime itself.

Obama’s re-engagement signalled an end to the days of considering
Syria – in the predatorial neo-con phrase – “low-hanging fruit”, but
American overtures have remained cautious, the new administration’s
policy severely limited by its commitments to Israel and the domestic
Israel lobby. Obama nominated Robert Ford as the first American
ambassador to Damascus in five years, but the appointment has since
been blocked by the Senate. In May, Obama renewed Bush-era sanctions,
citing Syria’s “continuing support for terrorist organizations and
pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and missile programs,” which,
“continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national
security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

So not much has changed. The neoconservative language is still in
place, the same elision of distance between American and Israeli
interests, and between anti-occupation militias and al-Qa’ida-style
terrorists, plus a flat refusal to understand that the countries
really under unusual and extraordinary threat of attack are Syria,
Lebanon, and – Netanyahu’s “new Amalek” – Iran.

It is clear to Syria that the US is both unwilling and unable to
deliver an Arab-Israeli settlement which would fulfill its minimum
demand – the return of the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since
1967 (creating 100,000 refugees) and annexed in 1981 (a move
condemned by UN Security Council Resolution 497). Any concession on
the well-watered Golan would be experienced as a betrayal by the
Syrian people. Former President Hafez al-Asad dragged a promise of
full Israeli withdrawal from Yitzhak Rabin, but all subsequent
Israeli prime ministers have reneged on the “Rabin Pledge.”
Furthermore, the “just and comprehensive peace” envisaged as a
“strategic option” by Hafez al-Asad in 1991 is no longer on offer.
Observers of the calibre of John Mearsheimer believe that it’s now
far too late for a viable two-state solution in Israel-Palestine.

Obama’s new peacemaking tack may involve public snubs of the Israeli
right, but it doesn’t extend to enforcing UN Resolution 497, (or 242
or 191 for that matter). Obama will not apply the real pressure
needed to nudge Israel into decolonisation of the West Bank. He will
not stop the billions of dollars of direct military aid, loan
guarantees and technology transfers, nor the flow of private Zionist
cash.

In April Obama adopted as truth highly suspect Israeli allegations of
a Syrian Scud missile transfer to Lebanon’s Hizbullah. The charge,
denied in Damascus and Beirut and by the UN, provided the Arabs
another example of American double standards. Aside from the
improbability of the Scud claim (these are weapons too cumbersome for
Hizbullah’s style of warfare), it stank of hypocrisy. The US is
currently selling F35 fighter planes to Israel, the most advanced of
its own fleet.

Without a change in the balance of power, it seems impossible that
Syria will reclaim the Golan. But the region is changing, and Syria
is diversifying its options.

In Istanbul on May 9th Bashaar al-Asad reaffirmed Syria’s willingness
to resume indirect peace talks with Israel, mediated by Turkey. The
bait is there if anyone wants to bite. Meanwhile Syria is working on
relations with its ‘Northern Alliance’: Turkey, Iraq and Iran.

The superficially unlikely alliance of secular-nationalist Syria and
Islamist Iran is longstanding and unwavering, and is of great
political, economic and military value to Syria. Al-Asad, like
Turkish prime minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan, had hoped to act as a
bridge between Iran and the Obama administration. Such hopes have
evaporated, and regional security deteriorates a notch further with
each Israeli threat to bomb Iran’s nuclear programme, or re-destroy
Lebanon’s infrastructure, or unseat the Asad regime.

In a February Damascus summit, al-Asad, Iran’s Ahmadinejad and
Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared a common military front in
the event of an Israeli attack on any of their countries. Nasrallah’s
rare public appearance gave bite to the proceedings. Known – almost
uniquely among Arab leaders – for keeping his word, Nasrallah had
promised a new military doctrine a few weeks earlier:

“If you strike martyr Rafiq al-Hariri’s international airport in
Beirut, we’ll strike your Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. If you hit
our ports, we’ll hit your ports. If you attack our refineries or
factories, we’ll bomb your refineries and factories.”

For the US and Israel, Hizbullah is no more than a terrorist
organisation, despite the fact that it concentrates its fire on
military targets far more effectively than Israel (in the 2006 war,
Hizbullah killed 43 civilians and 121 soldiers; Israel killed 1190
civilians and 250 soldiers). The Party of God – which runs
construction, welfare and media projects as well as an armed wing –
is wildly popular amongst the Shia, Lebanon’s largest sect, and at
any moment has the support of at least half the country as a whole
(elections under Lebanon’s skewed sectarian system do not always
reflect this fact). And Hizbullah is dear to most Arabs, because its
few thousand fighters drawn from the downtrodden have done what the
Arab states could not, for all their emergency laws and massive
military budgets, for all their fruitless embrace of the US-sponsored
peace process: they beat back, then in 2000 ended Israel’s 22-year
occupation of Lebanon. When Hizbullah held its own against Israel’s
2006 onslaught it proved its evolution from shadowy militia to
guerrilla force to a semi-conventional army able to keep territory.
For all the current rumours of war, it may be that a balance of
terror has already been achieved on the Lebanese border, that Israel
may be contained.

A step back from Syria’s frontline alliances stands its spectacularly
improved relationship with Turkey. Under new, upwardly-mobile,
Islamist-democrat direction, Turkey is investing heavily in Syria,
Iraq and Iran, waiving visas and building railways in the interests
of trade and tourism, publically supporting Iran’s nuclear programme
while condemning Israel’s siege of Gaza. Turkey, of course, with NATO
membership and a flourishing economy, is a weight-bearing nation. An
immediate consequence of its realignement is that the Resistance
Front – ‘Moderate State’ duality which held sway in the region a few
years ago has been consigned to history’s dust-heap. The increasing
irrelevance of such US-client regimes as Egypt and Saudi Arabia is
what prompted General Petraeus’s statement that “Israeli
intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardising US
standing in the region.”

And there’s a jaded but resurgent superpower in the picture too. In
the first visit to Syria by a Russian leader since the 1917
Revolution, this month President Medvedev discussed oil, gas, and
possibly nuclear cooperation. Russia is selling Damascus warplanes,
air defence systems and anti-tank weapons, and developing the port of
Tartus to receive the Russian fleet.

“Washington’s failure to realign relations with Iran and Syria dooms
it to repeat its past,” writes Syria analyst Joshua Landis, warning
of a new cold war. Bashaar al-Asad agrees, telling La Republica, “The
Russians never believed the Cold War ended. Neither did we. It only
changed shape. It has evolved with time. Russia is reasserting
itself. And the Cold War is just a natural reaction to the attempt by
America to dominate the world.”

But the current situation is too multipolar for an old-style cold
war. This time Syria isn’t compelled to choose between two sponsors.
Instead it meets a world of independent actors – Iran, Turkey,
Russia, China, even Brazil. The big story here is the emergence of
new alliances as the global power balance shifts.

UGLY ISLAMOPHOBIC ATTACK BY FRENCH WOMAN ON MUSLIM SISTERS

2010-10-19T21:59:00.001+01:00

The "country of human rights" or

French White Supremacist Republicanism?

The Guardian

14 October 2010

Prosecutors have called for a 63-year-old French woman to
be given a two-month suspended prison sentence and a fine
of €750 (£659) after she admitted tearing a full Islamic
veil from the face of a tourist from the United Arab
Emirates.

The woman, a retired English teacher identified only as
Marlène Ruby, said she was "irritated" by the sight of two
women shopping in Paris in their niqabs.

She said that, not realising the pair were foreigners, she
initially pulled one of their veils while chastising them
in French for covering their faces. Minutes later, upon
noticing that the woman concerned had replaced her veil,
she became further enraged.

"I tore her niqab off and I shouted. I wanted to create a
bit of a scandal," she told Le Parisien. Her anger, she
said, sprang from witnessing the treatment of women in the
Middle East, where she used to teach. "I think it is
unacceptable for the niqab to be worn in the country of
human rights. It's a muzzle," she said.

Although she admits removing the veil, Ruby denies
allegations that she hit and bit the tourist, who claims to
have been so distressed by the incident that she had not
returned to France since. The victim's lawyer said her
client was on the receiving end of "an attack on religious
freedom".

In a Paris court, the prosecutor, Anne de Fontette, said
the behaviour was not something that could be permitted in
France. "Living together requires, quite simply, an
acceptance of the other, of the way in which [the other] is
dressed," De Fontette said.

She said that although at the time of the attack, in
February, the full Islamic veil was legal attire in France,
the accused's actions would be reprehensible even now – a
month after the ban on wearing face-covering veils in
public became law.

Critics of the ban, which threatens wearers of the niqab
with a fine of €150 and a course in French citizenship,
have warned it is an unnecessary step that affects a small
minority of women but stirs up tensions.

A verdict is expected on 4 November.

LEILA KHALED'S ADDRESS TO LONDON EVENT COMMEMORATING 10yrs SINCE THE START OF THE SECOND/AL-AQSA INTIFADA

2010-10-19T21:58:00.001+01:00

Brothers, Sisters and comrades,

I am glad and honoured to be addressing you for this event.

I would like to tell you that from the start of our Palestinian

revolutionary movement, we knew we were not alone, that our struggle

was part of the international struggle. This makes us continue our

struggle without fear in facing zionism and imperialism, especially

US imperialism, as we know people around the world are with us

practically and not just theoretically.

We have learnt from history that when a people is occupied and

oppressed they will revolt to liberate themselves using all methods

including armed struggle, which is also enshrined in the UN Charter.

Our homeland has been occupied since 1948, and I Leila Khaled have

been a refugee for 62 years like 6 million other refugees inside and

outside of Palestine. In Palestine we have an occupation, the

occupation is the terrorism that oppresses the people of the land,

the Palestinians.

In the 21st Century capitalism and imperialism are trying to impose

their system of globalisation, which is not just an economic

globalisation, but exploits all aspects of the life of individuals

and peoples. But in confronting the system we say we should globalise

the struggle and defend the oppressed nations, our homeland and our

humanity.

I ask you all to research and look into the conflicts in the world so

that you have more knowledge of what is taking place, and if you

study, you will find the answers. I ask you on the basis of your

learning and understanding to struggle to establish a future based

not on WMDs and wars of aggression, but on peoples civilisation.

I request you to use this event to develop the BDS movements, to join

the struggle against imperialism and racism in the world. Continue to

get together and further deepen our struggles to defend our future.

Leila Khaled,

Amman, Jordan

01 October, 2010

==================================

INTERNATIONALISM & SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE

Time	Saturday at 5:30pm - October 3 at 12:00am

Location	Ladbroke Grove / Portobello Inn on the Green, 3-5 Thorpe Close, Ladbroke Grove, W10 5XL London, United Kingdom


More Info	▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ 10 YEARS SINCE THE INTIFADA series Part I INTERNATIONALISM & SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE "We are not liberating Palestine, Palestine is liberating us" ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ This is the first event in a series of events which commemorates 10 years since the eruption of the defining struggle of our generation - the Al-Aqsa / Second Intifada against the zionist-apartheid state. It is also a salute to that struggle. This event will explore the development of solidarity and internationalism with Palestine during the Intifada; what forms of struggle were more effective than others, and how we can continue to build a radical and effective internationalism for Palestine. ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ PROGRAM: * There will be large prints from paintings from artists from Gaza * There will also be an exclusive photo gallery by journalist and war correspondent Mustafa Khalili who covered the Intifada 1745: Doors open 1800: Welcoming address by Moktar Alatas followed by filmmaker Gabrielle Tierney presents her film on the Raytheon 9: NOT IN OUR NAME, with Q&A 1900: PANEL DEBATE with: - Lizzie Cocker - Gaza Demonstrators Defence Campaign - Arzu Merali - Islamic Human Rights Commission - Chris Osmond - Smash EDO - Jody McIntyre - grassroots peace activist and internationalist - Bellavia Ribeiro-Addy - Palestine Solidarity Campaign chair - Sukant Chandan 2130: CULTURAL PROGRAM compered by Lara Ahmad Louisa Maynard and Soufian Saihi (poetry recital and live Oud) Where's Huey? dedication to Rachel Corrie Empress Emmanuelle DJ Steaz Nekz (Brotherhood Movement) STORMTRAP (Ramallah Underground) and Kolonel Bleep GAZATEAM SHADIA MANSOUR LOWKEY ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ NOTE: The organisers reserve the right to eject anyone causing distress or disruption to the event. There will be friendly but firm security at the event. No persons or organisations are allowed to distribute material at this event without prior permission from the event organisers. * Please note that the whole event is being filmed and will be put on youtube The '10 years since the eruption of the Intifada' is an initiative of Sons of Malcolm, although people are more than welcome to get involved by getting in touch with event organiser: sukant.chandan@gmail.com

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NASSER AND MUBARAK

2010-09-30T10:11:00.002+01:00

VIDEO AND REVIEW OF NEW LOWKEY TRACK - 'TERRORIST?'

2010-09-12T17:43:00.000+01:00

Review by Beat Knowledge

Lowkey is on a serious roll at the moment – everything he is putting out is lyrically, musically and politically on point. The latest video from his forthcoming (and much-anticipated) album ‘Soundtrack to the Struggle’ is called ‘Terrorist?’, and it explores the true meanings of the concepts ‘terror’ and ‘terrorism’.

Lowkey starts off by quoting the dictionary definitions as follows:

Terrorist: the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coersion.

Terror: violent or destructive acts such as bombing, committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands.

He proceeds to compare some of the people that are labeled in the media as ‘terrorists’ (ie. Iraqis and others using primitive explosives against colonial domination) with the powerful states and corporations that are terrorising millions on a daily basis.

What’s the bigger threat to human society,

BAE Systems or home-made IEDs?

Remote controlled drones killing off human lives

Or man with home-made bomb committing suicide?

Although the ‘terrorist’ label has primarily been used to describe Muslims, particularly since the twin towers attack, Lowkey points out that resistance to imperialism isn’t limited to any one religion or racial group, and that all oppressed people are united by their opposition to the empire.

This is very basic

One nation in the world has over a thousand military bases.

They say it’s religion, when clearly it isn’t

It’s not just Muslims that oppose your imperialism.

Is Hugo Chavez a Muslim? Nah, I didn’t think so.

Is Castro a Muslim? Nah, I didn’t think so.

He brilliantly exposes the hypocrisy of western colonisers describing anybody as terrorists:

Lumumbah was democracy

Mossadeq was democracy

Allende was democracy

Hypocrisy, it bothers me

Call you terrorist if you don’t wanna be a colony

Refuse to bow down to a policy of robbery

The song is summed up by its beautiful, haunting chorus:

They’re calling me a terrorist

Like they don’t know who the terror is

When they put it on me I tell them this

I’m all about peace and love.

They’re calling me a terrorist

Like they don’t know who the terror is

Insulting my intelligence

Oh how these people judge

All in all, another very powerful track from Lowkey, with excellent production by the ever-reliable Red Skull and a highly professional, innovative video by Global Faction. Please spread the word!

YANKEE TROOPS STAY LOYAL TO THEIR TRADITIONS: KILLING INNOCENTS AT RANDOM AND COLLECTING FINGERS AS TROPHIES

2010-09-09T22:47:00.001+01:00

US soldiers 'killed Afghan civilians for

sport and collected fingers as trophies'

Soldiers face charges over secret 'kill team' which allegedly murdered

at random and collected fingers as trophies of war

The Guardian, 09 Sept, 2010

Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret "kill
team" that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at
random and collected their fingers as trophies.

Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three
Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate
attacks this year. Seven others are accused of covering up
the killings and assaulting a recruit who exposed the
murders when he reported other abuses, including members of
the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians.

In one of the most serious accusations of war crimes to
emerge from the Afghan conflict, the killings are alleged
to have been carried out by members of a Stryker infantry
brigade based in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.

According to investigators and legal documents, discussion
of killing Afghan civilians began after the arrival of
Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs at forward operating base
Ramrod last November. Other soldiers told the army's
criminal investigation command that Gibbs boasted of the
things he got away with while serving in Iraq and said how
easy it would be to "toss a grenade at someone and kill
them".

One soldier said he believed Gibbs was "feeling out the
platoon".

Investigators said Gibbs, 25, hatched a plan with another
soldier, Jeremy Morlock, 22, and other members of the unit
to form a "kill team". While on patrol over the following
months they allegedly killed at least three Afghan
civilians. According to the charge sheet, the first target
was Gul Mudin, who was killed "by means of throwing a
fragmentary grenade at him and shooting him with a rifle",
when the patrol entered the village of La Mohammed Kalay in
January.

Morlock and another soldier, Andrew Holmes, were on guard
at the edge of a poppy field when Mudin emerged and stopped
on the other side of a wall from the soldiers. Gibbs
allegedly handed Morlock a grenade who armed it and dropped
it over the wall next to the Afghan and dived for cover.
Holmes, 19, then allegedly fired over the wall.

Later in the day, Morlock is alleged to have told Holmes
that the killing was for fun and threatened him if he told
anyone.

The second victim, Marach Agha, was shot and killed the
following month. Gibbs is alleged to have shot him and
placed a Kalashnikov next to the body to justify the
killing. In May Mullah Adadhdad was killed after being shot
and attacked with a grenade.

The Army Times reported that a least one of the soldiers
collected the fingers of the victims as souvenirs and that
some of them posed for photographs with the bodies.

Five soldiers – Gibbs, Morlock, Holmes, Michael Wagnon and
Adam Winfield – are accused of murder and aggravated
assault among other charges. All of the soldiers have
denied the charges. They face the death penalty or life in
prison if convicted.

The killings came to light in May after the army began
investigating a brutal assault on a soldier who told
superiors that members of his unit were smoking hashish.
The Army Times reported that members of the unit regularly
smoked the drug on duty and sometimes stole it from
civilians.

The soldier, who was straight out of basic training and has
not been named, said he witnessed the smoking of hashish
and drinking of smuggled alcohol but initially did not
report it out of loyalty to his comrades. But when he
returned from an assignment at an army headquarters and
discovered soldiers using the shipping container in which
he was billeted to smoke hashish he reported it.

Two days later members of his platoon, including Gibbs and
Morlock, accused him of "snitching", gave him a beating and
told him to keep his mouth shut. The soldier reported the
beating and threats to his officers and then told
investigators what he knew of the "kill team".

Following the arrest of the original five accused in June,
seven other soldiers were charged last month with
attempting to cover up the killings and violent assault on
the soldier who reported the smoking of hashish. The
charges will be considered by a military grand jury later
this month which will decide if there is enough evidence
for a court martial. Army investigators say Morlock has
admitted his involvement in the killings and given details
about the role of others including Gibbs. But his lawyer,
Michael Waddington, is seeking to have that confession
suppressed because he says his client was interviewed while
under the influence of prescription drugs taken for
battlefield injuries and that he was also suffering from
traumatic brain injury.

"Our position is that his statements were incoherent, and
taken while he was under a cocktail of drugs that shouldn't
have been mixed," Waddington told the Seattle Times.

MISS USA - HIZBULLAH THREAT?

2010-09-09T22:17:00.000+01:00

Part 1

Part 2

HAMAS' MESHAAL INTERVIEWED ON STRATEGY AND STRUGGLE

2010-08-30T13:43:00.002+01:00

Thanks to Malangbaba

An excellent and through interview with Khalid Mesh'al, conducted by the Jordanian newspaper As-Sabeel (, and translated by South African based Afro-Middle East Centre. Mesh'al's statements should be noted for their honesty, critical self-reflection, humbleness, lack of empty sloganeering, and commitment to principles over rhetoric or "pragmatism." All these things, and many more should give insight into why such movements like Hamas and Hezbullah are so successful, disciplined, firmly rooted within an indigenous (Islamic) ideology and their peoples, mounting effective resistance, and (even by their own clear statements) bound to lose everything if they compromise on these principles.

Introduction

Since 1996, Khaled Mesh’al has been the Chairman of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) Political Bureau. After the assassination of Hamas leader Abdul ‘Aziz Rantisi in 2004 by Israeli forces, Mesh’al became the movement’s overall leader. He lives in exile in Damascus, from where he oversees the movement’s activities both within Palestine and outside.

The most recent interview with Mesh’al was conducted by the Jordanian Arabic-language Al-Sabeel newspaper in July 2010. In it, Mesh’al laid out the policy direction of Hamas on a number of critical issues: negotiations with Israel, recognition of Israel, resistance, Jews, Christians, women, among other issues. In the Arab world, the lengthy interview is being viewed as highly significant, and is regarded as a clear indication of positions that Hamas wants to pursue, especially with regard to its future attitude towards Israel. The Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC) translated the interview into English and publishes it here to make it accessible to a wider audience, and to allow for greater understanding of the political and other perspectives of a movement which has become one of the most important role-players in the Middle East today. It is an important piece articulating, in its own words, the perspectives of Hamas’ leadership, and is critical reading for observers of the Middle East, and policy-makers for whom the Middle East is important.

On negotiations

Do you reject, in principle, negotiations with the enemy? If negotiations cannot be conducted with the enemy, is it possible to do so with a friend? Does Hamas reject the principle of negotiations outright, or do you reject its form, conduct and results?

This is definitely a thorny and sensitive issue. Many people prefer to avoid any discussion of it, and tend not to take any clear position on it for fear of negative reactions or misinterpretations. The sensitive and critical nature of this issue is compounded by the dark shadows that are cast as a result of the bitter experiences of Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli negotiations. People are influenced by these experiences, and are extremely sensitive towards the idea of “negotiations”, particularly with regard to the collective mind and mood of the nation. There is now, in many quarters, loathing for and aversion to the concept of negotiations. This is quite understandable and natural, but this does not preclude us tackling the issue thoroughly, and sorting through matters carefully, so as to set every detail into context, God willing.

It is indisputable that negotiating with the enemy is not rejected, either legally or rationally; indeed, there are some stages during a conflict among enemies when negotiations are required and become necessary. Both from a rational perspective and from legal logic, it is true that negotiations as a means and a tool may be acceptable and legitimate at certain points in time, and rejected and prohibited at other times; that is, it is not rejected in itself nor is it rejected all the time.

In Islamic history, in the era of the Prophet (peace be upon him), and in subsequent ages – at the time of Salahuddin [Saladin], for example – negotiation with the enemy was conducted, but within a clear framework and a specific philosophy, within a context, vision, rules and regulations governing this negotiation. This is in stark contrast to the wretched approach taken by those negotiation professionals who consider it a way of life, and regard it as the sole strategic option in the service of which all other options are ruled out.

If resistance itself, honourable and esteemed as it is, is a means and not an end, does it make sense to make negotiations an end, an only option and a constant approach, rather than being a means and a tactic to fall back on when necessary and when the context requires it?

The concept in the Qur’an is clear, when God Almighty says: “And if they incline to peace, incline (you also to peace), and trust in God.” This implies that negotiation is acceptable, reasonable and logical for us as advocates of a just cause when the enemy is forced to resort to it, when they come to us ready for negotiation and for paying the price, and to respond to our demands. However, if we seek it desperately and consider it our only option, then we will be the ones paying the price. Those who are forced to negotiate are those who usually pay the price. Hence God Almighty says in another verse: “Do not weaken and call for peace when you have the upper hand.”

We go back to the first verse: “And if they incline to peace, incline (you also to peace), and trust in God,” which is preceded by God Almighty’s saying: “Prepare for them what you can of power, including steeds of war to terrify the enemy of God and your enemy.” What does this mean? It means that possessing power and its means is what drives the enemy forcibly towards peace, and that the enemy’s inclination to peace and negotiation is a result of jihad, resistance and the possession of power. Those who consider negotiation without resistance and without any power cards are virtually heading for surrender.

In the science of strategy and conflict management, negotiation is an extension to war, and a form of war management. What you obtain by negotiating at the table is a product of your condition on the ground, and an outcome of the balance of power in the battlefield. If you are vanquished in the battlefield, you will certainly be defeated in the negotiations as well. Just as war requires a balance of power, negotiations and peace each require a balance of power, for peace cannot be made when one party is powerful and the other weak; otherwise, this will be surrender. The United States did not make peace with Japan and Germany after World War II, but, rather, imposed surrender and a pact of compliance and submission on them. In short, peace is made by the powerful and not the weak; negotiations may serve the powerful but not the weak.

The conflict with Israeli occupation is different, as this is a case of a body alien to the region, which came from outside and imposed itself on a land and a people, drove people away from their land, and replaced them with an immigrant diaspora from all over the world. This is, therefore, a complex situation which must be dealt with delicately.

When objective conditions and requirements for negotiation are available, especially the presence of sufficient balance and relative equilibrium; when there is proven need for it at the appropriate time – without hurry or delay – then it could be one of the options we resort to as a mechanism, means and tool, not as an objective or an end, not as a permanent condition or a strategic option. Negotiation is a tactical instrument, and just as war is not a permanent condition and has its requirements and conditions, so too does negotiation.

With this clear view of negotiations, and when it is exercised with great caution and under strict rules at the right time, it will be acceptable and useful in the context of conflict management; otherwise it will lead only to surrender and submission to the enemy’s hegemony and conditions, and will result in the neglect of rights and a continuous decline in the level of demands and political positions.

Unfortunately, the Arab and Palestinian condition regarding this issue is – mostly – very bad; it is a vulnerable position, with no bargaining chips, support, manoeuvre or margin for ambiguity. The Palestinian ranks are fully exposed, so they go to peace declaring it to be their only strategic option. When your enemy is aware that you have no option but to negotiate, and you talk of nothing but peace, and have no other option, what will force them to make concessions to you?

The Palestinian negotiators say: “Negotiation is the option, the course and the only plan.” They coordinate security with the enemy and implement the “Road Map” and its security requirements freely, with Israel offering nothing in return. What is there to force Olmert or Netanyahu to grant the Palestinians anything?

Negotiation in the Palestinian case is out of its objective context; it is, merely from the perspective of political logic, lacking resistance and not based on the necessary power balance. The Vietnamese – for instance – negotiated with the Americans as the latter were retreating. Thus, negotiations were useful for turning the last page on American occupation and aggression. You are successful in negotiations and in imposing your conditions on the enemy depending on the number of power cards you have on the ground.

Hence, for negotiations not to be a risky and onerous process, you need to make clear to the enemy – not only in words, but in deed as well – your message that you are open to all options. The negotiator cannot succeed without basing his position on the multiplicity of options, meaning that, inasmuch as you are ready for negotiations, you are also ready and able to go to war. If negotiations reach a deadlock, you must be prepared to go to war, attrition or resistance; otherwise negotiation will be useless. We must remember that negotiations during the wars of old were often conducted on the battlefield, and the negotiators would either reach a solution, or resume the war. Negotiation is a tool and a tactic in the service of a strategy and is not a strategy in itself; it is not a substitute for a strategy of resistance and confrontation with the occupation.

Negotiation needs to be based on unity at a national level. If one party sees benefit in a certain step towards negotiation, and pursues such a decision alone and without referring to the people, they will be placing themselves in a difficult situation and will grant the enemy an opportunity which it will certainly use against them. This could also cause the negotiators to make significant concessions for fear that they might later be forced to acknowledge the failure of their negotiation option. Thus they prioritise their own interest over the national one in order not to be exposed in front of their people and others.

Negotiation has its specific spaces and domains and is not an absolute option in all matters. There are issues – such as critical constants – that should not be negotiated. Negotiation is a mechanism and a tactic within specific margins and domains; no one in their right mind would negotiate on everything, especially not on the principles. In business, negotiation is often on profits and not on business assets.

Unfortunately, the current experience, especially of the Palestinian negotiations, is that all these rules have been abandoned.

In all honesty and courage I say: negotiation is not absolutely prohibited or forbidden, be it from a legal or political perspective, or in view of the experiences of the nation and humanity, or the practices of the resistance movements and revolutions throughout history. However, it must be subject to equations, regulations, calculations, circumstances, contexts and proper management, for without these it becomes a negative and destructive tool.

Regarding the Palestinian case, we say that negotiation with Israel today is the wrong choice. A proposal was put forward to Hamas directly to negotiate with Israel but we refused. Some from among the Hamas leadership received a proposal to meet with a number of Israeli leaders, some of them in power, such as [Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Shas Party leader] Eli Yishai, and others belonging to the peace camp. Hamas has rejected these offers.

Negotiations today – under the current balance of power – are in the service of the enemy, and do not serve the Palestinian side. The conflict on the ground has not developed in a manner that has forced the Zionist enemy to resort to negotiation; it refuses to this day to withdraw from the land, and does not recognise Palestinian rights. Thus negotiation in such conditions is a fruitless gamble.

In light of our weakness and the imbalance of power, Israel is using negotiations as a tool to improve its relations and polish its image before the international community, and using it to gain time so as to create new facts on the ground through settlement-building, expelling people, the Judaising of Jerusalem, and the demolition of its neighbourhoods. It also uses negotiations as a cover to distract attention from its crimes and to water down Palestinian demands. Israel is exploiting negotiations to normalise its relations with the Arab and Islamic world, to penetrate it, and to distort the nature of the conflict; Israel is the sole beneficiary of the negotiations as they stand.

Negotiation under the existing imbalance of power is a subjugation of the Palestinian side to the requirements, conditions and dictates of the Israeli occupation. This is not an equal process, for just as there is currently no parity in the field of confrontation, there is also no parity around the negotiating table.

On recognising Israel

The issue of recognising the Zionist entity raises much debate. There is also talk of legal recognition in contrast to realistic or pragmatic recognition. What is the position of Hamas on this issue?

Our position regarding the acknowledgement of the occupation’s legality is clear and settled, and we do not hide or conceal it. Recognising Israel has been laid down as a condition for the international community opening up to Hamas, and so this has become an obstacle in our way. But we did not care, and we showed determination to withstand this challenge. Recognition means legitimising the occupation and conferring legitimacy upon Israel’s aggression, settlement, Judaisation, murders, arrests and other crimes and atrocities against our people and our land. This is unacceptable according to international law and human values, not to mention our religion.

It is unacceptable to legitimise occupation and theft of land. Occupation is a crime, theft is a crime, and should not be legitimised under any circumstances. These are uncontroversial concepts in the common human understanding, and so is the conception of the Palestinian victim whose land was usurped. This is an issue tied to our human existence, and it contrasts with recognising the legitimacy of occupation and usurpation, not to mention the patriotic and religious feelings, cultural affiliation and historical presence, which all link us to this land.

Others have fallen into this trap due to their ineffectiveness and submission to external pressures, and they thought that bowing to these conditions and pressures may make it easier for them to advance in their political agenda. However, it was practically demonstrated that they have paid an exorbitant price for an illusion. They were wrong in their logic of interests, and wrong in their logic of principles.

We reject recognition in both legal and pragmatic senses. There is a difference between saying there is an enemy called “Israel” on the one hand, and acknowledging its legitimacy on the other; the former is not really recognition. In short, we refuse to recognise the legitimacy of Israel because we refuse to recognise the legitimacy of occupation and theft of land. For us, this principle is clear and definitive.

Are you not surprised at the Israeli and international insistence on your recognising Israel? Is this not, in some way, a sign of weakness, as Israel sounds like it is questioning its own existence, and demanding that others recognise the legitimacy of this existence?

Without a doubt, the enemy is concerned about the future of its entity, particularly in light of the latest developments. Its psychology is that of a thief and a criminal who ultimately feels like an outlaw lacking legitimacy, no matter how strong he may become. The demand for recognition is certainly a sign of weakness, an expression of an inferiority complex, lack of confidence in the future of this entity, a feeling that it is illegitimate and still rejected by the peoples of the region as alien, and that the mere presence of a steadfast Palestinian people is a practical expression of the rejection of the Zionist entity.

Yet, there is another dimension, which is the feeling of superiority. This is the logic by which Western nations deal with third world countries. The Zionists adopt the same logic based on military supremacy, and feel that they are the party that has the right to dictate terms to others, including dictating preconditions for any negotiations.

Some Palestinian and Arab parties have, unfortunately, responded to this logic. This is unacceptable imbalance. In our dialogues with foreign delegations, we hear them constantly talking about the conditions of the Quartet; some of them introduce revised conditions to make it easier for us to accept them. We refused all conditions on principle, and refused discussing them even in the context of seeking revised formulas. We reject the principle of conditions, for it suggests that there are two levels of human beings, and one party can dominate the other, one party having the upper hand and the other the lower. Our humanity, dignity and self-respect state that we are on par with others even if they are militarily stronger; hence we refuse to be dealt with through preconditions.

Unfortunately, one of the mistakes causing them to persist in this approach is that some people have accepted these conditions, including the issue of recognition. They then made another mistake by not exchanging the recognition of Israel for the recognition of Palestinian rights, but preferred, rather, to be recognised themselves. This is a significant flaw added to the original one, namely recognition! It is preposterous to recognise Israel in return for its recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation or another movement instead of recognising the Palestinian people or state or rights. This implies that you have swapped public interest for personal interests, and have swapped the grand national objective for a petty partisan one. As we say this, we emphasise our rejection of the issue of recognition, regardless of the price.

Therefore, in our conversations with those Western delegations [who ask us to recognise Israel], we tell them: “Although we are eager to communicate with you and open up to the world, we are not begging or looking for Western recognition of Hamas. This does not concern us. Our legitimacy stems from the Palestinian people; the ballot boxes; Palestinian democracy; the legitimacy of struggle, sacrifice and resistance; and our Arab and Islamic depth. We are not looking for legitimacy from abroad; what we are seeking to achieve and obtain is recognition of Palestinian rights and the right of our people to freedom, deliverance from the occupation, and the right to self-determination. This will not be in exchange for recognition, because recognition is ultimately an acknowledgement of the legitimacy of occupation, aggression and land theft.”

In your opinion, why do the international community and the Israelis reject the long-term truce proposed by Hamas?

This rejection by the Zionist entity, the US administration, and other international parties is due to several reasons.

The first reason: the logic of power, superiority and hegemony of these parties. They believe that their superior power allows them to impose what they want on us, and to consider us Arabs and Palestinians as the defeated party which has no choice but to sign the instrument of surrender in the same way as Germany and Japan did in the aftermath of World War II, and not to provide solutions and ideas such as the truce.

The second reason: they see Arab and Palestinian parties making more enticing offers. So how would they respond to a truce offer when others offer to recognise Israel in return for a solution based on the borders of 1967, with a willingness to negotiate on the details of that solution, namely: borders, Jerusalem and the right of return?

The third reason: the experience of the Americans, the Zionists and other parties in the region tempts them to conclude that further pressure will drive us into a state of desperation as happened previously; they tried the policy of pressure and extortion with others and it succeeded. This prompts them to say: “Let us try the same thing with Hamas, for it may submit like the others did.” Add to that the fact that some Arabs and Palestinians – regrettably – advise them: “Surround Hamas, financially and politically, and incite against them; do not open up to them directly, maintain your conditions, and do not hurry. Hamas will ultimately succumb!”

These reasons, and perhaps others, prompt them to reject the truce offer. In our conversations with Western delegations, we tell them: “Yes, the positions of others are easier, and ours is more difficult; yet our advantage is that, when we make an offer or take a position, we strive to ensure its applicability on the ground and its potential to win the confidence of the Palestinian people and the Arab and Islamic public, and it is so only when it does not run counter to the national constants, rights and interests of the people.” As to the positions of others in the Palestinian arena, they are easy but lack the approval of the majority of the Palestinian people, its national forces and intellectual elites. What is the practical value of these positions, and the value of reaching agreements and finding solutions with some leaderships that were rejected by the majority of the people? The Oslo Agreements were imposed in the past, and they failed because they were unfair and did not meet the aspirations of our people, and thus remained alien to the Palestinian and Arab reality.

So we are aware that they will be forced finally to deal with the vision of Hamas and the vision of forces and leaders committed to national constants. We tell them: “If you think that you are able to achieve success in the region through other schemes, try and you will reach a dead-end.”

It might be easy for the major powers to incline towards easy solutions with certain leaders and rulers, without considering the importance of these solutions being convincing and satisfactory to the people. These powers overlook the fact that reconciliation with the leaders and governments alone is temporary and short-lived, and does not create stability in the region – no matter the extent of pressure and oppression exercised against the people. However, the success of any enterprise is realised only when the people are convinced and believe it to be satisfactory and equitable, even if temporarily. Some in the West are beginning to realise the importance of this perspective and are, consequently, developing their positions – albeit slowly – in the direction of dealing with Hamas. There are still obstacles in the effort to translate this limited development into real and serious steps. We, in turn, are not in a hurry because what matters for us is not our role but our commitment to our people’s rights and interests.

Hamas’ Model of Resistance

What contribution did Hamas make vis-à-vis jihad and the struggle? What distinguishes its model of resistance?

It must first be emphasised that Hamas as a movement of resistance against the Zionist occupation is a natural and authentic part of the experience of the Palestinian struggle, an extension of it, and one of its circles that is continuing from a hundred years ago, starting with the first revolution and the first martyr and all its icons and leaderships and their great struggle – despite adverse circumstances in their time. These were people such as ‘Izzeddine al-Qassam, Haj Amin al-Husseini, Farhan al-Sa’adi, Abdul Qader al-Husseini, among others, up to the contemporary Palestinian revolution with all its factions, forces, leaderships and icons of struggle. The march of the Palestinian struggle continues today, thanks to God, and will continue until the goals of liberation, return and deliverance from Zionist occupation are realised.

This means that Hamas, as a resistance movement, is not separate from this struggle, nor does it exist without roots in a desert, but is rather a part of a whole. It is part of our people’s history of struggle and its jihadi march – full of sacrifices, challenges, creativity, patience, endurance, and determination to continue the march and overcome all obstacles, challenges and adverse and unfavourable circumstances until the ultimate goal is achieved, God willing.

This sense of belonging and extension has infused Hamas – as it has infused other forces of the Palestinian resistance – with the legacy of that history and its originality, spirit and distinctive identity, and made us grasp that long and rich experience and benefit from its various stages with all its successes and achievements, and some failure as well. For us and our people, these experiences are a rich and valuable reservoir. The choice of the name of Martyr ‘Izzeddine al-Qassam for our military wing and its brigades is but an expression of this affiliation and a manifestation of it.

Our asserting this fact here is necessary and very important in order for each of us to know our roots and factors of real power on the one hand, and also to know our real size and specific position in this long march. Just as belonging to such history and course gives people or movements the strength and self-confidence that are necessary, especially in difficult moments, it also gives them the necessary humility and respect for the roles of others. We and the others are part of this blessed course; we were not the first and will not necessarily be the last.

We and the others build on the experience of our forerunners and benefit from them, then we create our own experiences with their positives and negatives, and interact with our associates in the march. All this will be a legacy for future generations who will carry the flag and continue the struggle until victory and liberation are achieved, God willing. This is the goal which everyone will have contributed to – even if they do not witness the final outcome.

We have striven to form our model of resistance, which we established as a contribution to this great struggle, and we were keen to offer – through it – a notable addition to the march of the Palestinian struggle. We have ingrained in it a host of important and necessary concepts, policies and regulations, and given it much spirit, creativity, perseverance and determination.

Among the most prominent of these visions, concepts and policies are:

First: Resistance is our means to achieve the strategic objective, namely, the liberation and restoration of our rights and ending the Zionist occupation of our land and our holy sites. That is to say, resistance is a strategy of liberation, and is the main axis in our work as a resistance movement rather than being a mere choice we have made. It is the backbone of our project. Despite the importance of our programme and the other work that is done in the course of implementing the movement’s programme – such as the political, popular, social, charitable, and economic work, the true value and impact of these activities in serving the objectives rest on their position within the context of resistance as a key programme, and within a working system to which the resistance is the backbone. This is because we are a resistance movement facing a colonialist military occupation opposed to our existence, and so it is natural that armed and all-inclusive resistance be the basis and the decisive factor in this confrontation.

Second: For us, resistance is a means, and not an end, in the service of the aim and the objectives; it is not resistance for the sake of resistance. The elaboration of the resistance concept to make it an end in itself entails many errors in understanding, vision, and in the practical attitude and behaviour, as well as a flaw in decision-making and interest assessment. Yes, resistance is very important, and a primary axis to our project, but it is not the objective. It is the means and the way for achieving this goal, and a strategic tool for liberation.

Third: Hamas is not a military group, but an all-embracing national liberation movement, with resistance as its main axis, its strategic means to liberation and the realisation of the Palestinian national project. At the same time, the movement works in all fields and areas, and has its own aims and political vision. It is a grass-roots movement conscious of the concerns of its people at home and abroad, defending their interests, and seeking to serve them as much as possible in all aspects of daily life.

Fourth: We have limited our resistance to be in opposition to the Israeli occupation alone. Our resistance is against the enemy occupying our land and encroaching on our people and holy sites, and not against anyone else. We did not use resistance even against those who supported our enemies and provided them with all the means of force and the deadly weapons which kill our people. We also adopted the policy of confining the resistance to Palestine and not conducting it outside Palestine. This was done not out of powerlessness, but on account of an accurate estimation of interest, and a balancing of various considerations.

Fifth: We clearly adopt the policy of using weapons and force only in the face of the occupier and the external enemy attacking us; this is legitimate resistance. This means not using weapons and force either in domestic affairs, or in addressing political and intellectual disputes. Addressing disputes within national ranks must be through dialogue, consensus and arbitration by people, through democracy and the ballot box.

The tragic events in the Gaza Strip a few years ago are not a departure from this policy, as this is an entirely different case. There was a Palestinian party which rejected the election result and sought to overturn it, that is, to overturn Palestinian legitimacy, and, unfortunately, they collaborated with the Zionist enemy and the Americans and used weapons against us. It is our natural right to defend ourselves when forced to do so, particularly considering that we did this from the position of a legitimate government formed after fair democratic elections which were approved by the elected Legislative Council.

On the other hand, when we were out of power from 1994 until 2006, and although the Authority had arrested thousands of our members and severely tortured them, and pursued the resistance, its weapons and people, and coordinated (and continues to coordinate) security with the Zionist enemy, we did not respond at that time by using weapons or force against it, and we restricted our resistance to the Zionist enemy alone. We adopted a hands-off policy and restricted our opposition to the Authority, and the management of our dispute with it, to peaceful political and popular means.

Six: We have adopted a policy of not engaging in turf battles in the region, contrary to what others had done in the earlier stages. We never used force and weapons against any Arab state or party even if they harmed and besieged us, or arrested and tortured our brethren, or stabbed the resistance in the back, or incited against us. The Arabs are our brothers and family and they constitute our strategic depth; so we cannot wrong them even if they did so to us. We have committed ourselves to this policy over the past years, and will remain committed to it, God willing, because our battle is exclusively against the Zionist enemy.

Seven: In building the resistance, we took pains to focus on building the resistance activist religiously, educationally, psychologically, and intellectually, ensuring a high degree of organisational and behavioural discipline, commitment to religious and ethical rules of resistance, and developing the capacity for endurance and steadfastness in extreme circumstances, as well as building awareness and clarity of vision in the fighters, sincerity of purpose and intention, and the blending of the religious and national dimensions to develop a strong incentive in the course of jihad and the resistance. The fighter struggles against the occupying enemy in defence of his homeland and holy sites, his people and nation, and his family and honour.

As for the movement’s contribution to jihad and the struggle, it must be noted as a key and substantial point that Hamas succeeded, thanks to God, in building and strengthening its resistance even though it emerged at a difficult time, at a point when many factors and objective conditions for the success of revolutions and liberation movements were vanishing. The most notable of these is the end of the Cold War, the absence of an international ally, and the emergence of an international system based on the uni-polarity of the United States of America, the foremost ally of the Zionist entity, followed by the entry of the world into the “war on terror”, and the pinning of the charge on Islam and resistance movements.

Added to that, although this factor often has various outcomes and implications, is the fact that the resistance in Palestine has been undergoing a suffocating siege for some time, and is deprived of a friendly neighbourhood that can provide strategic and logistical depth, and of a secure rear base allowing for freedom of movement and manoeuvre. All this led to extreme difficulty in the continuance of the armed struggle as it was before, especially working from the outside [of Palestine] to the inside, and the difficulty of providing logistical support to the resistance at home and abroad.

In light of this great challenge, and in order to continue the project of resistance and to overcome obstacles and blockades, the movement focused on a strategy of broadening the participation of the Palestinian people at home, and broadening their involvement in the resistance and confrontation [with the enemy]: starting from stone-throwing, introducing creativity to the first and second intifada in which everyone took part (thus reflecting a new phase of the Palestinian struggle), and introducing new and innovative forms of resistance and open confrontation with the occupation.

Another strategy of movement-building at home was also adopted in terms of recruitment, training, arming and manoeuvre, while making every effort to collect financial and technical support and arms from abroad. When the blockade intensified further, the idea of manufacturing weapons inside, from available raw materials, emerged.

So we accepted the task with these enormous challenges, siege and persecution, and faced it bravely and resolutely through innovation, creativity, diversification, self-reliance, counting on God in all circumstances, and continuously seeking friends, allies and available support. We thought to ourselves that, even if we remained by ourselves in the field, and lost all support from others, we would persist in our resistance and we would not give it up or end it, and we will continue urging our nation to support us and take part in this honourable duty, quoting Allah Almighty’s statement to the Prophet (peace be upon him): “You shall fight in God’s cause; you are responsible only for your own self; and inspire the believers to do the same. It may be that God will neutralise the power of those who reject faith. God is much more powerful, and stronger in the ability to deter” (Surah 4, Verse 84). We used to quote this despite our conviction and confidence in our nation’s faithfulness and its commitment not to abandon its responsibilities towards the central issue of Palestine and of confronting the Zionist enterprise. Our nation clearly realises the essence of the Zionist enterprise and the danger it poses to the whole region and the world

Another addition by Hamas, in terms of jihad and the struggle, is innovation in resistance and its methods, tactics and tools, such as expanding martyrdom operations and developing them to become a lethal weapon against the enemy, and striking deep at its security. An innovation was the manufacture of weapons locally and transforming this into an actual and real project that could be relied on, even if temporarily, given the difficulty of obtaining weapons from outside. The most prominent example in this regard is the manufacture of weapons which were initially dealt with lightly on account of their simplicity and their limited range and effectiveness, but which have evolved to advanced stages and have become a real nuisance to the enemy, with growing impact on its security.

Another important example is the development of the resistance’s capacities in the face of Israeli incursions, and the success in defending Palestinian areas and towns following the distinctive model of Gaza and the heroic attempt in the Jenin camp, where all conventional methods were used and were complemented by the use of tunnels on a large scale to defend and challenge. This went even so far as to withstand a real war wherein the enemy was routed and its objectives thwarted – like in the Zionist enemy’s war on the Gaza Strip in 2008-2009, which actually was the largest war waged by Israel on Palestinian land.

A further addition is the improvement of resistance to being able to achieve and liberate part of the land. The Palestinian resistance, with its military wings and qualitative martyrdom operations, and with the significant impact of our people’s second uprising, was able to force the Zionist enemy to leave the Gaza Strip and dismantle its settlements for the first time in the history of the Zionist entity. This clearly means that the Palestinian revolution, through the development of capacity, momentum and tools, as well as innovation and diversification of methods and tactics, and through determination and patience, has become a real and reliable option whose ability to withstand, defend and achieve, even if step-by-step, can be trusted by the people despite the enormous difference in and the continuing imbalance of power compared to the enemy.

The resistance was also concerned with an important aspect in its experience as a resistance movement, namely, the alternation between escalation and abatement in line with the conditions and circumstances of our people, serving the public interest, and sound political judgement. The calm could be self-chosen or undeclared as was necessary, and as part of the resistance’s decision-making, or it could be announced publicly by agreement of the resistance forces, in return for specific demands such as discontinuation of Zionist aggression, lifting the siege, and so on.

We, along with other resistance factions, exercised this with all consciousness and courage and took responsibility for our people and their interests. But, in all cases, we exercised this on the basis of clinging to resistance and developing it further as our strategic option for liberation. In the battlefield and on the path of resistance and liberation, the movement offered – as did others from our people – a prominent galaxy of martyrs from its finest leaders, icons and cadres, led by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, founder of the movement; Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi; Jamal Mansour; Jamal Salim; Ibrahim al-Makadmeh; Isma’il Abu Shanab; Salah Darwazeh; Yousef Sarakji; Saed Siam; Nizar Rayyan; and thousands of other noble martyrs.

The movement also offered illustrious figures in the history of Palestinian military activity, such as Imad Akel; Yahya Ayyash; Salah Shehadeh; Mahmoud Abu Hannoud; and dozens of other martyrs who cannot all be named here, though their names will remain in the Palestinian memory and history of struggle.

Another aspect, and a very important addition, is the introduction of the Islamic religious dimension to the battle alongside the national one, with all the significance of Islam in the life of the people and the nation, and the spirit, strength and vigour it endows the strugglers with, as well as enhancing motivation for resistance, the ability further to endure, persevere and withstand, and Islam’s ability to mobilise the masses and stir their feelings in the face of the occupiers.

Furthermore, this essential dimension has increased the rallying of the Arab and Islamic nation’s masses and their support for the Palestinian people and their resistance, especially during major events such as the war and blockade on Gaza, and all matters relating to Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque. Islamic sentiments are among the most important links between the masses of the nation and their elites and Palestine. Thus, the forceful entry of Hamas – with its clear Islamic identity – onto the battlefield was a decisive factor in raising the broad Arab and Islamic momentum, and invoking it for the cause and the Palestinian resistance.

How do you see the issue of laxity in shedding blood?

There are strict established conditions regarding blood and the lives of people, stressed by the Qur’an and the Sunnah [the Prophetic example]. The Prophet (peace be upon him) never stressed anything like he stressed this issue. He repeatedly emphasised it, particularly in his Farewell Sermon, and so it became central in the charter of the nation. There are also codes of ethics and national customs that people subscribe to so as to establish internal peace in their societies, and everyone should abide by these rules and not violate them.

We in the movement are keen to do this carefully, by instilling these constraints and legal, ethical and national rules, sensitising the members of the movement, educating them, compelling them to abide by these rules in their behaviour, and practising accountability for any infringements or violations.

Those who need emphasis on these issues are no doubt those in the military domain and the bearers of weapons, so that the weapons are used only in their natural domain against the occupying enemy. For those who carry weapons might be tempted by their feeling of self-power to use their weapons needlessly. The more intense the environment of domestic tension in a society becomes, the more likely will be indulgence and excess in the use of arms.

It should be noted here that the severity of the security experience with the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s, the poor performance of its security apparatus, corruption, harassment of people – especially the resistance movements, primarily Hamas, and the torture and insulting of its leaders, all created feelings of indignation and severe pain, and wounded souls that will never heal as a result of that harsh experience. This rendered the domestic environment in the Palestinian community unsound and unhealthy, tense and irascible, and increased narrow partisanship and partiality to the self and the faction at the expense of the overall national interest. These are defects we must all work to address; we must work together and take responsibility to get rid of them, because that would be in the interest of the country, the cause and all of us, and because the prolonging of such defects and phenomena is detrimental to all, and harmful to the cause and the national interest.

The possession of arms, the sense of power, and large forces often cast on their owners vanity and self-admiration, lure them into laxity in their use of weapons, and may cause them to make mistakes and abuse the rights of others. By nature, man exceeds proper bounds when he becomes rich or strong, as God Almighty says: “But man transgresses all bounds, in that he looks upon himself as self-sufficient” (Surah 96, Verses 6-7). Preventing such transgression requires discipline and control through religious, moral and patriotic commitment, and through the enactment of constraints, rules and penalties, and by being held answerable for abuses and irregularities.

We in the movement exercise this approach with its two parts: the religious, moral and patriotic deterrent; and checks, balances, accountability and penalty in the case of violation. These are issues related to religion, national interest and people’s rights. We are also keen on the integrity of intentions and purity of motives of the fighters, so that jihad, effort and behaviour are always purely for the sake of God, and for the homeland and its interest, away from the passion for revenge or personal motives. Despite all this, mistakes still occur; this is part of human nature.

Abuses and mistakes occur in the experiences of all nations and peoples, as with all armies of the world, and as in the case of the ugliness we see practised against the vulnerable and occupied peoples in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, as an Arab and Muslim nation, and by virtue of our religion’s principles, our morals and cultural heritage, we need always to commit to the highest standards of ethical and behavioural discipline, and firmness towards errors and abuses, for our morals are not to be practiced only among ourselves but are, rather, universal and human and should be practised with everyone, regardless of their religion or race.

Even at the time of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) there were excesses and errors, but dealing with them was firm and fast. The Holy Qur’an addressed one of these cases in the verse: “O you who believe! When you go abroad in the cause of God, investigate carefully, and say not to anyone who offers you a salutation: ‘You are not a believer!’ while you covet the perishable goods of this life. With Allah are profits and spoils abundant. You too were once in the same condition, till God conferred on you His favours. Therefore carefully investigate. For God is well aware of all that you do” (Surah 4, Verse 94).

The Prophet (peace be upon him) was firm in addressing these violations, few as they were, and the prophetic traditions in this regard are well-known, as partiality towards principles, values and morals is the basis of religion and the foundation of the nation.

From here, in compliance with Islamic rules and ethics, following the example of the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah (because we consider commitment to them a religious obligation and a source of goodness and bliss) and in fulfilment of our people’s and nation’s national interest, our policy in the movement is based on the non-endorsement of errors and violations, and in not legitimising them no matter where they come from. We, rather, consider them to be at variance with the approach of the movement, its thinking and commitment, and we penalise the offenders and abusers firmly.

Hamas and International Relations

Are you satisfied with your achievements in international relations? What is the position of these relations in the thinking, programmes and priorities of Hamas?

International relations in the political thinking of Hamas has several dimensions.

The first dimension: conviction that the Palestine battle, in one of its aspects, is the battle of humanity against Israeli injustice and oppression, and against the racist Zionist scheme targeting the world and humanity as a whole and threatening the interests of peoples and nations, since its evil and dangers are not limited to Palestine and the Palestinians and the Arabs and Muslims.

The second dimension: the necessity of promoting our just cause and winning more friends who support our legitimate right to resist occupation and aggression. It has been shown that there is still good in the human conscience, and that it could be awakened and moved in our favour if we present our case well, and strive to reveal the truth of the Zionist entity. The case of breaking the Gaza blockade, and the success in winning a large number of sympathisers with this issue through the movement of ships to Gaza is an example of the importance of this dimension. We recall and emphasise that the confrontation with the Zionist entity – through the people and resistance, as was the case with the Gaza War, south Lebanon and the flotilla, is what exposes the ugly face of this entity, and not negotiations and meetings with it as these polish its image and cover up its reality and crimes.

The third dimension: just as Israel encircles and haunts us on the international stage, we too must follow it in all international forums, and not leave the stage to it. Unfortunately, the official Arab and Islamic side has fallen far short of this objective, and its true role has been absent. However, what mitigated this deficiency are the efforts of the Palestinian, Arab and Islamic communities who recently moved more effectively on the international arena and scored significant results and important breakthroughs. They helped win friends and supporters for the Palestinian cause and Arab and Islamic issues, and worked so as to expose the ugly and ruthless face of Israel, whose aggressive and brutal behaviour has shocked human conscience and sentiments because it runs counter to the ethical values of Western peoples and the peoples of the world. These communities have also contributed, through their activities, to the pursuit of Israel legally and judicially.

The fourth dimension: we are interested in forging a network of relations, strong and effective at all levels, international as well as Arab and Islamic. We have created in our group a special section for international relations because we consider it a factor of strength, opening up and winning international support for the cause and the movement.

The fifth dimension: the forging of international relations starts here, from within the region, for here is the plant, and the harvest is there in the West, while hard work is required in both. This means that the primary basis for achieving a breakthrough and success in international relations is strength on the ground, and being ingrained in it, united around our people and our nation, practising resistance and resoluteness. [With such a foundation], the world will respect us and realise that there will be no peace or stability in the region unless they deal with us and accord us the consideration we deserve, respect our interests, rights and legitimate demands, and retreat from their current policies of bias towards Israel and disregard for the Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims.

We have scored successes in this field, thanks to God. Yet the road is long and we have a long way ahead of us. We are relatively satisfied with the achievements, considering the scale of obstacles facing us and being thrown in our path. It should not be forgotten that the level of the relations and the yield achieved does not depend on us alone, but also on the other side. This is how political and human relations take place.

If we are to measure the yield from the efforts we exerted, compared to the degree of Zionist penetration and influence in the world, the gap will seem wide. Western policy – which views Israel as its natural extension and chooses to support it without limit, the weakness of Arab performance and diplomacy, and the incitement by certain Palestinian and Arab parties against the movement have, no doubt, impacted on the extent of success and achievement.

We currently have a host of official relations on the international level, such as the relations with Russia, some Latin American countries and Asian and African nations. We also have other official international relations (some are covert in view of the conditions of the other party) and indirect relations through former officials who communicate with us with the knowledge of the officials in their countries; this is the case with the United States of America and others. All of this is an important development, and it will not be long, God willing, until this develops into open and consistent official relations with the movement.

We are not talking here about international relations from the viewpoint of eagerness, desperation, urgency and a search for partisan glory. Rather, we are forging these relations and following up on them with poise and self-respect, with the purpose of reaping gains for the Palestinian cause rather than for narrow partisan ones.

Alignments and axes

In recent years, the Arab arena has witnessed a number of different axes and alignments. Hamas has been classified by some as being within the axis of rejection. How do you view this situation dominating the Arab political scene, where do you see yourself with regard to it, and do you believe it to be in the interests of the nation?

I will answer this from three angles.

First angle: There is a reprehensible gathering, and another gathering which is praiseworthy. The reprehensible gathering is an assembly, for example, on the basis of race or narrow national ideas in opposition to other people; it invokes categorisation and internal alignment on the basis of the country or the nation. But if people rally to do good, to support the Palestinian people, resist the Zionist enemy, challenge normalisation, resist the efforts of enemies to infiltrate the nation, confront American hegemony and the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and stand in the way of attempts to rob the nation’s wealth, all this constitutes a praiseworthy gathering, and cannot be equated with the other one.

Therefore, when we say that we are for resistance, adherence to Palestinian rights, the right of return, have a bias for Palestine, Jerusalem and the nation’s sacred places, and that we reject the Zionist occupation and refuse to succumb to the dictates of the enemy, then this is something we are proud of and do not hide. This is the duty of the nation. God Almighty says: “Help one another in righteousness and piety and do not cooperate in sin and aggression.” Hence, coming together for such cooperation is desired, and we should not be afraid of being accused of bias towards one of the axes in such a case.

Second angle: we do not consider our commitment to resistance and refusal to submit to the Quartet’s and the enemy’s conditions and the American-Israeli vision of the settlement and relinquishment of Palestinian rights to be undermining of Palestinian or Arab parties. Rather, [we consider it to be an undermining] of the Zionist enemy. As for those whose agenda intersects with the enemy’s, or who succumb to them and go along with them under pressure, and participate in besieging us or inciting against us, those are the ones who are placing themselves against the mission of the resistance. However, we do not antagonise anyone from our people and our nation, and we have not formed a Palestinian, Arab or Muslim axis against another Palestinian Arab one. We continue to reach out to all, and are keen to communicate with everyone and establish relationships with everyone. If there is a break or chill in relationships with someone, it is this person or group who chooses this break or chill and not us. Everyone is aware of this fact, because we reach out to all Arabs – some of them respond positively, and others do not.

Third angle: if it was acceptable to disagree in our politics and analysis of the political situation when the accord was being put to the test and when people were paying heavily for the resistance, is it acceptable to disagree today after the accord has been proven a failure with an obstructive political horizon and very heavy costs and consequences, much heavier than the costs of the resistance?

We call on all the nation’s states and forces to rally together with us in our natural environment as a nation. When the nation undergoes occupation, our natural environment and our priority should be the resistance. When we undergo aggression it is natural to unite in the face of aggression; and when the nation enters a stage of independence, then our natural environment and priority would be reconstruction, economic advancement and cultural renaissance in all its dimensions.

Today, the nation should respond to the current challenges and place itself in its natural environment. We hope that everyone would be in this environment, particularly considering that they have tried and failed and found out that betting on the Americans and others is futile. The Americans have been tried in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, and were tried before that by the Shah of Iran, and the results were dismal. We say to the Arab and Islamic regimes: “The shortest way to maintain your regimes and even your stay in power is by siding with your nation and the people’s choices.”

The official Arab leaderships allowed themselves the opportunity to be engaged in many experiments and attempts on the path of compromise and negotiations. The most recent of these was the Arab Peace Initiative, through which they sent a clear and generous message that the Arab states were willing to provide benefits in return for steps taken by the other party. Eight years have elapsed since this proposal was mooted, without any respect being given either by the Zionist enemy, the US administration, or the international community – except for a few complimentary phrases.

During our meetings with many Arab officials and leaders, we continue to tell them: “After this experience, and after reaching a dead-end, is it not worthwhile to stop and look for alternative options?” We used also to say to them that withdrawing from the settlement plan and the Arab Initiative did not mean entering into official wars – which are not possible today – with Israel. Another option is to support the resistance, and thus the nation can rally behind a realistic and pragmatic option which has proven able to withstand and able to score some achievements, an option that is bound significantly to develop in terms of its weight and influence in the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially if it finds support

If official wars with the enemy are impossible today because of the imbalance of power, it is difficult for the nation – as things currently stand – to engage on a programme of a regular Arab war against Israel. So let the realistic and practical option be resistance, which we have tried and which has succeeded in driving the occupiers out of southern Lebanon and Gaza, and whose effects are being seen clearly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hence, we believe that calling on the nation and its forces to line up in their natural environment is not an abstract or emotional theory but is, rather, based on a practical option that has been successfully tried. The nation is capable of using this option on the official and popular levels, particularly since the negotiation option has failed and in light of the contempt displayed by the enemy leaders towards us, as well as successive US administrations’ betrayal of the Arabs and the Muslims – even of their friends and associates.

Hamas and Jews

Is the resistance of Hamas directed against the Zionists as Jews or as occupiers?

We do not fight the Zionists because they are Jews; we fight them because they are occupiers. The reason behind our war with the Zionist entity and our resistance to it is the occupation, rather than differences in religion. Resistance and military confrontation with the Israelis was caused by occupation, aggression and crimes committed against the Palestinian people, and not because of the differences in religion and belief.

We are well aware that Israel invokes religion to advance on the battlefield. They also employ historical grudges, distorted texts, legends and myths, and religious sentiments in the battle against the Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. Even the leaders of secular Zionism had used religion since the beginning of the Zionist movement and exploited it politically; and the Zionist entity was originally based on religion and racism. Despite all this, our religious differences with them is not what created a situation of war and resistance against them; we fight them because they are occupiers.

For us, religion is a cornerstone to our lives, belonging and identity, our culture and our daily actions; it is the energy that promotes patience and steadfastness, and gives rise to more sacrifice and generosity. This is a tremendous energy in the face of injustice, aggression and the powers seeking to harm our people and our nation. But we do not make of religion a force for engendering hatred, nor a cause or a pretext for harming and assaulting others, or grabbing what is not ours, or encroaching on the rights of others.

Hamas and Christians

What is the Hamas view of Christians and their role in the Palestinian cause?

Islam dealt with the Christians in a special manner compared to other religions, as in the [Qur’anic] verse: “You will surely find that, of all people, the most hostile to those who believe are the Jews and those who are polytheists; and you will certainly find that, of all people, the nearest in friendship to those who believe are those who say: ‘We are Christians’.” The historical relations between Christians and Muslims have had a special status since the conquest of Palestine, when the second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, received the keys to the city of Jerusalem. A special relationship between Muslims and Christians was formed thereafter.

What is more, Palestine enjoys an exceptional status, being the land of prophets and messengers, the birthplace of Jesus (peace be upon him), and the place of Muhammad’s (peace be upon him) night journey. Palestine is one of the foremost examples of coexistence and tolerance among all faiths. This is a legacy carried by the Palestinians – whether Muslims or Christians – and has resulted in the evolution of the historical relations we see.

In the past decades, since the 1930s when the late Haj Amin al-Husseini sponsored Christian and Muslim conferences, Muslims and Christians have had mutual concerns, and have cooperated to face mutual challenges. Palestinian Muslims and Christians were in the same boat against the Zionist occupation. This was reflected in the role of our Christian brothers in the contemporary Palestinian Revolution when all factions united as one people.

Since the formation of Hamas, the relationship with the Christian brothers has been normal and good, and there were no problems between us and them. This despite the fact that some Palestinian forces tried, unfortunately, to scare Christians with the idea of the new movement, reminding them that it is an Islamic movement in order that they might promote the notion of an allegedly inevitable contradiction between Hamas and Christians. However, these attempts at intimidation failed, and Christians found the movement to be close to them, dealing with everyone with tolerance, openness and respect. During the second Palestinian intifada, the movement took into consideration the specificities of Christian festivals, and was careful that strike days did not coincide with Christian festivals and events, just as it was also keen to protect Christian property. Not only this, but Hamas was also keen on an active Christian role in Palestinian political life. The movement’s leaders, at home and abroad, held several meetings with Christian national religious figures.

For these reasons, Hamas won broad support among Christians before and after the 2006 legislative elections. There were many Christians who voted for Hamas, and we supported them in the West Bank and Gaza, too. For example, Dr Husam al-Tawil – a Christian – won [a seat] in Gaza owing to votes from Hamas and its supporters. The number of Muslims who voted for him was several times the number of Christian votes – given that the number of Christians in the Gaza Strip is small.

I recall here, because of its symbolic significance, an incident that happened in an Arab airport. A certain person approached me, introduced himself as a Palestinian, said that he was a Christian from Beit Jala, and that he had voted for Hamas and still supported it. He was not obliged to say this, and nobody pushed him to say it; he did it on his own, and expressed his feelings. This is a model of the good relationship between the movement and the Christian brothers from among our people.

We are dealing with the Christians as a fundamental component of the people and homeland, and an active part in the struggle against the occupation, without the consideration that this is a Muslim and that a Christian. We are partners in the country, and everyone has rights and duties. When we recall religious figures prominent in the struggle of the people of Palestine, we recall, among Muslims, Sheikh Raed Salah, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, and [among Christians] Bishop Atallah Hanna, Bishop Capucci, and so on. We all share in defending Jerusalem and the cause.

Hamas may have surprised some liberals and secularists in the Palestinian arena who thought, or even promoted the idea, that, by virtue of its Islamic identity, it will isolate itself and that a tenuous relationship may develop between us and Christian Palestinians. They were surprised when their expectations did not materialise. This is because religion is not about isolation and detachment; on the contrary, faith motivates a person to be tolerant, to be respectful of others, and to recognise their rights.

Hamas and women

Islamic movements are commonly accused of contempt towards women and marginalisation of their role in political and social life. How do you view these charges in light of your experience in Hamas?

Unfortunately, there is a gap between the true concepts of Islam regarding woman, and their more recent practical application. There is an erroneous application and behaviour that results from backwardness and does not come from the texts and spirit of the Shari’ah.

Even at the present time, however, and despite the good level of progress in the Arab and Islamic countries, there are still errors in the application [of the Shari’ah] arising from many customs, traditions and concepts which emanate from certain situations and specific environments, and do not arise from the provisions of Islam itself.

Women in the texts of the Qur’an and hadith (prophetic traditions) are charged with duties just as men are, and when the Qur’an speaks about Shari’ah and its provisions, it mentions men and women together because everyone is charged with and has individual responsibilities. This is evident in God Almighty’s saying: “The Believers, men and women, are protectors one of another: they enjoin what is just, and forbid what is evil,” and “Never will I suffer to be lost the work of any of you, be you male or female. You are members, one of another.” And, in the Prophet’s words: “Women are the twin halves of men.” There are also other such Qur’anic verses and hadith in this vein.

Women in the Islamic concept of thought, jurisprudence, mandate and role are – indeed – one half of society, and woman has been given her prestige and respect. However, there is a huge difference between respect and appreciation for woman and her rightful role [on the one hand], and abusing her and presenting her as a cheap commodity as is done in the Western civilisation [on the other]. There is a difference between preserving woman’s chastity and modesty and safeguarding her rights while according her a suitable role, and dealing with her as a commodity of lust and pleasure. These ethical regulations are not just Islamic; they are innate and human.

We in Hamas are keen, as regards women, to invoke Islamic concepts and their unadulterated application which are not marred by the ages of backwardness or the weight of social norms and traditions that stem from the environment rather than the religious text, especially since the environment of Palestine is not a closed one but a historically civilised one enjoying plurality and openness to all religions, civilisations and cultures.

With this pure and original conception, and as a part and an extension of the Palestinian experience and its legacy, Hamas assigned a distinctive role for women in its operations. The role of women was highlighted during the intifada, in the resistance and all forms of struggle efforts, not only as mother, wife and sister to the strugglers, but also as one herself, carrying out commando and martyrdom operations, supporting her brothers and martyrs, and providing logistical assistance. There are also sisters who drove fighters to the operation site, as happened in the Sbarro operation and others. In the Zionist jails, there are tens of captive sisters enduring the suffering in prison and paying the toll of jihad side-by-side with their brothers.

The role of women is significant in the Palestinian arena and in the movement, whether at work, jihad and struggle, in the field of social charity and educational work, or political and syndicalist work. The Palestinian woman is educated and cultured, and her activity in schools and universities is no less than that of a man.

Proceeding from our Islamic terms of reference, Arab cultural identity and the distinctive Palestinian environment, women in Hamas occupy an advanced position. In political action, and before the Legislative Council was created, women had significant activities in the Palestinian student movement and in various unions; and when Hamas took part in the legislative elections, women enjoyed a strong presence and a large share on our lists, as well as in the government formed by Hamas.

It is true that some Islamic movements and groups are criticised for neglecting the role of women, but we find, on the other hand, cases of depravity and misdemeanour – impinging on ethical concerns – with some secular parties and forces. Hamas was keen to develop a moderate vision which would grant woman her authentic role, without breaking from Islamic principles, values and ethics, and at the same time being free from isolation, seclusion and marginalisation. I believe we have succeeded in that, thanks to God. Women also have an important role on the organisational level in Hamas, which seeks better to develop their role and participation within the organisational structure of the movement.

Future of the Zionist project

Through your reading of the course of the Zionist project and its current reality, how do you see the future of this project? Is it moving towards realising “Greater Israel”, or is it in decline and regression?

Factual data reinforce the conviction that the Zionist project has no future in the region. There is a real decline in this enterprise, for which expansion was an important characteristic, and it is no longer able to continue in this way. The construction of the wall (while recognising its negative repercussions on the Palestinian people), and the withdrawal from southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip are but practical examples of this decline and regression.

Israel – which used to wage war on its neighbours and win easily – was able to take the fight to its enemy, and used to strike everywhere. Now, its heartland is a field of battle for the Palestinian resistance. This is a repetitive phenomenon. The so-called “Israeli home front” is now threatened in every war or confrontation and is paying the price for its leaders’ adventures. Moreover, the ruling class in Israel today – and on the level of many military, political and security leaders – no longer has the capacity of the first generation who built this entity, nor the will to fight that they had had, not to mention rampant corruption in the ruling class, a growing number of suicides, the evasion of military service, and the declining performance of its security institutions.

Israel has not won a real war since 1967, except for the invasion of Beirut in 1982. This is an important indicator of the decline of the Zionist project’s ability, and the fact that it has no future. In my estimation, the “Greater Israel” project has come to an end, simply because the Zionist enemy is no longer able to accomplish it, and because Israel continues on the same path as did apartheid South Africa. This is a growing conviction for many neutral politicians and observers.

After more than 60 years since the establishment of this entity, and when the question in the Israeli street is not only about the security of Israel, but also about its future and destiny, this is an important and serious development. When the Israeli community questions the basis of its existence and future, and the feasibility of its enterprise, then the countdown must have begun, God willing. Saying this is not enough, however; what is required is building on it. We are not calling for an underestimation of the Zionist entity’s strength and capabilities. It is the sensible who do not underestimate their enemy, and the Zionist entity still has many elements of power. Nevertheless, this realistic reading and vision, based on many facts and indicators, should prompt us not to succumb to Israeli threats or conditions for political settlement, and not to deal with the Zionist project as an inevitable destiny. The real option and alternative to the policy of submission and the state of helplessness, waiting and getting bogged down in negotiations, is resistance. The Palestinian people are able, God willing, to continue the resistance, but they need the backing and participation of the nation.

There is debate among many international groups as to whether Israel still constitutes a strategic asset for Western interests in the region. Do you think there is a chance that some international parties might reconsider the usefulness of continued unlimited support to the Zionist entity?

One of Israel’s strong points was its ability to promote itself in the West as part of Western civilization and as an extension of it, carrying its values, way of life and political system of democratic governance. It also used to present itself as a victim of Nazism in order to draw Western sympathy. Today, Israel is no longer so – especially after the “Goldstone Report”, its crimes in the war on Gaza and in Lebanon before that, and its crime against the Freedom Flotilla, as its aggressions have affected hundreds of nationals from dozens of countries, including Western ones. Today, Israel is living in a state of exposure, and a situation where the moral rationale it earlier used to claim and promote is being shaken. Israel is falling morally, and its true ugly face is being exposed. This is a very important development.

The Western embrace of Israel has suffered a big shock, especially among the peoples of the West and the elites, due to its heinous crimes and due to the Palestinian steadfastness which exposed it for what it is, and highlighted the just Palestinian cause and its human face. Negotiations will result in Israel polishing its image for public relations purposes. When Israel loses its international incubator, it inflicts upon itself a heavy loss, because it is not an authentic part of the region, but rather survives on the support of the international community, especially the West. The Western mind, on the other hand, glorifies force, adores it and bases its policies upon it. Today, the Zionist entity no longer appears to the West as being capable of imposing what it wants in the region, and this means that Western confidence in the ability of this entity forcibly to impose its desires in the region is eroding. This has undoubtedly changed the image of Israel and its functional role in the West from being a profitable investment to becoming an onerous burden; this will gradually impact on Western interaction with the Zionist project in the future.

All these factors demonstrate the premature ageing of this enterprise. Usually, when senescence appears early in any physical structure, it indicates a flaw in formation or immunity, as well as a surrounding rejecting environment which brought about this ageing. Without the slightest doubt, Palestinian steadfastness and resistance, and the steadfastness and support of the nation, as well as the continuing confrontations with the [Zionist] project and nonconformity with its will, is what exposed this enterprise and its flaws. Hence, the project aged early and is no longer able to carry out the same adventures and score the same successes as in the past. In short, the Zionist project, like all other enterprises of occupation, settler-colonialism and aggression throughout history, has no legitimacy because it is alien to our region and lacks the elements of survival. It will, thus, end up like all other similar projects.

Future of the Region

What is your vision of the region’s future in the next five years?

The region today is in the throes of labour, and the next five years are likely to witness a continuation and expansion of this labour. We hope it will ultimately result in positive changes and a promising fruit, God willing, even if difficult. We have confidence and hope that the future will be to the benefit of the nation and the Palestinian resistance and cause. No doubt the nation is today going through a stage of advancement, but it is – unavoidably – a difficult one that might be accompanied by a lot of pain, and so it requires more patience and determination, and the doubling of efforts on the one hand, and the escalation of resistance and confrontation with the occupying enemy on the other.

Some people believe that this reading of yours is optimistic and unfounded. On what basis do you construct your expectations?

Our reading is not fanciful, and is certainly not defeatist. Our reading is realistic and based on numerous facts, proofs and indicators. One of these is that the resistance endeavour in the region has evolved significantly, and has proven its presence and effectiveness. Not only this, but the resistance endeavor has endured and scored important successes, even though it is working under unfavourable conditions and is facing major challenges, the most important of which is the regional and international imbalance of power, and the state of weakness and division in the Arab and Islamic countries.

Those who view the reality of the resistance in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan will realise that resistance has become the only real option on which the peoples of the region can depend to confront the forces of hegemony and for resisting occupation, defending the land and interests and safeguarding their independence, and to repel aggression from any nation in the world, even if it is as powerful and mighty as the United States of America.

Resistance in the region has not only held out and succeeded in accomplishing strides in liberation – as in Gaza and south Lebanon – and held out in the face of large wars, but it also entangled the invading forces – who seek directly to control the region – in such huge trouble and dilemmas that they are now forced to reconsider their calculations. The people and the resistance of the region have – thank God – forced these major powers and nations to accord some consideration to this nation, after being tempted by the Arab governments’ weak policies into more greed and underestimation and disregard for us when formulating their foreign policy and important decisions for the region.

The Zionist war on Gaza and the Freedom Flotilla incident have exposed something important in the course of the conflict, which is that the nation still sees Palestine as its first cause, and that the nation’s people, however frustrated, are still able to recover and mobilise significantly in record time, facing real issues and serious confrontations with the enemy. This inherent vitality in the nation, reflected in some of the junctures and hot spots, was one of the factors and causes – according to our information – which prompted Western countries to put pressure on Israel to accelerate the cessation of the recent war in Gaza, fearing the repercussions of sweeping Arab and Islamic anger and its effects vis-à-vis the current political reality in the region and Western interests therein.

There have also been important positive transformations in recent years in the positions of a number of Arab and Islamic countries which, together with the resistance forces, created a situation of increasing power and independence, bias for the resistance endeavour and the interests of the nation, and rejection of external conditions and pressures. There are also rejectionist countries allied to the resistance, and they have made remarkable progress in terms of their role in the region, along with other Arab states which developed their position and honestly and courageously expressed their support for the Palestinian resistance, the choice of the Palestinian people and the democratic choice demonstrated by the 2006 elections.

We recently saw the emergence of the Turkish regional role, on a positive course towards the independence of political decision-making and economic advancement, promotion of the democratic experience, openness to the Arab and Islamic nation, remarkable and effective engagement on the question of Palestine and other regional issues, and the adoption of strong and courageous positions, all of which indicate a transformation in the region and across the nation, strengthening the trend towards advancement and change for the better.

There is no doubt that there is a clear recognition by all, even those who stubbornly deny it, that the strategy of settlement and negotiations has failed miserably and has reached an impasse, after nearly 20 years of its adoption as the sole option for the overall Arab official policy based on so-called “moderation”. [There is also a recognition] that all successive US administrations, on which the Arab states counted for help in making this strategy successful, did nothing for them but embarrassed and let them down, giving them mere talk and promises, and changing time-lines, while still giving the Zionist entity political and practical support.

Although the advocates of this strategy are unwilling formally to admit failure, lest a vacuum should form resulting in the call for an alternative, the work in this region must definitely drive everyone to seek an alternate more serious and self-respecting strategy which will better be able to face the reality posed by Israel everyday on the ground in defiance of everyone – moderates and non-moderates. The policy of waiting, marking time, sticking to the current policy, testing failed options and reproducing them repeatedly is no longer feasible or possible.

In addition, the general Arab official policy seems, unfortunately, unable to keep pace with the changes in the region, the rise of new players and the growing roles of other players, and the resulting challenges facing the Arabs and their security, interests and regional roles – especially those of the major countries.

Although America continues to weigh influentially on several countries in the region, there is hidden resentment starting to grow towards it in these countries. This includes even those who are friends with the United States, simply because it lets them down and does not help with issues concerning the Arab nation – particularly with respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict – and indulges the Zionist entity and other regional countries at their expense, something which increases their embarrassment in front of their people, and weakens their ability to continue marketing and defending the political moderation strategy based on settlement and negotiations.

One of the proofs that strengthen our confidence that the future of the region is in our favour is the weakening position of the Zionist entity. It is true that it is still ahead militarily, and that the balance of power still works for it, but it is currently encountering many failures. Yes, it is capable of waging war, but it has long been unable to achieve victory.

All the facts mentioned above, and what they sometimes reflect of bitterness and sometimes of promising signs, with a growing awareness among the peoples of the region – especially the Arab people, with the open media space and the inability to hide the facts, with a growing return of the nation’s peoples to their authentic Arab-Islamic identity and cultural roots, and their increasing concern about the current situation of the Arab nation and its destiny and future, national security and regional and international roles and its major issues, at the forefront of which is the Arab-Zionist conflict... All this, in my opinion, stimulates the nation into real and significant change that has become inevitable. It is this which makes me (and those who think similarly to me) confident that the coming years will be, God willing, for the benefit of our nation, notwithstanding the current bitterness, pain and concerns. This view is reinforced by the fact that this region, as evidenced by the facts of history, had always eventually succeeded in regaining the initiative and defeating the forces of aggression.

We are a great nation, proud of ourselves, our religion, our land, our history, our culture and identity, with Palestine and Jerusalem as our beating heart and an indicator of our life and survival. Therefore, we will not tolerate the Zionist entity for long and we will defeat it just as we defeated the Crusades and the Mongol advance in the past. “For it is by turns that We apportion unto people such days (of fortune and misfortune)” (Surah 3, Verse 140).

LONDON: IMPORTANT CONFERENCE ON THE PALESTINIAN LEFT @ SOAS, 27-28th FEB

2010-02-19T21:28:00.001Z

THE LEFT IN PALESTINE / THE PALESTINIAN LEFT

Weekend Conference

27-28 February 2010,
School of Oriental and African Studies,
London Brunei Gallery

Organized by SOAS Palestine Society and hosted by the London Middle East Institute
Tickets
Please note SEATS ARE LIMITED – book in advance
Price: £30 (£20 concessions, and £40 organisations)
All tickets include lunch and refreshments

To buy your tickets:
Online - www.soaspalsoc.org
By cheque
Send cheque payable to SOAS Palestine Society with attached
note of email address to:
SOAS Palestine Society
Thornhaugh Street
London , WC1H 0XG

Day One: Saturday, 27th February

Registration and Refreshments (9:00-9:30)

Opening: Azmi Bishara (Former Knesset member in exile,
writer and political leader)

Speech delivered via video (9:30-10:00)

Session One: The Left in British-Mandate Palestine

(10:00-11:45)

Chair: John Rose (Independent Researcher, London )

Musa Budeiri ( Birzeit University )

The Last Colonial Venture: Communists, Nationalists and
Settlers in Palestine

Ilan Pappe ( Exeter University )

The Contradiction of the Zionist Left in the Mandate Era

Leena Dallasheh ( New York University )

Nazarene Labour Mobilization in Late Mandate Palestine

Coffee, Tea and Refreshments (11:45-12:00)

Session Two: The Left of the PLO-in-exile

(12:00-13:30)

Chair: Laleh Khalili ( School of Oriental and African
Studies)

Leila Khaled (PFLP, Member of the Palestinian National
Council)

The Left’s Social Mobilization in the Refugee Camps*

*presentation via video

Jamil Hilal (Independent Researcher, Ramallah)

The Shaping of the Palestinian Left

Gilbert Achcar ( School of Oriental and African Studies)

Strategic Deficiencies of the PLO Left

LUNCH (13:30-2:15)

Session Three: The Left of the PLO - West Bank and Gaza
Strip(2:15-4:15)

Chair: Dina Matar ( School of Oriental and African Studies)

Muhammad Jaradat (Campaign Unit Coordinator for BADIL)

The Left’s Lessons from the First Intifada

Toufic Haddad (Researcher for BADIL and Journalist)

The Left in the Post-Oslo Era

Aitemad Muhanna ( Swansea University )

The Rise of Hamas, the Fall of Leftist Ideology?

Jamal Juma (Coordinator for Stop the Wall Campaign)

The Current Situation of the Left in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip

Coffee, Tea and Refreshments (16:15-16:30)

Session Four: The Palestinian Left in the Israeli State

(16:30-18:00)

Chair: Bashir Abu-Manneh ( Barnard College )

Areen Hawari (Co-founder of Tajamu and former member of its
Politburo)

Balad (Tajamu): Democracy Confronts Zionism

Aida Touma-Sliman (Head of the International Relations
Department, Communist Party of Israel )

Title tbc

Ahmad Sa’di ( Ben Gurion University *)

Communism and Zionism: A Troubled Legacy

*speaking in his personal capacity

Day Two: Sunday, 28th February

Registration and Refreshments (10:30-11:00)
Session Five: The Israeli Anti-Zionist Left

(11:00-13:15)

Chair: Nira Yuval-Davis ( University of East London )

Moshe Machover ( Kings College , London )

Israeli Socialism and Anti-Zionism: Historical Tasks and
Balance Sheet

Sami Shalom Chetrit ( Queens College , CUNY)

The Zionist Left, the Anti-Zionist Left and the Fanatic
Extremist Zionist Mizrahim in Israel

(Who Really Invaded, Occupied, and Enslaved Palestine ?)

Michael Warschawski ( Alternative Information Center )

From Matzpen to Anarchists Against the Wall: Continuation
and Ruptures

Adar Grayevsky (Anarchists Against the Wall)

From Tel Aviv to Bil’in: The Israeli Radical Left Joins the
Palestinian Popular Struggle

Lunch (13:15-14:00)
Session Six: The Palestinian Left in Literature
(14:00-15:45)

Chair: Wen-Chin Ouyang ( School of Oriental and African
Studies)

Suheir Daoud (Coastal Carolina University )

Literature as Resistance

Sabry Hafez ( School of Oriental and African Studies)

Constructing Identity, Re-Claiming the Land: Palestinian
Poetry debunks the Zionist Myth

Bashir Abu-Manneh ( Barnard College )

Kanafani's Revolutionary Morality

Coffee, Tea and Refreshments (15:45-16:00)

Session Seven - Roundtable Discussion: Towards a New Left
Programme for the Palestinian Struggle

(16:00-18:00)

Chair: Gilbert Achcar

Aida Touma-Sliman, Areen Hawari, Jamal Juma, Jamil Hilal
and Muhammad Jaradat

Tickets Please note SEATS ARE LIMITED – book in advance
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All tickets include lunch and refreshments

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By cheque

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Location SOAS Brunei Gallery
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Contact
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www.soaspalsoc.org

NEW 'CULTURES OF RESISTANCE' MAGAZINE OUT NOW

2010-01-26T19:54:00.002Z

Conflicts Forum's third edition of Cultures of Resistance out now

entitled: The Building of a Docile Islam:
How not to prevent Violent Extremism

download PDF here

ANALYSIS OF US INVOLVEMENT IN YEMEN

2010-01-10T22:38:00.001Z

Obama's Yemeni odyssey targets China
By M K Bhadrakumar

Asia Times

A year ago, Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh made the
startling revelation that his country's security forces
apprehended a group of Islamists linked to the Israeli
intelligence forces. "A terrorist cell was apprehended and
will be referred to the courts for its links with the
Israeli intelligence services," he promised.

Saleh added, "You will hear about the trial proceedings."
Nothing was ever heard and the trail went cold. Welcome to
the magical land of Yemen, where in the womb of time the
Arabian Nights were played out.

Combine Yemen with the mystique of Islam, Osama bin Laden,
al-Qaeda and the Israeli intelligence and you get a heady
mix. The head of the US Central Command, General David
Petraeus, dropped in at the capital, Sana'a, on Saturday
and vowed to Saleh increased American aid to fight
al-Qaeda. United States President Barack Obama promptly
echoed Petraeus' promise, assuring that the US would step
up intelligence-sharing and training of Yemeni forces and
perhaps carry out joint attacks against militants in the
region.

Another Afghanistan?

Many accounts say that Obama, who is
widely regarded as a gifted and intelligent politician, is
blundering into a catastrophic mistake by starting another
war that could turn out to be as bloody and chaotic and
unwinnable as Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, on the face of it,
Obama does seem erratic. The parallels with Afghanistan are
striking. There has been an attempt to destroy a US plane
by a Nigerian student who says he received training in
Yemen. And America wants to go to war.

Yemen, too, is a land of wonderfully beautiful rugged
mountains that could be a guerilla paradise. Yemenis are a
hospitable lot, like Afghan tribesmen, but as Irish
journalist Patrick Cockurn recollects, while they are
generous to passing strangers, they "deem the laws of
hospitality to lapse when the stranger leaves their tribal
territory, at which time he becomes 'a good back to shoot
at'." Surely, there is romance in the air - almost like in
the Hindu Kush. Fiercely nationalistic, almost every Yemeni
has a gun. Yemen is also, like Afghanistan, a land of
conflicting authorities, and with foreign intervention, a
little civil war is waiting to flare up.

Is Obama so incredibly forgetful of his own December 1
speech outlining his Afghan strategy that he violated his
own canons? Certainly not. Obama is a smart man. The
intervention in Yemen will go down as one of the smartest
moves that he ever made for perpetuating the US's global
hegemony. It is America's answer to China's surge.

A cursory look at the map of region will show that Yemen is
one of the most strategic lands adjoining waters of the
Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. It flanks Saudi
Arabia and Oman, which are vital American protectorates. In
effect, Uncle Sam is "marking territory" - like a dog on a
lamppost. Russia has been toying with the idea of reopening
its Soviet-era base in Aden. Well, the US has pipped Moscow
in the race.

The US has signaled that the odyssey doesn't end with
Yemen. It is also moving into Somalia and Kenya. With that,
the US establishes its military presence in an entire
unbroken stretch of real estate all along the Indian
Ocean's western rim. Chinese officials have of late spoken
of their need to establish a naval base in the region. The
US has now foreclosed China's options. The only country
with a coastline that is available for China to set up a
naval base in the region will be Iran. All other countries
have a Western military presence.

The American intervention in Yemen is not going to be on
the pattern of Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama will ensure he
doesn't receive any body bags of American servicemen
serving in Yemen. That is what the American public expects
from him. He will only deploy drone aircraft and special
forces and "focus on providing intelligence and training to
help Yemen counter al-Qaeda militants", according to the US
military. Obama's main core objective will be to establish
an enduring military presence in Yemen. This serves many
purposes.

A new great game begins First, the US move has to be viewed
against the historic backdrop of the Shi'ite awakening in
the region. The Shi'ites (mostly of the Zaidi group) have
been traditionally suppressed in Yemen. Shi'ite uprisings
have been a recurring theme in Yemen's history. There has
been a deliberate attempt to minimize the percentage of
Shi'ites in Yemen, but they could be anywhere up to 45%.

More importantly, in the northern part of the country, they
constitute the majority. What bothers the US and moderate
Sunni Arab states - and Israel - is that the Believing
Youth Organization led by Hussein Badr al-Houthi, which is
entrenched in northern Yemen, is modeled after Hezbollah in
Lebanon in all respects - politically, economically,
socially and culturally.

Yemenis are an intelligent people and are famous in the
Arabian Peninsula for their democratic temperament. The
Yemeni Shi'ite empowerment on a Hezbollah-model would have
far-reaching regional implications. Next-door Oman, which
is a key American base, is predominantly Shi'ite. Even more
sensitive is the likelihood of the dangerous idea of
Shi'ite empowerment spreading to Saudi Arabia's highly
restive Shi'ite regions adjoining Yemen, which on top of it
all, also happen to be the reservoir of the country's
fabulous oil wealth.

Saudi Arabia is entering a highly sensitive phase of
political transition as a new generation is set to take
over the leadership in Riyadh, and the palace intrigues and
fault lines within the royal family are likely to get
exacerbated. To put it mildly, given the vast scale of
institutionalized Shi'ite persecution in Saudi Arabia by
the Wahhabi establishment, Shi'ite empowerment is a
veritable minefield that Riyadh is petrified about at this
juncture. Its threshold of patience is wearing thin, as the
recent uncharacteristic resort to military power against
the north Yemeni Shi'ite communities bordering Saudi Arabia
testifies.

The US faces a classic dilemma. It is all right for Obama
to highlight the need of reform in Muslim societies - as he
did eloquently in his Cairo speech last June. But
democratization in the Yemeni context - ironically, in the
Arab context - would involve Shi'ite empowerment. After the
searing experience in Iraq, Washington is literally perched
like a cat on a hot tin roof. It would much rather be
aligned with the repressive, autocratic government of Saleh
than let the genie of reform out of the bottle in the oil
rich-region in which it has profound interests.

Obama has an erudite mind and he is not unaware that what
Yemen desperately needs is reform, but he simply doesn't
want to think about it. The paradox he faces is that with
all its imperfections, Iran happens to be the only
"democratic" system operating in that entire region.

Iran's shadow over the Yemeni Shi'ite consciousness worries
the US to no end. Simply put, in the ideological struggle
going on in the region, Obama finds himself with the
ultra-conservative and brutally autocratic oligarchies that
constitute the ruling class in the region. Conceivably, he
isn't finding it easy. If his own memoirs are to be
believed, there could be times when the vague recollections
of his childhood in Indonesia and his precious memories of
his own mother, who from all accounts was a free-wheeling
intellectual and humanist, must be stalking him in the
White House corridors.

Israel moves in But Obama is first and foremost a realist.
Emotions and personal beliefs drain away and strategic
considerations weigh uppermost when he works in the Oval
Office. With the military presence in Yemen, the US has
tightened the cordon around Iran. In the event of a
military attack on Iran, Yemen could be put to use as a
springboard by the Israelis. These are weighty
considerations for Obama.

The fact is that no one is in control as a Yemeni
authority. It is a cakewalk for the formidable Israeli
intelligence to carve out a niche in Yemen - just as it did
in northern Iraq under somewhat comparable circumstances.

Islamism doesn't deter Israel at all. Saleh couldn't have
been far off the mark when he alleged last year that
Israeli intelligence had been exposed as having kept links
with Yemeni Islamists. The point is, Yemeni Islamists are a
highly fragmented lot and no one is sure who owes what sort
of allegiance to whom. Israeli intelligence operates
marvelously in such twilight zones when the horizon is
lacerated with the blood of the vanishing sun.

Israel will find a toehold in Yemen to be a god-sent gift
insofar as it registers its presence in the Arabian
Peninsula. This is a dream come true for Israel, whose
effectiveness as a regional power has always been seriously
handicapped by its lack of access to the Persian Gulf
region. The overarching US military presence helps Israel
politically to consolidate its Yemeni chapter. Without
doubt, Petraeus is moving on Yemen in tandem with Israel
(and Britain). But the "pro-West" Arab states with their
rentier mentality have no choice except to remain as mute
spectators on the sidelines.

Some among them may actually acquiesce with the Israeli
security presence in the region as a safer bet than the
spread of the dangerous ideas of Shi'ite empowerment
emanating out of Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah. Also, at some
stage, Israeli intelligence will begin to infiltrate the
extremist Sunni outfits in Yemen, which are commonly known
as affiliates of al-Qaeda. That is, if it hasn't done that
already. Any such link makes Israel an invaluable ally for
the US in its fight against al-Qaeda. In sum, infinite
possibilities exist in the paradigm that is taking shape in
the Muslim world abutting into the strategic Persian Gulf.

It's all about China

Most important, however, for US global
strategies will be the massive gain of control of the port
of Aden in Yemen. Britain can vouchsafe that Aden is the
gateway to Asia. Control of Aden and the Malacca Strait
will put the US in an unassailable position in the "great
game" of the Indian Ocean. The sea lanes of the Indian
Ocean are literally the jugular veins of China's economy.
By controlling them, Washington sends a strong message to
Beijing that any notions by the latter that the US is a
declining power in Asia would be nothing more than an
extravagant indulgence in fantasy.

In the Indian Ocean region, China is increasingly coming
under pressure. India is a natural ally of the US in the
Indian Ocean region. Both disfavor any significant Chinese
naval presence. India is mediating a rapprochement between
Washington and Colombo that would help roll back Chinese
influence in Sri Lanka. The US has taken a u-turn in its
Myanmar policy and is engaging the regime there with the
primary intent of eroding China's influence with the
military rulers. The Chinese strategy aimed at
strengthening influence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar so as to
open a new transportation route towards the Middle East,
the Persian Gulf and Africa, where it has begun contesting
traditional Western economic dominance.

China is keen to whittle down its dependence on the Malacca
Strait for its commerce with Europe and West Asia. The US,
on the contrary, is determined that China remains
vulnerable to the choke point between Indonesia and
Malaysia.

An engrossing struggle is breaking out. The US is unhappy
with China's efforts to reach the warm waters of the
Persian Gulf through the Central Asian region and Pakistan.
Slowly but steadily, Washington is tightening the noose
around the neck of the Pakistani elites - civilian and
military - and forcing them to make a strategic choice
between the US and China. This will put those elites in an
unenviable dilemma. Like their Indian counterparts, they
are inherently "pro-Western" (even when they are
"anti-American") and if the Chinese connection is important
for Islamabad, that is primarily because it balances
perceived Indian hegemony.

The existential questions with which the Pakistani elites
are grappling are apparent. They are seeking answers from
Obama. Can Obama maintain a balanced relationship vis-a-vis
Pakistan and India? Or, will Obama lapse back to the George
W Bush era strategy of building up India as the pre-eminent
power in the Indian Ocean under whose shadow Pakistan will
have to learn to live?

US-India-Israel axis

On the other hand, the Indian elites
are in no compromising mood. Delhi was on a roll during the
Bush days. Now, after the initial misgivings about Obama's
political philosophy, Delhi is concluding that he is all
but a clone of his illustrious predecessor as regards the
broad contours of the US's global strategy - of which
containment of China is a core template.

The comfort level is palpably rising in Delhi with regard
to the Obama presidency. Delhi takes the surge of the
Israeli lobby in Washington as the litmus test for the
Obama presidency. The surge suits Delhi, since the Jewish
lobby was always a helpful ally in cultivating influence in
the US Congress, media and the rabble-rousing think-tankers
as well as successive administrations. And all this is
happening at a time when the India-Israel security
relationship is gaining greater momentum.

United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates is due to
visit Delhi in the coming days. The Obama administration is
reportedly adopting an increasingly accommodative attitude
toward India's longstanding quest for "dual-use" technology
from the US. If so, a massive avenue of military
cooperation is about to open between the two countries,
which will make India a serious challenger to China's
growing military prowess. It is a win-win situation as the
great Indian arms bazaar offers highly lucrative business
for American companies.

Clearly, a cozy three-way US-Israel-India alliance provides
the underpinning for all the maneuvering that is going on.
It will have significance for the security of the Indian
Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. Last
year, India formalized a naval presence in Oman.

All-in-all, terrorism experts are counting the trees and
missing the wood when they analyze the US foray into Yemen
in the limited terms of hunting down al-Qaeda. The hard
reality is that Obama, whose main plank used to be
"change", has careened away and increasingly defaults to
the global strategies of the Bush era. The freshness of the
Obama magic is dissipating. Traces of the "revisionism" in
his foreign policy orientation are beginning to surface. We
can see them already with regard to Iran, Afghanistan, the
Middle East and the Israel-Palestine problem, Central Asia
and towards China and Russia.

Arguably, this sort of "return of the native" by Obama was
inevitable. For one thing, he is but a creature of his
circumstances. As someone put it brilliantly, Obama's
presidency is like driving a train rather than a car: a
train cannot be "steered", the driver can at best set its
speed, but ultimately, it must run on its tracks.

Besides, history has no instances of a declining world
power meekly accepting its destiny and walking into the
sunset. The US cannot give up on its global dominance
without putting up a real fight. And the reality of all
such momentous struggles is that they cannot be fought
piece-meal. You cannot fight China without occupying Yemen.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet
Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

US IGNORE SIGNIFICANT TALIBAN OFFER

2009-12-17T23:41:00.005Z

US silent on Taliban's al-Qaeda offer

By Gareth Porter
Asia Times Online

WASHINGTON - The Barack Obama administration is refusing to
acknowledge an offer by the leadership of the Taliban in
early December to give "legal guarantees" that they will
not allow Afghanistan to be used for attacks on other
countries.

The administration's silence on the offer, despite a public
statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing
skepticism about any Taliban offer to separate itself from
al-Qaeda, effectively leaves the door open to negotiating a
deal with the Taliban based on such a proposal.

The Taliban, however, have chosen to interpret the Obama
administration's position as one of rejection of their
offer.

The Taliban offer, included in a statement dated December 4
and e-mailed to news organizations the following day, said the
organization had "no agenda of meddling in the internal
affairs of other countries and is ready to give legal
guarantees if foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan".

The statement did not mention al-Qaeda by name or elaborate
on what was meant by "legal guarantees" against such
"meddling", but it was an obvious response to past US
insistence that the US war in Afghanistan is necessary to
prevent al-Qaeda from having a safe haven in Afghanistan
once again.

It suggested that the Taliban were interested in
negotiating an agreement with the United States involving a
public Taliban renunciation of ties with al-Qaeda, along
with some undefined arrangements to enforce a ban on
al-Qaeda's presence in Afghanistan in return for a
commitment to a timetable for withdrawal of foreign troops
from the country.

Despite repeated queries by Inter Press Service to the
State Department spokesman, P J Crowley, and to the
National Security Council's press office over the past week
about whether either Clinton or Obama had been informed
about the Taliban offer, neither office has responded to
the question.

Anand Gopal of The Wall Street Journal, whose December 5
story on the Taliban message was the only one to report
that initiative, asked a US official earlier that day about
the offer to provide "legal guarantees".

The official, who had not been aware of the Taliban offer,
responded with what was evidently previously prepared
policy guidance casting doubt on the willingness of the
Taliban to give up its ties with al-Qaeda. "This is the
same group that refused to give up bin Laden, even though
they could have saved their country from war," said the
official. "They wouldn't break with terrorists then, so why
would we take them seriously now?"

The following day, asked by ABC News This Week host George
Stephanopoulos about possible negotiations with "high
level" Taliban leaders, Clinton said, "We don't know yet."

But then she made the same argument the unnamed US official
had made to Gopal on Saturday. "[W]e asked [Taliban leader]
Mullah Omar to give up bin Laden before he went into
Afghanistan after 9/11," Clinton said, "and he wouldn't do
it. I don't know why we think he would have changed by
now."

In the same ABC interview, Defense Secretary Robert Gates
suggested that the Taliban would not be willing to
negotiate on US terms until after their "momentum" had been
stopped.

"I think that the likelihood of the leadership of the
Taliban, or senior leaders, being willing to accept the
conditions Secretary Clinton just talked about," Gates
said, "depends in the first instance on reversing their
momentum right now, and putting them in a position where
they suddenly begin to realize that they're likely to
lose."

In a statement issued two days after the Clinton-Gates
appearance on ABC, the Taliban leadership, which now calls
itself "Mujahideen", posted another statement saying that
what they called their "proposal" had been rejected by the
United States.

The statement said, in part, "Washington turns down the
constructive proposal of the leadership of Mujahideen," and
repeated its pledge to "ensure that the next government of
the Mujahideen will not meddle in the internal affairs of
other countries including the neighbors if the foreign
troops pull out of Afghanistan."

The fact that both the State Department and the NSC are now
maintaining silence on the offer rather than repeating the
Clinton-Gates expression of skepticism strongly suggests
that the White House does not want to close the door
publicly to negotiations with the Taliban linking troop
withdrawal to renunciation of ties with al-Qaeda, among
other issues.

Last month, a US diplomat in Kabul made an even more
explicit link between US troop withdrawal and a severing by
the Taliban of their ties with al-Qaeda.

In an article published on November 11, Philadelphia
Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin, who was then visiting
Kabul, quoted an unnamed US official as saying, "If the
Taliban made clear to us that they have broken with
al-Qaeda and that their own objectives were nonviolent and
political - however abhorrent to us - we wouldn't be
keeping 68,000-plus troops here."

That statement reflected an obvious willingness to
entertain a negotiated settlement under which US troops
would be withdrawn and the Taliban would break with
al-Qaeda.

A significant faction within the Obama administration has
sought to portray those who suggest that the Taliban might
part ways with al-Qaeda as deliberately deceiving the West.

Bruce Riedel, of the Brookings Institution, who headed the
administration's policy review of Afghanistan and Pakistan
last spring, recently said, "A lot of smoke is being thrown
up to confuse people."

But even the hardliner Riedel concedes that the Pakistani
Taliban's attacks on the Pakistani military and
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) threaten the close
relationship between the Afghan Taliban and ISI. The
Pakistani Taliban continues to be closely allied with
al-Qaeda.

The Taliban began indicating their openness to negotiations
with the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization in September 2007. But they began to hint
publicly at their willingness to separate itself from
al-Qaeda in return for a troop withdrawal only three months
ago.

Mullah Omar's message for Eid al-Fitr in mid-September
assured "all countries" that a Taliban state "will not
extend its hand to jeopardize others, as it itself does not
allow others to jeopardize us ... Our goal is to gain
independence of the country and establish a just Islamic
system there."

But the insurgent leadership has also emphasized that
negotiations will depend on the US willingness to withdraw
troops. In anticipation of Obama's announcement of a new US
troop surge in Afghanistan, Mullah Omar issued a 3,000-word
statement on November 25 which said, "The people of
Afghanistan will not agree to negotiations which prolongs
and legitimizes the invader's military presence in our
beloved country."

"The invading Americans want Mujahideen to surrender under
the pretext of negotiation," it said.

That implied that the Taliban would negotiate if the US did
not insist on the acceptance of a US military presence in
the country. The day after the Taliban proposal to
Washington, Afghan President Hamid Karzai made a public
plea to the United States to engage in direct negotiations
with the Taliban leadership.

In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Karzai said
there is an "urgent need" for negotiations with the
Taliban, and made it clear that the Obama administration
had opposed such talks. Karzai did not say explicitly that
he wanted the United States to be at the table for such
talks, but said, "Alone, we can't do it."

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist
specializing in US national security policy. The paperback
edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance
of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in
2006.

(Inter Press Service)

HAMAS LEADER INTERVIEWED BY FORMER LONDON MAYOR - KEN LIVINGSTONE

2009-09-21T17:48:00.003+01:00

Exclusive: Hamas leader interview

Ken Livingstone

Published 17 September 2009
New Statesman

In a world exclusive, Ken Livingstone discusses religion,
violence and the chances for peace with the Hamas leader
Khaled Meshal

The key to peace in the Middle East is restoration of
international law and the recognition of the right of both
Palestinians and Israeli Jews to live in peace and security
side by side. As President Obama says, there is no peace
process today. Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu,
continues to extend illegal settlements in the West Bank
and East Jerusalem and maintain a near-complete blockade of
Gaza. Palestinians fire ineffectual rockets into Israel.
Israel regularly attacks Palestinian territories with
modern weapons.

No major conflict can be resolved without each side talking
to the other. That was the case in South Africa, Ireland
and countless other situations where people said they would
never talk to their opponents. I was vilified in the
Eighties for saying that, to resolve the Irish conflict,
you had to talk to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

In the Middle East, peace can only be achieved through
discussion between the elected representatives of both the
Israelis and the Palestinians - and that means Hamas, which
won a big majority in the last Palestinian parliamentary
election, as well as Fatah. This does not mean that I agree
with the views of Hamas, Fatah or the government of Israel.
Far from it: I do not. For example, I think a number of
passages in the original Hamas charter are unacceptable and
should be repudiated. Many observers believe that this is
also the view of some in Hamas.

Yet, for too many people, Hamas as an organisation remains
opaque. What they know about it is derived from a hostile
media; it has no face. Most would probably think its leader
is some disturbed Osama Bin Laden figure. In fact,
al-Qaeda's supporters in Gaza are so hostile to Hamas that
they have declared war on it.

For these reasons, I thought it important to interview the
de facto leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, who lives in exile
in Syria. Not every issue is clear. But at the beginning of
any peace process, what matters most is engagement.
Dialogue is necessary to get to clarity and mutual
understanding. Sinn Fein did not answer every question at
the beginning and neither does Binyamin Netanyahu today.
The answers from Meshal come at a time of heightened
tensions and renewed death threats against him, adding to
the permanent danger of assassination bids not only by the
Israelis, but also al-Qaeda supporters in the region.

I hope this interview will help to make the case for the
dialogue that is needed, which I believe is inevitable. It
is simply a question of how much suffering there will be,
on both sides, before we get there.

Ken Livingstone: Could you explain a little about your
childhood and the experiences that shaped your development
into the person you are today?

Khaled Meshal: I was born in the West Bank village of
Silwad near Ramallah in 1956. In my early age, I learned
from my father how he was part of the Palestinian
revolution against the British mandate in Palestine in the
Thirties and how he fought, alongside other Palestinians
using primitive weapons, against the well-equipped and
trained Zionist gangs attacking Palestinian villages in
1948.

I lived in Silwad for 11 years until the 1967 war, when I
was forced with my family, like hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians, to leave home and settle in Jordan. That was
a shocking experience I will never forget.

KL: What happened to you after the war?

KM: Soon afterwards, I left Jordan for Kuwait, where my
father had already been working and living since before
1967. After completing my primary education in 1970, I
joined the prestigious Abdullah al-Salim Secondary School.
In the early Seventies, it was a hub of intense political
and ideological activity.

During my second year at al-Salim school, I joined the
Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun). Upon finishing
my fourth year successfully I secured admission to Kuwait
University, where I studied for a BSc degree in physics.

Kuwait University had an active branch of the General Union
of Palestinian Students (GUPS), which had been under the
absolute control of the Fatah movement. I and my fellow
Islamists decided, in 1977, to join GUPS, which we had
previously shunned, and contest its leadership election.
However, working from within GUPS proved impossible; we
felt constantly impeded and realised we Islamists would
never be given a chance. By 1980, two years after I
graduated, my juniors decided to leave GUPS and form their
own Palestinian association on campus.

Many of the students had become disillusioned with the
Palestinian leadership, who seemed intent on settling for
much less than what they had grown up dreaming of, namely
the complete liberation of Palestine and the return of all
the refugees to their homes.

KL: What is the situation in Gaza today?

KM: Gaza today is under siege. Crossings are closed most of
the time and for months victims of the Israeli war on Gaza
have been denied access to construction materials to
rebuild their destroyed homes. Schools, hospitals and homes
in many parts of the Gaza Strip are in need of rebuilding.
Tens of thousands of people remain homeless. As winter
approaches, the conditions of these victims will only get
worse in the cold and rain. One and a half million people
are held hostage in one of the biggest prisons in the
history of humanity. They are unable to travel freely out
of the Strip, whether for medical treatment, for education
or for other needs. What we have in Gaza is a disaster and
a crime against humanity perpetrated by the Israelis. The
world community, through its silence and indifference,
colludes in this crime.

KL: Why do you think Israel is still imposing the siege on
Gaza?

KM: The Israelis claim that the siege is for security
reasons. The real intention is to pressure Hamas by
punishing the entire population. The sanctions were put in
place soon after Hamas won the Palestinian elections in
January 2006. While security is one of their concerns, it
is not the main motivation. The primary objective is to
provoke a coup against the results of the democratic
elections that brought Hamas to power. The Israelis and
their allies seek to impose failure on Hamas by persecuting
the people. This is a hideous and immoral endeavour. Today,
the siege continues despite the fact that we have, for the
past six months, observed a ceasefire. Last year, a truce
was observed from June to December 2008. Yet the siege was
never lifted, and the sanctions remained in place.
Undermining Hamas is the main objective of the siege. The
Israelis hope to turn the people of Gaza against Hamas by
increasing the suffering of the entire population of the
Strip.

KL: How many supporters of Hamas and elected
representatives of Hamas are there in prison in Israel?
Have they all been charged and convicted of crimes?

KM: Out of a total of 12,000 Palestinian captives in
Israeli detention, around 4,000 are Hamas members. These
include scores of ministers and parliamentarians
(Palestinian Legislative Council members). Around ten have
recently been released, but about 40 PLC members remain in
detention. Some have been given sentences, but many are
held in what the Israelis call administrative detention.
The only crime these people are accused of is their
association with Hamas's parliamentary group. Exercising
one's democratic right is considered a crime by Israel. All
these Palestinians are brought before an Israeli system of
justice that has nothing to do with justice. The Israeli
judiciary is an instrument of the occupation. In Israel,
there are two systems of justice: one applies to Israelis
and another applies to the Palestinians. This is an
apartheid regime.

KL: What part, if any, do other states and institutions,
such as the US, the EU, Britain, Egypt, or the Palestinian
Authority, play in the blockade of Gaza?

KM: The blockade of Gaza would never have succeeded had it
not been for the collusion of regional and international
powers.

KL: How do you think the blockade can be lifted?

KM: In order for the blockade to be lifted, the rule of
international law must be respected. The basic human rights
of the Palestinians and their right to live in dignity and
free from persecution would have to be acknowledged. There
has to be an international will to serve justice and uphold
the basic principles of international human rights law. The
international community would have to free itself from the
shackles of Israeli pressure, speak the truth and act
accordingly.

KL: Israel says that the bombing and invasion of Gaza last
year was in response to repeated breaking of the ceasefire
by Hamas and the firing of rockets into southern Israel. Is
this the case?

KM: The Israelis are not telling the truth. We entered
into a truce deal with Israel from 19 June to 19 December
2008. Yet the blockade was not lifted. The deal entailed a
bilateral ceasefire, lifting the blockade and opening the
crossings. We fully abided by the ceasefire while Israel
only partially observed it, and towards the end of the term
it resumed hostilities. Throughout that period, Israel
maintained the siege and only intermittently opened some of
the crossings, allowing no more than 10 per cent of the
basic needs of the Gazan population to get through. Israel
killed the potential for renewing the truce because it
deliberately and repeatedly violated it.

I have always informed my western visitors, including the
former US president Jimmy Carter, that the moment Hamas is
offered a truce that includes lifting the blockade and
opening the crossings, Hamas will adopt a positive stance.
So far, no one has made us any such offer. As far as we are
concerned, the blockade amounts to a declaration of war
that warrants self-defence.

KL: What are the ideology and goals of Hamas?

KM: Our people have been the victims of a colonial project
called Israel. For years, we have suffered various forms of
repression. Half of our people have been dispossessed and
are denied the right to return to their homes, and half
live under an occupation regime that violates their basic
human rights. Hamas struggles for an end to occupation and
for the restoration of our people's rights, including their
right to return home.

KL: What is your view of the cause of the conflict between
the state of Israel and the Palestinians?

KM: The conflict is the outcome of aggression and
occupation. Our struggle against the Israelis is not
because they are Jewish, but because they invaded our
homeland and dispossessed us. We do not accept that because
the Jews were once persecuted in Europe they have the right
to take our land and throw us out. The injustices suffered
by the Jews in Europe were horrible and criminal, but were
not perpetrated by the Palestinians or the Arabs or the
Muslims. So, why should we be punished for the sins of
others or be made to pay for their crimes?

KL: Do you believe that Israel intends to continue to
expand its borders?

KM: Israel does not, officially, have stated borders. When
Israel was created in our homeland 62 years ago, its
founders dreamed of a "Greater Israel" that extended from
the Nile to the Euphrates. Expansionism manifested itself
on different occasions: in 1956, in 1967 and later on in
the occupation of parts of Lebanon in the Eighties. Arab
weakness, Israeli military superiority, the support given
to Israel by the western powers, and the massacres it was
prepared to commit against unarmed civilians in Palestine,
Egypt and Lebanon, enabled it to expand from time to time.
Although expansionism still lurks in the minds of many
Israelis, it would seem that this is no longer a practical
option. Lebanese and Palestinian resistance has forced
Israel to withdraw unilaterally from lands it had
previously occupied through war and aggression. While in
the past Israel was able to defeat several Arab armies,
today it faces formidable resistance that will not only
check its expansionism but also, in time, force it to
relinquish more of the land that it illegally occupies.

KL: What are your principal goals? Is Hamas primarily a
political or a religious organisation?

KM: Hamas is a national liberation movement. We do not see
a contradiction between our Islamic identity and our
political mission. While we engage the occupiers through
resistance and struggle to achieve our people's rights, we
are proud of our religious identity that derives from
Islam. Unlike the experience of the Europeans with
Christianity, Islam does not provide for, demand or
recognise an ecclesiastical authority. It simply provides a
set of broad guidelines whose detailed interpretations are
subject to and the product of human endeavour (ijtihad).

KL: Are you committed to the destruction of Israel?

KM: What is really happening is the destruction of the
Palestinian people by Israel; it is the one that occupies
our land and exiles us, kills us, incarcerates us and
persecutes our people. We are the victims, Israel is the
oppressor, and not vice versa.

KL: Why does Hamas support military force in this conflict?

KM: Military force is an option that our people resort to
because nothing else works. Israel's conduct and the
collusion of the international community, whether through
silence or indifference or actual embroilment, vindicate
armed resistance. We would love to see this conflict
resolved peacefully. If occupation were to come to an end
and our people enabled to exercise self-determination in
their homeland, there would then be no need for any use of
force. The reality is that nearly 20 years of peaceful
negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis have
not restored any of our rights. On the contrary, we have
incurred more suffering and more losses as a result of the
one-sided compromises made by the Palestinian negotiating
party.

Since the PLO entered into the Oslo peace deal with Israel
in 1993, more Palestinian land in the West Bank has been
expropriated by the Israelis to build more illegal Jewish
settlements, expand existing ones or construct highways for
the exclusive use of Israelis living in these settlements.
The apartheid wall that the Israelis erected along the West
Bank has consumed large areas of the land that was supposed
to be returned to the Palestinians according to the peace
deal.

The apartheid wall and hundreds of checkpoints turned the
West Bank into isolated enclaves like cells in a large
prison, which makes life intolerable.

Jerusalem is constantly tampered with in order to alter its
landscape and identity, and hundreds of Palestinian homes
have been destroyed inside the city and around it, making
thousands of Palestinians homeless in their own homeland.
Instead of releasing Palestinian prisoners, the Israelis
have arrested an additional 5,000 Palestinians since the
Annapolis peace conference in 2007 - actions that testify
to the fact they simply aren't interested in peace at all.

KL: Does Hamas engage in military activity outside
Palestine?

KM: No; since its establishment 22 years ago, Hamas has
confined its field of military operation to occupied
Palestine.

KL: Do you wish to establish an Islamic state in Palestine
in which all other religions are subordinate?

KM: Our priority as a national liberation movement is to
end the Israeli occupation of our homeland. Once our people
are free in their land and enjoy the right to
self-determination, they alone have the final say on what
system of governance they wish to live under. It is our
firm belief that Islam cannot be imposed on the people. We
shall campaign, in a fully democratic process, for an
Islamic agenda. If that is what the people opt for, then
that is their choice. We believe that Islam is the best
source of guidance and the best guarantor for the rights of
Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

KL: Does Hamas impose Islamic dress in Gaza? For example,
is it compulsory in Gaza for women to wear the hijab, niqab
or burqa?

KM: No. Intellectually, Hamas derives its vision from the
people's culture and religion. Islam is our religion and is
the basic constituent of our culture. We do not deny other
Palestinians the right to have different visions. We do not
impose on the people any aspects of religion or social
conduct. Features of religion in Gaza society are genuine
and spontaneous; they have not been imposed by any
authority other than the faith and conviction of the
observant.

KL: It is suggested that the division in the Palestinian
people between the West Bank and Gaza and between Fatah and
Hamas, which obviously weakens their position, came about
because Hamas seized power by force in Gaza. Is this true
and how do you explain this division?

KM: Undoubtedly, division does weaken the Palestinians and
harms their cause. However, the division is caused not by
Hamas, but by the insistence of certain international and
regional parties on reversing the results of Palestinian
democracy. It dismayed them that Hamas was elected by the
Palestinian people.

The division is compounded by the existence of a
Palestinian party that seeks empowerment from those same
regional and international parties, including the US and
Israel, that wish to see Hamas out of the arena. Soon after
its victory in the election of January 2006, every effort
was exerted to undermine the ability of Hamas to govern.

When these efforts failed, General Keith Dayton, of the
United States army, who currently serves as US security
co-ordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, was
despatched to Gaza to plot a coup against the Hamas-led
national unity government that came out of the Mecca
agreement of 2007. The plot prompted Hamas in Gaza to act
in self-defence in the events of June 2007. The claim that
Hamas carried out a coup is baseless because Hamas was
leading the democratically elected government. All it did
was act against those who were plotting a coup against it
under the command and guidance of General Dayton.

KL: Do those of other political or religious views such as
Fatah enjoy democratic freedoms in Gaza? What is the
situation of Hamas members in the West Bank territories
controlled by Fatah?

KM: Some Palestinian factions have been inspired by Arab
nationalism, others by Marxism or Leninism, and others by
liberalism. While we strongly believe that these ideas are
alien to our people and have failed to meet their
aspirations, we insist that the people are the final
arbiter on whom they wish to lead them and by which system
they desire to be governed. Thus, democracy is our best
option for settling our internal Palestinian differences.
Whatever the people choose will have to be respected.

We endeavour to the best of our ability to protect the
human rights and civil liberties of the affiliates of Fatah
and all the other factions within the Gaza Strip. In
contrast, the Palestinians in the West Bank under Israeli
occupation and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah
continue to be denied their basic rights. General Dayton is
in the West Bank supervising the severe and brutal
crackdown on Hamas and other Palestinian groups. More than
1,000 political prisoners, including students, university
professors and professionals in all fields are hunted down,
detained and tortured, sometimes to death, by the US-,
British- and EU-trained and -sponsored Palestinian
Authority's security force.

KL: Do you believe it is possible to reunite the
Palestinian people? If so, how do you think this could be
done and within what kind of timescale?

KM: It is possible to reunite the Palestinians. In order
for this to happen two things are needed. First, foreign
interventions and demands must stop. The Palestinian people
should be left to deal with their own differences without
external pressure. Second, all Palestinian parties must
respect the rules of the democratic game and submit to the
results of its process.

KL: Hamas's refusal to recognise Israel is frequently cited
as an insuperable obstacle to negotiations and a peace
settlement.

KM: This issue is only used as a pretext. Israel does not
recognise the rights of the Palestinian people, yet this is
not raised as an obstacle to Israel being internationally
recognised nor to it being allowed to take part in talks.
The reality is that Israel is the one that occupies the
land and possesses superior power. Rather than ask the
Palestinians, who are the victims, it is Israel, who is the
oppressor, who should be asked to recognise the rights of
the Palestinians.

In the past, Yasser Arafat recognised Israel but failed to
achieve much. Today, Mahmoud Abbas recognises Israel, but
we have yet to see any of the promised dividends of the
peace process.

Israel concedes only under pressure. In the absence of any
tangible pressure on Israel by the Arabs or by the
international community, no settlement will succeed.

KL: Do you have a "road map" of interim steps which could
realistically lead to a peaceful settlement of the
conflict? Do you think Jews, Muslims and Christians can one
day live together in peace in the Holy Land?

KM: We do, in Hamas, believe that a realistic peaceful
settlement to the conflict will have to begin with a
ceasefire agreement between the two sides based on a full
withdrawal of Israel from all the territories occupied in
1967. Israeli intransigence and the lack of will to act on
the part of the international community are what impede
this settlement. We believe that only once our people are
free and back in their land will they be able to determine
the future of the conflict.

It should be reiterated here that we do not resist the
Israelis because they are Jews. As a matter of principle,
we do not have problems with the Jews or the Christians,
but do have a problem with those who attack us and oppress
us. For many centuries, Christians, Jews and Muslims
coexisted peacefully in this part of the world. Our society
never witnessed the sort of racism and genocide that Europe
saw until recently against "the other". These issues
started in Europe. Colonialism was imposed on this region
by Europe, and Israel was the product of the oppression of
the Jews in Europe and not of any such problem that existed
in the Muslim land.

KL: What role do you think that other countries and
organisations, in particular the US, EU and Britain, are
currently playing in the Israel/ Palestine conflict and the
divisions between the Palestinians?

KM: The role played by all these has thus far been
negative. The attitude towards Israeli crimes against our
people has been either silence or collusion. The policies
and positions adopted by these parties have contributed to
the Palestinian division or augmented it. On the one hand,
conditions are stipulated that have the effect of
torpedoing unity talks and reconciliation efforts. On the
other hand, some of these international parties are
directly embroiled in suppressing our people in the West
Bank. The US and the EU provide funding, training and
guidance to build a Palestinian security apparatus
specialised in the persecution of critics of the
Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

We have particularly been concerned about reports that the
British government, directly as well as indirectly by means
of security firms and the services of retired army, police
and intelligence officers, is fully involved in the
programme led by General Dayton against Hamas in the West
Bank.

KL: What should countries such as the US and Britain do to
assist a peaceful settlement?

KM: They should simply uphold international law - the
occupation is illegal, the annexation of East Jerusalem is
illegal, the settlements are illegal, the apartheid wall is
illegal, and the siege of Gaza is illegal. Yet nothing is
done.

KL: What relations does Hamas wish to have with the rest of
the world, and, for example, with Britain?

KM: Hamas defends a just cause. For this purpose, it
desires to open up to the world. The movement seeks to
establish good relations and to conduct constructive
dialogue with all those concerned with Palestine.

VOICES FOR ENGAGING HAMAS GROW IN WEST

2009-07-30T18:20:00.003+01:00

There can be no Middle East settlement without Hamas

By throwing their weight behind repression
on the West Bank, the US and Britain are
only making a viable peace less likely

Seumas Milne
guardian.co.uk
Wednesday
29 July 2009

Barely six months into Barack Obama's presidency and public
tensions between the US and Israel, unthinkable for most of
the past two decades, have already spilled over into open
recriminations. Israel will not take orders or accept
"edicts" from Washington, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
has declared, while reportedly branding two of Obama's most
senior aides – Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod – as
"self-hating Jews".

A posse of Obama emissaries has now been dispatched to
Jerusalem to smooth Israeli feathers with talk of a
"discussion among friends". In the face of intense Israeli
resistance, Obama's demand for a "complete freeze" on
Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories
is now expected to become a fudge about 2,500 more homes
currently under construction.

But all the signs are that Washington is determined to use
pressure to halt settlement expansion, combined with some
gestures of Arab "normalisation" with Israel, to create the
conditions for restarting peace talks later this year.
Assuming that those negotiations flounder, as in the past,
the administration is then expected to produce a peace plan
of its own – perhaps based around a provisional West Bank
state, with the most contentious issues of Jerusalem and
refugees once again postponed till a later date.

If that's the direction of travel, it's not a recipe for
lasting peace but for further conflict. For all the welcome
US shift from its blank-cheque policy towards its closest
Middle Eastern ally, Obama's attempt to balance a freeze on
illegal Israeli settlements in illegally occupied territory
with the kind of diplomatic concessions the Arab world has
always held back for a final peace agreement is a pretty
lopsided kind of exchange.

For Palestinians on the ground, even more urgent than a
halt to settlement expansion is effective pressure on
Israel to take its heel off their windpipe: to lift the
life-choking checkpoints, halt the construction of the
land-grabbing wall, and end the continuing siege of the
Gaza Strip, which has left tens of thousands of people
living in rubble since the destruction and slaughter
unleashed on them in January.

But more fundamentally still, from the point of view of any
lasting settlement, is the continuing veto by the US on
talks with the Palestinians' elected representatives, who
won the closest thing to free elections possible under
military occupation three years ago. Obama acknowledged
support for Hamas in his Cairo speech last month, but
insisted the movement could only "play a role" if it signed
up to conditions he knows it will not accept.

Since Israel's onslaught on Gaza, Hamas has resumed its
earlier ceasefire: last month, only two rockets were fired
into Israel from the strip. And the Hamas leader, Khalid
Mish'al, has reiterated its commitment to an indefinite end
to hostilities in exchange for full withdrawal from the
territories occupied in 1967 and recognition of the
refugees' right to return.

It should be clear enough that no settlement is going to
succeed unless it commands broad support or acquiescence on
both sides: most obviously from the Palestinians, the
victims of dispossession, ethnic cleansing and occupation,
many of whom have little to lose. Recognising that basic
reality, Britain's parliamentary foreign affairs committee
called on the government at the weekend to end its ban on
talking to Hamas – echoing influential voices in the US and
Israel itself.

But the only deal envisaged by the US is one with the
unpopular Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as president expired
last January. As the Democratic chairman of the Senate
foreign relations committee, John Kerry, put it recently:
"Hamas has already won one election – we cannot allow them
to win another."

And far from supporting the Palestinian national unity
necessary to make any peace agreement stick, America and
its allies are doing everything possible to deepen the
split between Hamas and Abbas's Fatah movement. In fact,
the US, Britain and the EU make support for the Palestinian
Authority (PA) dependent on a continuing security crackdown
against Hamas activists in the West Bank – justified as
fighting terrorism – which makes reconciliation between the
two Palestinian parties ever more far-fetched.

As a result, more than 1,000 political prisoners are
reported by human rights groups to be held without trial in
PA jails, while extrajudicial killings, torture and raids
on Hamas-linked social institutions have become routine by
security forces trained and funded by the US and the EU.
And heading the effort to build up Abbas's forces that
carry out these operations is US Lieutenant-General Keith
Dayton – increasingly regarded as the real power in the
West Bank – supported by British officials and the Foreign
Office-sponsored security firm Libra Advisory Group, fresh
from working for the occupation forces in Iraq.

Needless to say, all the governments and security outfits
concerned reject any link with torture and insist their
training is aimed at overcoming human rights violations –
while Hamas has retaliated with its own arrests and abuses
against Fatah members in Gaza. And the destructive impact
of the mobilisation of the PA as an instrument for policing
the Israeli occupation isn't only felt in the split between
Fatah and Hamas, but within Fatah itself, which is holding
its first congress for 20 years next week.

The aim of Abbas, under US and EU guidance, is to complete
the transformation of Fatah from a national liberation
movement into the governing party of a state that doesn't
exist. Money and gerrrymandering are likely to see off
internal opposition, such as from the grassroots West Bank
Fatah leader Hussam Khader, who calls for unity with Hamas
and a twin strategy of resistance and negotiation.

"We expect nothing from Obama," Khader told me yesterday.
Even if Abbas were to sign up to the half-baked collection
of walled-in West Bank bantustans masquerading as an
independent state that currently seems the most the US
might be ready to squeeze out of Israel, he would not be
able to sustain or legitimise it. Until the US feels it
necessary to use its leverage with Israel to deliver
something closer to a genuinely just settlement, the
prospect must be of renewed violence, with ever greater
global consequences.

BRITISH MPs STATE: NO PROGRESS WITHOUT HAMAS

2009-07-26T12:50:00.001+01:00

UK MPs urge talks with Hamas

Brown's government says it is open to talks with
Hezbollah, but not with Hamas

Al-Jazeera

British legislators have urged the government to talk to
moderates within Hamas, saying the West's policy of
shunning the Palestinian group was showing little sign of
success.

Russia is the only member of the Quartet of Middle East
peace brokers, which also comprises the United States, the
United Nations and the European Union, talking to Hamas.

The British parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee said in
a report on Sunday it stood by a recommendation it first
made two years ago that the government should engage
politically with moderate elements within Hamas, which
rules the Gaza Strip.

"We conclude that there continue to be few signs that the
current policy of non-engagement is achieving the Quartet's
stated objectives," the committee said.

"We further conclude that the credible peace process for
which the Quartet hopes, as part of its strategy for
undercutting Hamas, is likely to be difficult to achieve
without greater co-operation from Hamas itself."

Incentives

The committee, made up of MPs from all the main political
parties, said it was dismayed that, six months after the
end of fighting in Gaza, there was still no ceasefire
agreement between Israel and Hamas.

There had been little change to several issues that
contributed to the conflict, it said.

"We conclude that this situation makes for an ongoing risk
of insecurity and a renewed escalation of violence," it
said.

The committee said it was concerned the Quartet was failing
to provide Hamas with greater incentives to change its
position.

It said Britain should talk to Hamas moderates as a way of
encouraging the group to meet the Quartet principles.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government changed policy in
March by saying it was open to talks with the political
wing of Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah, but it remains
opposed to talking to Hamas.

Israel invaded Gaza on December 27, 2008 and fighting
continued until January 18, 2009, killing more than 1,000
people.

BRITISH MPs STATE: NO PROGRESS WITHOUT HAMAS

2009-07-26T12:50:00.000+01:00

UK MPs urge talks with Hamas

Brown's government says it is open to talks with
Hezbollah, but not with Hamas

Al-Jazeera

British legislators have urged the government to talk to
moderates within Hamas, saying the West's policy of
shunning the Palestinian group was showing little sign of
success.

Russia is the only member of the Quartet of Middle East
peace brokers, which also comprises the United States, the
United Nations and the European Union, talking to Hamas.

The British parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee said in
a report on Sunday it stood by a recommendation it first
made two years ago that the government should engage
politically with moderate elements within Hamas, which
rules the Gaza Strip.

"We conclude that there continue to be few signs that the
current policy of non-engagement is achieving the Quartet's
stated objectives," the committee said.

"We further conclude that the credible peace process for
which the Quartet hopes, as part of its strategy for
undercutting Hamas, is likely to be difficult to achieve
without greater co-operation from Hamas itself."

Incentives

The committee, made up of MPs from all the main political
parties, said it was dismayed that, six months after the
end of fighting in Gaza, there was still no ceasefire
agreement between Israel and Hamas.

There had been little change to several issues that
contributed to the conflict, it said.

"We conclude that this situation makes for an ongoing risk
of insecurity and a renewed escalation of violence," it
said.

The committee said it was concerned the Quartet was failing
to provide Hamas with greater incentives to change its
position.

It said Britain should talk to Hamas moderates as a way of
encouraging the group to meet the Quartet principles.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government changed policy in
March by saying it was open to talks with the political
wing of Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah, but it remains
opposed to talking to Hamas.

Israel invaded Gaza on December 27, 2008 and fighting
continued until January 18, 2009, killing more than 1,000
people.

NEW CONFLICTS FORUM MAGAZINE OUT NOW

2009-05-15T12:01:00.003+01:00

Cultures of Resistance

Volume One | Issue Two [PDF]

From the Margins to the Centre From the Margins to the Centre:

An Irish Republican Narrative of Resistance - Raymond McCartney

A Discourse of Demonisation - Seyed Mohammad Marandi

Introducing a New Political Discourse - Alastair Crooke

Moving Forward in South Africa - Ambassador Mohamed Dangor

Hearing the Call - Adli Jacobs

Anti-Apartheid Islam - Na’eem Jeenah

Mscnceptns of Islm - Sheikh Chafiq Jaredah

Resistance & Freedom - Raafat Murra

SADDAM'S SPEECH THAT STARTED THE WAR AGAINST IRAQ

2009-05-08T16:12:00.003+01:00

This speech was delivered by Saddam Hussein to the Amman Summitt meeting on Feb. 24, 1990. Present were the heads of state of the key Arab allies of the United States: the president of Egypt and the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The president of Syria was also present. In its sweeping proposals for Arab unity against U.S.-Israeli domination, it was a blunt challenge to imperialism. It is this speech that was the flash point of the U.S.-U.N. aggression, not the Kuwait crisis which was engineered in response. (David Hungerford)

Since it is difficult in a meeting such as this to deal with all that
is negative or positive in international developments during 1989 and
prior to then, and during the period from the beginning of 1990, you
might share my opinion that discussions should deal with the most
urgent and important of these issues and within the limits of time
allowed us.

Among the most important developments since the international
conflict in World War II has been the fact that some countries which
used to enjoy broad international influence, such as France and
Britain, have declined, while the influence and impact of two
countries expanded until they became the two superpowers among the
countries of the world--I mean the United States and the Soviet
Union. Of course, with these results, two axes have developed: the
Western axis under the leadership of the United States, with its
known capitalist approach and its imperialist policy; and the East
bloc under the leadership of the Soviet Union and its communist
philosophy.

Among the results of World War II: The Zionist state has become a
reality, and the original owners of the land, the Palestinians, have
become refugees. While the imperialist Western world helped the
expansionist scheme and aggression of the Zionist entity in 1967, the
communist bloc sided with the Arabs in the concept of balance of
interests in the context of the global competition between the two
blocs, and sought to secure footholds for the East Bloc against the
Western interests in the Arab homeland. The East bloc, led by the
USSR, supported the Arabs' basic rights, including their rights in
the Arab-Zionist conflict. The global policy continued on the basis
of the existence of two poles that were balanced in term of force.
They are the two superpowers, the United States and the USSR.

And suddenly, the situation changed in a dramatic way. The USSR
turned to tackle its domestic problems after relinquishing the
process of continuous conflict and its slogans. The USSR shifted from
the balanced position with the United States in a practical manner,
although it has not acknowledged this officially so far. The USSR
went to nurse the wounds that were inflicted on it as a result of the
principles and mistaken policy it followed for such a long time, and
as a result of the wave of change it embarked on, which began to
depart from the charted course. It has become clear to everyone that
the United States has emerged in a superior position in international
politics. This superiority will be demonstrated in the United States
readiness to play such a role more than in the predicted guarantees
for its continuation.

We believe that the world can fill the vacuum resulting from the
recent changes and find a new balance in the global arena by
developing new perspectives and reducing or adding to this or that
force. The forces that laid the ground for filling the vacuum and for
the emergence of the two superpowers, the United States and the USSR,
after World War II at the expense of France, Britain, and Germany can
develop new forces, which we expect will be in Europe or Japan.
America will lose its power just as quickly as it gained it by
frightening Europe, Japan, and other countries through the continuous
hinting at the danger of the USSR and communism. The United States
will lose its power as the fierce competition for gaining the upper
hand between the two superpowers and their allies recedes.

However, we believe that the United States will continue to depart
from the restrictions that govern the rest of [the] world throughout
the next five years until new forces of balance are formed. Moreover,
the undisciplined and irresponsible behavior will engender hostility
and grudges if it embarks on rejected stupidities....

We all remember, as does the whole world, the circumstances under
which the United States deployed and bolstered its fleets in the
Gulf. Most important of these circumstances: The war that was raging
between Iraq and Iran; Iranian aggression had extended to other
Arabian Gulf countries, most notably the sisterly state of Kuwait. At
the time, beyond the conflicting views regarding the presence of
foreign fleets in Arab territorial waters and foreign bases on their
territory and their repercussions for pan-Arab security, that
excessive deployment was somehow comprehensible. But now, and against
the background of the recent world developments and the cessation of
hostilities between Iraq and Iran, and with Kuwait no longer being
the target of Iranian aggression, the Arabian Gulf states, including
Iraq, and even the entire Arabs would have liked the Americans to
state their intention to withdraw their fleets.

Had they said that under the same circumstances and causes they would
have returned to the Gulf, it might have been understandable also.
But U.S. officials are making such statements as if to show that
their immediate and longer-term presence in Gulf waters and, maybe,
on some of its territory, is not bound to a time frame. These suspect
policies give Arabs reason to feel suspicious of U.S. policies and
intentions as to whether it is officially and actually interested in
a termination of the Iraq-lran war and thus in contributing to much
needed regional stability.

The other side is the immigration of Soviet Jews to the occupied
Palestinian land. How can we explain the Americans' support and
backing for Jewish immigration to the occupied Arab territories,
except that the United States does not want peace as it claims and
declares. If it really and actually wants peace, the United States
would not have encouraged Israel and the aggressive trends in it to
adopt such policies, which enhance Israel's capability to commit
aggression and carry out expansion.

We the Arabs, proceeding from a long-standing friendship with the
Soviet Union, did not expect that the Soviets would give in to this
U.S. pressure in such a way that it would lead to these grave
consequences for the Arabs and their pan-Arab security. As we tackle
these challenges, it would be just as compromising to the destiny and
cause of the Arabs to feel fear as it would be to be lax in our
evaluating and working out a reaction to them. Therefore, there is no
place among the ranks of good Arabs for the fainthearted who would
argue that as a superpower, the United States will be the decisive
factor, and others have no choice but to submit. At the same time,
there is no place in our midst for those who fail to take note of
recent developments that have added to U.S. strength, thus prompting
it to the possible commission of follies against the interests and
national security of the Arabs--either directly or by fanning and
encouraging conflicts detrimental to the Arabs, irrespective of their
source. We are only making the point that the Arabs seek peace and
justice throughout the world and want to forge relations of
friendship with those who show respect to what friendship is all
about--be it the United States or any other nation. It is only
natural that the Arabs take a realistic approach to the new posture
and power of the United States that has led the Soviet Union to
abandon its erstwhile position of influence. However, America must
respect the Arabs and respect their rights, and should not interfere
in their internal affairs under any cover....

Against the backdrop of the vital issue related to the substance of
national Arab security, the question arises as to what we the Arabs
have to do.... It has been proven that Arabs are capable of being
influential when they make a decision and set their minds to it for
actual application purposes. We have much evidence of how effective
they can be; for example, the joint Iraqi-Saudi resolution of August
6,1980, and the warning the two countries issued together that
embassies must not be moved to Jerusalem, one of whose direct results
in less than a month--the duration of the warning--was not only that
the concerned countries did not transfer their embassies to
Jerusalem, but also that embassies that had already long been
transferred to the city returned to Tel Aviv.

The reason the United States stays in the Gulf is that the Gulf has
become the most important spot in the region and perhaps the whole
world due to developments in international policy, the oil market,
and increasing demands from the United States, Europe, Japan, Eastern
Europe, and perhaps the Soviet Union, for this product. The country
that will have the greatest influence in the region through the Arab
Gulf and its oil will maintain its superiority as a superpower
without an equal to compete with it. This means that if the Gulf
people, along with all Arabs, are not careful, the Arab Gulf region
will be governed by the United States's will. If the Arabs are not
alerted and the weakness persists, the situation could develop to the
extent desired by the United States; that is, it would fix the amount
of oil and gas produced in each country and sold to this or that
country in the world. Prices would also be fixed in line with a
special perspective benefitting U.S. interests and ignoring the
interests of others.

If this possibility is there and it is convincing, those who are
convinced by it must conclude that peace in the Middle East is remote
from the United States point of view because U.S. strategy, according
to this analysis, needs an aggressive Israel, not a peaceful one.
Peace between Iraq and Iran could be far off as long as Iran does not
react favorably from an aware and responsible position and with the
peace initiatives proposed by Iraq. The region could witness
inter-Arab wars or controlled wars between the Arabs and some of
their neighbors, if tangible results are not achieved on the basis of
the principles of noninterference in others' internal affairs and
nonuse of military force in inter-Arab relations.

Agreement should be reached over clear and widespread pan-Arab
cooperation programs among Arab countries in the economic, political,
and educational fields, as well as other fields. Love and peace of
mind will take the place of suspicion, doubt, mistrust, and giving in
to information and speculation propagated by rumor-mongers, such as
prejudiced Westerners and some rootless Arabs.

Brothers, the weakness of a big body lies in its bulkiness. All
strong men have their Achilles' hell. Therefore, irrespective of our
known stand on terror and terrorists, we saw that the United States
as a superpower departed Lebanon immediately when some Marines were
killed, the very men who are considered to be the most prominent
symbol of its arrogance. The whole U.S. administration would have
been called into question had the forces that conquered Panama
continued to be engaged by the Panamanian armed forces. The United
States has been defeated in some combat arenas for all the forces it
possesses, and it has displayed signs of fatigue, frustration, and
hesitation when committing aggression on other peoples' rights and
acting from motives of arrogance and hegemony. This is a natural
outcome for those who commit aggression on other peoples' rights.
Israel, once dubbed the invincible country, has been defeated by some
of the Arabs. The resistance put up by Palestinian and Lebanese
militia against Israeli invasion forces in 1982 and before that the
heroic Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973 have had a more
telling psychological and actual impact than all Arab threats.
Further, the threat to use Arab oil in 1973 during the October war
proved more effective than all political attempts to protest or to
beg at the gates of American decision-making centers. The stones in
occupied Palestine now turn into a virtual and potentially fatal
bullet if additional requirements are made available. It is the best
proof of what is possible and indeed gives us cause to hold our heads
high.

Just as Israel controls interests to put pressure on the United
States administration, hundreds of billions invested by Arabs in the
United States and the West may be similarly deployed. Indeed, for
instance, some of these investments may be diverted to the USSR and
East European countries. It may prove even more profitable than
investment in the West, which has grown saturated with its national
resources. Such a course of action may yield inestimable benefits for
the Arabs and their national causes. Our purported weakness does not
lie in our ideological and hereditary characteristics. Contemporary
experience has shown our nation to be distinguished and excellent,
just as our nation's history over the centuries has shown this to be
the case. Our purported weakness lies in a lack of mutual trust among
ourselves, our failure to concentrate on the components of our
strength, and our failure to focus on our weaknesses with a view to
righting them. Let our motto be: All of us are strong as long as we
are united, and all of us are weak as long as we are divided.

WEST HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO ACCEPT DEFIANT RESISTANCE IN LEBANON

2009-04-28T19:26:00.009+01:00

[pictured: Samir Al-Kuntar, Lebanese prisoner freed after the 2006 Israeli aggression against Lebanon]

A new order emerges in Lebanon

By Sami Moubayed
Asia Times Online

DAMASCUS - Last week, one of America's top allies in
Lebanon, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, caused a row when he
made remarks - off the record - criticizing his allies in
the pro-Western March 14 Coalition. Among other things,
Jumblatt scoffed at his patron Saad al-Hariri, the head of
the largest bloc in the Lebanese parliament, for having
tried - and failed - to combat Hezbollah on the streets of
Beirut last May.

Then, Hariri's armed men were round up and disarmed in a
matter of minutes by the well-trained Hezbollah fighters.
"We have seen the Sunnis in the field, huh!" he said,
adding, "They didn't last for more than 15 minutes!”
Jumblatt quickly apologized - but the damage was already
done.

Shortly afterwards, when landing in Beirut, US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton did not meet the Druze warlord - who
had often played host to her predecessor Condoleezza Rice,
and been received previously at the Oval Office by George W
Bush.

Jumblatt is a symbol of a loud anti-Syrian and
anti-Hezbollah stance in Lebanon. The fact that he has lost
faith in his own allies - who have bankrolled him for years
- and was snubbed by Clinton, are testimony to how much
things have changed in Lebanon. This is the same man after
all who called for regime change in Damascus, and betted on
American and Israeli forces to disarm Hezbollah in 2006.

Jumblatt is a political animal, however, who knows how to
get off a ship before it sinks. The US is simply no longer
interested in battle, either with Damascus or with
Hezbollah. On the contrary, it is trying to find common
ground with the Syrians to solve a basket of problems in
the region, like Iran's nuclear file, Palestinian
reconciliation and the future of Hezbollah.

If March 14 continues to challenge Syria, it should not
except much support from the Barack Obama administration.
That is why, according to some observers, Jumblatt might be
toying with the idea of a u-turn - which from where the
Syrians see it, is close to impossible, given the
aggressive stance he took against Damascus during the
difficult years in Syrian-American relations.

Why would the US continue to support March 14 if it is
cooperating fully with the Syrians? March 14 was useful,
after all, during the war against Syria in 2005-2008
-mainly to punish the Syrians for having worked against US
interests in Iraq.

Jumblatt realizes that for all practical purposes, its only
a matter of time until the United States begins dialogue
with two arch-enemies of the former Bush White House -Hamas
in Palestine and Hezbollah. Delaying his own rapprochement
with Hezbollah would harm nobody but him.

During the recent Summit of the Americas, Obama said that
he would respect the "legitimacy" of all democratically
elected governments, even if the US "might not be happy"
with the results of any elections. He added that the US
“condemns any efforts at a violent overthrow of
democratically elected governments, wherever it happens in
the hemisphere”. Talks with Hamas have already begun in
Europe and it is only a matter of time until they are
expanded to include Hezbollah.

Earlier this year, Britain announced that it would commence
political dialogue with Hezbollah, much to the displeasure
of March 14. In early April, British parliamentarians came
to Damascus and met with Hamas political chief Khaled
Meshaal. Certain American political figures, like former
president Jimmy Carter, also met with the Hamas chief in
Syria last December.

According to a January 9 article in The Guardian, "sources
close to the [Obama] transition team" will change course
via Hamas, and "initiate low-level clandestine approaches".
For that to be done, not only would there be a need for a
change in US mentality - both in the media level, on the
street and in American officialdom - but it would also
require changing a 2006 Congressional law banning any kind
of assistance to the Islamic group.

Recently, however, Paul Volker, a senior economic advisor
to Obama, was among those who authored a letter calling for
a more rational approach to dealing with Hamas. Martin
Indyk, the former US ambassador to Israel, who is close to
Clinton, recently wrote that any peace deal without Hamas
was destined to fail.

Additionally, former British prime minister Tony Blair in
his capacity as international envoy for the Middle East
warned of the dangers of continuing to ignore the Gaza
Strip, which effectively is under the command of Hamas. He
was quoted saying, "I think it is important to find a way
to engage Hamas in dialogue."

Richard Hass, a diplomat under both president George H W
Bush and George W Bush, who was earmarked to become Obama's
Middle East envoy, also supports low-level contacts with
Hamas. James A Baker, former secretary of state now based
at the Baker Institute at Rice University in Houston, was
quoted in Newsweek as saying that Obama must involve Hamas
in any peace process in the Middle East. Baker said, "You
cannot negotiate peace with only half the Palestinian
polity at the table."

Richard W Murphy, a veteran American diplomat and former
ambassador to Syria, added, "I don't think it will happen
quickly but I think it is inevitable. Hamas is, in my
opinion, a legitimate representative of part of the
Palestinian community."

Taking all of that into account, many raised questions
about Clinton's weekend visit to Beirut ahead of
parliamentary elections in June, which are expected to
bring about a smashing victory for Hezbollah. Already,
France has said that it will not boycott any Lebanese
government, even if it is packed with members of the
Islamic group.

With loud voices coming out of Washington calling for
engagement with Hezbollah, Obama promising to respect any
election, Britain taking the lead in dialogue with
non-state players, and the Syrians back in the
international arena, times are not good for leftovers of
the Bush era in the Middle East.

Decision-makers around the world have reasoned that not
talking to Hezbollah or Hamas will not make them disappear.
On the contrary, it will only lead them to radicalize.

Looking back at the Hamas tenure in government, everybody
realizes that the Bush administration missed a golden
opportunity when the Palestinian group said that it was
willing to accept a long-term truce with Israel, and abide
by the borders of 1967. Israel couldn't get them to disarm
by force, clearly demonstrated by the results of the
December 2008 war on Gaza.

The United Nations couldn't disarm them, nor could
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat or the United States. The
same applies to Hezbollah, which emerged victorious from
the war of 2006. Obama, a practical leader by all accounts,
realizes that if these groups are voted into power, it
would be sheer hypocrisy not to deal with them and repeat
what was committed by Bush.

Walid Jumblatt - and anti-Hamas figures in Palestine like
President Mahmud Abbas - is among the first to fully grasp
this new attitude in Washington.

Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.

FULLL TEXT OF AHMADINEJAD'S GENEVA SPEECH

2009-04-28T12:25:00.003+01:00

This is a rush transcript of the Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad’s remarks at the United Nations Durban Review Conference
on racism in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 20, 2009. Transcribed from
the translation given in the U.N. webcast here

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful… [Protestors in
clown costumes escorted out by security] May he bestow upon his
prophets… Praise be upon Allah, the Almighty, who is just, kind, and
compassionate. May he bestow upon his prophets his blessings and his
grace from Adam to Noah; Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ, and His last
prophet, Mohammed. Peace be upon them all who are the harbingers of
monotheism, fraternity, love … [Applause] … human dignity and
justice.

Mr. Chairman. I call upon all distinguished guests to forgive these
ignorant people.

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Praise be upon
Allah, the Almighty, who is just, kind, and compassionate, and praise
and salutations of the Almighty God to the great prophet. May he
bestow upon [us] His blessings, His grace. We thank the Almighty God.
Praise be upon him who is just and who is compassionate. And the
salutations and regards of Allah to his prophets, from Noah to
Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ, and his last prophet Mohammed. Peace be
upon them all who are the harbingers of monotheism, fraternity, love,
human dignity, and justice.

Mr. Chairman. Honorable Secretary General of the United Nations.
Madam High Commissioner. Ladies and Gentleman. We have gathered here
in the follow up to the Durban conference against racism and racial
discrimination to work out practical mechanisms for our holy and
humanitarian campaigns. Over the last centuries, humanity has gone
through tremendous suffering and pain. In the middle ages, thinkers
and scientists were sentenced to death. It was then followed by a
period of slavery and slave trade, when innocent people in millions
were captivated and separated from their families and loved ones, to
be taken to Europe and America under worse conditions; the dark
period that also experienced occupations, lootings, and massacres of
innocent people.

Many years passed by before nations rose up and fought for their
liberty and freedom, and they paid a high price. They lost millions
of lives to expel the occupiers and proclaim their independence.
However, it did not take long that the coercive powers imposed two
wars in Europe which also plagued a part of Asia and Africa. Those
horrific wars claimed about 100 million lives and left behind massive
devastation. Had lessons been learned from the occupations, horrors,
and crimes of those wars, there would have been a ray of hope for the
future. The victorious powers called themselves the conquerors of the
world while ignoring or downtreading the rights of other nations by
the imposition of oppressive laws and international arrangements.

Ladies and gentlemen, let us take a look at the U.N. Security
Council, which is one of the legacies of World War II and World War
I. What was the logic behind their granting themselves the veto
rights? How can such a logic comply with humanitarian or spiritual
values? Could it be in conformity with the recognized principles of
justice, equality before law, love, and human dignity? [Applause] Or
rather, with discrimination, injustice, violation of human rights, or
humiliation of the majority of nations and countries?

That Council is the highest decision-making world body for
safeguarding the international peace and security. How can we expect
the realization of justice and peace when discrimination is legalized
and the origin of law is dominated by coercion and force rather than
by justice and the right?

Coercion and arrogance is the origin of oppression and wars. Although
today many proponents of racism condemn racial discrimination in
their words and in their slogans, a number of powerful countries have
been authorized to decide for other nations based on their own
interests and at their own discretions. And they can easily ridicule
and violate all laws and humanitarian values, as they have done so.

Following World War II, they resorted to military aggression to make
an entire nation homeless on the pretext of Jewish sufferings. And
they sent migrants from Europe, the United States, and other parts of
the world in order to establish a totally racist government in the
occupied Palestine… [Delegates walk out in protest. Applause] And in
fact in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe…
Okay, please. Thank you. And in fact in compensation for the dire
consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most
cruel and repressive, racist regime in Palestine. [Applause]

The Security Council helped stabilize this occupation regime and
supported it in the past 60 years, giving them a free hand to
continue their crimes. It is all the more regrettable that a number
of Western governments and the United States have committed
themselves to defend those racist perpetrators of genocide whilst the
awakened conscience and free minded people of the world condemn
aggression, brutalities and bombardments of civilians in Gaza. They
have always been supportive or silent against their crimes. And
before that, they have always been silent with regard to their
crimes.

Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, what are the root
causes of U.S. attacks against Iraq or invasion of Afghanistan?
[Shouts from audience] What are the root causes of U.S. attacks
against Iraq invasion of Afghanistan? Was the motive behind the
invasion of Iraq anything other than the arrogance of the then U.S.
administration and the mounting pressures on the part of the owner of
wealth and power to expand their sphere of influence, seeking the
interests of giant arms manufacturing companies, affecting a noble
culture with thousands of years of historical background, eliminating
potential and practical traits of Muslim countries against the useful
Zionist regime, or to control and plunder energy resources of the
Iraqi people? Why, indeed almost a million people were killed and
injured and a few more millions were displaced and became homeless.
Why, indeed the Iraqi people have suffered enormous losses amounting
to hundreds of billions of dollars. And why was hundreds of billions
of dollars imposed on the American people and its allies as a result
of these military actions? Wasn’t the military action against Iraq
planned by the Zionists and their allies in the then U.S.
administration in complicity with the arms manufacturing companies
and the owner of the wealth?

The invasion of Afghanistan; restore peace, security, and economic
well being in this country. The United States and its allies not only
have failed to contain [?] in Afghanistan, but also the illicit
cultivation of narcotics multiplied in the course of their presence.
The basic question is: What was the responsibility of the job of the
then U.S. administration and its allies? Did it represent the world?
Have they been mandated by them? Have they been authorized on behalf
of the people of the world to interfere in all parts of the globe?
And of course mostly in our region aren’t these measures a clear
example of egocentrism, racism, discrimination, or infringement upon
the dignity and independence of nations?

Ladies and gentlemen, who are responsible for the current global
economic crisis? Where did the crisis start from? From Africa? From
Asia? Or was it first from the United States, then spreading to
Europe and to their allies? For a long time they imposed inequitable
economic regulations. By their political power on the international
economy they imposed a financial and a monetary system without a
proper international oversight mechanism on nations and governments
that played no role in the repressive trends or policies. They have
not even allowed their people to oversee of monitor their financial
policies. They introduce all laws and regulations in defiance to all
moral values only to protect the interests of the owners of wealth
and power. They further presented a definition of market economy and
competition that denied many of the economic opportunities that could
be available to other countries of the world. They even transferred
their problems to others whilst the wave of crisis lashed back,
plaguing their economies with thousands of billions of dollars in
budget deficits. And today, they are injecting hundreds of billions
of cash from the pockets of their own people into the failing banks
companies and financial institutions making the situation more and
more complicated for the economy and their people. They are simply
thinking about maintaining power and wealth. They couldn’t care any
less about the people of the world and even about their own people.

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, racism is rooted in the lack of
knowledge concerning the truth of human existence as the selected
creature of God. It is also the product of his deviation from the
true path of human life and the obligations of mankind in the world
of creation. Failing to consciously worship God, not being able to
think about the philosophy of life or the path to perfection that are
the main ingredients of divine and humanitarian values, have
restricted the horizon of human outlook, making transient and limited
interests a yardstick for his actions.

That is why the cells of the Devil’s power took shape and expanded
its realm of power by depriving others from enjoying equitable and
just opportunities to development. The result has been the making of
an unbridled racism that is posing the most serious threat against
the international peace and has hindered the way for building
peaceful coexistence in the entire world. Undoubtedly, racism is the
symbol of ignorance which has deep roots in history. And it is indeed
a sign of frustration in the development of human society. It is
therefore crucially important to trace the manifestations of racism
in situations or in societies where ignorance or lack of knowledge
prevails in the societies. This increasing general awareness and
understanding towards the philosophy of human existence is the
principle struggle against such manifestations; which is the key to
understanding the truth that humankind centers on the creation of the
universe, and the key to a return to the spiritual and moral values,
and finally the inclination to worship God the Almighty. The
international community must initiate collective moves to raise
awareness in the afflicted societies where the ignorance of racism
still prevails so as to bring to a halt the spread of these malicious
manifestations.

Dear friends, today the human community is facing a kind of racism
which has tarnished the image of humanity in the beginning of the
third millennium. The world Zionism personifies racism that falsely
resorts to religion and abuses religious sentiments to hide their
hatred and ugly faces. However, it is of great importance to bring
into focus the political goals of some of the world powers and those
who control huge economic resources and interests in the world. They
mobilize all their resources, including their economic and political
influence and world media to render support in vain to the Zionist
regime, and maliciously endeavor to diminish the indignity and
disgrace of this regime. This is not simply a question of ignorance,
and one cannot conquer this ugly phenomenon through cultural
campaigns. Efforts must be made to put an end to the abuse by
Zionists and their supporters of political and international means
and respect of the will and aspirations of nations. Governments must
be encouraged and supported in their fights aimed at eradicating this
barbaric racism [applause] and to move towards reforming … [applause]
… the current international mechanisms.

There is no doubt that you are all aware of the conspiracies of some
powers and Zionist circles against the goals and objectives of this
conference. Unfortunately, there has been literature and statements
in support of Zionism and their crimes, and it is the responsibility
of honorable representatives of nations to disclose these campaigns
which run counter to humanitarian values and principles. It should be
recognized that boycotting such a session as an outstanding
international capacity is a true indication of supporting the blatant
example of racism.

In defending human rights it is primarily important to defend the
rights of all nations to participate equally in all important
international decision making processes without the influence of
certain world powers. And secondly it is necessary to restructure the
existing international organizations and their respective
arrangements. Therefore this conference is a testing ground and the
world public opinion today and tomorrow will judge our decisions and
our actions [applause].

Mr. President. Mr President. Ladies and gentlemen. The world is going
through fundamental changes, radical fundamental changes. Power
relations have become so weak and fragile. The sounds of cracks in
the pillars of world oppression can now be heard. Major political and
economic structures are at the brink of collapse. Political and
security crises are on the rise. The worsening crises in the world
economy for which there can be seen no bright prospect, amply
demonstrate the rising tide of far reaching global changes. I have
repeatedly emphasized the need to change the wrong direction in which
the world has been managed today. And I have also warned of the dire
consequences of any delay in this crucial responsibility.

Now, in this [?] and valuable event, I would like to announce here to
all leaders thinkers, and to all nations of the world present in this
meeting and those who have a hunger for peace and economic well
being, that the management, the inequitable and unjust management of
the world, is now at the end of the road. This deadlock was
inevitable since the logic of this imposed management was oppressive.

The logic of collective management of world affairs is based on noble
aspirations which centers on human beings and the supremacy of the
Almighty God. Therefore it defies any policy or plan which goes
against the interest of nations. Victory of the right over the wrong
and establishment of a just world system have been promised by the
Almighty God and his messengers and it has been a shared goal of all
human beings from different societies and generations in the course
of history. Realization of such a future depends upon the knowledge
of the creation and the belief in the hearts of all the faithful
[applause]. The making of a global society is in fact the
accomplishment of a noble held in the establishment of a common
global system that will be run with the participation of all nations
of the world in all major and basic decision making processes and the
definite route to this sublime goal. Scientific and technical
capacities as well as communication technologies have created a
common and wider spread understanding of the world society and has
provided the necessary ground for a common system.

Now it is incumbent upon all intellectuals, thinkers, and policy
makers in the world to carry out their historical responsibility with
firm belief to this definite route, I also want to lay emphasis on
the fact that the western liberalism and capitalism, like communism,
has reached to its end since it has failed to perceive the truth of
the world and human[kind] as it is. It has imposed its own goals and
directions on human beings with no regard for human and divine
values, justice, freedom, love, or brotherhood; has based the living
on the intensive competition securing individual and collective
material interests.

Now we must learn from the past by initiating collective efforts by
dealing with present challenges, and in this connection and in
closing my remarks I wish to draw your kind attention to two
important points. One: It is absolutely possible to improve the
existing situation in the world. However, it must be noted that it
could only be achieved through the cooperation of all countries in
order to get the best out of existing capacities and resources in the
world. My participation in this conference is because of my
conviction of these important issues, as well as to our common
responsibility to defending the rights of nations /vis-a-vis/ the
sinister phenomenon of racism, and being with you, the thinkers of
the world. [Applause]

Two: Mindful of the inefficacy of the current international
political, economic, and security systems on the world scene, it is
necessary to focus on the divine and humanitarian values and by
referring to the true definition of human beings, and based upon
justice and respect for the rights of all people in all parts of the
world, and by acknowledging the past wrongdoings in the past dominant
management of the world undertake collective measures to reform the
existing structures. In this respect, it is crucially important to
reform the structure of the Security Council, including the
elimination of the discriminatory veto right … [applause] … and
change the current world and financial monetary systems. It is
evident that lack of understanding on the urgency for change is
equivalent to the much heavier costs of delay.

Dear friends, be aware that to move in the direction of justice and
human dignity is like the national rapid flow in the current of a
river. Let us not forget the essence of love and affection, the
promised bright future of human beings is a great asset that will
serve our purpose in keeping us together to build a new world and to
make the world a better place full of love fraternity and blessings;
a world devoid of poverty and hatred, [inaudible] the increasing
blessings of God Almighty and the righteous management of the perfect
human being. Let us all join hands in amity in playing our share in
the fulfillment such a decent new world.

I thank you Mr. President, Secretary General, and all distinguished
participants for having the patience to listen to me. Thank you very
much.

COMMENTARY ON AHMEDINEJAD'S SPEECH AT UN CONFERENCE

2009-04-23T12:32:00.001+01:00

Adrian Hamilton:

Walking out on Ahmadinejad was just plain childish

What are we trying to say? That any mention of Israel is now barred?

The Independent
Thursday, 23 April 2009

Isn't it time western diplomats just grew up and stopped
these infantile games over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
All that this play-acting over boycotting of conferences
because of his presence and walking out because of his
words achieves is to flatter his ego, boost his poll
ratings at home and play into the hands of an Israel that
is desperate to prove Iran the gravest threat to its
existence.

True, Iran's President is not the world's most endearing
character. Some of the things he says are certainly
contentious. But he is far from the most offensive leader
on the block at the moment. With Silvio Berlusconi sounding
off about women and sex, and Nicolas Sarkozy sounding off
about everything from the quality of his fellow leaders to
the unsuitability of Muslims to join the civilised nations,
and a Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, giving his views on
gays, Europe could claim its fair share of premiers who
should not be allowed out in public.

Read Ahmadinejad's address at the UN conference on racism
in Geneva this week and there is little to surprise and a
certain amount to be agreed with. His accusations against
the imperial powers for what they did with colonial rule
and the business of slavery is pretty much part of the
school curriculum now. His anger at the way the economic
crisis originated in the West but has hit worst the
innocent of the developing world would find a ready echo
(and did) among most of the delegates.

It was not for this, however, that the countries of Europe
and North America gathered up their skirts and walked out
of Ahmadinejad's peroration. The UK's ambassador to the UN
in Geneva, Peter Gooderham, rather gave the game away when
he said afterwards: "As soon as President Ahmadinejad
started talking about Israel, that was the cue for us to
walk out. We agreed in advance that if there was any such
rhetoric there would be no tolerance for it." The Iranian
leader, he went on to say, was guilty of anti-Semitisim.

Just how you can accuse a man of anti-Semitisim when you
haven't stayed to hear him talk is one of those questions
which the Foreign Office no doubt trains its diplomats to
explain. But what basically was our representative trying
to say here? That any mention of the word Israel is barred
from international discussions? That the mere mention of it
is enough to have the Western governments combine to still
it? In fact, Ahmadinejad's speech was not anti-Semitic, not
in the strict sense of the word. Nowhere in his speech did
he mention his oft-quoted suggestion that Israel be
expunged from the map of the world. At no point did he
mention the word "Jews", only "Zionists", and then
specifically in an Israeli context. Nor did he repeat his
infamous Holocaust denials, although he did reportedly
refer to it slightingly as "ambiguous" in its evidence.

Instead, he launched the time-honoured Middle Eastern
accusation that Israel was an alien country imposed on the
local population by the West, out of its own guilt for the
genocide; that it was supported by a Zionist take-over of
Western politics and that it pursued racist policies
towards the Palestinians. Now you may find these calls
offensive or far-fetched (if there is a Zionist world
conspiracy, it is making a singularly bad job of it) but it
is pretty much the standard view in the Muslim world.
Western support of Israel is seen as a conspiracy, and it
is not just prejudice. There are now books by Western
academics arguing that the pro-Israeli lobby wields an
influence in the US out of all proportion to its numbers.
If the Western walkout in Geneva did nothing else, it
rather proved the point.

Nor is it far-fetched to charge Israel with being a racist
state. As the only country in the world that defines itself
and its immigrants on racial grounds, it could be regarded
as fair comment. And if you doubt that this founding
principle leads Israel into racist attitudes to
non-Israelis, then you only have to read the comments of
its new Foreign Secretary, Avigdor Lieberman, to disabuse
you.

Of course, Ahamadinejad was playing to his home audience.
He is a politician facing re-election at a time when his
domestic economic record makes him vulnerable. Most of the
educated class are fed up with his cavorting on the world
stage while his country goes from wrack to ruin. And, of
course, international conferences of this sort, intended to
spread sweetness and light, are not the most appropriate
forums for such tirades.

But on these issues he does speak for the majority not just
in Iran but in the region. Deny that view a hearing and you
will only increase the resentment and the sense of a
Western world set up against them. Which is precisely what
our oh-so-sanctimonious representatives achieved this week.

EXTRACTS FROM WHAT IRANIAN PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD SAID AT THE UN CONFERENCE AGAINST RACISM IN GENEVA

2009-04-22T17:21:00.005+01:00

"Following the Second World War, they resorted to military aggression
to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish
suffering. They sent migrants from Europe, the United States and
other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist
government in the occupied Palestine. In fact, in compensation for
the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power
the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine."

"It is all the more regrettable that a number of Western governments
and the United States have committed themselves to defend those
racist perpetrators of genocide, while the awakened, conscious and
free-minded people of the world condemn aggression, brutalities and
bombardments of civilians of Gaza."

"Ladies and gentlemen: What are the root causes of US attacks against
Iraq, or invasion of Afghanistan? Was the motive behind the invasion
of Iraq anything other than the arrogance of the then-US
administration and the mounting pressures ... to expand their sphere
of influence, seeking the interest of giant arms manufacturing
companies, affecting another culture with thousands of years of
historical background, eliminating potential and practical threats of
Muslim countries against the Zionist regime? Or, to control and
plunder energy resources of the Iraqi people. Why indeed were almost
a million people killed and injured, and a few more millions were
displaced and became homeless? Why indeed have the Iraqi people
suffered enormous losses amounting to hundreds of billions of
dollars? ... Wasn't the military action against Iraq planned by the
Zionists and their allies in the then-US administration, in
complicity with the arms manufacturing companies, and the owner of
the world?"

"The United States and its allies not only have failed to contain the
production of drugs in Afghanistan, but also the illicit cultivation
of narcotics multiplied in the course of their presence. The basic
question is what was the responsibility of the then-US administration
and its allies? Did they represent countries of the world? Have they
been mandated by them? Have they been authorized on behalf of the
people of the world to interfere in all parts of the globe, and of
course mostly in our region? Aren't these measures a clear example of
egocentrism, racism, discrimination, or infringement on the dignity
and independence of nations?"

Ladies and gentlemen: Who is responsible for the current global
economic crisis? Where did the crisis start from? From Africa? From
Asia? Or was it first from the United States?"

"Dear friends, today, the human community is facing a kind of racism
that has tarnished the image of humanity. In the beginning of the
third millennium, the world Zionism personifies racism that falsely
resorts to religion, and abuses religious sentiment to hide their
hatred and ugly faces. However, it is of great importance to bring
into focus the political goals of some of the world's powers and
those who control huge economic resources and interests in the world,
and mobilize all their resources, economic and political influence,
and world media to render support in vain to the Zionist regime, and
maliciously to diminish to indignity and disgrace this regime."

taken from here:

'ZIONISM IS THE PROBLEM'

2009-03-16T21:32:00.003Z

The Zionist ideal of a Jewish state is keeping Israelis and
Palestinians from living in peace

By Ben Ehrenreich
LA Times
March 15, 2009

It's hard to imagine now, but in 1944, six years after Kristallnacht,
Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism,
felt comfortable equating the Zionist ideal of Jewish statehood with
"the concept of a racial state -- the Hitlerian concept." For most of
the last century, a principled opposition to Zionism was a mainstream
stance within American Judaism.

Even after the foundation of Israel, anti-Zionism was not a
particularly heretical position. Assimilated Reform Jews like
Rosenwald believed that Judaism should remain a matter of religious
rather than political allegiance; the ultra-Orthodox saw Jewish
statehood as an impious attempt to "push the hand of God"; and
Marxist Jews -- my grandparents among them -- tended to see Zionism,
and all nationalisms, as a distraction from the more essential
struggle between classes.

To be Jewish, I was raised to believe, meant understanding oneself as
a member of a tribe that over and over had been cast out, mistreated,
slaughtered. Millenniums of oppression that preceded it did not
entitle us to a homeland or a right to self-defense that superseded
anyone else's. If they offered us anything exceptional, it was a
perspective on oppression and an obligation born of the prophetic
tradition: to act on behalf of the oppressed and to cry out at the
oppressor.

For the last several decades, though, it has been all but impossible
to cry out against the Israeli state without being smeared as an
anti-Semite, or worse. To question not just Israel's actions, but the
Zionist tenets on which the state is founded, has for too long been
regarded an almost unspeakable blasphemy.

Yet it is no longer possible to believe with an honest conscience
that the deplorable conditions in which Palestinians live and die in
Gaza and the West Bank come as the result of specific policies,
leaders or parties on either side of the impasse. The problem is
fundamental: Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious
identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse
leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion (think of the
139-square-mile prison camp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale
ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the problem is Zionism.

It has been argued that Zionism is an anachronism, a leftover
ideology from the era of 19th century romantic nationalisms wedged
uncomfortably into 21st century geopolitics. But Zionism is not
merely outdated. Even before 1948, one of its basic oversights was
readily apparent: the presence of Palestinians in Palestine. That led
some of the most prominent Jewish thinkers of the last century, many
of them Zionists, to balk at the idea of Jewish statehood. The Brit
Shalom movement -- founded in 1925 and supported at various times by
Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem -- argued for a
secular, binational state in Palestine in which Jews and Arabs would
be accorded equal status. Their concerns were both moral and
pragmatic. The establishment of a Jewish state, Buber feared, would
mean "premeditated national suicide."

The fate Buber foresaw is upon us: a nation that has lived in a state
of war for decades, a quarter-million Arab citizens with second-class
status and more than 5 million Palestinians deprived of the most
basic political and human rights. If two decades ago comparisons to
the South African apartheid system felt like hyperbole, they now feel
charitable. The white South African regime, for all its crimes, never
attacked the Bantustans with anything like the destructive power
Israel visited on Gaza in December and January, when nearly1,300
Palestinians were killed, one-third of them children.

Israeli policies have rendered the once apparently inevitable
two-state solution less and less feasible. Years of Israeli
settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have
methodically diminished the viability of a Palestinian state.
Israel's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has even refused to
endorse the idea of an independent Palestinian state, which suggests
an immediate future of more of the same: more settlements, more
punitive assaults.

All of this has led to a revival of the Brit Shalom idea of a single,
secular binational state in which Jews and Arabs have equal political
rights. The obstacles are, of course, enormous. They include not just
a powerful Israeli attachment to the idea of an exclusively Jewish
state, but its Palestinian analogue: Hamas' ideal of Islamic rule.
Both sides would have to find assurance that their security was
guaranteed. What precise shape such a state would take -- a strict,
vote-by-vote democracy or a more complex federalist system -- would
involve years of painful negotiation, wiser leaders than now exist
and an uncompromising commitment from the rest of the world,
particularly from the United States.

Meanwhile, the characterization of anti-Zionism as an "epidemic" more
dangerous than anti-Semitism reveals only the unsustainability of the
position into which Israel's apologists have been forced. Faced with
international condemnation, they seek to limit the discourse, to
erect walls that delineate what can and can't be said.

It's not working. Opposing Zionism is neither anti-Semitic nor
particularly radical. It requires only that we take our own values
seriously and no longer, as the book of Amos has it, "turn justice
into wormwood and hurl righteousness to the ground."

Establishing a secular, pluralist, democratic government in Israel
and Palestine would of course mean the abandonment of the Zionist
dream. It might also mean the only salvation for the Jewish ideals of
justice that date back to Jeremiah.

Ben Ehrenreich is the author of the novel "The Suitors."

CIA PREDICT ISRAEL'S END

2009-03-13T20:28:00.003Z

CIA report: Israel will fall in 20 years

Press TV
Fri, 13 Mar 2009
International lawyer, Franklin Lamb

A study conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
has cast doubt over Israel's survival beyond the next 20 years.

The CIA report predicts "an inexorable movement away from a two-state
to a one-state solution, as the most viable model based on democratic
principles of full equality that sheds the looming specter of
colonial Apartheid while allowing for the return of the 1947/1948 and
1967 refugees. The latter being the precondition for sustainable
peace in the region."

The study, which has been made available only to a certain number of
individuals, further forecasts the return of all Palestinian refugees
to the occupied territories, and the exodus of two million Israeli -
who would move to the US in the next fifteen years.

"There is over 500,000 Israelis with American passports and more than
300,000 living in the area of just California," International lawyer
Franklin Lamb said in an interview with Press TV on Friday, adding
that those who do not have American or western passport, have already
applied for them.

"So I think the handwriting at least among the public in Israel is on
the wall...[which] suggests history will reject the colonial
enterprise sooner or later," Lamb stressed.

He said CIA, in its report, alludes to the unexpectedly quick fall of
the apartheid government in South Africa and recalls the
disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, suggesting the
end to the dream of an 'Israeli land' would happen 'way sooner' than
later.

The study further predicts the return of over one and a half million
Israelis to Russia and other parts of Europe, and denotes a decline
in Israeli births whereas a rise in the Palestinian population.

Lamb said given the Israeli conduct toward the Palestinians and the
Gaza strip in particular, the American public -- which has been
voicing its protest against Tel Aviv's measures in the last 25 years
-- may 'not take it anymore'.

Some members of the US Senate Intelligence Committee have been
informed of the report.

MRS/MMN

MULLAH OMAR CALLS ON PAKISTANI TALIBAN TO FOCUS ON FIGHTING NATO IN AFGHANISTAN AND DESIST FROM ALIENATING PEOPLE

2009-03-12T11:01:00.003Z

Taliban rivals unite to fight US troop surge

Saeed Shah in Peshawar
The Guardian
Tuesday 3 March 2009

Taliban fighters have taken over the Swat valley, in the lawless
north-west of Pakistan, and have forced the government to impose
sharia law in the region.

Three rival Pakistani Taliban groups have agreed to form a united
front against international forces in Afghanistan in a move likely to
intensify the insurgency just as thousands of extra US soldiers begin
pouring into the country as part of Barack Obama's surge plan.

The Guardian has learned that three of the most powerful warlords in
the region have settled their differences and come together under a
grouping calling itself Shura Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen, or Council of
United Holy Warriors.

Nato officers fear that the new extremist partnership in Waziristan,
Pakistan's tribal area, will significantly increase the cross-border
influx of fighters and suicide bombers - a move that could undermine
the US president's Afghanistan strategy before it is formulated.
Saeed Shah on how the Taliban in Pakistan are being called to fight
Link to this audio

The unity among the militants comes after a call by Mullah Omar, the
cleric who leads the Afghan Taliban, telling Pakistani militants to
stop fighting at home in order to join the battle to "liberate
Afghanistan from the occupation forces".

The Pakistani Taliban movement was split between a powerful group led
by the warlord Baitullah Mehsud and his bitter rivals, Maulvi Nazir
and Gul Bahadur. While Mehsud has targeted Pakistan itself in a
campaign of violence and is accused of being behind the assassination
of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Nazir and Bahadur sent
men to fight alongside other insurgents in Afghanistan.

The move potentially provides short-term relief in Pakistan but
imperils Nato forces, especially those stationed in southern and
eastern Afghanistan, including the British, close to the Pakistani
border.

"It's of concern to us when we see a grouping like that," said a
western security official in Pakistan. "This can't be ignored."

Fears of an increase in fighting come as the International Committee
of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned yesterday that civilians would face
the brunt of any increase in violence in Afghanistan. Ordinary
Afghans were now more at risk from the fighting than at any time
since the start of the war in 2001, said Pierre Kraehenbuehl,
director of operations for the ICRC.

Violence in Afghanistan intensified last year with some 5,000 people
killed, including more than 2,100 civilians, a 40% increase on the
previous year, the UN reported last month.

Pakistan was already under intense western pressure to act against
extremists based in its tribal area. A western military adviser, also
based in Pakistan, said a Pakistani Taliban alliance would cement the
grip of the militants over Waziristan. The region is also home to
Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida, who use Waziristan and other parts of
the tribal area as a haven to regroup and launch attacks against
Afghan and Nato forces.

"No insurgency has ever been destroyed as long as the sanctuaries are
still alive. If the sanctuaries are gaining more strength, that
certainly worries Nato," said the military adviser.

The Obama administration in Washington has announced 17,000 extra
troops for Afghanistan. American forces will concentrate on areas
close to the Pakistani border, which are seen as the most
troublesome. Obama is pressing European countries to also boost their
troop numbers.

In an apparent response to the augmented US challenge, Mullah Omar
has directed Pakistani militants in Waziristan to halt attacks on
Pakistani forces.Baitullah Mehsud is feared in Pakistan, having led
an assault on his own country since 2007, killing hundreds of
soldiers, policemen and ordinary Pakistanis through suicide attacks
and other bombings. But his tactics, influenced by al-Qaida, were
controversial even within the Taliban.

"If anybody really wants to wage jihad, he must fight the occupation
forces inside Afghanistan," Mullah Omar told Pakistani militants in a
letter. "Attacks on the Pakistani security forces and killing of
fellow Muslims by the militants in the tribal areas and elsewhere in
Pakistan is bringing a bad name to mujahideen and harming the war
against the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan."

The Pakistani Taliban recognise Mullah Omar, founder of the Taliban
movement in Afghanistan, as their ultimate leader, although
operationally they work independently.

"Baitullah Mehsud is now taking on the Americans," said Talat Masood,
a retired Pakistani general turned analyst. Baitullah Mehsud has
recently called off his fighters in two key battles inside Pakistan,
with ceasefires declared in Swat valley, in the North West Frontier
Province, and Bajaur, another tribal area. While Pakistani forces
claim to have "won" in Bajaur, they show no appetite for taking the
war to Waziristan.

Controversially, the Pakistani government has acceded to the
militants' demand for Islamic law in Swat. Under two secret peace
deals signed by Pakistani authorities with the militants last year,
covering north and south Waziristan, a truce exists there.

While western countries want to see the Pakistani army take the fight
to Waziristan, Pakistani forces have been repeatedly defeated there.
Major General Athar Abbas, chief spokesman for the Pakistan army,
said that there was "no plan" to start operations in Waziristan.
"It's the government that decides these things," he added.

OURAIM'S SUKANT CHANDAN ON PRESS TV - 'BETWEEN THE HEADLINES'

2009-03-11T08:14:00.000Z

TIME TO REMOVE HAMAS FROM 'TERROR' LISTS

2009-02-19T11:30:00.001Z

Europe opens covert talks with ‘blacklisted’ Hamas

By Anne Penketh,
Diplomatic Editor
The Independent, Thurs, 19 Feb 2009

European nations have opened a direct dialogue with Hamas as the US
intensifies the search for Middle East peace under Barack Obama.

In the first meeting of its kind, two French senators travelled to
Damascus two weeks ago to meet the leader of the Palestinian Islamist
faction, Khaled Meshal, The Independent has learned. Two British MPs
met three weeks ago in Beirut with the Hamas representative in
Lebanon, Usamah Hamdan. “Far more people are talking to Hamas than
anyone might think,” said a senior European diplomat. “It is the
beginning of something new – although we are not negotiating.”

Mr Hamdan said yesterday that since the end of last year, MPs from
Sweden, the Netherlands and three other western European nations,
which he declined to identify, had consulted with Hamas
representatives.

“They believe they made a mistake by blacklisting Hamas,” he said,
referring to the EU decision in 2003 to add the political wing of the
movement to its list of terrorist organisations. “Now they know they
have to talk to Hamas.”

Political contacts with Hamas are banned under the rules of the
international Quartet for Middle East peace – which groups the US,
the EU, Russia and the UN – on the grounds that the Palestinian
faction remains committed to the destruction of Israel. The
international community insists that the ban will only be lifted once
the Islamists agree to recognise Israel and renounce violence. But
the policy, set out in 2006 following the Hamas victory in
Palestinian elections, has been called into question since the
three-week war in Gaza which is ruled by Hamas.

Diplomats insisted that the lawmakers’ contacts with Hamas were at
their own initiative, although they are presumed to have reported
back to governments. The British MPs who went to Beirut “were not
engaged in back channel or officially sanctioned talks,” said a
Foreign Office spokesman.

The EU backs Egyptian-mediated efforts to secure reconciliation
between Hamas and its Fatah rivals as part of a ceasefire agreement
between Hamas and Israel. Palestinian unity is being encouraged as a
prerequisite for a two-state solution.

But Mr Meshal told the French senators that Palestinian unity was
“the most difficult issue”, according to a source familiar with the
talks. “Meshal said the Palestinian Authority [led by the President
Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah] no longer represents anything,” said the
source. Hamas is “convinced that the Arab street is with them”.

Hamas’s main backer, Syria, is also brimming with confidence after
the three-week war failed to deal a knock-out blow to its allies in
Gaza. The Syrian government senses an opportunity under Mr Obama to
end the isolation imposed by the Bush presidency.

Syria’s President, Bashir Assad, has granted several interviews to
Western media in recent weeks in which he has expressed the hope of
improved relations with the US. John Kerry, the head of the Senate
foreign relations committee who has advocated the return of a US
ambassador to Syria, is due in Damascus at the weekend.

The Syrian ambassador to London, Sami Khiyami, said: “We expect
another ambassador. It is not going to take a long time. America,
like Europe, understands that the gate to having a political
influence in the Middle East can only be achieved through Syria.”

But Middle East analysts play down expectations that EU – or US
policy – regarding Hamas is about to change. Two major uncertainties
remain: the approach of the Obama administration and the contours of
the future Israeli government which could be led by the hardliner
Benjamin Netanyahu.

Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel, said Mr Obama would
be making a “huge mistake” if he decided to open direct talks with
Hamas. Such a move would “undermine the Palestinian leadership that
wants to make peace with Israel”.

He said there had been progress in indirect peace talks between
Israel and Syria, and that Mr Netanyahu could well decide to embark
down the track which is “somewhat riper”. But “the Syrians are not
about to sign on the dotted line” insofar as they would come under
pressure to break with their strategic allies, Hamas, Hizbollah and
Iran, he added.

Mr Khiyami said the Israelis would have to choose between
negotiations or future confrontation. “If they choose the first
option they will find people ready to negotiate under the umbrella of
the Arab initiative. If they choose the second, we are not
responsible anymore for any violence that can happen in the Middle
East.”

A CLOSER LOOK AT HAMAS

2009-02-05T14:08:00.002Z

We must adjust our distorted image of Hamas

Gaza is a secular society where people listen to pop music, watch TV
and many women walk the streets unveiled

William Sieghart
Times

Last week I was in Gaza. While I was there I met a group of 20 or so
police officers who were undergoing a course in conflict management.
They were eager to know whether foreigners felt safer since Hamas had
taken over the Government? Indeed we did, we told them. Without doubt
the past 18 months had seen a comparative calm on the streets of
Gaza; no gunmen on the streets, no more kidnappings. They smiled with
great pride and waved us goodbye.

Less than a week later all of these men were dead, killed by an
Israeli rocket at a graduation ceremony. Were they “dangerous Hamas
militant gunmen”? No, they were unarmed police officers, public
servants killed not in a “militant training camp” but in the same
police station in the middle of Gaza City that had been used by the
British, the Israelis and Fatah during their periods of rule there.

This distinction is crucial because while the horrific scenes in Gaza
and Israel play themselves out on our television screens, a war of
words is being fought that is clouding our understanding of the
realities on the ground.

Who or what is Hamas, the movement that Ehud Barak, the Israeli
Defence Minister, would like to wipe out as though it were a virus?
Why did it win the Palestinian elections and why does it allow
rockets to be fired into Israel? The story of Hamas over the past
three years reveals how the Israeli, US and UK governments'
misunderstanding of this Islamist movement has led us to the brutal
and desperate situation that we are in now.

The story begins nearly three years ago when Change and Reform -
Hamas's political party - unexpectedly won the first free and fair
elections in the Arab world, on a platform of ending endemic
corruption and improving the almost non-existent public services in
Gaza and the West Bank. Against a divided opposition this ostensibly
religious party impressed the predominantly secular community to win
with 42 per cent of the vote.

Palestinians did not vote for Hamas because it was dedicated to the
destruction of the state of Israel or because it had been responsible
for waves of suicide bombings that had killed Israeli citizens. They
voted for Hamas because they thought that Fatah, the party of the
rejected Government, had failed them. Despite renouncing violence and
recognising the state of Israel Fatah had not achieved a Palestinian
state. It is crucial to know this to understand the supposed
rejectionist position of Hamas. It won't recognise Israel or renounce
the right to resist until it is sure of the world's commitment to a
just solution to the Palestinian issue.

In the five years that I have been visiting Gaza and the West Bank, I
have met hundreds of Hamas politicians and supporters. None of them
has professed the goal of Islamising Palestinian society,
Taleban-style. Hamas relies on secular voters too much to do that.
People still listen to pop music, watch television and women still
choose whether to wear the veil or not.

The political leadership of Hamas is probably the most highly
qualified in the world. Boasting more than 500 PhDs in its ranks, the
majority are middle-class professionals - doctors, dentists,
scientists and engineers. Most of its leadership have been educated
in our universities and harbour no ideological hatred towards the
West. It is a grievance-based movement, dedicated to addressing the
injustice done to its people. It has consistently offered a ten-year
ceasefire to give breathing space to resolve a conflict that has
continued for more than 60 years.

The Bush-Blair response to the Hamas victory in 2006 is the key to
today's horror. Instead of accepting the democratically elected
Government, they funded an attempt to remove it by force; training
and arming groups of Fatah fighters to unseat Hamas militarily and
impose a new, unelected government on the Palestinians. Further, 45
Hamas MPs are still being held in Israeli jails.

Six months ago the Israeli Government agreed to an Egyptian- brokered
ceasefire with Hamas. In return for a ceasefire, Israel agreed to
open the crossing points and allow a free flow of essential supplies
in and out of Gaza. The rocket barrages ended but the crossings never
fully opened, and the people of Gaza began to starve. This crippling
embargo was no reward for peace.

When Westerners ask what is in the mind of Hamas leaders when they
order or allow rockets to be fired at Israel they fail to understand
the Palestinian position. Two months ago the Israeli Defence Forces
broke the ceasefire by entering Gaza and beginning the cycle of
killing again. In the Palestinian narrative each round of rocket
attacks is a response to Israeli attacks. In the Israeli narrative it
is the other way round.

But what does it mean when Mr Barak talks of destroying Hamas? Does
it mean killing the 42 per cent of Palestinians who voted for it?
Does it mean reoccupying the Gaza strip that Israel withdrew from so
painfully three years ago? Or does it mean permanently separating the
Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, politically and
geographically? And for those whose mantra is Israeli security, what
sort of threat do the three quarters of a million young people
growing up in Gaza with an implacable hatred of those who starve and
bomb them pose?

It is said that this conflict is impossible to solve. In fact, it is
very simple. The top 1,000 people who run Israel - the politicians,
generals and security staff - and the top Palestinian Islamists have
never met. Genuine peace will require that these two groups sit down
together without preconditions. But the events of the past few days
seem to have made this more unlikely than ever. That is the challenge
for the new administration in Washington and for its European allies.

William Sieghart is chairman of Forward Thinking, an independent
conflict resolution agency

ALI ABUNIMAH BREAKS IT DOWN ON OBAMA AND PALESTINE

2009-01-28T12:09:00.002Z

From Gaza to Obama: What Next for the Middle East?

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Palestine Brief No. 174

By Ali Abunimah
Palestine Center Fellow

Introduction

Israel's attack on the occupied Gaza Strip caused massive death and destruction. It has also profoundly changed the regional political landscape, calling for a deep reassessment of U.S. policy. It is into this perilous situation that U.S. President Barack Obama steps. Early moves, entirely consistent with statements during the campaign, indicate that the necessary reassessment will not soon be forthcoming.¹ Hence, despite the appointment of the well-respected and highly-experienced former U.S. Senator George Mitchell as envoy, the region should brace itself for enduring political stalemate and escalating violence.

Scorched Earth

Beginning on 27 December 2008, Israel bombarded the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air for 22 days. UN Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes echoed statements from Palestinians and international witnesses when he called the devastation in the coastal territory that is home to 1.5 million Palestinians "extremely shocking."

Amnesty International found "indisputable evidence" that Israel had indiscriminately used white phosphorus--that causes horrific injuries and death--in civilian areas.² There have been numerous allegations of other war crimes and atrocities, including summary executions of civilians, denial of medical care to the injured, the targeting of ambulances, medical personnel, UN facilities where civilians had sought shelter, as well as systematic targeting of private homes, police stations, universities, mosques, fishing boats, factories and workshops, government buildings and the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).

In just three weeks, Israel killed more Palestinians in Gaza--at least 1,300--than in any previous year since it began its violent crackdown on the second intifada in 2000. Among the dead were 412 children and 110 women, according to health officials. Although large numbers of male civilians, including dozens of civilian police officers, were killed, exact numbers have not been reported. Among the 5,300 injured, 1,855 were children and 795 were women.³ Thirteen Israelis, ten of them Israeli soldiers, also died. Preliminary estimates put the number of homes completely destroyed at more than 4,000 with 17,000 damaged. Tens of thousands are displaced or without shelter.

The enormous physical and psychological cost of Israel's attack, particularly on children, has yet to be fully calculated, and its consequences will be deep and lasting on a society that had already suffered from 61 years of dispossession, 41 years of military occupation and almost two years of total blockade.

Israel Lost Much More than It Gained

Israel's pretext for the Gaza attack--accepted by the United States and other western governments--was to stop indiscriminate rocket fire by Hamas from Gaza. It is indisputable, and Israel has acknowledged that Hamas did not fire any rockets at Israel from the moment a truce deal was reached on 19 June 2008 until after 4 November 2008, when rocket fire resumed. Israel had also acknowledged that Hamas moved to prevent other factions that fired about two dozen rockets over that four-month period from breaking the truce. Hamas resumed rocket fire only after Israel carried out a 4 November 2008 attack on Gaza that killed six Palestinians. Hamas allowed the already collapsed truce to formally lapse without renewal on 19 December 2008 primarily because Israel had refused to loosen the crippling blockade of Gaza or halt its armed attacks that had killed dozens of Palestinians during the truce.⁴

Although it wanted to prevent rocket fire, Israel's primary goals were to restore "deterrence" lost in its 2006 Lebanon debacle and to fatally weaken Hamas and rob it of political support. It achieved none of these goals; Hamas and other resistance groups still had rocket launching capability even after Israel declared a ceasefire. Hamas did not collapse as a military or political organization and retained the mass support without which a guerilla organization cannot function. Having survived an all-out assault from the Israeli war machine, Hamas emerged with significantly enhanced prestige among Palestinians and Arab public opinion, just as Hizballah did from its 2006 war with Israel.

In order to consolidate this support, Hamas will have to show that it can competently manage the aftermath, including assistance to the families' victims. Hamas leaders in Damascus and Gaza have already announced plans to distribute financial compensation and rebuild, again following precedents set by Hizballah.

Israel's Jewish citizens overwhelmingly supported the attack on Gaza and celebrated tactical "victories"--essentially their ability to inflict enormous pain and damage. With time, Israelis may begin to recognize that as in Lebanon they have suffered another strategic defeat: Israeli military power cannot cow entire populations into submission and cannot remake the politics of the region to reflect Israeli preferences. This lesson should have been learned after Israel's disastrous 1982 invasion of Lebanon but has yet to be absorbed by Israeli elites.

In addition to military power, Israel relies on Western support to maintain regional dominance. This pillar is starting to weaken as a consequence of Gaza; despite solid support from Western governments, Israel faced unprecedented waves of outrage from global public opinion and civil society as expressed in press commentary, enormous demonstrations and other mass actions. Israel's official hasbara (state propaganda) machinery was unable to suppress these mobilizations. One consequence is likely to be the mainstreaming of support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, modeled on the anti-apartheid struggle of the 1980s, to force Israel to comply with international law.⁵

There have been unprecedented calls from international jurists, civil society organizations, UN officials, legislators and others for Israel to be held accountable. Israel is concerned enough that its officials and military officers may face war crimes charges that it has taken active countermeasures, such as tightening official censorship of accounts of actions taken by its army in Gaza and even on publishing the names of soldiers involved and offering legal support.⁶

For decades, Israel nurtured a narrative persuasive in the West that its creation, maintenance and conduct were the morally righteous legacy of the Nazi Holocaust. The long-term viability of this narrative as a means to mobilize political support and suppress criticism has been badly if not irrevocably degraded by Israel's actions in Gaza.

The Palestinian Authority and the Arab "Moderates" Lose Out

As part of the "War on Terror," the Bush administration divided a vast swathe of the planet from Morocco to Pakistan between so-called "moderates," on the one hand, and "extremists" on the other. A moderate is any actor that is in a patron-client relationship with the United States. In the Arab region, this group includes Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora (up to May 2008) and the Palestinian Authority (PA) headed by Mahmoud Abbas. An extremist, in this scheme, is any actor that opposes or resists U.S. hegemony in the region.

The labels, "moderate" and "extremist," clearly imply value judgments and were created to obscure underlying power relations and interests. They have nothing to do with democracy or Islamism; the most "moderate" regimes from the U.S. perspective are often the most undemocratic, repressive or theocratic (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, PA). Whereas, "extremists" may have received popular mandates at contested elections (Hamas, Hizballah, Iran) or be secular (Syria). What is at stake is America's ability to shore up a regional order it dominates, but that is coming apart at the seams. If the Gaza attack was supposed to tip the balance in favor of the moderates, it backfired even more spectacularly than Israel's war against Lebanon in 2006.

Among Palestinians, it is now conventional (though certainly not universal) to view Abbas, whose official term as PA president expired on 9 January 2009, as having zero legitimacy and credibility. Large segments of Palestinian public opinion view Abbas and his government headed by Salam Fayyad as irrelevant.⁷ Hamas--through its own successes and survival and because there is no viable alternative--has effectively emerged as the closest thing Palestinians have to a national leadership. That is probably not a position Hamas can or wants to sustain, and there remains a pressing need for Palestinians themselves to create representative and inclusive bodies to guide the national movement.

Before Gaza, Hamas sought reconciliation while Abbas' leadership continued to impose U.S.-dictated conditions that Hamas would never meet. Now, as they feel their support draining away, some voices in Ramallah are calling for reconciliation on almost any terms. Others are opportunistically attempting to persuade Arab and international donors to channel desperately needed humanitarian aid for Gaza through Abbas in order to revive a dead political body.

In a 21 January 2009 "victory" speech broadcast live on Al Jazeera, Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal set out his movement's new terms for reconcliation: the PA would have to abandon "security cooperation" with Israel, release political prisoners and support and recognize resistance not "silly negotiations" (a mocking reference to Abbas" dismissal of Hamas' "silly rockets") as the foundation of a national program. Even as the PA becomes irrelevant, there are few signs it is capable of making such compromises that would jeopardize its last existing base of support, "the international community," and the Israeli government.

Thus, the Palestinians are entering a period, similar to the 1970s, where the only credible leadership is isolated and scorned by Israel and its Western backers who continue to try to prop up or nurture pliable clients.

Arab Regimes More Divided than Ever over Israel, U.S.

The divisions between moderates and those resisting U.S. hegemony broke into open confrontation during the Gaza crisis, with the two blocs convening rival summits. The moderates, particularly Egypt, undoubtedly lost the political and public opinion battle. Throughout the region, there were unprecedented accusations of collusion with Israel directed at Egypt, which failed to mount an effective public defense.

Moderates boycotted an informal Arab summit convened by Qatar on 16 January 2009. Reflecting an official strategy of demonizing Iran, one of Egypt's official newspapers dismissed the Doha summit as "Persian" rather than "Arab."⁸ Nevertheless, the PA's absence left the floor to Hamas to represent Palestinians, further enhancing the latter's status. Qatar, which hosts a major U.S. military base, and Mauritania cut off all ties with Israel. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad pronounced the Arab Peace Initiative dead and suspended indirect Turkish-brokered peace talks with Israel.

Despite attempts to patch over differences at a 19 June 2008 meeting in Kuwait, Arab leaders remain deeply divided over relations with the United States and how to deal with Israel. Hamas' ability to deny Israel any strategic achievement in Gaza--like Hizballah's success in 2006--reinforced and expanded the constituency arguing that resistance is a viable option, and that without the power-balancing effects of resistance, no negotiations can achieve meaningful results. The moderates', supporting open-ended negotiations that have achieved little in 18 years, reliance on the United States and holding out the Arab Peace Initiative indefinitely have few cards left to play. As their priority is preservation of their increasingly unpopular regimes, moderates are unlikely to be able to offer any creative initiatives, although it can be expected that among their tactics will be the further demonization of Islamist-led opposition and resistance movements in an attempt to play into Western fears and prejudices.

A notable phenomenon is NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) member and spurned EU candidate Turkey's emergence as a regional power apparently more sympathetic to the pro-resistance bloc. In addition to his country's brokering role on behalf of Syria, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered to represent Hamas' interests at the UN during the crisis and issued uncharacteristically harsh condemnations of Israeli behavior and violations of international law. This was in step not only with Arab public opinion, but also with that in Turkey, where hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Istanbul against the Israeli attack. Turkey is not only supplanting a regional role once played by Egypt but, along with Iran, asserting that Western powers are not the only non-Arabs who can intervene in the Arab world.

Enter the Obama Administration

In his first detailed remarks after taking office, President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to Middle East peace and appointed the widely-respected Northern Ireland peace broker, former Senator George Mitchell, as his new envoy.

But Obama's basic approach remained unchanged from that of his predecessor. Obama fully accepted the Israeli narrative of its attack on Gaza and reaffirmed that "we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats."⁹

The president reiterated that Hamas must abide by the Quartet conditions to "recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements." In effect, Obama expects Hamas to accept Israel's highly controversial and anathema to most Palestinians political demand to be recognized as a "Jewish state," even while Israel is not required to accept any Palestinian rights even those grounded in international law; renounce any Palestinian right to self-defense or resistance while Palestinians are under occupation, blockade and constant Israeli attack; and abide by agreements that Israel has systematically violated without consequence. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal explicitly rejected the Quartet conditions in his 21 January 2009 speech, while reaffirming his movement's willingness to engage in a political process on fair terms.

Obama insisted that reopening Gaza's borders--a fundamental requirement of the Fourth Geneva Conventions and on which Palestinians' lives literally depends--be conditioned on "an appropriate monitoring regime, with the international and Palestinian Authority participating." Specifically, Obama stated that the United States "will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot rearm." Obama, like Bush, has accepted the Israeli view that Palestinian violence, rather than Israeli occupation, siege and active colonization and the far more massive Israeli-generated violence these entail, should be the sole focus of U.S. concern.

President Obama reaffirmed the boycott of Hamas and continues to recognize Mahmoud Abbas as PA president. This was confirmed by the State Department spokesman Robert Wood. Although when challenged, Wood could not provide any legal basis for how Abbas' expired term was extended.¹⁰

The new administration has therefore publicly recommitted to a set of policies that are demonstrated not to work and to exacerbate conflict, violence and political stalemate.

The only bright spot was Mitchell's appointment. His earlier foray to the region produced the 2001 Mitchell Report, which called for a full cessation of all violence by both Israelis and Palestinians, and a complete freeze on Israeli settlement construction. This less biased approach contrasts with now standard U.S. policy of opposing only Palestinian violence while endorsing much more devastating Israeli violence.

Above all, Mitchell brings with him his reputation as the broker of the 1998 Belfast Agreement, which heralded the end of the bloody conflict in Northern Ireland. But that experience demonstrates why the odds are stacked firmly against a similar success in the Middle East.

In Northern Ireland, violence by the Irish Republican Army (IRA), loyalist and other paramilitaries came to be viewed as the symptom of systemic injustice that had to be redressed through an inclusive political process. Moreover, British state-sponsored violence always presented--like Israeli violence--as "self-defense" came to be seen as part of the problem rather than a solution. Previously, demonized parties, such as Sinn Fein, were brought into the process in contrast to the continued exclusion of Hamas. No party was forced a priori to accept its adversaries' political demands or renounce its own. Each was allowed to represent the interests and views of those who elected it, thus producing an agreement that could enjoy broad support.

Finally, the United States used its weight to pressure the British who were the strong side in that conflict and support Irish nationalists, the weaker side. In this sense, the Irish American lobby had a beneficial influence on U.S. policy because it helped level the power imbalance so that negotiations could succeed. The Israel lobby, by contrast, works to push the U.S. to support Israeli intransigence and pressure the vastly weaker Palestinians and will mobilize all its resources to frustrate Mitchell's mission. Indeed, before Mitchell even set foot in the region, a major Israel lobby figure signaled opposition to the new envoy, precisely because he might be "too fair."¹¹

This leads to the discouraging conclusion that without the political support and policy framework needed to change an already tried and failed approach, Mitchell's determination and skill are unlikely to make much difference.

Ali Abunimah is a fellow at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC. He is an expert on Palestine, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Abunimah also co-founded The Electronic Intifada, an online publication about Palestine and the Palestine-Israeli conflict, Electronic Iraq and Electronic Lebanon.

The views expressed in this information brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

¹See Ali Abunimah, "President Obama and the Prospects for Israeli-Palestinian Peace: An Analysis," Palestine Center Information Brief No. 169, 17 November 2008, [http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/3172/pid/223/TPL/InformationBrief/displaytype/raw].
²Amnesty International, "Israel used white phosphorus in Gaza civilian areas," 19 January 2009, [http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/israeli-armys-use-white-phosphorus-gaza-clear-undeniable-20090119].
³See United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, "Field update on Gaza from the Humanitarian Coordinator 22-23 January 2009," [http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_gaza_humanitarian_situation_report_2009_01_22_english.pdf].
⁴For a good analysis of events leading up to the attack, see John Mearsheimer, "Another war, another defeat," The American Conservative, 26 January 2009, [http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/jan/26/00006].
⁵See http://www.bdsmovement.net.
⁶Amos Harel, "IDF censor bans naming officers involved in Gaza op," Haaretz, 23 January 2009, [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1057964.html].
⁷See Mouin Rabbani, "Out of the rubble," The National, 23 January 2009, [http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090123/REVIEW/759141570/0/NEWS]; "Can Abbas survive after Gaza war?" Aljazeera.net, 17 January 2009, [http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/200911711953774195.html]; and Patrick Cockburn, "Fatah fears Gaza conflict has put Hamas in the ascendancy," The Independent, 23 January 2009, [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/fatah-fears-gaza-conflict-has-put-hamas-in-the-ascendancy-1513430.html]; Robert Fisk, "So far, Obama's missed the point on Gaza," The Independent, 22 January 2009, [http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-so-far-obamas-missed-the-point-on-gaza-1488632.html].
⁸See: "EGYPT: Biting criticism of Doha summit," Los Angeles Times blog, 19 January 2009, [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2009/01/egypt-biting-cr.html].
⁹Transcript: "President Obama Delivers Remarks to State Department Employees," The Washington Post, 22 January 2009, [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/22/AR2009012202550.html].
¹⁰See transcript of State Department Daily Press Briefing for 23 January 2009, [http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2009/jan/115333.htm].
¹¹James Besser, "Mitchell As Envoy Could Split Center," The Jewish Week, 25 January 2009, [http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c37_a14675/News/National.html].

HENRY SIEGMAN ON HAMAS

2009-01-23T12:28:00.000Z

Israel’s Lies

Henry Siegman

London Review of Books

Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network.

I am not aware of a single major American newspaper, radio station or TV channel whose coverage of the assault on Gaza questions this version of events. Criticism of Israel’s actions, if any (and there has been none from the Bush administration), has focused instead on whether the IDF’s carnage is proportional to the threat it sought to counter, and whether it is taking adequate measures to prevent civilian casualties.

Middle East peacemaking has been smothered in deceptive euphemisms, so let me state bluntly that each of these claims is a lie. Israel, not Hamas, violated the truce: Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel; in return, Israel was to ease its throttlehold on Gaza. In fact, during the truce, it tightened it further. This was confirmed not only by every neutral international observer and NGO on the scene but by Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division. In an interview in Ha’aretz on 22 December, he accused Israel’s government of having made a ‘central error’ during the tahdiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce, by failing ‘to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip . . . When you create a tahdiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues,’ General Zakai said, ‘it is obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahdiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire . . . You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they’re in, and expect that Hamas will just sit around and do nothing.’

The truce, which began in June last year and was due for renewal in December, required both parties to refrain from violent action against the other. Hamas had to cease its rocket assaults and prevent the firing of rockets by other groups such as Islamic Jihad (even Israel’s intelligence agencies acknowledged this had been implemented with surprising effectiveness), and Israel had to put a stop to its targeted assassinations and military incursions. This understanding was seriously violated on 4 November, when the IDF entered Gaza and killed six members of Hamas. Hamas responded by launching Qassam rockets and Grad missiles. Even so, it offered to extend the truce, but only on condition that Israel ended its blockade. Israel refused. It could have met its obligation to protect its citizens by agreeing to ease the blockade, but it didn’t even try. It cannot be said that Israel launched its assault to protect its citizens from rockets. It did so to protect its right to continue the strangulation of Gaza’s population.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Hamas declared an end to suicide bombings and rocket fire when it decided to join the Palestinian political process, and largely stuck to it for more than a year. Bush publicly welcomed that decision, citing it as an example of the success of his campaign for democracy in the Middle East. (He had no other success to point to.) When Hamas unexpectedly won the election, Israel and the US immediately sought to delegitimise the result and embraced Mahmoud Abbas, the head of Fatah, who until then had been dismissed by Israel’s leaders as a ‘plucked chicken’. They armed and trained his security forces to overthrow Hamas; and when Hamas – brutally, to be sure – pre-empted this violent attempt to reverse the result of the first honest democratic election in the modern Middle East, Israel and the Bush administration imposed the blockade.

Israel seeks to counter these indisputable facts by maintaining that in withdrawing Israeli settlements from Gaza in 2005, Ariel Sharon gave Hamas the chance to set out on the path to statehood, a chance it refused to take; instead, it transformed Gaza into a launching-pad for firing missiles at Israel’s civilian population. The charge is a lie twice over. First, for all its failings, Hamas brought to Gaza a level of law and order unknown in recent years, and did so without the large sums of money that donors showered on the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. It eliminated the violent gangs and warlords who terrorised Gaza under Fatah’s rule. Non-observant Muslims, Christians and other minorities have more religious freedom under Hamas rule than they would have in Saudi Arabia, for example, or under many other Arab regimes.

The greater lie is that Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza was intended as a prelude to further withdrawals and a peace agreement. This is how Sharon’s senior adviser Dov Weisglass, who was also his chief negotiator with the Americans, described the withdrawal from Gaza, in an interview with Ha’aretz in August 2004:

What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements [i.e. the major settlement blocks on the West Bank] would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns . . . The significance [of the agreement with the US] is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with [President Bush’s] authority and permission . . . and the ratification of both houses of Congress.

Do the Israelis and Americans think that Palestinians don’t read the Israeli papers, or that when they saw what was happening on the West Bank they couldn’t figure out for themselves what Sharon was up to?

Israel’s government would like the world to believe that Hamas launched its Qassam rockets because that is what terrorists do and Hamas is a generic terrorist group. In fact, Hamas is no more a ‘terror organisation’ (Israel’s preferred term) than the Zionist movement was during its struggle for a Jewish homeland. In the late 1930s and 1940s, parties within the Zionist movement resorted to terrorist activities for strategic reasons. According to Benny Morris, it was the Irgun that first targeted civilians. He writes in Righteous Victims that an upsurge of Arab terrorism in 1937 ‘triggered a wave of Irgun bombings against Arab crowds and buses, introducing a new dimension to the conflict’. He also documents atrocities committed during the 1948-49 war by the IDF, admitting in a 2004 interview, published in Ha’aretz, that material released by Israel’s Ministry of Defence showed that ‘there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought . . . In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them, and destroy the villages themselves.’ In a number of Palestinian villages and towns the IDF carried out organised executions of civilians. Asked by Ha’aretz whether he condemned the ethnic cleansing, Morris replied that he did not:

A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.

In other words, when Jews target and kill innocent civilians to advance their national struggle, they are patriots. When their adversaries do so, they are terrorists.

It is too easy to describe Hamas simply as a ‘terror organisation’. It is a religious nationalist movement that resorts to terrorism, as the Zionist movement did during its struggle for statehood, in the mistaken belief that it is the only way to end an oppressive occupation and bring about a Palestinian state. While Hamas’s ideology formally calls for that state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, this doesn’t determine Hamas’s actual policies today any more than the same declaration in the PLO charter determined Fatah’s actions.

These are not the conclusions of an apologist for Hamas but the opinions of the former head of Mossad and Sharon’s national security adviser, Ephraim Halevy. The Hamas leadership has undergone a change ‘right under our very noses’, Halevy wrote recently in Yedioth Ahronoth, by recognising that ‘its ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future.’ It is now ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state within the temporary borders of 1967. Halevy noted that while Hamas has not said how ‘temporary’ those borders would be, ‘they know that the moment a Palestinian state is established with their co-operation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the game: they will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original ideological goals.’ In an earlier article, Halevy also pointed out the absurdity of linking Hamas to al-Qaida.

In the eyes of al-Qaida, the members of Hamas are perceived as heretics due to their stated desire to participate, even indirectly, in processes of any understandings or agreements with Israel. [The Hamas political bureau chief, Khaled] Mashal’s declaration diametrically contradicts al-Qaida’s approach, and provides Israel with an opportunity, perhaps a historic one, to leverage it for the better.

Why then are Israel’s leaders so determined to destroy Hamas? Because they believe that its leadership, unlike that of Fatah, cannot be intimidated into accepting a peace accord that establishes a Palestinian ‘state’ made up of territorially disconnected entities over which Israel would be able to retain permanent control. Control of the West Bank has been the unwavering objective of Israel’s military, intelligence and political elites since the end of the Six-Day War.[*] They believe that Hamas would not permit such a cantonisation of Palestinian territory, no matter how long the occupation continues. They may be wrong about Abbas and his superannuated cohorts, but they are entirely right about Hamas.

Middle East observers wonder whether Israel’s assault on Hamas will succeed in destroying the organisation or expelling it from Gaza. This is an irrelevant question. If Israel plans to keep control over any future Palestinian entity, it will never find a Palestinian partner, and even if it succeeds in dismantling Hamas, the movement will in time be replaced by a far more radical Palestinian opposition.

If Barack Obama picks a seasoned Middle East envoy who clings to the idea that outsiders should not present their own proposals for a just and sustainable peace agreement, much less press the parties to accept it, but instead leave them to work out their differences, he will assure a future Palestinian resistance far more extreme than Hamas – one likely to be allied with al-Qaida. For the US, Europe and most of the rest of the world, this would be the worst possible outcome. Perhaps some Israelis, including the settler leadership, believe it would serve their purposes, since it would provide the government with a compelling pretext to hold on to all of Palestine. But this is a delusion that would bring about the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

Anthony Cordesman, one of the most reliable military analysts of the Middle East, and a friend of Israel, argued in a 9 January report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the tactical advantages of continuing the operation in Gaza were outweighed by the strategic cost – and were probably no greater than any gains Israel may have made early in the war in selective strikes on key Hamas facilities. ‘Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal, or at least one it can credibly achieve?’ he asks. ‘Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process? To be blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes.’ Cordesman concludes that ‘any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends.’

15 January

Note

[*] See my piece in the LRB, 16 August 2007.

Henry Siegman, director of the US Middle East Project in New York, is a visiting research professor at SOAS, University of London. He is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America.

ANOTHER WAR ANOTHER ISRAELI/US DEFEAT

2009-01-19T20:13:00.003Z

The Gaza offensive has succeeded in punishing the
Palestinians but not in making Israel more secure.

By John J. Mearsheimer

Israelis and their American supporters claim that Israel learned its
lessons well from the disastrous 2006 Lebanon war and has devised a
winning strategy for the present war against Hamas. Of course, when a
ceasefire comes, Israel will declare victory. Don’t believe it.
Israel has foolishly started another war it cannot win.

The campaign in Gaza is said to have two objectives: 1) to put an end
to the rockets and mortars that Palestinians have been firing into
southern Israel since it withdrew from Gaza in August 2005; 2) to
restore Israel’s deterrent, which was said to be diminished by the
Lebanon fiasco, by Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, and by its
inability to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

But these are not the real goals of Operation Cast Lead. The actual
purpose is connected to Israel’s long-term vision of how it intends
to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a
broader strategic goal: the creation of a “Greater Israel.”
Specifically, Israel’s leaders remain determined to control all of
what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and
the West Bank. The Palestinians would have limited autonomy in a
handful of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves, one of
which is Gaza. Israel would control the borders around them, movement
between them, the air above and the water below them.

The key to achieving this is to inflict massive pain on the
Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a
defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for
controlling their future. This strategy, which was first articulated
by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s and has heavily influenced Israeli
policy since 1948, is commonly referred to as the “Iron Wall.”

What has been happening in Gaza is fully consistent with this
strategy.

Let’s begin with Israel’s decision to withdraw from Gaza in 2005. The
conventional wisdom is that Israel was serious about making peace
with the Palestinians and that its leaders hoped the exit from Gaza
would be a major step toward creating a viable Palestinian state.
According to the New York Times’ Thomas L. Friedman, Israel was
giving the Palestinians an opportunity to “build a decent mini-state
there—a Dubai on the Mediterranean,” and if they did so, it would
“fundamentally reshape the Israeli debate about whether the
Palestinians can be handed most of the West Bank.”

This is pure fiction. Even before Hamas came to power, the Israelis
intended to create an open-air prison for the Palestinians in Gaza
and inflict great pain on them until they complied with Israel’s
wishes. Dov Weisglass, Ariel Sharon’s closest adviser at the time,
candidly stated that the disengagement from Gaza was aimed at halting
the peace process, not encouraging it. He described the disengagement
as “formaldehyde that’s necessary so that there will not be a
political process with the Palestinians.” Moreover, he emphasized
that the withdrawal “places the Palestinians under tremendous
pressure. It forces them into a corner where they hate to be.”

Arnon Soffer, a prominent Israeli demographer who also advised
Sharon, elaborated on what that pressure would look like. “When 2.5
million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human
catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they
are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The
pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible
war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill
and kill. All day, every day.”

In January 2006, five months after the Israelis pulled their settlers
out of Gaza, Hamas won a decisive victory over Fatah in the
Palestinian legislative elections. This meant trouble for Israel’s
strategy because Hamas was democratically elected, well organized,
not corrupt like Fatah, and unwilling to accept Israel’s existence.
Israel responded by ratcheting up economic pressure on the
Palestinians, but it did not work. In fact, the situation took
another turn for the worse in March 2007, when Fatah and Hamas came
together to form a national unity government. Hamas’s stature and
political power were growing, and Israel’s divide-and-conquer
strategy was unraveling.

To make matters worse, the national unity government began pushing
for a long-term ceasefire. The Palestinians would end all missile
attacks on Israel if the Israelis would stop arresting and
assassinating Palestinians and end their economic stranglehold,
opening the border crossings into Gaza.

Israel rejected that offer and with American backing set out to
foment a civil war between Fatah and Hamas that would wreck the
national unity government and put Fatah in charge. The plan backfired
when Hamas drove Fatah out of Gaza, leaving Hamas in charge there and
the more pliant Fatah in control of the West Bank. Israel then
tightened the screws on the blockade around Gaza, causing even
greater hardship and suffering among the Palestinians living there.

Hamas responded by continuing to fire rockets and mortars into
Israel, while emphasizing that they still sought a long-term
ceasefire, perhaps lasting ten years or more. This was not a noble
gesture on Hamas’s part: they sought a ceasefire because the balance
of power heavily favored Israel. The Israelis had no interest in a
ceasefire and merely intensified the economic pressure on Gaza. But
in the late spring of 2008, pressure from Israelis living under the
rocket attacks led the government to agree to a six-month ceasefire
starting on June 19. That agreement, which formally ended on Dec. 19,
immediately preceded the present war, which began on Dec. 27.

The official Israeli position blames Hamas for undermining the
ceasefire. This view is widely accepted in the United States, but it
is not true. Israeli leaders disliked the ceasefire from the start,
and Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the IDF to begin preparing
for the present war while the ceasefire was being negotiated in June
2008. Furthermore, Dan Gillerman, Israel’s former ambassador to the
UN, reports that Jerusalem began to prepare the propaganda campaign
to sell the present war months before the conflict began. For its
part, Hamas drastically reduced the number of missile attacks during
the first five months of the ceasefire. A total of two rockets were
fired into Israel during September and October, none by Hamas.

How did Israel behave during this same period? It continued arresting
and assassinating Palestinians on the West Bank, and it continued the
deadly blockade that was slowly strangling Gaza. Then on Nov. 4, as
Americans voted for a new president, Israel attacked a tunnel inside
Gaza and killed six Palestinians. It was the first major violation of
the ceasefire, and the Palestinians—who had been “careful to maintain
the ceasefire,” according to Israel’s Intelligence and Terrorism
Information Center—responded by resuming rocket attacks. The calm
that had prevailed since June vanished as Israel ratcheted up the
blockade and its attacks into Gaza and the Palestinians hurled more
rockets at Israel. It is worth noting that not a single Israeli was
killed by Palestinian missiles between Nov. 4 and the launching of
the war on Dec. 27.

As the violence increased, Hamas made clear that it had no interest
in extending the ceasefire beyond Dec. 19, which is hardly
surprising, since it had not worked as intended. In mid-December,
however, Hamas informed Israel that it was still willing to negotiate
a long-term ceasefire if it included an end to the arrests and
assassinations as well as the lifting of the blockade. But the
Israelis, having used the ceasefire to prepare for war against Hamas,
rejected this overture. The bombing of Gaza commenced eight days
after the failed ceasefire formally ended.

If Israel wanted to stop missile attacks from Gaza, it could have
done so by arranging a long-term ceasefire with Hamas. And if Israel
were genuinely interested in creating a viable Palestinian state, it
could have worked with the national unity government to implement a
meaningful ceasefire and change Hamas’s thinking about a two-state
solution. But Israel has a different agenda: it is determined to
employ the Iron Wall strategy to get the Palestinians in Gaza to
accept their fate as hapless subjects of a Greater Israel.

This brutal policy is clearly reflected in Israel’s conduct of the
Gaza War. Israel and its supporters claim that the IDF is going to
great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, in some cases taking
risks that put Israeli soldiers in jeopardy. Hardly. One reason to
doubt these claims is that Israel refuses to allow reporters into the
war zone: it does not want the world to see what its soldiers and
bombs are doing inside Gaza. At the same time, Israel has launched a
massive propaganda campaign to put a positive spin on the horror
stories that do emerge.

The best evidence, however, that Israel is deliberately seeking to
punish the broader population in Gaza is the death and destruction
the IDF has wrought on that small piece of real estate. Israel has
killed over 1,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 4,000. Over half
of the casualties are civilians, and many are children. The IDF’s
opening salvo on Dec. 27 took place as children were leaving school,
and one of its primary targets that day was a large group of
graduating police cadets, who hardly qualified as terrorists. In what
Ehud Barak called “an all-out war against Hamas,” Israel has targeted
a university, schools, mosques, homes, apartment buildings,
government offices, and even ambulances. A senior Israeli military
official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, explained the logic
behind Israel’s expansive target set: “There are many aspects of
Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because
everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against
Israel.” In other words, everyone is a terrorist and everything is a
legitimate target.

Israelis tend to be blunt, and they occasionally say what they are
really doing. After the IDF killed 40 Palestinian civilians in a UN
school on Jan. 6, Ha’aretz reported that “senior officers admit that
the IDF has been using enormous firepower.” One officer explained,
“For us, being cautious means being aggressive. From the minute we
entered, we’ve acted like we’re at war. That creates enormous damage
on the ground … I just hope those who have fled the area of Gaza City
in which we are operating will describe the shock.”

One might accept that Israel is waging “a cruel, all-out war against
1.5 million Palestinian civilians,” as Ha’aretz put it in an
editorial, but argue that it will eventually achieve its war aims and
the rest of the world will quickly forget the horrors inflicted on
the people of Gaza.

This is wishful thinking. For starters, Israel is unlikely to stop
the rocket fire for any appreciable period of time unless it agrees
to open Gaza’s borders and stop arresting and killing Palestinians.
Israelis talk about cutting off the supply of rockets and mortars
into Gaza, but weapons will continue to come in via secret tunnels
and ships that sneak through Israel’s naval blockade. It will also be
impossible to police all of the goods sent into Gaza through
legitimate channels.

Israel could try to conquer all of Gaza and lock the place down. That
would probably stop the rocket attacks if Israel deployed a large
enough force. But then the IDF would be bogged down in a costly
occupation against a deeply hostile population. They would eventually
have to leave, and the rocket fire would resume. And if Israel fails
to stop the rocket fire and keep it stopped, as seems likely, its
deterrent will be diminished, not strengthened.

More importantly, there is little reason to think that the Israelis
can beat Hamas into submission and get the Palestinians to live
quietly in a handful of Bantustans inside Greater Israel. Israel has
been humiliating, torturing, and killing Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories since 1967 and has not come close to cowing them. Indeed,
Hamas’s reaction to Israel’s brutality seems to lend credence to
Nietzsche’s remark that what does not kill you makes you stronger.

But even if the unexpected happens and the Palestinians cave, Israel
would still lose because it will become an apartheid state. As Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert recently said, Israel will “face a South
African-style struggle” if the Palestinians do not get a viable state
of their own. “As soon as that happens,” he argued, “the state of
Israel is finished.” Yet Olmert has done nothing to stop settlement
expansion and create a viable Palestinian state, relying instead on
the Iron Wall strategy to deal with the Palestinians.

There is also little chance that people around the world who follow
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will soon forget the appalling
punishment that Israel is meting out in Gaza. The destruction is just
too obvious to miss, and too many people—especially in the Arab and
Islamic world—care about the Palestinians’ fate. Moreover, discourse
about this longstanding conflict has undergone a sea change in the
West in recent years, and many of us who were once wholly sympathetic
to Israel now see that the Israelis are the victimizers and the
Palestinians are the victims. What is happening in Gaza will
accelerate that changing picture of the conflict and long be seen as
a dark stain on Israel’s reputation.

The bottom line is that no matter what happens on the battlefield,
Israel cannot win its war in Gaza. In fact, it is pursuing a
strategy—with lots of help from its so-called friends in the
Diaspora—that is placing its long-term future at risk.

__________________________________________
John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and coauthor of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

ANGRY ARAB EVALUATES LAST THREE WEEKS OF WAR ON GAZA

2009-01-18T20:38:00.003Z

On balance: Evaluation of the Israeli festival of slaughter and butchery in Gaza

As'ad AbuKhalil
Sat Jan 17th, 2009

[Excellent analysis, apart from the rather childish comments on Arafat - OURAIM]

From war to war (which is a title of a book by Nadav Safran),
that is the context in which we need to evaluate our century-old
conflict with Israel. You can't isolate each chapter or war or
slaughter and analyze it without the larger context of the conflict.

The press conference by the Israeli prime minister and his
defense minister was remarkable: less triumphalist than
usual, and certainly vague about goals and successes. Now
we can evaluate the goals within the context of Israel's
declared goals, and within the context of Israel's
strategic plan.

For somebody of my age, I can say this at first: that from
1948 until the 1990s, every Israeli military success more
smashing the one before: the 1973 was a different story
because it was the only Arab-Israeli war that was initiated
by the Arab side (remarkable when you think about the
propaganda of the "beleaguered Israel"), and it was bungled
by the Egyptian (Nazi) dictator, Anwar Sadat (Jimmy
Carter's favorite personality and friend), and Israel
(contrary to present-day Arab states' propaganda) wound up
winning overall at the end.

So Israel's strategic posture was predicated on
intimidating 1) the armies of the enemy; 2) the population
of the enemy. Israeli psychological warfare succeeded for
decades in convincing the enemy that Israel is way too
mighty and way too invincible to be damaged by any military
effort. Arabs reached a mood of defeatism that permeated
the political culture, and helped in securing the survival
and propaganda of the ruling regimes. Israel's tactic was
meant to discourage any political violence or even defense
from the other side.

You also need to compare to the times when Israel faced
non-state actors: we have different episodes: from
Al-Karamah battle in 1968 (a crucial watershed in
fida'iyyin recruitment), to the various chapters of Israeli
invasions of Lebanon culminating in the 1982 invasion of
Lebanon. I am quite familiar and witnessed the responses to
Israeli invasions of Lebanon. It is in that context that I
find Gaza (under siege and cut off from the world with
Egypt playing the role of the ally of Israel) to be an
utter failure for the Israeli side. I never expected much
from Hamas in terms of military effectiveness, and I think
that the Israeli-Egyptian-Saudi-Dahlan plan was based on a
low estimation of Hamas' military effectiveness.

In previous confrontations in the West Bank or in Lebanon
in the 1980s, the Israeli military would bomb from the air
for a day or two, and then advance swiftly. And that was
exactly what happened in the invasion of Lebanon in the
summer of 1982: now, the lack of stiff resistance back then
had to do with many factors, including the lousy leadership
of `Arafat (who cared about preserving his little empire
more than about resistance and who is not dead enough as
far as I am concerned, and may his grave deepen), the gap
between people of the South and the resistance, and the
financial regularization of the PLO's fighting force, and
the psychological factor that often curtailed the ability
of the fighting force, all helped the Israeli plan. True,
there was stiff resistance in some places: like Rashidiyyah
and `Ayn Al-Hilwah but it was sporadic and disorganized.
Only in West Beirut, a strong fighting force was prepared
and they were ready for a confrontation with Israel, and
that is why Israel never invaded the city: it only waited
until the evacuation of the fighters and then supervised
the butchery of the women and children in the Sabra and
Shatila camps--slaughter of women and children is a classic
specialty of the Zionist forces even before the
establishment of the state.

But Hamas performed far better than the expectations of its
enemies and even of its leadership in Syria and Lebanon.
Israel would have succeeded if it achieved what it wanted:
to achieve an unconditional surrender of Hamas. That's what
it used to get from Fatah in the West Bank: Arafat would
negotiate the terms of his surrender with third-parties and
that would be that (like in Bethlehem). Yet, Hamas defiance
and the launching of rockets continued to the last day--in
fact it continues as I write this from what I see on the
screen. Hamas leaders did not leave as Fatah leaders and
fighters would (in the era under Arafat-Dahlan-Rajjub in
the West Bank bantustan after Oslo), but continued in stiff
resistance and defiance to the very last end.

So Israel failed in 1) achieving a total surrender of
Hamas;

2) in propping up the Dahlan-Abu Mazen gangs who are more
discredited today than ever. Early in the campaign, Dahlan
appeared on Al-Arabiyya and on Egyptian TV and was quite
bombastic because he was expecting that the matter would be
over in the first week. When that did not happen, he
disappeared, and some say that he went back to
Montenegro--his news base.

3) Israel failed in achieving a victory that it needed: a
victory that would once and for all put to rest the
humiliating defeat of Israel in 2006. Hamas knew that its
performance was extremely influential in possibly
dramatically altering the image of the Israeli soldiers in
the eyes of all Arabs: fighters and lay people alike, and
it knew that expectations were in building on the
performance on Hizbullah in 2006;

4) Israel failed in creating a rift between the Palestinian
people and Hamas, just as it failed to create a rift
between the population of the South and Hizbullah, its
silly SMS messages notwithstanding;

5) Israel failed in putting an end to the rockets;

6) Israel failed in smashing Hamas;

7) Israel failed in creating a new psychological climate in
the Middle East: it was expected that Israel would use more
massive and indiscriminate violence than before, and that
it would try to "shock and awe" more than before because it
wanted to kill the image of its humiliation in South
Lebanon. That was not accomplished despite the high number
of casualties among the civilians.

8) Israeli prime minister today bragged about intelligence
successes: but that was inflated. It is true the killing of
two Hamas leaders (along with tens of innocent civilians
but that is how Israel "assassinates") was a success for
Israel but there are other Hamas leaders. Plus, Israel
policy of assuming that an organization would die by
killing the leader has always been one of the many dumb
Israeli miscalculations. The most recent case was in 1992
when Israeli terrorist leaders killed Abbas Musawi (and his
family) and they got...Hasan Nasrallah instead. I have no
doubt that they probably now regret killing Musawi. And
Hamas now operates on the assumption that all leaders may
die and they have most likely structured the organization
on that assumption, unlike the centrally run, say, DFLP or
Fatah under `Arafat.

9) Israel failed to build on the years-old Saudi policy of
mobilizing Arab public opinion against Iran, instead of
Israel. That clearly failed miserably. If anything, Arab
public opinion is more mobilized against Israel than any
other time in memory.

10) Israel failed to sell its slaughter as a legitimate
contribution to the "war on terrorism". Clearly, the scenes
of carnage offended public opinion around the world with
the exception of the US and the UN embassy of Micronesia.
But there are successes: if Israel was aiming to kill a
very large number of women and children, that was achieved
to a large measure. Very knowledgeable sources in Beirut
tell me that only 5% of Hamas' fighting abilities were
damaged in this war thus far, and there will be another
round no doubt. But think about Karamah battle. In Karamah:
a lot of the lore was built by Arafat's bombast and a unit
of the Jordanian army fought with the Palestinian
resistance. This time around, Arab and particularly
Palestinian public opinion will look with admiration at the
performance of Hamas during this 22 days. It is commonly
estimated that some 20,000 Palestinians volunteered in the
resistance movement after Karamah, and I expect a
region-wide campaign of recruitment to the benefit of
Hamas.

Israel's choice of Palestinian leadership (supported by
Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt), i.e., Dahlan gangs, are
discredited beyond repair. I mean, when I read in Saudi
newspapers description of Dahlan as an Israeli stooge, you
know how Palestinian opinion will regard him--and the
fleeing of his men in their underwear did not help either.
From 1968 to 1978, the Fatah movement transformed from a
band of fighters in Jordan to an army (badly run to be sure
by Arafat) with all sorts of heavy weapons.

There is now a point of no-return: Arabs are no more afraid
of Israeli soldiers. From that loss, Israel shall never
recover and it will expedite the inevitable process of the
elimination of Zionism from Palestine. The confrontation
with Israel is cumulative, and this culmination is now not
in the interests of Israel. Many Arabs now talk about the
defeat of Israel: I rarely heard those sentiments before
2006.

QUILLIAM FONDATION CORRECTED OVER THEIR NONSENSE ON HAMAS

2009-01-16T14:49:00.001Z

FORWARD THINKING

URGENT PRESS RELEASE – 16/01/09

Hamas leaders did not support a strict Islamic code as
recently claimed.

Forward Thinking calls on Quillam Foundation to withdraw
its misleading and erroneous press statement issued on 24th
December 2008 claiming that Hamas had passed a bill for an
Islamic Penal Code in Gaza.

It was claimed that the bill included “punishments such as
flogging chopping of the hands, crucifixation and
execution”

Majid Nawaz, Director of Quilliam Foundation stated “Hamas
finally show their colours and their true colours of their
colleagues in their parent organisation – the Muslim
Brotherhood”

The statement was based on a report in the Al Hayat
newspaper 24/12/08

The New York Times Correspondent in Gaza who was present at
the Legislative Council meeting in which this bill was
mentioned told Forward Thinking that the reporter from Al
Hayat was not present as alleged and had filed a total
misleading account of events. The matter of introducing an
Islamic Penal Code was proposed by a member of the
Legislative Council but was rejected by the majority. We
were informed that any further discussion of the bill was
vetoed by senior Hamas members of the Legislative Council.

We believe that it is important to put this record right as
this erroneous information has been referred to in a number
of newspaper articles.

For further information please contact Oliver McTernan,
Forward Thinking Director on, 07891 914 019.

=======================

Forward Thinking
84-86 Regent St.
London W1B 5DD
UK

tel: 020.7734.2303
fax: 020.7494.2570

nosheen.oezcan@forwardthinking.org

FORMER E.U MEDIATOR WITH HAMAS PUTS GAZA SLAUGHTER INTO CONTEXT

2009-01-12T21:30:00.002Z

WEST'S 'MODERATES' VS 'EXTREMISTS' FLAWED

By Alastair Crooke
Conflicts Forum
January 11, 2009

Many have asked in the wake of Israel’s attack on Gaza, how Hamas, if
it saw the consequences of ending the ceasefire — and Hamas did
foresee the likelihood of disproportionate Israeli military action —
nonetheless could have acquiesced to the inevitable bloodshed —
bloodshed that an Israeli army, fixated on restoring its deterrence
after its failed 2006 war with Hesballah, would visit on the citizens
of Gaza. Some may read into this decision the cynicism of a movement
that prioritises resistance; but to do so would be to misread how
Hamas analyses their situation and understands the nature of
resistance.

At one level, the six month ceasefire simply had failed to satisfy
two key litmus tests: The circumstances of life of the Gazan people
continually had deteriorated, and the ceasefire was not seen to be
taking the Palestinian people any closer to a political solution. On
the contrary, Hamas saw a settlement receding further into the
distance.

In short, Israel — abetted by the US and Europe — had used the six
month ‘ceasefire’ not as a building-block towards doing serious
politics and real negotiation, but to squeeze the pips out of the
people of Gaza in the hope that a desperate people would turn on
their own representatives, leaving Hamas discredited and
marginalised. No Israeli had died during this ceasefire, but instead
of alleviating the conditions in Gaza, as agreed at the outset,
Israel incrementally aggravated them. Not surprisingly, the calm
eroded — and finally unravelled — following Israel’s military
incursion and breach of the ceasefire with its armed incursion into
Gaza on 5 November, in which six Hamas members were killed.

The Israeli objective to dismantle the movement that overwhelmingly
won the 2006 Parliamentary elections in Palestine stands naked in the
face of the explicit admission from Israeli officials that that
Israel had begun preparing the current attacks on Gaza (cited in
Haaretz 28 Dec 08)– even as the last ceasefire was being agreed.
Hamas was to be either to be eviscerated by a ‘ceasefire slow-death’;
or alternatively, be eliminated by massive military action.

European leaders bought into this strategy, hoping to pull-off a
quickie, under-the-table deal with western protégé President Abbas
that could be imposed on the Palestinians through a multi-national
‘peacekeeping’ force. This was to be achieved with the collaboration
of Egypt and Saudi Arabia governments who were becoming increasingly
fearful of the growing challenge to their own legitimacy in the
region, and who were not adverse to seeing Hamas cornered in Gaza and
‘punished’ by the Israelis.

Any psychologist however might have advised the European and US
policy-makers that putting one-and-a-half million Palestinians ‘on a
diet’, as an earlier chief-of-staff to the Israeli Prime Minister
described it, and shredding any plans or hopes that they may have had
for their futures, does not make humans more docile or more moderate.
After a while in the Gaza pressure-cooker, anger and despair boil-up:
Gaza ultimately was set to explode — one way or another.

If this was not discerned by western policy-makers, it was well
understood by Hamas. In other words, what is happening in Gaza was
all too foreseeable. A few Israelis saw this too, but their ‘grand
narrative’ of the global struggle between ‘moderates’ and
‘extremists’ overrode their instincts in respect to the local
Palestinian conflict.

The thesis that literally ‘everything’ must be done either to lever
‘moderates’ into power or prevent them from losing power —
euphemistically called ‘supporting moderation’ — lies at the heart of
the Gaza crisis.

It is a narrative that has served Israeli wider interests in
garnering legitimacy for their policies toward Iran, and in
dichotomising the region into ‘moderates’ and ‘extremists’. Quartet
Envoy Tony Blair’s proselytising around the world on this theme has
been a huge asset; but his, and other Quartet members’ espousal of
this doctrine, in practice has only pushed the prospect of a
political solution to the Israeli – Palestine conflict beyond reach —
by branding a mainstream Palestinian national liberation movement
such as Hamas ‘extreme’ — despite it having won national and local
elections.

Britain and the US have instead busied themselves in training a
Palestinian ‘special forces’ militia around Mahmoud Abbas, which has
been used to suppress political activity by Hamas, and to close-down
welfare and social organisations that are not aligned directly with
Abbas. A policy of political ‘cleansing’ of the West Bank, cloaked in
the rhetoric of ‘building security institutions’, predictably has
been met with an equivalent counter-reaction in Gaza. The paradoxical
consequence of this has been to create such a schism within the
Palestinian body politic that no Palestinian leader now enjoys the
legitimacy to bring a political solution before the people: The West
has sacrificed its wish for a political solution to its ideology of
‘moderation’ versus ‘extremism’.

Security officials have made clear that Israel will not permit fresh
elections in Palestine — for fear that Hamas will win; and whereas
the West probably will continue to bestow Mahmoud Abbas with the
trappings of legitimacy after his term in office expires on 9 January
2009, he will enjoy no such legitimacy amongst Palestinians. Indeed
the very effort to leverage such spurious legitimacy will discredit
him further.

This then is the backdrop against which Hamas elected to decline a
renewed ceasefire: To stand passive and cornered whilst Palestinians
in Gaza were made destitute and hopeless in an extended ceasefire and
to watch — acquiescent — as the Anglo-American political cleansing in
the West Bank proceeded, simply was not feasible. An explosion at
some point was inevitable.

The only option was to break the mould of a Gaza left ‘stewing’ in
its isolated misery, and a West Bank frozen in a pattern of Israeli
total control, but providing the all-important illusion of a
‘political process’ that western leaders could extol back home. This
represented a formula that Israel could happily sustain for years to
come, in Hamas’ view. The Israeli election campaign seemed to confirm
an electorate relapsing back into ‘security’ mode — having
interpreted the Annapolis ‘process’ to have demonstrated a hardening
of Palestinian negotiating positions: again there was an Israeli
consensus forming that there was ‘no partner for peace’.

In making such a decision, Hamas knew it could not defeat Israel’s
military strength; but the ‘war’ already is shuffling the cards of
both Palestinian and regional politics. If it extends, and if the
resistance is perceived by Palestinians and Muslims to acquit itself
well, then the structure of Palestinian leadership may fall ripe to
major re-structuring. Equally the regional anger being generated by
graphic scenes of death in Gaza possesses a potential for the
conflict to widen geographically and is coalescing Arab and Islamic
resistance against certain Arab leaderships. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
of Hesballah has pointed to this prospect in two recent key speeches:
Were such a broadening-out of the conflict to occur, it will carry
important consequences. These are all big and significant ‘ifs’. But
Hamas’ decision should be placed against this backdrop — rather than
be painted as the callous disregard of Palestinian lives.

Alastair Crooke is a former European Union mediator with Hamas and is
currently director of Conflicts Forum, based in Beirut.

HIZBULLAH AND GAZA, PALESTINE

2009-01-11T16:39:00.000Z

Will Hizballah intervene in the Gaza conflict?
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb,
The Electronic Intifada,
11 January 2009

A mock Katyusha rocket-launcher pointed towards Israel sits next to a main highway in southern Lebanon. (Matthew Cassel)

While Israel fervently attempts to terrorize the Palestinians into submission in Gaza, many observers have started to wonder why Hizballah has refrained from stepping in militarily to assist its brothers-in-arms, Hamas. Such musings fail to take account of the constraints on Hizballah's room for action, as well as the circumstances under which Hizballah would ignore such constraints. The question that should be posed is not so much if Hizballah will act, but when.

As things currently stand, Hizballah is not in a position to directly help Hamas militarily by opening a new front with Israel. In the first place, Hizballah and its supporters have only recently recovered from the devastating impact of Israel's war against them in July 2006. A Hizballah offensive against northern Israel would surely be met with "disproportionate" force on Israel's part, which Israel has been threatening as much for several months now. Mass destruction and devastation aside, Hizballah would once again be faced with intense domestic pressures to disarm, and possibly, more externally manufactured, locally-executed conspiracies hatched against it that could drag it into the kind of civil warfare that the movement found itself in during May 2008.

Armed action by Hizballah would not only hurt the movement but would also harm Hamas whose status as a nationalist resistance movement, capable of defending its own people, would be greatly undermined and its raison d'etre called into question. Furthermore, since Hamas has thus far managed to withstand the Israeli onslaught on its own without suffering any significant damage to its organizational hierarchy or military infrastructure, Hizballah does not regard an intervention on its part as an exigent need.

The preconditions for Hizballah's active engagement in the conflict are two. First, if Hamas is left bleeding to death on the battlefield, either due to the decapitation of its leadership ranks or if its military infrastructure suffers a significant blow, drastically impairing its military performance and leading to its eventual collapse, Hizballah would likely step in. Second, if the organization is forced to accept a conditional ceasefire along the lines of the current French-Egyptian proposal that meets all of Israel's key demands while weakening Hamas militarily and politically, Hizballah would feel compelled to come to its rescue.

For Hizballah, the need to act under such circumstances would override all the attendant costs that come with such action -- a calculation which takes as its basis Hizballah's moral responsibility towards the Palestinians and the shared strategic fate between the two resistance movements. As expressed by Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah on 16 July 2008: "[the resistance] is one project and the resistance movement is one movement and has one course, one destiny, one goal, despite its different parties, factions, beliefs, sects and intellectual and political trends ... Resistance movements in this region, especially in Lebanon and Palestine, complement one another and are contiguous groups ..."

Hizballah's view of the conflict in Gaza

This moral and strategic imperative to act is also based on Hizballah's understanding of the current war as but one episode of an open-ended and comprehensive war waged by the US-Israeli-"moderate" Arab axis against the jabhit al-mumana'a (political and military resistance front) which includes Iran, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas. According to this narrative, the events unfolding are simply an extension of the July War of 2006, as evinced by Israel's admission that one motive behind its current onslaught is to restore the deterrence capability and image it lost in July 2006. Further bolstering this view is the virtually identical stand moderate Arab regimes have taken on Gaza as the one taken in July 2006. In fact, the perception of the Arab role has shifted from one of "silence" and concealed "collaboration" with Israel in the July War, to open "cooperation" and "partnership" with the Zionist state in its war against Gaza. So blatant has Arab, and especially Egyptian, government support for Israel's military campaigns become, that even UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (known for his sympathies to the US and Israel) chided Arab regimes on 29 December for "not doing enough" to help the Palestinians in Gaza, while Israeli officials and media continue to knowingly embarrass their moderate Arab allies by flaunting their newly out-of-the closet relationship.

Considering the extent of Arab cooperation with Israel in its latest military (mis)adventure and in view of the ferocity of the latter, the current Gaza episode is deemed a particularly dangerous moment in the regional conflict insofar as it represents not merely a war against Hamas, but against the Palestinian cause, or as Nasrallah described it on 29 December, "the fate of Palestine." Given that the Palestinian cause is embodied by Hamas and defines the political identity of its regional allies, this conflict is one in which the ideological and strategic stakes for all members of the resistance front are extremely high. Nasrallah admitted as much in his 28 December speech: "what is happening in Gaza will have repercussions not only for Gaza alone or Palestine, but for the entire umma [a term used to refer to the Arab nation in a secular nationalist context and for the world community of Muslims]. We must continue work and not be satisfied with an activity here, a demonstration there ... we must exert every effort to defend our people."

Hizballah's regional strategy in the Gaza conflict

For Hizballah, the Israeli offensive against Gaza must have been foreseeable given Israel's repeated violations of its ceasefire agreement with Hamas over the past several months and the latter's refusal to renew it at least a month before it expired. It is more than likely that Hizballah has been preparing for this eventuality alongside Hamas for some time now. In a sign of such coordination, on 15 December Nasrallah used a televised speech to mobilize popular support for an "open ended" campaign to lift the siege on Gaza that was to be launched on 19 December, several days before the Israeli assault began. It is no coincidence that the Hizballah leader chose to make this announcement one day after Hamas' political head, Khaled Meshal, formally declared the movement's ceasefire with Israel over on 14 December.

Over and above this political coordination, Hizballah must have helped Hamas ready itself for such an Israeli operation by providing weapons and training, as well as through joint military planning. Hizballah officials' strong confidence in Hamas' military performance appears to stem from an intimate knowledge of the organization's capabilities. This conclusion reveals itself in the assertion made by the head of Hizballah's parliamentary bloc, Mohammad Raad, who claimed on 2 January that "the enemy will be surprised by the range of rockets found in the resistance's arsenal in Gaza." This argument is further bolstered by Nasrallah's admission in March 2002 that the three Hizballah officials whom Jordan had captured as they were trying to smuggle weapons into the West Bank, did in fact belong to the movement, as well as his declaration at the time that "to supply arms to the Palestinians is a duty ... it is shameful to consider such an act as a crime."

Hamas' fighting style also seems to bear the hallmarks of the military tactics Hizballah used during the July War such as its use of underground bunkers and tunnel networks, as well as adopting similar rocket tactics, all of which suggest Hizballah's extensive training of Hamas' military forces. Nasrallah came close to admitting as much when he claimed on 31 December that "the resistance in Gaza benefitted more from these lessons [from the July War] than the Israelis." More than simply receiving military training, Hamas's military strategy appears to conform to the "new school of fighting" founded by Hizballah's assassinated military leader, Imad Mughniyeh (himself rumored to have personally trained and equipped several Palestinian groups over the years), which combines conventional and non-conventional, guerilla warfare that functions not only to liberate occupied territory, but to defend it from aggression.

Hizballah's strategy vis-a-vis Egypt

Not only did Hizballah coordinate its activity on the Gaza crisis with Hamas, but also with Iran. One such indication of this coordination was the fact that the Iranian campaign against Egypt's closure of the Rafah crossing was launched several days in advance of the one kicked off by Nasrallah, prompting Cairo to recall its diplomatic envoy from Tehran. On 12 December, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a member of the Assembly of Experts with strong ties to Iran's Supreme Leader, Imam Khamenei, disparaged Arab regimes in language reminiscent of Khomeini's revolutionary discourse of the 1980s: "Forget about silence. They are cooperating with Israel." Referring to Egypt by name, in light of its cooperation with Israel on the Gaza siege, Khatami asked: "where has your Islam gone, where has your humanity gone?" In a similar vein, in his 28 December speech Nasrallah denied the existence of an Arab "silence," insisting that it was an Arab "partnership" with Israel. Like Khatami, Nasrallah also singled out Egypt by name, warning it that if did not open the crossing then it too would be "partners to the crime, partners to the murders and partners to the Palestinian tragedy." To that end, the Hizballah leader called on "millions" of Egyptians to brave government repression and take to the streets to express their outrage, similarly urging the Egyptian armed forces to apply pressure on the regime to open the crossing.

While many have dismissed Nasrallah's verbal barrage on the Mubarak regime as little more than a diversionary or compensatory tactic designed to divert attention from or compensate for Hizballah's inaction, such a view fails to appreciate the unprecedented nature of this attack, as well as the wider strategy underpinning it. Not since the 1980s has Hizballah adopted such an inflammatory discourse against an Arab regime, or even singled out any one for attack. Not even during the July War, when Arab complicity with Israel was at its peak, did Nasrallah call on the Arab masses to exert pressure on their governments, nor did Hizballah's relations with those regimes take a turn for the worse thereafter. At the time, Hizballah clearly did not want to burn its bridges with Arab regimes or provide them with ammunition to invoke the Shiite scarecrow and stoke Sunni-Shiite tensions. In Gaza though, Hizballah has not found any such room for diplomacy and self-restraint. In his 7 January speech, Nasrallah warned that although Hizballah did not make enemies of those who had betrayed it during the July War, "we will make those who collaborate against Gaza and its people our enemies."

Hizballah's policy shift and its coordination with Iran on this matter signal a joint Iranian-Hizballah strategy of exposing the Mubarak regime's collusion with Israel and pressuring it to lift its siege of Gaza. These goals also fulfill the grander objective of shaking the foundations of the Egyptian-Israeli alliance which, in turn, would serve to weaken Israel's regional position. A strategy of this kind is deemed necessary given Egypt's "public embrace" of Israel, as one Israeli journalist put it (Haaretz, 9 January). In contrast to the July War when Egypt and other moderate regimes confined their collaborative role to blaming Hizballah for Israel's aggression, this time round Egypt has not even bothered to feign neutrality while secretly trying to benefit from Israel's campaign against Hamas. In this war, Egypt cannot even play the role of conspiring mediator because it is in fact, a party to the conflict. Egypt's foreknowledge of Israel's operation -- some would even argue, its demand that Israel launch such an operation -- is now common knowledge, as is the false sense of security it lulled Hamas into prior to the Israeli assault.

But the most palpable indication of Egypt's shared war aims with Israel is in its siege of Gaza and its ardent refusal to lift it. Hizballah and its allies view the opening of the Rafah crossing as being key to the outcome of the conflict. As Nasrallah explained on 28 December: "today the Egyptian stand is the cornerstone of what is going on in Gaza. If the crossing is opened, and water, food, medicine, and money, and even arms reach our people in Gaza, the epic victory in Lebanon will be repeated." Hizballah's wartime experiences demonstrate this fact only too well. Syria's opening of its border crossing with Lebanon, permitting the movement of weapons, goods and refugees, was pivotal to Hizballah's military success in 2006. In the case of Rafah, the opening of the border crossing is deemed even more indispensable for the Palestinians considering that it is not merely a supply line for Hamas, but a lifeline for Gaza's population who are besieged from all sides.

While Nasrallah's strategy has failed to persuade Mubarak to open the crossing, it did serve to greatly embarrass his domestic and regional standing and reduce his regime's role to a purely defensive one, preoccupied with formulating lamentable counter-arguments to the Hizballah chief's accusations, and rallying its moderate allies to its defense. Furthermore, to cover up for its moral bankruptcy the Egyptian regime has now formulated a ceasefire initiative in the vain hope that it can somehow restore its lost regional role. For the Palestinians though (not to mention the vast majority of Egyptians and Arabs), no action on Egypt's part can compensate for the opening of the Rafah border crossing. Moreover, the initiative itself serves Israel's interests and military objectives, as well as as those of Mahmoud Abbas, in so far as it merely seeks to reinstate the Fatah-Israel agreement of 2005 which called for the supervision of the border by Fatah security men and European monitors. Although Hizballah has yet to comment on the initiative, Hamas has expressed "major reservations" about it, while Iran has rejected it outright. It can be therefore surmised that Hizballah's and Iran's forthcoming strategy will be to ensure that Hamas is not pressured to accept the Egyptian proposal, which would weaken it politically and militarily. Hizballah and its allies will strongly back Hamas' refusal to become the Islamist equivalent of Fatah.

Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah speaks to thousands of supporters on the one year anniversary of the 2006 war. (Matthew Cassel)

Hizballah's readiness to intervene militarily

While some commentators have suggested that a rift has emerged within Hizballah over the circumstances under which it should assist Hamas militarily, such assumptions seem implausible. As mentioned earlier, Israel's offensive against Gaza could not have taken Hizballah by surprise and it is therefore highly unlikely that the party's leadership was caught off guard and has suddenly found itself subject to internal pressures to take immediate action. As one of the pillars of Hizballah's ideology and strategic vision, defending Hamas and the Palestinians from Israel, is by necessity an issue which enjoys a party consensus.

Moreover, the party leadership has not publicly committed itself to a policy of restraint, nor is it likely that it has done so behind the scenes as some Lebanese officials in the rival March 14 camp have been claiming. When Lebanese parliament majority leader Saad Hariri announced earlier this month that he had received assurances from Saeed Jalili, the head of Iran's National Security Council, while the latter visited Beirut that Hizballah would not respond to the Israeli assault on Gaza, Nasrallah lambasted him for granting "free assurances" to Israel. In fact, upon contacting a reliable source at the Iranian embassy in Lebanon, this author was informed that no such assurances were given to Hariri on Jalili's part.

The reason then for Hizballah's constructive ambiguity, whereby it neither confirms nor denies its intent to join the conflict, is clear: although its resistance has so far remained on the sidelines of the conflict, it is highly improbable that it would continue to do so if Hamas were on the verge of collapse. Based on the centrality of the Palestinian cause to Hizballah and its strategic role in confronting the US-Israeli project, it cannot allow Hamas to be crushed militarily on the battlefield or politically, by means of a humiliating ceasefire arrangement that would weaken the movement. It is in this context that we should read Hizballah's recent pledges to "never abandon" the Palestinian cause. In another indication of the resistance movement's readiness to militarily support Hamas, Nasrallah made an underreported request to his followers in one of his addresses on 29 December marking the Muslim holy day of Ashura: "I hope that you who gather in this place ... will always be ready to respond to any call, position and decision." While this can be construed to mean that Hizballah's followers were merely being asked to support its right to defend itself in case of an Israeli attack on Lebanon, it could be argued that Hizballah hardly needs to ask the party faithful who have more than proven their loyalty to the resistance movement to support its right to self-defense. Besides, Hizballah does not formulate positions or decisions on self-defense, which is considered not merely a non-negotiable right but a duty that is incumbent upon it.

Scenarios of intervention

Although an armed intervention on Hizbullah's part would incur the wrath of Israel, rallying popular Shiite support for such a strategy would not prove too difficult if Hizballah depicted it not so much as opening a new front but as legitimate self-defense. Israel has provided the resistance movement with more than enough provocations of which it can avail itself and thereby use to ignite a war with the Zionist state. Aside from Israel's continued occupation of the Shebaa Farms and Ghajar, which the Lebanese government has thus far been unable to liberate through diplomatic means, Israel routinely abducts Lebanese civilians from the Lebanese side of the Blue Line, most recently in December 2008.

More frequently still, Israeli planes violate Lebanese airspace on a daily basis in violation of UN Resolution 1701. In fact, Hizballah issued a statement in July 2008 decrying the incursions as "provocative, unacceptable and condemned," urging the Lebanese government and relevant UN bodies to take necessary measures to end the violations. On 31 July 2008, Lebanon's Al-Akhbar newspaper, considered close to the movement, also reported that Hizballah was planning to take "practical measures" in response to the violations. Around the same time, several reports emerged in Arab media of the planned deployment of anti-aircraft missile launchers in the Lebanese mountains for the purpose of shooting down Israeli planes. But irrespective of the veracity of such reports, Hizballah would not even have to down any jets to protest the overflights, but could settle for firing anti-aircraft guns that "accidently" fall on northern Israeli settlements as it has done in the past.

Retaliating for Israel's assassination of Mughniyeh would also enable Hizballah to spark a war with Israel. That Hizballah will respond to the assassination is almost a certainty considering his political and military significance to the movement and recalling Nasrallah's 14 February declaration to engage in an "open war" with Israel, as well as the oath he made on 22 February to avenge his death: "Oh Hajj Imad, I swear by God that your blood will not go in vain." Perhaps Hizballah has reserved its right to respond for such a time when it would serve a much wider strategic purpose than mere tit-for-tat. What better purpose than to save the Palestinian cause from possible collapse?

Whichever scenario unfolds, Hizballah would still have to explain the timing of any defensive measure it takes. The movement would be fully justified in presenting its attack as a preemptive one and could legitimately argue that it lies next in the line of fire by an emboldened Israel that had succeeded in finishing off Hamas politically or militarily. As warned by Nasrallah on 28 December and again on 7 January, the possibility of an impending Israeli attack on Lebanon remained a very real one which Hizballah was more than ready to confront. As a matter of fact, Israel's threats against Lebanon did not commence with the war on Gaza but have been a persistent feature of its official discourse for well over a year now.

Hizballah's readiness for war

Hizballah began to respond to those threats not only with counter-threats but with a new discourse emphasizing the eradication of Israel as a Zionist state by means of "destroying its army." The linkage between Israel's survival as a state and its deterrence capability was not a new one for Hizballah, but as Nasrallah explained on 22 February 2008, the notion of destroying its "remaining deterrence" once and for all was. On Hizballah's first July War anniversary on 14 August 2007, Nasrallah stunned his supporters and Israel alike when he "promised" a "big surprise" in any upcoming war with Israel "that could change the course of the war and the fate of the region," and which would enable Hizballah to score "a historic and decisive victory." Not only would Hizballah decisively eliminate Israel's remaining deterrence, but it would do so quickly: "Any new war will be swift and the victory shall be fast" Nasrallah stated on 24 August 2008.

While many have conjectured that Nasrallah's threats suggest Hizballah's acquisition of advanced weapons such as anti-aircraft missiles, an equally valid conclusion (and one that doesn't rule out the former) would be that it has developed a new method or strategy of warfare involving a much larger number of fighters than has been used in the past. As declared by Nasrallah on 14 February 2008: "In any coming war, not just one Imad Mughniyeh will be waiting for you, and not just a few thousand fighters. Imad Mughniyeh has left behind him tens of thousands of trained, equipped and ready-for-martyrdom fighters." These fighters would display "an unprecedented method of fighting" which Israel had supposedly "never seen since its establishment," Nasrallah stated on 24 August 2008.

Regardless of Hizballah's readiness for war, and its potential to destroy Israel's military deterrence, what is certain is that for the movement and many of its supporters and allies, destroying the Zionist regime in Israel is no longer confined to the ideological realm but has entered the realm of strategic interests as well. Regional security requires that the perpetual threat that Israel poses to its neighbors be neutralized once and for all. While such logic may seem like a throw back to the 1950s and 1960s, the new thinking shares more in common with the American notion of "regime change" and one-state solution proposals rather than with "throwing the Jews into the sea." If the war against Gaza has achieved anything, it is that it has succeeded in drumming this logic in the Arab and Muslim political consciousness.

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb is a Lebanese political scientist, scholar and analyst who teaches at Lebanese American University, and author of book Hizbullah: Politics and Religion. She is currently working on a book on Iran's regional alliances with Hizballah, Hamas and Syria for IB Taurus which is due to be published in 2010.

EXILED HAMAS LEADER DEFIANT

2009-01-08T13:32:00.001Z

This brutality will never break our will to be free

For six months we in Hamas observed the ceasefire.
Israel broke it repeatedly from the start

Khalid Mish'al
The Guardian,
Tuesday 6 January 2009

For 18 months my people in Gaza have been under siege,
incarcerated inside the world's biggest prison, sealed off
from land, air and sea, caged and starved, denied even
medication for our sick. After the slow death policy came
the bombardment. In this most densely populated of places,
nothing has been spared Israel's warplanes, from government
buildings to homes, mosques, hospitals, schools and
markets. More than 540 have been killed and thousands
permanently maimed. A third are women and children. Whole
families have been massacred, some while they slept.

This river of blood is being shed under lies and false
pretexts. For six months we in Hamas observed the
ceasefire. Israel broke it repeatedly from the start.
Israel was required to open crossings to Gaza, and extend
the truce to the West Bank. It proceeded to tighten its
deadly siege of Gaza, repeatedly cutting electricity and
water supplies. The collective punishment did not halt, but
accelerated - as did the assassinations and killings.
Thirty Gazans were killed by Israeli fire and hundreds of
patients died as a direct effect of the siege during the
so-called ceasefire. Israel enjoyed a period of calm. Our
people did not.

When this broken truce neared its end, we expressed our
readiness for a new comprehensive truce in return for
lifting the blockade and opening all Gaza border crossings,
including Rafah. Our calls fell on deaf ears. Yet still we
would be willing to begin a new truce on these terms
following the complete withdrawal of the invading forces
from Gaza.

No rockets have ever been fired from the West Bank. But 50
died and hundreds more were injured there last year at
Israel's hands, while its expansionism proceeded
relentlessly. We are meant to be content with shrinking
scraps of territory, a handful of cantons at Israel's
mercy, enclosed by it from all sides.The truth is Israel
seeks a one-sided ceasefire, observed by my people alone,
in return for siege, starvation, bombardment,
assassinations, incursions and colonial settlement. What
Israel wants is a gratuitous ceasefire.

The logic of those who demand that we stop our resistance
is absurd. They absolve the aggressor and occupier - armed
with the deadliest weapons of death and destruction - of
responsibility, while blaming the victim, prisoner and
occupied. Our modest, home-made rockets are our cry of
protest to the world. Israel and its American and European
sponsors want us to be killed in silence. But die in
silence we will not.

What is being visited on Gaza today was visited on Yasser
Arafat before. When he refused to bow to Israel's dictates,
he was imprisoned in his Ramallah headquarters, surrounded
by tanks for two years. When this failed to break his
resolve, he was murdered by poisoning.

Gaza enters 2009 just as it did 2008: under Israeli fire.
Between January and February of last year 140 Gazans died
in air strikes. And just before it embarked on its failed
military assault on Lebanon in July 2006, Israel rained
thousands of shells on Gaza, killing 240. From Deir Yassin
in 1948 to Gaza today, the list of Israel's crimes is long.
The justifications change, but the reality is the same:
colonial occupation, oppression, and never-ending
injustice. If this is the "free world" whose "values"
Israel is defending, as its foreign minister Tzipi Livni
alleges, then we want nothing to do with it.

Israel's leaders remain in the grip of confusion, unable to
set clear goals for the attacks - from ousting the
legitimately elected Hamas government and destroying its
infrastructure, to stopping the rockets. As they fail to
break Gaza's resistance the benchmark has been lowered. Now
they speak of weakening Hamas and limiting the resistance.
But they will achieve neither. Gaza's people are more
united than ever, determined not to be terrorised into
submission. Our fighters, armed with the justice of their
cause, have already caused many casualties among the
occupation army and will fight on to defend their land and
people. Nothing can defeat our will to be free.

Once again, Washington and Europe have opted to aid and
abet the jailer, occupier and aggressor, and to condemn its
victims. We hoped Barack Obama would break with George
Bush's disastrous legacy but his start is not encouraging.
While he swiftly moved to denounce the Mumbai attacks, he
remains tongue-tied after 10 days of slaughter in Gaza. But
my people are not alone. Millions of freedom-loving men and
women stand by its struggle for justice and liberation -
witness daily protests against Israeli aggression, not only
in the Arab and Islamic region, but worldwide.

Israel will no doubt wreak untold destruction, death and
suffering in Gaza. But it will meet the same fate in Gaza
as it did in Lebanon. We will not be broken by siege and
bombardment, and will never surrender to occupation.

• Khalid Mish'al is the head of the Hamas political bureau

ISRAEL LIFTS ROCKS TO DROP THEM ON ITS OWN FEET

2009-01-05T23:52:00.002Z

Hamas gaining sympathy as onslaught continues

01/01/2009
Palestinian Information Centre

By Khalid Amayreh

With the massive Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip continuing
unabated, and with Israeli political and military leaders threatening
to “decimate” Hamas, Palestinian intellectuals as well as ordinary
people expect Hamas’s popularity to rise dramatically when the
present Israeli campaign is over.

Israel claims that its war on Gaza is with Hamas, not with the
Palestinian people. However, There is hardly a Palestinian who would
give the Israeli claim the benefit of the doubt.

And those who do, such as the followers of the so-called
“American-Israeli Trend” within the Fatah movement, are quite
reluctant to speak up publicly, fearing a severe reaction from the
Palestinian public and being accused of treason and collaboration
with Israel.

Israel also hopes that the vast havoc and destruction and death
wreaked on Gaza so far would prompt the masses to blame Hamas.

However, apart from some Fatah figures who have vested interests in
portraying Hamas in bad light, most Palestinians are blaming Israel
and the “treacherous Arab regimes” for the Gaza nightmare.

On Wednesday, the American-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman
Mahmoud Abbas was forced to acknowledge that the “Israeli aggression”
was targeting not a specific Palestinian faction, but the entire
Palestinian people.

“This criminal aggression is targeting all Palestinians without
discrimination,” said Abbas in pre-recorded speech broadcast by the
Fatah-controlled Palestine TV.

The Palestinian leader also hinted that he might terminate futile
peace talks with Israel if the Jewish state continued to use the
talks as a rubric for murdering and tormenting the Palestinian
people.

It is not certain if Abbas’s relatively tough tone is genuine or
disingenuous. Skeptics, and they are many, think that Abbas is only
trying to mollify the decidedly anti-Israeli Palestinian public.

In recent days, Hamas accused a number of PA figures, including two
top aides to Chairman Abbas, al Tayeb Abdul Rahim and Nimr Hamad, of
colluding with Israel against Hamas.

Hamas’s officials in Gaza accused Abdul Rahim of directing a cell of
Fatah informers in Gaza to collect information on Hamas’s targets and
relay it to Israel via Ramallah.

Such charges, coupled with the widespread views in the Arab world
that the PA along with Egypt were conniving and conspiring with
Israel to bring down the Hamas government have forced the Ramallah
regime into a defensive posture.

“We have been struggling for forty years, and no one has the right to
doubt our credentials,” Abbas angrily told reporters earlier.

However, such defensive reflexes by PA leaders are failing to
convince the skeptical Palestinian public opinion of their innocence.

“There are widespread feelings among Palestinians that the PA is
quite satisfied with what is happening in Gaza . And undoubtedly this
is going to seriously undermine the image of Palestinian leadership,”
opined Abdul Sattar Qassem, Professor of political Science at the
Najah National University in Nablus .

Qassem predicted that the current Israeli campaign would actually
lead to the boosting of Hamas’s popularity.

“ Israel , and probably some other Arab regimes, think that the
intensive bombing and pornographic murder in Gaza would force the
Palestinian main street to abandon or rise up against Hamas. This was
undoubtedly the goal behind the harsh blockade of Gaza . But of
course no serious uprising against Hamas took place.

“From my observations of the general mood in Gaza and Palestine in
general, I don’t think that even those who hate Hamas would rise up
against it, mainly because of the broad-based support it enjoys. Yes,
many people may be quite satisfied seeing Israel bomb Hamas targets,
but their ability to mobilize the Palestinian street against the
movement is very limited.

“Moreover, the anti-Hamas elements know that they won’t be able to
successfully confront Hamas’s supporters in the streets.”

Qassem said he believed that the PA would be the biggest loser in the
current showdown between Israel and Hamas.

“If Israel succeeded in dismantling the government of Gaza , and then
handed over the coastal enclave to the PA, then most Palestinians and
Arabs and Muslims would view the PA as a quisling entity very much
like defunct Israeli puppet South Lebanese army.”

Another Palestinian intellectual, Abdul Bari Atwan, predicts that
public support for Hamas will increase as a result of the present
Israeli campaign in the Gaza Strip.

“The Palestinian people is not stupid, it knows very well who the
real patriots are and who the real traitors are. Abbas is not a real
President of the Palestinian people. He is answerable to Israel and
the United States , not to the Palestinian people,” said the
Editor-in-Chief of the London based Arabic daily, al Quds al Arabi.

The mood of ordinary Palestinians who are unaffiliated with any
political faction doesn’t differ much.

“I think Israel wouldn’t have started this genocide without at least
a wink from Abbas,” said Hasan Amer, a cabbie from the Bethlehem
region.

“Things are clear and one doesn’t have to be versed in politics to
see the facts.”