Hamas

AFP reports: Hamas re-elected its veteran exiled leader Khaled Meshaal in Cairo on Monday, said an official of the Palestinian Islamist movement that rules Gaza. “The leaders of Hamas chose Meshaal,” the high-ranking official told AFP via telephone from the Egyptian capital, requesting anonymity. Hamas officials said earlier that the movement’s governing shura council was [...]

Efraim Halevy writes: he recent news out of the Middle East has been grim. But, if there’s an atmosphere of pessimism in the international press, that’s because the real story hasn’t been earning any attention—intentionally so. We can all read about Hamas’s daily maligning of Israel, and its promises to put an end to Jewish [...]

AFP reports: Thousands of Palestinians attended a rare Hamas rally in the northern West Bank city of Nablus on Thursday, celebrating the group’s “victory” over Israel in Gaza. The rally is the first time that the West Bank’s ruling Palestinian Authority (PA) — which is dominated by the Fatah faction, Hamas’s bitter rival — has [...]

In an interview with Paul Martin, editor-in-chief of ConflictZones.tv, Moussa Abu Marzook, deputy politburo leader of Hamas and a strong contender to replace outgoing chairman Khaled Meshaal, says: “It is not useful for us to negotiate [with Israel] at this time. Negotiations, they have two conditions: the first condition, to be equal; the second condition” [...]

This is an interesting interview with the leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal. Christiane Amanpour, however, is flat wrong when she emphatic claims that “international agreements” have settled the question of the right of return. Just like the status of Jerusalem, this is an unresolved issue. No Palestinian has signed any agreement renouncing the right of [...]

Ending terrorism is much easier than most people realize. All it requires is a change in language and from that can follow a change in perceptions. That doesn’t mean adopting some kind of Obama-speak euphemism like “violent extremism” but rather an objective and descriptive term that has explanatory power. “Terrorism” connotes random acts of violence [...]

Amira Hass spoke to Dr. Mahmoud Ramhi, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and one of the most prominent Hamas representatives in the West Bank. Ramhi, an anesthesiologist, was released four months ago from administrative detention after being in custody for two years. He has been arrested and tried several times for belonging [...]

The Washington Post reports: As the conflict between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip intensifies, Arab governments are throwing their weight behind the territory’s long-isolated Islamist leaders in a reflection of the region’s shifting political dynamics after nearly two years of upheaval. Long kept at a distance by Arab autocrats wary of Hamas’s hard-line [...]

The Guardian reports: Ahmed al-Jaabari, the operational commander of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, kept largely out of the limelight. Blamed by Israel for being the captor-in-chief of the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006, he confirmed that role by escorting Shalit to the handover when he was finally released last [...]

Charlotte Silver writes: Before Hamas was designated a “terrorist organisation” in the United States, it wasn’t. And before Sami al-Arian, The Holy Land Five, and the countless other Palestinian Americans whose lives have been wrung through harrowing immigration and counter-terrorist proceedings for their connections – however slight – to Gaza, there was Muhammad Salah. It’s [...]