From the category archives:

Hamas

Hamas says negotiations have already failed

September 2, 2010

If the political purpose behind this week’s attacks on Israeli settlers in the West Bank is still hard to decipher, it seems the message they sent out was directed more to Palestinians in the West Bank than to the parties currently gathered in Washington.
Nicolas Pelham considers Hamas’ resilience as a political force and notes that [...]

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The fountainhead of global strife

September 2, 2010

If the Obama administration had been as visionary as Obamamania promised it might be, Chas Freeman might not have merely been briefly offered the post of chair of the National Intelligence Council; he could have become a fine Secretary of State. Instead, the Israel lobby made sure he gained no position at all, but by [...]

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Terrorism is like advertising — it short-circuits the rational mind

September 1, 2010

Update below
If there’s just one lesson we can draw from the last decade it is this: utter the word “terrorism” and thought grinds to a halt, perceptions become blinkered and the power of human intelligence is suddenly put on hold.
Consider the attack near Hebron in the West Bank yesterday in which four Israelis were gunned [...]

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Hamas: “Anyone who is awaiting change from the West today will not get any change”

September 1, 2010

On the eve of US-brokered Palestinian-Israeli peace talks which begin on Thursday, Sharmine Narwani went to Damascus to interview the Hamas political bureau chief, Khaled Meshaal.
Sharmine Narwani: There is debate about whether Hamas accepts the premise of a two-state solution — your language seems often vague and heavily nuanced. I want to ask if you [...]

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The 9/11 hijackers now defending Ground Zero

August 27, 2010

The opponents of Park51, the so-called “Ground Zero mosque,” have decided that the litmus test for identifying “good Muslims” is to ask them whether they regard Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Andy McCarthy, one of the lead knights in the crusade to stop “the Islamization of America,” strikes the latest blow — this time against a [...]

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Hamas supports the right of Muslims to pray in mosques — even in New York

August 16, 2010

Hamas has leaped into the New York mosque controversy — well, actually, not so much leaped as diffidently tiptoed when pressed to express an opinion on the issue.
In an interview on New York’s WABC radio (audio can be heard here), Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas who is in the Gaza political leadership, was asked [...]

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Is Payoneer under US investigation for role in Dubai murder?

August 2, 2010

The Wall Street Journal reports:
American investigators, cooperating in a probe of the January assassination of a top Palestinian leader in Dubai, have identified a handful of U.S.-based companies believed to have been used to transfer money to suspects in the case, a finding that brings international authorities closer to identifying who funded the operation.
The findings [...]

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Time for a free and independent Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip

July 30, 2010

Geoffrey Aronson writes at Foreign Policy:
Prime Minister David Cameron during his recent visit to Turkey warned that the Gaza Strip “cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.” Britain, however, along with the rest of the European community, and of course, Washington, are ambivalent guardians of the self-described prison camp run by [...]

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To avert disaster, stop isolating Hamas now

July 30, 2010

Chris Patten writes in the Financial Times:
As we all know, peace will come to the Middle East when Israel and Palestine agree to a two-state solution, with a viable Palestinian state rising from the rubble of more than 60 years of turbulence to live peacefully alongside Israel within the 1967 borders as modified through negotiation. [...]

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Israel bans parachutes from Gaza

July 5, 2010

If Hamas had plans to form a paratroopers brigade, these will now need to be put on hold.
Israel’s long-awaited release of its blacklist of items banned from importation into the strip include parachutes. How exactly parachutes might be used in Gaza, if the ban gets lifted, is hard to envisage. What’s the use of a [...]

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It’s obvious, go talk to the Islamists

July 4, 2010

Rami G Khouri writes:
This nagging issue just will not go away: How do local or foreign governments best deal with leading Islamist groups in the Middle East and South Asia? Do you engage, negotiate with, ignore, or actively fight politically and militarily against Hizbullah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban and other such groups that [...]

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Mainstreaming realism

July 1, 2010

It was widely assumed that George Bush’s departure from Washington would coincide with a revival of strength for the reality-based community — the people the neocons swept aside for the sake of empire. But though the neocon dream was quick to perish, the reality-based community is still struggling to assert itself — at least inside [...]

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The terrorist-naming game

June 28, 2010

On September 11, 2001, George Bush changed the way Americans look at the world and the success with which he accomplished this feat is evident in the fact that his perspective largely remains unchallenged — even among many of his most outspoken critics. Bush’s simplistic for-us-or-against-us formula was transparently emotive yet utterly effective.
For almost a [...]

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