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 conducted by evil, nihilistic people. As such, the problem of terrorism is reduced to the need for its eradication. But trying to eradicate terrorism is like trying to eradicate a disease without identifying the virus that causes it.

If instead of talking about “terrorism,” we talk about “political violence,” the term immediately demands consideration of the political motives which lie behind such acts of violence.

If Western governments and Israel continue to insist on referring to Hamas as a terrorist organization, they do a disservice to their own citizens and hold up a conceptual barrier that obstructs political changes — changes that would not be as difficult to effect as most people imagine.

Ed Husain writes: When I visit Jerusalem and the West Bank, I frequently ask young Arabs about their views on Hamas. In almost every discussion, Christians and Muslims alike refuse to label Hamas as a “terrorist” organization. When I raise criticism of Hamas and its targeting of innocent civilians, my comments never register. The responses are some variation of “Israel has taken over our lands and killed thousands of Arab civilians over the years. Hamas is only resisting occupation and fighting for our rights.”

I hear similar sentiments in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even non-Arab Pakistan. Al-Jazeera Arabic gives prominence to the popular Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has repeatedly called suicide bombings against Israelis not terrorism, but “martyrdom.” He argues that since Israelis all serve in the military, they are not civilians. Even children, he despicably argues, are not innocent. They would grow up to serve in the military. Qaradawi is not alone.

I can name tens of Muslim clerics, important formulators of public opinion in a region dominated by religion, that will readily condemn acts of terrorism against the West, but will fall silent when it comes to condemning Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Put simply, support for violent resistance against Israel among Arab and Muslim-majority countries — including allies of the United States such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia — remains popular.

Hamas benefits from that support. From radical Iran to moderate Tunisia, Hamas’ Prime Minister Ismail Haniyyeh was welcomed by vast cheering crowds during visits this year.

In a new Middle East, where popular opinion matters more than ever before, to demand that people condemn Hamas is a political nonstarter. It won’t happen. Israel’s talk of Hamas terrorism has failed to convince the Muslim and Arab masses. And worse, the label of “terror” loses its importance when entire populations, essentially, see nothing wrong with Hamas’s violent activities.

In short, Israel’s strategy has failed to win Muslim hearts and minds. In the long term, it cannot continue to rely on military superiority and Western support in the face of popular hostility. Israel is a nation in the Middle East, and it needs to find a home and place among its increasingly democratic neighbors. The old ideas of “we do not talk to terrorists” are not only strategically futile, but also untrue.

In order to secure the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Israelis (in both official and unofficial capacities) negotiated with Hamas. In spite of the Netanyahu government’s bluster about refusing to deal with Hamas now, securing a cease-fire involves doing exactly that with the help of Egypt’s new Islamist government.

In the past, Israel refused to talk with the PLO and Yasser Arafat, and in 1988, despite Israel’s intransigence, the United States opened a dialogue with the PLO and thereby helped steer the organization to its nonviolent politics today. Similar examples abound in recent history from South Africa, where Margaret Thatcher once called the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela terrorists, to Northern Ireland’s Sinn Fein.

In short, when the political calculations shift, the actions of terrorists are altered. Lest we forget, George Washington was labeled a terrorist by the British. But that label carried little weight amid his support base in America.

Nathan Brown writes: Hamas has always boasted of its pragmatism. It continues to claim to be a “wasati” movement — the term means “centrist” and is used by Islamists who want to communicate their responsiveness to the interests of the public rather than their devotion to the strictest version of religious teachings. And it is clear that in the first few years after winning elections in Gaza in 2006, some Hamas leaders, confronted with intense regional pressure and a fiscal crisis, and the knowledge that they would have to face the Palestinian voters again in 2010, took initial steps in a more moderate direction.

Unfortunately, the elections they were anticipating were never held (and the primary culprits in that regard were President Mahmud Abbas who threatened constantly to use an utterly imaginary authority to dissolve the parliament and Western actors who supported him in those threats). When a Palestinian civil war erupted in June 2007, the governments in the West Bank and Gaza became more explicitly autocratic, to the detriment of Palestinians in both territories. Hardly anyone harbors expectations any longer of free elections: On those rare occasions when Hamas and the leaders of the West Bank have had half-hearted conversations about reuniting, elections haven’t been a meaningful part of the negotiations.

Any hopes since then that Hamas would moderate have been squandered. The changing regional environment after the Arab upheavals of 2011 seemed to offer brief hope that Hamas would reposition itself away from the “resistance” camp in the region and toward the camp of Islamist movements in North Africa that were dedicated to making political Islam the basis of a practicable governing system. That would have required taking reconciliation with Israel a bit more seriously, interpreting “resistance” a bit more flexibly to encompass popular mobilization more than armed action, and presenting a friendlier diplomatic face to the rest of the world. But the effort, led by Khalid Mish’al, was derailed by Hamas leaders who didn’t want to risk their hold on the government in Gaza.

There is a possible path forward out of this dreary political landscape. The most promising way to force Hamas to become more moderate is to force it to be more responsive to its own public. (As a leading Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarian in neighboring Egypt told me when I asked him whether Hamas would ever accept a two-state solution: “They will have to. Their people will make them.”) And the most promising way to ensure such responsiveness is to speed up the reconciliation between the governments in the West Bank and Gaza, so that those governments can agree to hold elections rather than jealously hold on to their own fiefdoms in a fit of paranoia. But that, in turn, will require that Israel and the international community show a greater willingness to countenance Palestinian reconciliation.

Dr Mahmoud Ramhi

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 to Hamas, and has been in Israeli jails for a total of eight years.

“When Israel assassinated Ahmed Jabari [the Hamas military chief killed Wednesday], it knew that he was involved in negotiations with the Egyptians over a tahadiyeh [lull],” said Ramhi. “Of course it was a loss for Hamas, but ultimately, it was a slap in the face to Egypt.”

Ramhi said Israeli leaders are shortsighted.

“I find that the Israeli leadership behaves foolishly,” he said. “It sees only as far as its election. It looks at the future of the election, but doesn’t look at the future of Israel? Israel has lost all its allies in the region.”

For instance, Israel “lost Turkey as a strategic ally with its own hands, in an attack on a civilian ship,” said Ramhi, referring to the 2010 Israeli naval raid of the Mavi Marmara. “Now it’s losing Egypt. And not because [Egyptian President Mohammed] Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, is in power. In Jordan the protesters are already calling, not for a decrease in gas prices, but for the downfall of the king. Israel has lost its ties with the [Palestinian] Authority, and is now losing its deterrent power, with 4 million Israelis in the line of fire. One can rightly ask how they are to blame, but by the same token we must ask how the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza are to blame.”

Ramhi said Israel must recognize that the recent changes in the Arab world are benefiting the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is part.

“The United States,” said Ramhi, “is smarter than Israel. It is acting in line with its interests. It started moving a bit closer to the Muslim Brotherhood, not just on the Egyptian track, but also [closer] to us, here.”

The U.S. has given a green light to Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to bring Hamas members into the Palestinian government in the West Bank, as long as the establishment of a unity government is delayed. This means that Hamas in the West Bank is recognized as a political Islamic movement, said Ramhi. He said the proposal is still being discussed, although Hamas officials have already said, at the meeing some three weeks ago, that they want at least a year in which Hamas supporters get their political rights back: detainees are released, Hamas members fired from their jobs for political reasons get their positions back, and political activity is allowed.

Israel must begin a dialogue with political Islam if it wants to survive, said Ramhi.

“If Israel wants to continue to exist in the region, it must open a channel of political dialogue with political Islam in the area, including Hamas,” he said. “The Israelis need a leadership that knows how to negotiate with others. That can deal with others, not with arrogance or a feeling of supremacy.”

Mark Perry writes: Gerson Baskin’s entry in these pages — “Assassinating The Chance For Calm” — has given the readers a valuable insight into the workings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But as Baskin himself knows, this is not the first time that “calm” has been assassinated.

In July of 2002, I was an integral part of a small team working to end the second Intifada. I was the lone American on the team, the only one who was not an intelligence officer, and the only one with a direct line to Yasser Arafat and the senior leadership of Fatah. Our task was to gain the approval of Palestinian factions for a draft ceasefire that would end attacks on Israelis not living in the Occupied Territories. My job was to actually draft the ceasefire and serve as liaison with Arafat’s envoy in the process — Hani al-Hassan.

The task proved more difficult than I supposed. Hassan, whom I had forged a strong bond with over many years, disagreed with my multiple drafts of the document. And the document itself had to be approved by the eleven member “Fatah Higher Committee” in the West Bank, the several layers of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (and particularly their most intransigent cells in Nablus), as well as the head of the Hamas military wing in Gaza.

In addition, I was intent that the ceasefire be put in place precisely at one minute after midnight on July 22 and that the press be notified of its start. My reasoning was that Israel had acted with impunity in breaking a previous ceasefire, in January, by assassinating Raed Karmi. The problem then was simple: no one in the international community even knew that a ceasefire had been agreed to. I vowed that this would not be the case now, which is why the team of which I was a part kept Israeli officials informed of our progress.

Salah Shehadeh

It took many days of talks with Hani al-Hassan to produce a final ceasefire document, and weeks of negotiation to gain approval for it among the Fatah Higher Committee and the West Bank’s myriad resistance brigades. But by July 20, all seemed in place. Only Salah Shehadeh, the head of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, needed to give his approval — and he had informed our team, through a Fatah intermediary, that he was prepared to do so. His signature on the ceasefire document was to be obtained on the evening of July 22, during a meeting between him and a senior Fatah official in Gaza City. It had taken weeks of talks with Hamas to gain his approval.

I remember sitting on the 11th floor of the David Citadel Hotel as the clock ticked off the minutes leading to midnight on the night of July 21. I was in contact with our Fatah intermediary in Gaza by cell phone, urging him to complete his visit to Shehadeh — at times, shouting at him: “You need to move, you need to see this man.” He assured me that the meeting with Shehadeh had been set, and that he was on his way, just then, to meet with him.

But then, with just ten minutes to go before the ceasefire took effect, his cell phone went dead. And then, thirty minutes later, an Israeli F-16 dropped a one ton bomb on Shehadeh’s home in Gaza City. The Israeli bomb killed Shahadeh and fourteen other people, including Shehadeh’s wife and daughter. Seven people who lived next door, all innocent, were also killed. The then Deputy Chief of Staff of the IDF, Major General Dan Halutz later said that had he known that innocent people would be killed in the bombing, it would not have been ordered. I know otherwise. Later, he added: “What do I feel when I drop a bomb? A slight bump in the airplane.”

The next morning, as I walked from my hotel near the Damascus Gate to a meeting of the ceasefire team, I was approached by an Israeli official who we’d been dealing with. He smiled at me. “Ah, the naïve American,” he said, in greeting. “You had rough night.” I said nothing, but he continued: “You know Mr. Perry, you don’t seem to understand. We don’t want a ceasefire.” And he walked away.

I have thought about Salah Shehadeh in the years since, and about my own role in his death, and the death of those he loved and knew. I know now that someone on my team was working against us, and someone in Fatah — most likely the intermediary who was to meet with him that night in Gaza City. These are very painful memories, to be sure. In the end, perhaps, the Israeli was right: I was naïve.

I’m not now.

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 ideology, the group has found a new set of highly influential friends — including the democratically elected governments of Egypt, Tunisia and Turkey, all U.S. allies. Those backers give Hamas stronger standing internationally, and perhaps greater room to maneuver as it faces the second major Israeli operation in Gaza in four years.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi signaled the extent of the shift on Friday when he sent his prime minister to Gaza in a show of solidarity with Hamas. The move was a radical break from the policy of Morsi’s ousted predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, and came as Israel was attempting to turn up the heat on a group it considers a terrorist organization.

Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil toured Gaza alongside Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a longtime Mubarak foe, in the highest-profile Egyptian visit to Gaza since Hamas took power in 2007. Morsi, meanwhile, warned Israel of a “high price” for continued military operations in the coastal enclave.

“Egypt will not leave Gaza alone,” Morsi said in a speech to a crowd of worshippers at a mosque on Cairo’s outskirts. “I speak on behalf of all of the Egyptian people in saying that Egypt today is different from Egypt yesterday, and the Arabs today are different from the Arabs of yesterday.”

Morsi’s words were echoed Friday throughout the region, where Islamist movements with ideological ties to Hamas have gained influence through popular uprisings and elections. [Continue reading…]

Ahmed al-Jaabari (right) alongside Hamas political chief, Khaled Meshaal

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 year.

Jaabari was also heavily involved in the negotiations between Israel and Hamas for the soldier’s release, hosted by Egypt.

Jaabari, 52, was killed on Wednesday along with an unnamed associate when their car was blown apart by an Israeli missile. Palestinians said nine people were killed, including a seven-year-old girl.

Video from Gaza showed the charred and mangled wreckage of a car belching flames, as emergency crews picked up what appeared to be body parts.

Born in the Shujiya area of Gaza City in 1960, Jaabari came from a noted activist family and studied history at Gaza’s Islamic University.

Originally a member of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, he was imprisoned in 1982 where he first encountered some of the founding figures of Hamas, including Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, who would also be killed in an Israeli attack. [Continue reading…]

Haaretz reports: Ahmed Jabari, head of Hamas’ military wing, was killed Wednesday in a targeted strike by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Islamist group said an Israeli airstrike hit a car in the Gaza Strip, killing both Jabari, who ran the organization’s armed wing, the Izz el-Deen Al-Qassam, and a passenger.

Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence service confirmed it had carried out the attack, saying it had killed Jabari because of his “decade-long terrorist activity.”

The incident appeared to end a 24-hour lull in cross-border violence that surged this week.

Jabari is the most senior Hamas official to be killed since an Israeli invasion of Gaza four years ago. He has long topped Israel’s most-wanted list.

Dalia Hatuqa reports: This month, Hamas’s political leader Khaled Meshaal took part in a conference hosted by Turkey’s ruling AKP party. A commentator on Syria’s state-run Al Dunya television channel compared Mr Meshaal to “an orphan” looking for shelter after being rebuffed by other countries, further admonishing the group’s leader for his seeming ingratitude to Syria.

The commentary displayed just how frayed relations have become between Mr Meshaal and the state that granted him sanctuary after Jordan expelled him in 1999. Syria had long provided Hamas with a safe haven in addition to economic and logistical support. Despite the stark differences between the Baathists’ secular mandate and Hamas’s religiosity, the two parties found common ground in their opposition to Israel.

In February, after months of standing on the sidelines of the uprisings gripping the Middle East, Hamas was forced to make a defining decision. The party declared it was closing up shop in Damascus, signalling a tectonic shift between Hamas and its Syrian hosts.

The implications of this shift for Hamas’s relationship with its other traditional patrons in Iran is open to question. Speaking to the Egyptian daily Al Masry Al Youm, Mousa Abu Marzouk, the deputy chief of Hamas’s political bureau, acknowledged a change in relations with Tehran as a consequence of events in Syria, but still took a distinctly diplomatic tack on related questions. Mr Meshaal and Khaled Ghadoumi, the chief of Hamas’s political bureau in Iran, recently affirmed the strategic relationship. [Continue reading…]

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 useful to view the shift in the US relationship to Hamas alongside the story of Muhammad Salah, a Palestinian-born citizen of the United States, who was seized in 1993 by Israel when he was on his way into the Gaza Strip to distribute humanitarian aid. The aid had been raised in the wake of Israel’s mass deportation of 415 men from Gaza to South Lebanon in the dead of winter in 1992.

In 1993, Salah was a grocer in the suburbs of Chicago; a husband and father of four children. He was described as soft-spoken and keen on community volunteer work.

Today, Salah is the sole person residing in the US who is labelled a “terrorist”. The status, assigned to him in 1995, has rendered his every movement, purchase, transaction and life decision – from the mundane to the substantive – subject to review by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

“He is, essentially, internally banished. He cannot engage with anyone, and no one can engage with him,” said David Cole, an attorney with the Centre for Constitutional Rights, who is representing him in his recently filed suit against the federal government.

“Internal banishment” is a form of punishment in which the government determines with whom the sentenced is permitted to speak. It gained notoriety by its wide use under South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Matt Piers, who has represented Salah since 1998, believes the conditions of Salah’s sentence are even more severe than those imposed in South Africa [Continue reading…]

Zvi Bar’el reviews, Lehakir et Hamas ‏(Getting to Know Hamas‏), a new book (in Hebrew) by the Gaza-affairs correspondent for Israel’s Channel 10 News, Shlomi Eldar. The book explains how Israel’s leaders have squandered peacemaking opportunities because their ideological inflexibility has led them to ignore Hamas’s pragmatism; that their insistence on viewing the movement as a terrorist organization whose leadership could be decapitated has resulted in a failure to understand Hamas’s political maturity; and that the timing of Operation Cast Lead, the war on Gaza in 2008-2009, was determined by domestic Israeli politics, not a breakdown of the ceasefire.

“Hamas offers two alternatives: 1. A separate track, dealing only with the release of Gilad Shalit in return for 1,000 Palestinian political prisoners. 2. A release of prisoners will take place in the broader context of a strategic approach ‏(as follows‏), and the number of prisoners released will not be in the hundreds.”

That is an excerpt from an extraordinary document its authors called “Hamas and Israel: Peaceful Coexistence.” Its publication for the first time, in the fascinating book “Getting to Know Hamas” by Shlomi Eldar, the Gaza-affairs correspondent for Channel 10 News, is more than a journalistic coup. According to Eldar, the document − composed by Khaled Meshal, the political chief of Hamas, after Shalit was seized by Palestinian militants in a 2006 cross-border raid, and sent by messenger to then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert − represents the first demonstration of strategic thinking on the part of Hamas: thinking that Israel does not recognize and does not want to get to know.

The detailed document, whose existence and transmission to the prime minister were denied completely by Olmert’s office at the time, constituted an offer by Hamas to conduct a multilevel dialogue with Israel, beginning with discussion about a cease-fire and the building of long-term trust, and ending with a coexistence agreement to last 25 years, and the establishment of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders.

The document does not mention recognition of Israel or a peace agreement per se. It does, however, stipulate not only a cease-fire ‏(“tahadiyeh” in Arabic, which literally means “lull” but has come to mean a “temporary truce”‏), but also cooperation on the civilian front, such as the opening of border crossings and a renewal by Israel of tax-money transfer to the Palestinians.

The coexistence document represents the high point of repeated attempts by Meshal to build a system of practical cooperation with Israel, an effort that began after Hamas was swept into power in general elections held at the beginning of 2006. Such attempts are confirmed in the book, both in documents cited by Eldar and in descriptions of talks Eldar had with Hamas leaders. And it is here that the profound importance of the book lies. Along with a series of tactical and strategic decisions made by Hamas during this period, Eldar acquaints us not only with that organization but also with Israel’s ideological, strategic outlook in its struggle against it. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: The Hamas Islamist government in Gaza said it had declined an invitation to a meeting of 120 developing nations in Tehran this week, heading off a potential confrontation with rival Palestinian leaders in the West Bank.

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, had accepted the invite over the weekend but backtracked on Sunday “in order that the participation would not be an introduction to deepening a Palestinian, Arab and Muslim division over the Palestinian cause,” said spokesman Taher al-Nono.

Iran’s call for Hamas to attend the annual Non-Aligned Movement conference had infuriated the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA), which sees itself as the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinians.

PA leader President Mahmoud Abbas has been at loggerheads with Hamas since his forces lost control of Gaza in a brief 2007 war with the Islamist movement. He has since governed only in the occupied West Bank.

Abbas had also accepted an invitation to the conference. But his aides had earlier mulled cancelling the trip if Haniyeh attended.

“We won’t allow Palestinian representation to be ripped up – we won’t allow anyone to do this,” Abbas told a cheering crowd at a civic event in the West Bank capital of Ramallah earlier on Sunday.

“We are capable of looking after ourselves and our dignity, and we want unity and want to return to this unity,” he added.

The International Crisis Group reports:

Hamas never has faced such large challenges and opportunities as presented by the Arab uprisings. It abandoned its headquarters in Damascus, at much cost to ties with its largest state supporter, Iran, while improving those with such U.S. allies as Egypt, Qatar and Turkey. Asked to pick sides in an escalating regional contest, it has sought to choose neither. Internal tensions are at new heights, centring on how to respond to regional changes in the short run. Leaders in the West Bank and exile tend to believe that with the rise to power of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in particular and the West’s rapprochement with Islamists in general, it is time for bolder steps toward Palestinian unity, thereby facilitating Hamas’s regional and wider international integration. The Gaza leadership by contrast is wary of large strategic steps amid a still uncertain regional future. These new dynamics – Islamists’ regional ascent; shifting U.S. and EU postures toward them; vacillation within their Palestinian offshoot – offer both Hamas and the West opportunities. But seizing them will take far greater pragmatism and realism than either has yet shown.

The Arab uprisings hardly could have caused a more stark reversal of Hamas’s fortunes. In the stagnant years preceding them, it had been at an impasse: isolated diplomatically; caged in economically by Egypt and Israel; crushed by Israeli and Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank; warily managing an unstable ceasefire with a far more powerful adversary; incapable of fulfilling popular demands for reconciliation with Fatah; and more or less treading water in Gaza, where some supporters saw it as having sullied itself with the contradictions of being an Islamist movement constricted by secular governance and a resistance movement actively opposing Gaza-based attacks against Israel.

Facing reduced popularity since the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections that brought it to power, Hamas had to contend with criticism from without and within, the latter accompanied by defections from a small but important group of militants who left to join groups more committed to upholding Islamic law and to engaging in attacks against Israel. All in all, the movement could take comfort in little other than that Fatah was doing no better. Continue reading →

The National reports: Khaled Meshaal is standing for re-election to lead Hamas four months after announcing he would step down.

The decision is a setback for hardliners in the Islamist movement who have criticised Mr Meshaal’s recent reforms, which include dismantling Hamas’s headquarters in Damascus, reconciling with its Palestinian rival Fatah and tentatively embracing unarmed struggle against Israel.

Hamas’ senior leadership refused to accept Mr Meshaal’s decision in January not to seek another term as the group’s Political Bureau head, sources say.

They persuaded him to remain in his post and run for re-election in an upcoming secret party ballot, the sources say.

“Meshaal is still the head of Hamas and he has majority approval from the group, from both the leaders inside Gaza and abroad,” said a Hamas official in Gaza, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mr Meshaal agreed to stay in his job and he “is considered one of the candidates to lead the group for the election.” the official said.

His continued leadership could have implications for Hamas’s orientation in a region divided between strengthened Sunni Islamist parties and the revolutionary-Islamist axis of Shiite Iran and Hizbollah and the regime in Syria.

Larry Cohler-Esses from The Forward went to Cairo to interview Mousa Abu Marzook, Hamas’s second-highest-ranking official, in the first such interview a senior Hamas leader has conducted with a Jewish publication.

“Why am I here?”

This was not an existential plea to the cosmos. It was, rather, the first question I put to Abu Marzook at the start of the interview: Why had he agreed to a request by a Jewish news organization to talk with him in-depth in a lengthy and probing exchange?

“We don’t have originally something against the Jew as a religion or against the Jew as a human being,” he said. “The problem is that the Israelis kicked out my family. They have occupied my land and injured thousands of Palestinians…. I have to differentiate between the Jew who did this problem to my people and [American] Jews like you, who never did anything bad to my people.”

Abu Marzook waved away the contention that, in fact, most American Jews strongly support Israel as a Jewish state — in many cases, quite actively — and sympathize with their fellow Jews there. Speaking of Americans in general, he said, “Those people who have sympathy for the Jews [in Israel], it’s because of their history with the Jews. If you look carefully at what happened to the Jews in Moscow or Madrid, in Spain or in Germany or Poland, that’s very bad…. Anyone who historically his father or grandfather did something like that [to the Jews], he should be ashamed.”

This made Abu Marzook’s comments the next day in defense of the Hamas Charter all the more surprising. The charter, a lengthy, multi-part founding document composed in 1988, contains several sections that have been widely condemned as anti-Semitic.

The first such section cites a hadith, or saying of the Prophet Muhammad:

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.”

The second section cites passages from “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” an early 20th-century forgery now widely attributed to the czar of Russia’s secret police, that depict world Jewry as a nefarious international force through Western history. The passages cited hold “world Zionism” as responsible for, among other things, the French and communist revolutions, the control of media and finance worldwide, and the machinations of “secret societies,” including the “Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions in different parts of the world” that have been formed “for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests.”

Abu Marzook said that the charter does not govern his organization.

“We have many, many policies that are not going with the charter,” he said. “But when you talk about ‘change the charter,’ there are many Hamas people talking about changing the charter. That’s a debate inside Hamas, because there are many, many policies against what’s written in the charter.”

Asked specifically about changing the passages on Jews, Abu Marzook acknowledged no such amendments existed. But he defended the hadith as being taken out of context. The passage, he said, did not apply to all Jews — just those in Palestine.

As for the Protocols, “The Zionists wrote it, and they said, ‘No, we didn’t.‘ [It’s] linked to Zionists,” he said.

Informed that the document was, in fact, a forgery, Abu Marzook appeared nonplussed. “Really? This is the first time I know [about this],” he said.

For a Hamas leader who had lived and studied in the West to respond in such a manner seemed a stunning reflection of a movement that remains deeply insular and parochial, even as it now seeks wider legitimacy.

Abu Marzook spoke hopefully of the influence of the Arab Spring as a boon to his movement. The rise of fellow Islamist groups in Egypt and elsewhere could help bring the issue of the Palestinians to the fore, he said, even if, in the short term, Muslim Brotherhood groups, now responsible for governing, emphasized domestic concerns.

He alluded to the debate that the Arab Spring has sparked within Hamas itself, including discussion of converting the group fully into a political party that eschewed its own separate militia or guerilla arm, as has occurred with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. “There are some people in Hamas thinking [that] way,” he said. “But personally, I’m against any kind of political party, because Hamas is a political party and a resistance. You can’t divide this.”

But asked how the Arab Spring’s themes of civil resistance and demands for openness, transparency and democracy might influence Hamas, Abu Marzook looked puzzled. His group operates in areas, such as the occupied West Bank, in which it remains an illegal organization, he noted. And its status in several Arab countries also makes open operations impractical. He declined even to offer a dollar figure for its operating budget.

Might Hamas, for example, consider opening a window on debate within the secretive Shura Council, a body that will soon select a new leader even though no one, including its purported constituents, knows who its members are and how they will vote?

“This is not the interest of people in any way,” Abu Marzook replied.

The New York Times reports: As it prepares to take power in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is overhauling its relations with the two main Palestinian factions in an effort to put new pressure on Israel for an independent Palestinian state.

Officials of the Brotherhood, Egypt’s dominant Islamist movement, are pressing its militant Palestinian offshoot, Hamas, which controls Gaza, to make new compromises with Fatah, the Western-backed Palestinian leadership that has committed to peace with Israel and runs the West Bank.

The intervention in the Palestinian issue is the clearest indication yet that as it moves into a position of authority, the Brotherhood, the largest vote getter in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, intends to both moderate its positions on foreign policy and reconfigure Egypt’s.

Brotherhood officials say that they are pulling back from their previous embrace of Hamas and its commitment to armed struggle against Israel in order to open new channels of communications with Fatah, which the Brotherhood had previously denounced for collaborating with Israel and accused of selling out the Palestinian cause. Brotherhood leaders argue that if they persuade the Palestinians to work together with a newly assertive Egypt, they will have far more success forcing Israel to bargain in earnest over the terms of statehood.

“Now we have to deal with the Palestinian parties as an umbrella for both of them, and we have to stand at an equal distance from each,” said Reda Fahmy, a Brotherhood leader who oversees its Palestinian relations and is now chairman of the Arab affairs committee in Egypt’s upper house of Parliament. “Any movement of the size of the Muslim Brotherhood, when it is in the opposition it is one thing and then when it comes to power it is something completely different.”

The shift in the Brotherhood’s stance toward neutrality between Hamas and Fatah — acknowledged by officials of both groups — may relieve United States policy makers, who have long worried about the Brotherhood’s relationship with the more militant Hamas. The United States considers the Palestinian group to be a terrorist organization. But the shift in Egypt’s policies may unnerve Israel, because it is a move away from former President Hosni Mubarak’s exclusive support for the Western-backed Fatah movement and its commitment to the peace process. Israeli officials have said they will not negotiate with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas.

But Mr. Fahmy said the Brotherhood believed that Palestinian unity could break the deadlock in talks with Israel. “A Palestinian negotiator will go the table and know that all the Palestinian people are supporting his project,” Mr. Fahmy said. “This will be a huge change and very important to both sides.” Jailed at times by the Mubarak government for his role in the Brotherhood, Mr. Fahmy spoke this month from an ornate hall of Parliament.

Today’s Zaman reports: Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal has called for a unity agreement between Palestinian factions, saying peace is mandatory for Palestinians who are united in fighting Israeli occupation.

Mashaal, speaking on Sunday after talks with Turkish leaders, dismissed rivalry between Palestinian groups as a “conspiracy” targeting the Palestinians. “We want to open a new page, and we think that we have created a domestic peace atmosphere. Peace is obligatory, and Palestinians should be unified. The Palestine issue is our cause, and our stance on occupation is the same,” Mashaal said in regards to talks between Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah.

“I would like to send a message to all Palestinian people living in and out of Palestine: Let’s exert efforts seriously and sincerely to make an internal compromise agreement. … We should sacrifice our personal and political views for the sake of the Palestine cause,” Mashaal said in an interview with Turkey’s semi-official Anatolia news agency.