Category Archives: Hamas

OPINION: We are drowning in a bottomless sea

This is the era of wise men
By Ghazi Hamad, Checkpoint Jerusalem, October 31, 2007

I am certain it is possible and feasible for us to solve all our issues here, yes here, in the alleyways of Gaza or Nablus or Ramallah, without the need to wait at the gates of the capitals that have grown tired of our frequent visits! There is no need to search for mediators of oriental or foreign skin. Yes we can succeed with distinction if all devote themselves to the national interest and give up all narrow calculations. We do not need to travel far. We do not need round or square “tables;” what we need are clean hearts and conscious minds.

As there are those who are concerned for and enthusiastic about the homeland in Hamas, there are also the same in Fatah, the two fronts [the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine], Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and all other forces. All these hands can join together and bring us out of the cycles of misery and wretchedness. I say to you that our people are fed up with the strife, fed up with the dialogues, fed up with the multiplicity of governments and authorities, and with waiting for the unknown. They are fed up of blocked horizons and lost hopes. Do not torture them further. Show mercy on them. Show mercy on their elderly and youths who are unable to find work or breathing space. Show mercy on their students who are not allowed to travel, on their merchants who have gone bankrupt. Be a gentle hand to this people rather than a whip scalding their backs. Be a smile of hope to them, instead of these frowning expressions that appear from time to time to menacingly threatening!

Each side can say what it wants to say and claim what it wants to claim, but the voice of the homeland (the cleaner and clearer) is the voice that must be heard now. All must be silent to hear the voice of the wounded exhausted homeland, which says that we are walking in the wrong direction, the direction going against our liberation and independence march, the march of our unity and dignity. The homeland says: “No to the direction of war and estrangement. No to the direction of hate.” The voice of the homeland says that Gaza is not for Hamas and the West Bank is not for Fatah, but the homeland is one and the people are one. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS: The Israeli military advantage over Hamas is shrinking

The IDF in Gaza – advantage over Hamas is shrinking
By Amos Harel, Haaretz, October 31, 2007

Until recently, it was obvious who was winning this confrontation. The IDF has an enormous advantage in terms of firepower, observation, control of the air, armored vehicles and troop training. Dozens of IDF operations in the strip following the abduction of Gilad Shalit in the summer of 2006 resulted in hundreds of Palestinian dead. During that period, the IDF suffered one dead soldier, killed by friendly fire.

But in recent months, the efforts by Iran and Hezbollah to improve Hamas’s military capabilities are beginning to be felt. It is not only better weaponry, but also careful study of the lessons of the Second Lebanon War. Dozens of militants trained in Iran and Lebanon have managed to enter the strip and have subsequently created a system of control and coordination. There is a chain of command for every area, which operates a coordinated network of observation posts, infantry and antitank forces. [complete article]

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OPINION: Israel never had as few excuses for evading progress toward peace

The importance of a failed summit
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, October 29, 2007

Israel never had as few excuses for evading progress toward peace, the ambient climate was never more conducive to progress. The terror card cannot be played again, because the terror has abated. Qassams landing on Sderot and a childish assassination attempt are not a reason to evade the peace process. This low level of terror will, unfortunately, continue to accompany Israeli-Palestinian relations for years to come. We must learn to live with it, and above all recognize that it will not stop in the absence of an agreement that will put an end to the occupation. There is more. The security issue is much greater today on the Palestinian side. Israel can no longer continue to mouth slogans about security, after seven years in which it killed 4,267 Palestinians, 861 of them children and teens, in comparison to 467 Israelis who were killed, according to data from B’Tselem.

Another excuse that no longer washes is the “no partner” one. Israel has never had an easier peace partner than Mahmoud Abbas. True, he represents barely half the Palestinian people – Olmert represents an even smaller proportion – and true, it would be preferable if the Palestinian team going to Annapolis were to include Hamas, but that is no reason not to try. We destroyed Yasser Arafat as a partner – and the time has come to regret it – but we can no longer use the weakness of his successor as an excuse: Israel did all it could to create that situation. [complete article]

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NEWS: In Gaza: “The backbone of the economy is being destroyed.”

Under Hamas, Gaza is besieged
By Ashraf Khalil, Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2007

The streets are quiet now and the electricity works most of the time. Crime is down and even weapons smuggling is at least being regulated. But four months after Hamas seized control of Gaza, the already precarious economy has been sent into a tailspin as the militant Islamic group reigns over a pariah state.

Although Hamas’ claims that its June takeover has brought peace and order to Gaza bear some credence, its four-day military rout of the Fatah faction has ushered in an abysmal new chapter for the 1.5 million people crowded into this impoverished coastal sliver.

Now more than ever, Gaza is besieged: from the outside by economic sanctions and from the inside by a continuing battle of wills between Hamas and Fatah loyalists. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS: Israel’s plan to destroy Gaza

Israel’s real intention behind sanctions on Gaza Strip
By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff , Haaretz, October 26, 2007

There is an enormous gap between the reasons Israel is giving for the decision to impose significant sanctions against Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip, and the real intentions behind them. Defense Minister Ehud Barak authorized Thursday a plan for disrupting electricity supply to the Gaza Strip, as well as significantly shrinking fuel shipments. This is supposed to reduce the number of Qassam rocket attacks against Sderot and the other border communities. In practice, defense officials believe that the Palestinian militants will intensify their attacks in response to the sanctions.

As such, the real aim of this effort is twofold: to attempt a new form of “escalation” as a response to aggression from Gaza, before Israel embarks on a major military operation there; and to prepare the ground for a more clear-cut isolation of the Gaza Strip – limiting to an absolute minimum Israel’s obligation toward the Palestinians there.

Several weeks ago, Barak said Israel “is getting closer” to a major operation in the strip. Like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Barak is not excited about this possibility. He knows that it will not be easy, and there are no guarantees for positive results. Many soldiers will be killed and so will many innocent Palestinians, because the IDF will employ a massive artillery bombardment before it sends infantry into the crowded built-up areas. This will be a “dirty war,” very aggressive, that will have scenes of destruction similar to southern Lebanon in 2006. The sole exception: unlike in Lebanon, the population there has nowhere to run. [complete article]

See also, PA seeks int’l intervention as Gaza power cuts imminent (Haaretz).

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Divide and rule might fail

Fresh violence feared if peace talks collapse
By Rory McCarthy and Ian Black, The Guardian, October 24, 2007

Palestinians are warning that the failure of a coming Middle East peace conference, convened by the US, could undermine chances of a two-state solution and may threaten a return to violence.

Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, reiterated after talks with Gordon Brown in London yesterday that the conference, scheduled for Annapolis, Maryland, next month, would focus on core issues rather than detailed negotiations, fuelling fears that it carries unacceptably high risks.

“We can live without a conference but we can’t live with a conference that fails,” said a close adviser to the Palestinian president and Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas. “It will be good not just for Hamas, but for al-Qaida too.” Hamas, the Islamist movement in control of the Gaza Strip, says the conference is an American-Israeli trap. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The catastrophe that Fatah and its Israeli and American lukewarm friends really fear is that if Annapolis comes to nothing — as it surely will — then Fatah will have to bow to the inevitable: it will have to talk to Hamas. In other words, the fear is not of renewed violence; it is of the reconcilliation of Palestinian divisions.

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Another defeat in the war on Islam

U.S. prosecution of Muslim group ends in mistrial
By Leslie Eaton, New York Times, October 23, 2007

A federal judge declared a mistrial on Monday in what was widely seen as the government’s flagship terrorism-financing case after prosecutors failed to persuade a jury to convict five leaders of a Muslim charity on any charges, or even to reach a verdict on many of the 197 counts.

The case, involving the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and five of its backers, is the government’s largest and most complex legal effort to shut down what it contends is American financing for terrorist organizations in the Middle East.

President Bush announced he was freezing the charity’s assets in December 2001, saying that the radical Islamic group Hamas had “obtained much of the money it pays for murder abroad right here in the United States.”

But at the trial, the government did not accuse the foundation, which was based in a Dallas suburb, of paying directly for suicide bombings. Instead, the prosecution said, the foundation supported terrorism by sending more than $12 million to charitable groups, known as zakat committees, which build hospitals and feed the poor. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — This is a vindication for the principle that democracy depends on the separation of powers. Those in the executive branch of government who obviously feel more comfortable with a totalitarian concentration of power will however be disappointed that most of the jury reached the “wrong” verdict and that in doing so they may have been influenced by a former American consul general in Jerusalem. That the defendents would regard this as having been “an Israeli trial tried on American soil,” is not surprising, yet when a jury member says of the trial, “it seems political to me,” noting that the prosecution’s key witness was paid by the Israeli government to testify, it seems reasonable to ask, who is our government working for? And when what had been the largest Muslim charity in the United States gets put on trial there seems little reason to wonder why so many Muslims, and others, see the war on terrorism as a war on Islam.

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ANALYSIS: Condi prepares the way for Hamas’ return

Annapolis summit will bring Hamas back into the fold
By Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz, October 21, 2007

The Hamas chief in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniyeh, may not have been invited to attend the Annapolis peace conference, but the group’s presence there will be felt precisely because of its absence. The low expectations on the outcome of the conference, and its failure, may serve as a platform for renewed negotiations between Fatah and Hamas. Once the summit is over, it will be impossible to continue ignoring Hamas. Hamas and Fatah are still clashing on the ground, but Egypt is preparing for a meeting of representatives of the two Palestinian factions, with Saudi Arabia’s blessing.

Ten days ago, Haniyeh announced that mediation efforts were being carried out by an Arab country he did not specify. That same day, Nabil Amr, political adviser to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, denied the existence of such talks. But behind the scenes, the Yemeni foreign minister won the support of Saudi Arabia and Egypt to try to mediate between the two groups. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak instructed Omar Suleiman, the head of Egyptian intelligence, to ask Fatah and Hamas to present a list of demands so that an agreed framework for negotiations could be prepared. [complete article]

See also, Senior Hamas figure criticises takeover of Gaza (Reuters) and Three die in heavy Gaza fighting (BBC).

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FEATURE: Hamas: Islamic democracy and national liberation

Hamas: Islamic democracy and national liberation
By Sukant Chandan, Conflicts Forum, October 15, 2007

The Hamas election victory in January 2006 has led to an increased interest in the Islamic Resistance Movement. Hitherto little had been understood of Hamas’ history, political and social strategy and tactics. Rather rumors and cheap prejudice against Hamas have been rampant across the political spectrum in the West. Regrettably, progressives in the West have largely dodged the challenges of internationalism and anti-racism in the context of neocolonialism’s racist campaign focused on Muslims and Islam, of which the maligning and criminalisation of Hamas is a component. Democrat-minded and progressive people who challenge the criminalisation of Hamas by the West, in so doing confront the Eurocentric idea that legitimacy is only bestowed upon those that the West consider democratic rather then what the people in the given country have chosen. This article seeks to demonstrate that Hamas’ ideology has as much claim to the values and practices of democracy and human rights as those political movements in the West. The difference is that these values are inspired and rooted in their own religious, cultural and social contexts. [complete article]

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NEWS: The mirage of Middle East peace

Haniyeh, Meshal urge Abbas not to fall into ‘trap’ of peace summit
AP, October 12, 2007

Haniyeh, who was dismissed from office after Hamas overran Gaza in June, criticized Abbas for planning to attend next month’s U.S.-sponsored international peace conference, meant to provide support for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. He cautioned the PA chairman “not to give this occupier legitimacy on our land.”

“Don’t fall into the trap of the coming conference. Don’t make new compromises on Jerusalem, on our sovereignty,” Haniyeh urged.

Khaled Meshal echoed the warning in a holiday message on Hamas radio. And he urged Abbas, who set up his own government in the West Bank after Hamas’ Gaza takeover, to accept the Islamists’ invitations for dialogue.

“Abbas and his allies will find out that they are pursuing nothing but a mirage,” Meshal said, referring to the conference. [complete article]

Hamas offers talks with Fatah
Al Jazeera, October 10, 2007

Hamas has said it will hold reconciliation talks with Fatah and hinted it may be ready to give up control of the Gaza Strip it seized in June. [complete article]

Senior Fatah official rules out reconciliation with rival Hamas
Reuters, October 11, 2007

Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction ruled out talks with Hamas on Thursday, while Israel said any such dialogue with the Islamists could “torpedo” a peace deal. [complete article]

Stalemate threatens Mideast peace talks
By Richard Boudreaux and Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, October 12, 2007

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas put negotiators to work last week with instructions to make progress in advance of a U.S.-sponsored peace conference tentatively set for next month. Yet the talks have reached an impasse, aides said, prompting the two leaders to look to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to salvage the effort during a six-day visit to the region starting this weekend. [complete article]

U.S. grills Israel over road planned on Palestinian land
AP, October 12, 2007

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that she asked the Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Sallai Meridor
for clarifications about an Israeli plan to build a road near Jerusalem, partly on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians charge the construction will cut them off from Jerusalem. [complete article]

Israel-Palestine talks must be inclusive, urge U.S. graybeards
By Jim Lobe, IPS, October 11, 2007

To succeed, next month’s Israeli-Palestinian conference here should establish and endorse the contours of a permanent peace accord and secure the participation of Arab states that do not currently recognize Israel, including Syria, according to a letter sent Wednesday to President George W. Bush from a bipartisan group of eight former top US policy-makers. [complete article]

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NEWS: Saudis revive hope for Palestinian national unity government

Saudis urge Hamas and Fatah to form new coalition
By Donald Macintyre, The Independent, September 28, 2007

Saudi Arabia – potentially a key player in current diplomatic moves on the Middle East – has warned that Fatah and Hamas will have to form a new coalition if any peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians is going to work.

At the same time it has expressed cautious optimism about the international Middle East conference called by George Bush for November – without yet committing itself to attend, as Israel and the United States would like it to.

The latest, relatively candid, summary of the Saudi position came during the meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York on the fringes of which the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, met the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and top officials from Gulf states. [complete article]

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NEWS: Hamas ready to fight IDF

Hamas: 50,000 gunmen are ready to fight IDF, defend the Gaza Strip
By Avi Issacharoff and Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz, September 28, 2007

Fifty thousand Palestinian gunmen and hundreds of suicide bombers are ready to repel or at least impede any large-scale Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, an official from the ruling Hamas faction said on Friday.

The statement came one day after 12 Palestinians were killed in separate Israel Defense Forces and Israel Air Force strikes within the coastal territory.

Nizar Rayyan, a senior Hamas leader, promised Israel “a painful response” should it send troops and tanks en masse into the Gaza Strip. [complete article]

See also, Palestinians face an emerging paradox in Gaza (Haaretz).

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NEWS: Talking to Hamas

Israeli writers urge talks with Hamas
By Dion Nissenbaum, Checkpoint Jerusalem, September 24, 2007

Ever since Hamas won control of the Palestinian Authority 20 months ago, there have been isolated calls from well-respected figures for Israel to talk to the Islamist movement that spearheaded the dispiriting suicide bombing campaign of the second intifada.

Among those who have urged talks with Hamas: Former Mossad leader Efraim Halevy and former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Now, a group of prominent Israeli intellectuals is joining the call.

A.B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, and David Grossman have all signed a petition urging Israel to negotiate a cease fire with Hamas to stop the near-daily volleys of Qassam rockets being fired into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip. [complete article]

See also, On the way to a pariah state (Carlo Strenger).

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OPINION: The rise of political Islam

Democracy, not terror, is the engine of political Islam
By William Dalrymple, The Guardian, September 21, 2007

The Bush administration proclaimed in 2004 that the promotion of democracy in the Middle East would be a major foreign policy theme in its second term. It has been widely perceived, not least in Washington, that this policy has failed. Yet in many ways US foreign policy has succeeded in turning Muslim opinion against the corrupt monarchies and decaying nationalist parties who have ruled the region for 50 years. The irony is that rather than turning to liberal secular parties, as the neocons assumed, Muslims have lined up behind parties most clearly seen to stand up against aggressive US intervention.

Religious parties, in other words, have come to power for reasons largely unconnected to religion. As clear and unambiguous opponents of US policy in the Middle East – in a way that, say, Musharraf, Mubarak and Mahmoud Abbas are not – religious parties have benefited from legitimate Muslim anger: anger at the thousands of lives lost in Afghanistan and Iraq; at the blind eye the US turns to Israel’s nuclear arsenal and colonisation of the West Bank; at the horrors of Abu Ghraib and the incarceration of thousands of Muslims without trial in the licensed network of torture centres that the US operates across the globe; and at the Islamophobic rhetoric that still flows from Bush and his circle in Washington.

Moreover, the religious parties tend to be seen by the poor, rightly or wrongly, as representing justice, integrity and equitable distribution of resources. Hence the strong showing, for example, of Hamas against the blatantly corrupt Fatah in the 2006 elections in Palestine. Equally, the dramatic rise of Hizbullah in Lebanon has not been because of a sudden fondness for sharia law, but because of the status of Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s leader, as the man who gave the Israelis a bloody nose, and who provides medical and social services for the people of South Lebanon, just as Hamas does in Gaza. [complete article]

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OPINION: The international community can do business with Hamas

Hamas is the key
By Ahmed Yousef, Haaretz, September 21, 2007

While largely unnoticed in American discourse on the topic, much has been said and written to debunk the sanctions regime imposed on Hamas government administrations since its resounding victory in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections of January 2006. These calls and reports show with compelling logic that the sanctions regime is wrong and misguided and, equally important, that it is a reaction to the excessively intense pressure that the U.S. administration has exercised over other nations to induce them to boycott and besiege a government democratically elected by the people and to punish the Palestinians for their democratic choice. The Quartet has been spearheading this campaign of isolation against Hamas, and in the process is advancing a U.S.-Israeli agenda whose goal is to delegitimize Hamas and prevent it from exercising its right to lead the Palestinian people, even though the latter have elected it in a transparent, internationally monitored electoral process. A variety of underhanded methods, both internal and external, have been used to undermine the Hamas-led government, including destabilization from within the fragile Palestinian political system. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — According to the “West Bank first” fable, Israeli and Western support for the “moderate” Abbas regime would pave the way for peace and something vaguely resembling a Palestinian state. But even while Condoleezza Rice endeavors to add delicate strokes to her picture of a political horizon, the Israelis, rather than dismantling roadblocks — one of the specified gestures intended to serve as a sign post pointing to that political horizon — have instead been busy constructing dozens of new roadblocks.

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NEWS: EU and UN call on Israel not to cut services to Gaza

EU calls on Israel to reconsider sanctions against Gaza Strip
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, September 20, 2007

The European Union joined on Thursday a United Nations call for Israel to reconsider its move to declare the Gaza Strip “hostile territory” and appealed for it not to cut key services to the Hamas-run territory.

Israel announced the move on Wednesday, saying it would disrupt electricity and fuel supplies to the coastal strip as a step to prevent continued rocket fire at Israeli civilians.

Following the cabinet’s decision, Israel Defense Forces officials on Thursday morning began formulating plans to limit services to the civilian population in Gaza. [complete article]

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NEWS AND OPINION: Hamas becomes an ‘enemy entity’

Israel pressures Hamas ahead of Rice’s arrival
By Steven Erlanger and Helene Cooper, New York Times, September 19, 2007

Under international law, Israel is considered an occupying power in Gaza, even though it has removed its troops and settlers. Denying civilians access to the necessities of life is considered collective punishment and a violation of international law under both the Hague and Geneva conventions although the amounts involved could be subject to dispute. Electricity, water and gasoline are considered by many, like the Israeli rights lobbying organizations B’Tselem and Gisha, as well as Oxfam and other groups, to be necessities. But the United States argued, when it bombed power plants in Belgrade during the Kosovo war, that electricity furthered Serbia’s war effort; Israel argued similarly when it bombed Gaza’s main power station in July 2006, after the capture of one of its soldiers.

“Regardless of how they might cloak it, cutting off electricity to a civilian population is collective punishment and a violation of international law,” said Sarit Michaeli of B’Tselem. “It doesn’t really make a difference whether it’s cutting off the supply from Israel or bombing the power station.”

Israel says it would not cut off water, but most of Gaza’s water is indigenous, pumped from wells with electricity; electricity also is important for sewage treatment, Ms. Michaeli said. She condemned the Qassam rockets and said that Israel was legally obligated to defend Israelis, but not by violating international law. [complete article]

Hamas denounces curbs on Gaza as ‘declaration of war’
Haaretz, September 19, 2007

Hamas denounced as a “declaration of war” the Wednesday decision of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s security cabinet to declare Gaza a “hostile entity” and to approve curbs in electricity and fuel supplies to the population of the strip.

“They aim to starve our people and force them to accept humiliating formulas that could emerge from the so-called November peace conference,” said Hamas spokesman Barhoum, referring to a U.S.-sponsored meeting expected to be held in two months.

“It is a declaration of war and continues the criminal, terrorist Zionist actions against our people.” [complete article]

It depends who is doing the torturing
By Amira Hass, Haaretz, September 19, 2007

According to the findings of Palestinian human rights organizations, hundreds of Hamas activists have been arrested, and are still being arrested, in blatant violation of Palestinian law, and by some security forces who do not have the authority to make arrests. Reports from Nablus speak of security personnel who are waiting, with the advent of Ramadan, outside the mosques in order to arrest Hamas activists after evening prayers. Disturbing testimony is piling up that speaks of the severe torture of some detainees – a few of whom required hospitalization. Revenge and intimidation are the name of the game. Some of those released testified that they had been forced to sign a promise to keep completely silent about their experiences during their detention. The arrests are part of a whole complex of offensive tactics: shootings of Hamas activists; attacks, including arson, on Hamas offices; threats to Hamas representatives on local councils, to journalists and members of parliament; and infringement of freedom of the press (including blocking the distribution in the West Bank of the two Hamas newspapers). [complete article]

See also, Rice begins ‘peace mission’ as Israel declares Gaza an ‘enemy entity’ (VOA).

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NEWS: Israelis said to be mediating between Hamas and Fatah; Abbas opposes exchange of populated territory with Israel

Israelis said to be mediating between Hamas and Fatah
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, August 26, 2007

The London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported Sunday that Israeli mediators are involved in efforts to reconcile rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah.

The southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, headed by MK Sheikh Ibrahim Sarsur, is involved in the mediation efforts, according to the report.

The newspaper also reported that the Hamas leadership is considering an initiative proposing it hand back Gaza Strip security compounds seized from Fatah in June in order to achieve reconciliation with the rival group. [complete article]

Abbas opposes exchange of populated territory with Israel
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz, August 26, 2007

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday he opposes the exchange of populated territory between Israel and the PA within the framework of a peace deal.

At a meeting with Hadash Chairman MK Mohammad Barakeh,
Abbas stated he is against a final status accord under which areas in Israel containing Arab Israelis would become part of a future Palestinian state’s territory. This would be in return for settlement blocs in the West Bank remaining under Israeli sovereignty. [complete article]

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