Hamas is openly stating its genocidal purpose toward Israel, and yet, most of the world will simply stuff their fingers into their ears and say “LALALALA, I can’t hear you!”
Exhibit one: Hamas intends to unite their “army” with the PA security forces for one giant “resistance weapon” pointed, of course, at Israel.
Damascus – Head of the political bureau in the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, Khaled Mishaal, affirmed that his Movement’s participation in the next PA cabinet is under intensive deliberation and will be announced in the suitable time.
In an interview with the Arabiya satellite TV channel in the Syrian capital, Damascus, Mishaal stressed that the topic of the resistance weapon mustn’t be a point of dispute.
He clarified that Hamas is willing to unite the Palestinian weapon provided it will be under a national liberation army that would continue the liberation march of the Palestinian occupied lands and protecting the Palestinian people, rather than placing it under the control of the security apparatuses.
Exhibit Two: Hamas will enact Islamic law after the elections.
Rafah – The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, would enact the legislations and laws tying in with the Islamic Shariah, and invalidate all the laws that run counter to the Islamic teachings, if elected to the PLC, Dr. Fuad Al-Nahal, a Hamas’ parliamentary candidate in Rafah district, said.
“We would present to the Ummah and the Palestinian people the laws and legislation compatible with the Islamic Shariah and would do our best to nullify the non-Islamic ones,” Nahal told an election campaign meeting Hamas he held in Rafah Monday.
Exhibit Three: Hamas reiterates it will not disarm after the elections.
Gaza – Sheikh Ismail Haneyya, one of Hamas’ outstanding leaders, underlined that his Movement would retain its weapons following the PLC ballot despite the US pressure on the Islamic group either to disarm or drop out of the race.
“There is no discrepancy between the resistance’s weapons and the elections. And those who are pressing towards such a direction should pressure the Israeli occupation to return the usurped rights to the Palestinian people,” Hanneya told reporters Wednesday morning.
Exhibit four: The leader of Hamas explains the organizational goals.
Today we are facing a political structure that used to be based on Oslo – true, it resulted from Oslo – but today this structure represents a new reality in the Palestinian scene. The Palestinian people, with its will, its sacrifice, its Intifada, is creating something new, on which this Legislative Council is based. That’s why Hamas and the other forces are joining the Legislative Council on the basis of continued resistance, adhering to the weapons of the resistance, adhering to the Palestinian rights, to rectifying internal Palestinian affairs, to reform, to fighting corruption – this is our platform, and we do not base ourselves on Oslo.
In spite of all the evidence–in spite of the fact that the Hamas leadership is lying when it pretends that it will give up its genocidal intent towards Israel and indeed, says one thing to the Western press and turns right around and assures its people that the end of Israel is at hand–the world continues to insist that Israel can and should “work” with Hamas.
How? Hamas wants all Israelis dead, gone, or dhimmi. There is no other solution in their eyes. “Palestine” is the country they want to replace Israel–not the country they will form from the West Bank and Gaza.
Read the Hamas charter. It remains unchanged.
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
These are the words that the editorialists and politicians overlook when they insist that Hamas can be “tamed.” The PLO was never tamed. To this day, PLO members infest the PA and work with terrorists to destroy Israel.
This isn’t poetry. This is their intent:
The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.
It is utterly unbelievable to me that people refuse to take these words at face value. Because these are the words that were uttered by the Hamas leadership just last week:
Ismail Haniya, the top candidate on the Hamas list for Palestinian parliamentary elections, said Sunday that Hamas supports only as a temporary solution the establishment of a Palestinian states along the 1967 borders and with Jerusalem as its capital.
Haniya emphasized that Hamas does not recognize the existence of the State of Israel and maintains its vision of establishing a Palestinian state throughout all of the area west of the Jordan River.
He also reiterated that there is no chance that Hamas would voluntarily disarm as long as Israel exists, Israel Radio reported.
What part of that don’t you understand?
First, the PLO does not “infest the PA.” The PLO entered into the Oslo Accords with Israel, and the PA is therefore a creature of the PLO. See this chart from the PA’s official website.
Second, the PA’s formal jurisdiction extends only to the territories. Because the PLO is the only recognized representative of ALL of the Palestinian Arabs, including the refugees, it had long been held that only the PLO has “standing” to negotiate final status issues with Israel. This is noted in the above chart, and is also consistent with the fact that the PLO, not the PA, maintains a Negotiations Affairs Department.
Because, in this view, the PA deals only with local matters in the territories, what do HAMAS’s long-term objectives matter? If matters of water supply, electricity, transport of goods and movement of people are to be discussed, why is it less acceptable to speak to HAMAS-niks than to FATAH-niks?.
Note, however, that the PA created its own “foreign ministry” and in recent months has been working to wrest control over the embassies from the PLO’s Political Department. This might have seemed like a good thing when the PA was viewed as more “moderate” than PLO Foreign Minister Farouk Qaddoumi, but after today’s elections, who knows?
However, the final and most important point is that your argument proves too much. As Israeli author Hersh Goodman explained to Margaret Warner Tuesday on The News Hour,
I might add that the the constitution of FATAH is just as clear as the HAMAS Charter in terms of the movement’s ultimate aims. For example, Art. 19 states:
There’s just no principled way for Israel to say “We will talk to FATAH but not to HAMAS.” Frankly, I don’t see how Israel has ever “constructively engaged” with the PA, or for that matter with the PLO, but if it was possible before the latest elections than it ought to be just as possible now.
And we’re back to normal.
You’re answering questions I never asked, bringing up rebuttals to points I never made, and making it seem like that’s what my post is about.
I hope you don’t think I intend to get into the discussion you’re having with yourself.
Meryl,
I’m doing what I can to spread the word. The local paper has an online edition that allows comments, and I’ve linked this blog post of yours there (and done a real hatchet-job of paraphrasing it — sorry!)
The article is here, and the comments are linked from the bottom.
–Howard
But, Meryl, they have social welfare programs and the assistant deputy ribbon clerk in the Nablus office whispered to a western journalist that Hamas might engage in negotiations with someone who would negotiate with Israel as a temporary measure. Isn’t that hopeful? Besides, you know those Arabs–it’s just picturesque rhetoric.
If the Israelis take their words seriously it’s just another excuse for Israeli intransigence, which of course is the real problem.
I was responding directly to two comments in your post.
If the PA is an organ of the PLO (as it was in the first instance), it’s nonsensical to say that PLO members “infest” the PA. Likewise, saying that “PLO members . . . work with terrorists,” while true in the sense that the PLO works with non-PLO outfits like HAMAS and PIJ, glosses over the point that the PLO itself is nothing more than an umbrella group of terror outfits like the one that the US openly supports, FATAH, whose charter I quoted from in my first comment.
You also wrote that
These same people refused to take the equally vicious and equally clear words of Arafat and other FATAH and PLO officials at face value.
Is their posture vis-a-vis HAMAS dispiriting? Yes. Depressing? Yes. Unbelievable? Emphatically no. Past actions are usually the best predictors of future actions.