Mahmoud Abbas made a unilateral decision to remove religion from Palestinian ID cards, and Hamas and fundamentalist Muslims are up in arms over it. The story:
According to Alawi, since religion is mentioned on a citizen’s birth certificate — as per the Basic Law, which provides for non-discrimination between Palestinians on the basis of sex, race or religion — there is no need to repeat it on the ID.
Not good enough for Hamas, which fears–gasp–this may lead to marriage between Christians and Muslims!
However, a news website close to Hamas cited a variety of reasons for the movement’s rejection of the decision, describing it as “shameful” and made within a fake national framework, because abolishing religion was the demand of secularists and leftists. According to the site, the latter are demanding the abolition of anything related to religion in Palestinian life, including religious affiliation being listed on the ID. The site also warned that the decision would allow a Muslim woman to marry a Christian man, paving the way for civil marriage.
Or even worse, it will give Israelis dual citizenship in a Palestinian state.
What is interesting is that those in Hamas who objected to the abolition of religion consider the decision to be a prelude to the implementation of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s plan in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. This plan aims at keeping the settlers in the future Palestinian state, without any distinction between Jews, Muslims and Christians through IDs, Ghussein told Al-Monitor.
Hosni al-Boraini, a member of the Legislative Council for Hamas in the West Bank, said that the decision was a prelude to accommodating settlers in the anticipated Palestinian state, allowing them to participate in elections, and the Jews would become components of the Palestinian people.
For his part, Taher al-Nono, the media adviser to the head of the Hamas government, considered the decision to be an obvious preliminary step to implement Kerry’s plan, aimed at including Israeli settlers as holders of dual nationality. Thus, the decision ought to be rejected, because it served the interest of Israel alone.
The PA was quick to deny that their state would be anything but judenrein.
Al-Monitor spoke to a senior official in the PA to determine the link between the timing of the issuance of the decision and the progress in the negotiations with Israel. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “There is no connection between the two. This spontaneous coincidence between the two events is not an indication of the PA’s position to accept settlers in the Palestinian state.”
Regarding the mechanism for implementing the decision, Alawi said that abolishing religion on the ID has been at the center of negotiations with Israel since 1995. Israel has objected to abolishing religion on Palestinian IDs because it controls their official records, IDs and passports and the PA does not have the right to make amendments to this effect without the prior approval of Israel, according to the Oslo Accords.
Ew, Jew cooties.
And there you have it. An example of the wheels within wheels in the fantasies of Hamas and the Israel haters. Mahmoud Abbas takes religion off ID cards? It must be an Israeli plot. Why else would the head of the PA, who openly loathes Israel and fights having to even have peace talks at every occasion, do such a thing?
This is why there will not be peace.
I don’t see what’s got Hamas so upset. At the rate both they and the Muslims in the PA are persecuting Christians, there won’t be any left in the PA or Gaza soon, so the question of intermarriage won’t come up. As for Jews, everybody with any brain cells knows that any Jews left in the territory of the PA on the day Israel pulls out the last of its troops from Judea and Samaria will all be dead within 24 hours. The only question will be, how many of the killers will they take with them? Then Tel Aviv will assume the role of Sderot.