Dana kindly pointed me to two very interesting articles published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, by leading figures from the Political Bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas); Khaled Mish'al, and Mousa Abu Marzouq. Here are parts of it, but I encourage you to read the whole thing. I won't be commenting much because I don't think the time is right to draw conclusions, and because I'm just curious to see what turn things will take on the ground.
Khaled Mish'al wrote:
The day Hamas won the Palestinian democratic elections the world's leading democracies failed the test of democracy. Rather than recognise the legitimacy of Hamas as a freely elected representative of the Palestinian people, seize the opportunity created by the result to support the development of good governance in Palestine and search for a means of ending the bloodshed, the US and EU threatened the Palestinian people with collective punishment for exercising their right to choose their parliamentary representatives....The US and EU could have used the success of Hamas to open a new chapter in their relations with the Palestinians, the Arabs and the Muslims and to understand better a movement that has so far been seen largely through the eyes of the Zionist occupiers of our land....While we are keen on having friendly relations with all nations we shall not seek friendships at the expense of our legitimate rights.
An interesting point brought up is this:
Our message to the Muslim and Arab nations is this: you have a responsibility to stand by your Palestinian brothers and sisters whose sacrifices are made on behalf of all of you. Our people in Palestine should not need to wait for any aid from countries that attach humiliating conditions to every dollar or euro they pay despite their historical and moral responsibility for our plight. We expect you to step in and compensate the Palestinian people for any loss of aid and we demand you lift all restrictions on civil society institutions that wish to fundraise for the Palestinian cause.
If the US and the EU don't budge on their initial decision not to deal with Hamas, I truly wonder what the Arab governments would do. It's definitely going to strain things for those governments who wouldn't want to risk upsetting the US and entering the "terrorism support" club, but at the same time will face enormous pressures from their people.
He goes on to say:
Our message to the Israelis is this: we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture. [...] Our conflict with you is not religious but political.
He concludes it with:
We shall never recognise the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else's sins or solve somebody else's problem. But if you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms. Hamas is extending a hand of peace to those who are truly interested in a peace based on justice.
So how exactly do you extend a hand of peace to someone you don't want to recognize?? And what is "a long term truce"?
Probably in response to all those who kept saying that Hamas will not turn the West Bank and Gaza into an ultra-conservative society, imposing Islamic social laws, Mousa Abu Marzooq says:
Alleviating the debilitative conditions of occupation, and not an Islamic state, is at the heart of our mandate (with reform and change as its lifeblood).
...
A new "road map" is needed to lead us away from the path of checkpoints and walls and onto the path of freedom and justice. The past decade's "peace process" has led to a dramatic rise in the expansion of illegal settlements and land confiscation. The realities of occupation include humiliating checkpoints, home demolitions, open-ended administrative detentions, extrajudicial killings and thousands of dead civilians.
...
It would be a mistake to view the collective will of the Palestinian people in electing Hamas in fair and free elections under occupation as a threat. For meaningful dialogue to occur there should be no prejudgments or preconditions. And we do desire dialogue. The terms of the dialogue should be premised on justice, mutual respect and integrity of the parties.
And here's another interesting point:
We will exert good-faith efforts to remove the bitterness that Israel's occupation has succeeded in creating, alienating a generation of Palestinians. We call on them not to condemn posterity to endless bloodshed and a conflict in which dominance is illusory. There must come a day when we will live together, side by side once again.
Thanks again Dana!
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