Thursday, February 02, 2006
Hamas Will Not Recognize Israel for Pie in the Sky
By Khalid Amayreh
2 February, 2006
One of the main factors contributing to Hamas’s resounding electoral victory over Fatah on 25 January is undoubtedly the futility and conspicuous failure of the Oslo peace process.
Indeed, it is amply clear that the misbegotten process has utterly failed to recover Palestinian rights or even seriously alleviate Israel’s Nazi-like repression of the Palestinians.
The Oslo Agreement itself was so vague, so much so that both the PLO and Israel viewed it differently, if not contradictorily.
Israel viewed the agreement as an expedient arrangement that would, more or less, keep the occupation intact, while giving the nearly decimated Palestinians a limited autonomy whereby Israel would retain nearly all the assets and the Palestinians would receive nearly all the liabilities.
When the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat told his people that the agreement would eventually give them an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, Shimon Peres, the proverbial “peace dove,” said rather contemptuously that “we can’t stand guard at Arafat’s lips, let him dream, dreaming is not against the law.”
As to the PLO, whose leadership excelled in futile rhetoric about “liberation” and “statehood” and “Sha’ab al Jabarin” (the irresistible people of Palestine), it sought consistently to sell the Palestinians a mendacious interpretation of Oslo, namely a promise of liberation and a viable state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
In fact, nowhere was the Oslo Agreement more scandalous in its “constructive vagueness” than in the issue of mutual recognition.
The PLO, eager to extricate itself from an acute financial and political crisis following the Second Gulf War (the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent defeat of Iraq by an American-led coalition) agreed readily to recognize Israel without even specifying its borders.
In return, Israel never agreed to recognize a would-be Palestinian state, and only, and rather parsimoniously and reluctantly, agreed to recognize the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people.
The recognition of the PLO was no more than a symbolic act, devoid of any concrete significance in political terms. In fact, the recognition didn’t imply any Israeli recognition of Palestinian rights or any realization that the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem would have to be terminated.
Indeed, the subsequent unmitigated expansion of Jewish colonies in the West Bank, under the nose of the PLO and the international community, proved beyond doubt that Israel didn’t and wouldn’t recognize a state called Palestine, despite Israel’s (disingenuous) acceptance of the “roadmap.” Indeed, a country that really wants peace with her neighbors doesn’t build hundreds of hateful colonies on stolen land, and doesn’t transfer hundreds of thousands of its most fanatical and hateful citizens (the Talmudic settlers) to occupied territories. And, obviously, Israel has done all of that and more, while still having the audacity to tell the world it has no peace partner on the Palestinian side.
Last week, when the Palestinian people in the occupied territories were given the chance to vote in a democratic election, they expressed their utter disenchantment with this ignominious scandal and finally decided to trash the corrupt and lying clique which gave them 12 years of deception, lies, and a police state without a state, whose modus operandi consisted of corruption, despotism, nepotism cronyism as well as total subservience to Jewish insolence and submission to American blackmail.
The Palestinian people voted for Hamas because they have been cheated by the PLO, cheated by the neighboring Arabs states (most of which are no more than obsequious puppets at America’s beck and call), cheated by the international community, as they have been tormented and nearly decimated by an insolent Israel whose powerful Jewish circles in America control, nearly completely, American politics and polices.
The Palestinian people are sincere about peace, but they are not stupid or gullible. They can easily recognize a genuine peace process from a genuine deception process. They allowed themselves to be duped and cheated once, but they will not allow themselves to be duped and cheated again. We gave what we thought was a peace process the benefit of the doubt, but we will not give what is manifestly a deception process the benefit of the doubt.
It is true that Hamas has no miracles to offer at this time since the Palestinian people, including Hamas itself, are still under a most nefarious and dehumanizing occupation, not unlike the Nazi occupation of Europe.
Hamas will be honest with the Palestinian people and will not seek to sell them pie in the sky and will not give them fantastic promises based one classical American lies and classical Zionist mendacity.
Moreover, Hamas will not be bullied by hypocritical western demands which, not only ignore the enduring Jewish rape of Palestine and enslavement of its people, but demand that the rape victims make sustained efforts to accommodate the rapist Israel and show deference to her feelings.
Hamas will not speak about Israel’s destruction. Hamas can’t destroy Israel. And Hamas actually doesn’t want to destroy nuclear Israel.
But Hamas will not give Israel a free recognition nor will it give up the most intrinsic right to resist these vile foreign occupiers. Everything has a price, because real peace can only be the fruit of justice.
Hamas will be willing and ready to give Israel a de facto recognition, an open-ended peace, if Israel agrees to recognize a sovereign Palestinian state on 100% of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, from which they were expelled at gun point when Israel was created in 1948.
Hamas will not accept to cede even one centimeter of the 1967 territories.
Needless to say, the 4th of June, 1967 borders have a paramount psychological symbolism, in addition to their political significance. One has to be Palestinian to understand this symbolism, and we will not betray our own souls.
Hamas is also willing and ready to halt all forms of violent resistance if Israel is willing to reciprocate and stop its wanton daily aggression, acts of murder, home demolitions and this organized, institutionalized state- terror against our people.
In short, Hamas wants to be a genuine peace partner, not an inferior vanquished supplicant begging for everything from Israel and America, from travel permits to a meeting with a junior American officials.
There is now a new breed of Palestinian leaders the world will have to deal with.
These proud and dignified people will not be bullied by sticks or induced by carrots. Nor will they allow themselves to be blackmailed by foreign aid, as Hamas Khalid Mish’al pointed out recently.
In short, the ball is in Israel’s and America’s courts. If they want a historical peace with based on UN resolutions, and the principle of land for peace, this is the time.
If they say no, because of their insolent nature and arrogance of power, then they will only be vindicating Hamas long-standing ideology that Israel and peace are an inherent oxymoron, when one appears, the other disappears.
2 February, 2006
One of the main factors contributing to Hamas’s resounding electoral victory over Fatah on 25 January is undoubtedly the futility and conspicuous failure of the Oslo peace process.
Indeed, it is amply clear that the misbegotten process has utterly failed to recover Palestinian rights or even seriously alleviate Israel’s Nazi-like repression of the Palestinians.
The Oslo Agreement itself was so vague, so much so that both the PLO and Israel viewed it differently, if not contradictorily.
Israel viewed the agreement as an expedient arrangement that would, more or less, keep the occupation intact, while giving the nearly decimated Palestinians a limited autonomy whereby Israel would retain nearly all the assets and the Palestinians would receive nearly all the liabilities.
When the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat told his people that the agreement would eventually give them an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, Shimon Peres, the proverbial “peace dove,” said rather contemptuously that “we can’t stand guard at Arafat’s lips, let him dream, dreaming is not against the law.”
As to the PLO, whose leadership excelled in futile rhetoric about “liberation” and “statehood” and “Sha’ab al Jabarin” (the irresistible people of Palestine), it sought consistently to sell the Palestinians a mendacious interpretation of Oslo, namely a promise of liberation and a viable state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
In fact, nowhere was the Oslo Agreement more scandalous in its “constructive vagueness” than in the issue of mutual recognition.
The PLO, eager to extricate itself from an acute financial and political crisis following the Second Gulf War (the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent defeat of Iraq by an American-led coalition) agreed readily to recognize Israel without even specifying its borders.
In return, Israel never agreed to recognize a would-be Palestinian state, and only, and rather parsimoniously and reluctantly, agreed to recognize the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people.
The recognition of the PLO was no more than a symbolic act, devoid of any concrete significance in political terms. In fact, the recognition didn’t imply any Israeli recognition of Palestinian rights or any realization that the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem would have to be terminated.
Indeed, the subsequent unmitigated expansion of Jewish colonies in the West Bank, under the nose of the PLO and the international community, proved beyond doubt that Israel didn’t and wouldn’t recognize a state called Palestine, despite Israel’s (disingenuous) acceptance of the “roadmap.” Indeed, a country that really wants peace with her neighbors doesn’t build hundreds of hateful colonies on stolen land, and doesn’t transfer hundreds of thousands of its most fanatical and hateful citizens (the Talmudic settlers) to occupied territories. And, obviously, Israel has done all of that and more, while still having the audacity to tell the world it has no peace partner on the Palestinian side.
Last week, when the Palestinian people in the occupied territories were given the chance to vote in a democratic election, they expressed their utter disenchantment with this ignominious scandal and finally decided to trash the corrupt and lying clique which gave them 12 years of deception, lies, and a police state without a state, whose modus operandi consisted of corruption, despotism, nepotism cronyism as well as total subservience to Jewish insolence and submission to American blackmail.
The Palestinian people voted for Hamas because they have been cheated by the PLO, cheated by the neighboring Arabs states (most of which are no more than obsequious puppets at America’s beck and call), cheated by the international community, as they have been tormented and nearly decimated by an insolent Israel whose powerful Jewish circles in America control, nearly completely, American politics and polices.
The Palestinian people are sincere about peace, but they are not stupid or gullible. They can easily recognize a genuine peace process from a genuine deception process. They allowed themselves to be duped and cheated once, but they will not allow themselves to be duped and cheated again. We gave what we thought was a peace process the benefit of the doubt, but we will not give what is manifestly a deception process the benefit of the doubt.
It is true that Hamas has no miracles to offer at this time since the Palestinian people, including Hamas itself, are still under a most nefarious and dehumanizing occupation, not unlike the Nazi occupation of Europe.
Hamas will be honest with the Palestinian people and will not seek to sell them pie in the sky and will not give them fantastic promises based one classical American lies and classical Zionist mendacity.
Moreover, Hamas will not be bullied by hypocritical western demands which, not only ignore the enduring Jewish rape of Palestine and enslavement of its people, but demand that the rape victims make sustained efforts to accommodate the rapist Israel and show deference to her feelings.
Hamas will not speak about Israel’s destruction. Hamas can’t destroy Israel. And Hamas actually doesn’t want to destroy nuclear Israel.
But Hamas will not give Israel a free recognition nor will it give up the most intrinsic right to resist these vile foreign occupiers. Everything has a price, because real peace can only be the fruit of justice.
Hamas will be willing and ready to give Israel a de facto recognition, an open-ended peace, if Israel agrees to recognize a sovereign Palestinian state on 100% of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, from which they were expelled at gun point when Israel was created in 1948.
Hamas will not accept to cede even one centimeter of the 1967 territories.
Needless to say, the 4th of June, 1967 borders have a paramount psychological symbolism, in addition to their political significance. One has to be Palestinian to understand this symbolism, and we will not betray our own souls.
Hamas is also willing and ready to halt all forms of violent resistance if Israel is willing to reciprocate and stop its wanton daily aggression, acts of murder, home demolitions and this organized, institutionalized state- terror against our people.
In short, Hamas wants to be a genuine peace partner, not an inferior vanquished supplicant begging for everything from Israel and America, from travel permits to a meeting with a junior American officials.
There is now a new breed of Palestinian leaders the world will have to deal with.
These proud and dignified people will not be bullied by sticks or induced by carrots. Nor will they allow themselves to be blackmailed by foreign aid, as Hamas Khalid Mish’al pointed out recently.
In short, the ball is in Israel’s and America’s courts. If they want a historical peace with based on UN resolutions, and the principle of land for peace, this is the time.
If they say no, because of their insolent nature and arrogance of power, then they will only be vindicating Hamas long-standing ideology that Israel and peace are an inherent oxymoron, when one appears, the other disappears.
