Engage with Hamas

It is a bit surprising that Yousef a Hamas spokesperson should have an article in the Washington Post. He also has an article in the New York Times. Perhaps some in the US want to work out a deal with Hamas. However the Bush administration and Abbas are leaping ahead with a government that excludes Hamas even though Hamas controls Gaza. Hamas offers to talk with Fatah but Fatah obviously hopes to be able to forge ahead with the arms aid and encouragement of the US, Israel and no doubt most other countries as well. Yousef's plea for unity seems to be a pipe dream at the moment.

Engage With Hamas
We Earned Our Support
By Ahmed Yousef
Washington Post
Wednesday, June 20, 2007; A19

GAZA CITY, Palestine -- The Palestinian National Authority apparently
joins
the list of elected governments targeted or toppled over the past
century by
interventionism: nations that had the courage to take American rhetoric
at
face value and elect whomever they would. No doubt some in Washington
persist in the fiction that the United States is following a "road map"
to
democracy for Palestinians, just as others believe the Iraq war has
been a
sincere exercise in nation-building. Neoconservative strategists have
miscalculated, however, and Hamas is stronger than ever.

For the first time in months, Gaza is secure. This may be a momentary
peace
as Israel prepares an attempt to retake parts of Gaza. Yet neither
blunt
force nor U.S. subterfuge will extinguish Palestinian aspirations for
self-governance, free from outside interference.

Hamas's actions to secure Gaza from the horrific recent violence of the
Palestinian contras have been out of self-defense. The assassinations
of
Hamas officials and supporters, attempts on the life of the elected
prime
minister, and kidnappings and bombings by some in President Mahmoud
Abbas's
paramilitary groups had to stop. The PA has a clear legal right, indeed
an
obligation, to prevent this violence, by force if necessary, and to
protect
the Palestinian people.

It is not Hamas that has "outlawed" the government. (When has an
elected
party with a voting majority ever resorted to banning the government to
get
its way?) The success of the Reform and Change Party is neither a
chimera
nor a momentary lapse in reason on the part of the electorate. Rather,
it is
the result of four decades of hard work in Palestinian society. It
reflects
the trust of the people. Those who collaborate with the occupiers to
void
the electoral process will not succeed. Abbas's "state of emergency"
and his
U.S. and Israeli arms will not prevail in Gaza or quench the thirst for
political freedom in the West Bank.

Some critics raise the red flag of "al-Qaeda" and say that Hamas and
parliament are a stalking horse for Salafi jihadists. I defy them to
demonstrate one instance in which Hamas's military structure has struck
against any force outside the theater of the occupation. The struggle
has
always been against the Israeli agenda of ethnic cleansing and
conquest.
Hamas is a movement of Palestinian liberation and nationalism --
Islamist,
yes, but in the sea of contending faiths that is the homeland, where is
the
sin in loving one's creed?

Likewise, those who demean resistance to the occupation as little more
than
a proxy for Iran, Syria or Hezbollah are ignorant of history. The
long-suffering Palestinians have gratefully accepted assistance from
neighbors both near and far, Arab and Western, Muslim or otherwise.
Slighting the generosity of those who sympathize with the Palestinians
is
hypocritical given America's billions of annual aid dollars for Israel,
money that has only purchased tragedy.

Palestinians want, on their terms, the same thing Western societies
want:
self-determination, modernity, access to markets and their own economic
power, and freedom for civil society to evolve. Those who warn of
"failed
states" and "Hamastan" as a breeding ground for terrorism forget where
blame
for failure belongs -- at the feet of the American administration,
which has
chosen to isolate, rather than deal with, the elected government.

The Bush administration never intended to honor the outcome of fair and
transparent elections in the occupied territories. The embargo,
designed to
punish the electorate for its choice, was the first step toward
crushing new
democratic institutions. The second has been to find collaborators for
the
American agenda and to supply them with advisers, funds and weapons for
their campaign of destabilization. The final step will be to truncate
Gaza
from any proposed Palestinian state and make it a de facto prison for
all
"undesirable" aspects of Palestinian nationalism. This will culminate
in
provocations designed to trigger a military response from Israel, which
will
"justify" a war on Gazans. This would be tragic for all concerned, and
the
international community, especially the Arab League, must not allow
such an
outcome.

What can be salvaged from the wreckage of the multiparty system? Those
who
have dissolved the government and joined with the occupiers are
embraced by
the Bush and Olmert administrations, which have released Palestinian
tax
revenue and taken other steps to shore up the Abbas government's
legitimacy
and proclaim it the future of a Palestine shorn of troublesome Gaza.

Yet it remains that Hamas has a world in common with Fatah and other
parties, and they all share the same goals -- the end of occupation;
the
release of political prisoners; the right of return for all
Palestinians;
and freedom to be a nation equal among nations, secure in its own
borders
and at peace. For more than 60 years, Palestinians have resisted walls
and
checkpoints intended to divide them. Now they must resist the poisonous
inducements to fight one another and resume a unified front against the
occupation.

We urge the Bush administration not to repeat the mistakes that have
become
hallmarks of its actions in the Middle East. Allow the Palestinian
people to
chart their own course, free from the influence of those who seek
little
more than to perpetuate the status quo. The alternative is
unacceptable.

Ahmed Yousef is a senior political adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, who is
contesting his dismissal as prime minister by Mahmoud Abbas.

* * *