Gaza: Israel threatens to cut off water and power supplies if unity government formed

 Israel prefers to have Palestinians warring with each other in separate factions. As long as Hamas and Fatah could not co-operate Israel was able to try to work out a deal with Abbas and the Fatah faction who were relatively weak because of the split. Hamas was simply ignored.
    Hamas was left to rule over Gaza a virtual prison complete with a naval blockade and regulations that only allowed into Gaza those items that Israel wanted. At the same time few exports have been allowed making the strip a welfare client of Israel and the international community. Even so Israel feels so threatened by any unity among the Palestinians that it is willing to cut off power and water to the Gaza strip.
   Israel  also collects taxes for the Palestinian authority. It already froze tens of millions of those funds as a punishment for Palestine's becoming a full member of UNESCO. A senior Israeli official said that if a partnership were agreed to by Hamas and Fatah the transfer of those funds would become impossible.
   No doubt little if nothing will be said about this and the press and media coverage will be light. The defense of these measures will be easy: Here is the line from the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister. A unity government "would transform the Palestinian Authority into a terrorist authority and would put an end to any hope for a peace agreement"  Of course Israel itself used terrorist tactics in gaining its independence.  While Hamas has itself used terrorist tactics at present it tries to keep more radical elements in Gaza from firing rockets into Israel. For more see this article.

Hamas, Son of Israel

The fact that Israel helped nurture Hamas as opposition to the secularist PLO is rarely mentioned in mainstream critical analysis of the Israel Hamas conflict. As the article mentions this is a clear case of blowback. As with the evil terrorist Jihadists of Afghanistan when the USSR was in Afghanistan, so Hamas was OK and fostered to weaken the PLO just as the Jihadists were a weapon against the USSR. Of course when the jihadists turned against the west after the defeat of the Soviets they began the incarnation of evil and when the Islamist groups promoted by Israel to undermine the PLO became successful and turned against Israel rather than only the PLO they became the terrorists and thugs portrayed now in the media.



Hamas, Son of Israel
The Israelis birthed and nurtured their Islamist nemesis
by Justin Raimondo
Amid all the howls of pain and gnashing of teeth over the triumph of Hamas in the Palestinian elections, one fact remains relatively obscure, albeit highly relevant: Israel did much to launch Hamas as an effective force in the occupied territories. If ever there was a clear case of "blowback," then this is it. As Richard Sale pointed out in a piece for UPI:
"Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years. Israel 'aided Hamas directly – the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),' said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic [and International] Studies. Israel's support for Hamas 'was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative,' said a former senior CIA official."
Middle East analyst Ray Hanania concurs:
"In addition to hoping to turn the Palestinian masses away from Arafat and the PLO, the Likud leadership believed they could achieve a workable alliance with Islamic, anti-Arafat forces that would also extend Israel's control over the occupied territories."
In a conscious effort to undermine the Palestine Liberation Organization and the leadership of Yasser Arafat, in 1978 the government of then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin approved the application of Sheik Ahmad Yassin to start a "humanitarian" organization known as the Islamic Association, or Mujama. The roots of this Islamist group were in the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, and this was the seed that eventually grew into Hamas – but not before it was amply fertilized and nurtured with Israeli funding and political support.
Begin and his successor, Yitzhak Shamir, launched an effort to undercut the PLO, creating the so-called Village Leagues, composed of local councils of handpicked Palestinians who were willing to collaborate with Israel – and, in return, were put on the Israeli payroll. Sheik Yassin and his followers soon became a force within the Village Leagues. This tactical alliance between Yassin and the Israelis was based on a shared antipathy to the militantly secular and leftist PLO: the Israelis allowed Yassin's group to publish a newspaper and set up an extensive network of charitable organizations, which collected funds not only from the Israelis but also from Arab states opposed to Arafat.
Ami Isseroff, writing on MideastWeb, shows how the Israelis deliberately promoted the Islamists of the future Hamas by helping them turn the Islamic University of Gaza into a base from which the group recruited activists – and the suicide bombers of tomorrow. As the only higher-education facility in the Gaza strip, and the only such institution open to Palestinians since Anwar Sadat closed Egyptian colleges to them, IUG contained within its grounds the seeds of the future Palestinian state. When a conflict arose over religious issues, however, the Israeli authorities sided with the Islamists against the secularists of the Fatah-PLO mainstream. As Isseroff relates, the Islamists
"Encouraged Israeli authorities to dismiss their opponents in the committee in February of 1981, resulting in subsequent Islamisation of IUG policy and staff (including the obligation on women to wear the hijab and thobe and separate entrances for men and women), and enforced by violence and ostracization of dissenters. Tacit complicity from both university and Israeli authorities allowed Mujama to keep a weapons cache to use against secularists. By the mid 1980s, it was the largest university in occupied territories with 4,500 students, and student elections were won handily by Mujama."
Again, the motive was to offset Arafat's influence and divide the Palestinians. In the short term, this may have worked to some extent; in the longer term, however, it backfired badly – as demonstrated by the results of the recent Palestinian election.
The Hamas infrastructure of mosques, clinics, kindergartens, and other educational institutions flourished not only because they were lavishly funded, but also due to being efficiently run. Sheik Yassin and the future leaders of Hamas acquired a reputation for "clean" governance and good administrative practices, which would greatly aid them – especially in comparison to the PLO, which was widely perceived as corrupt. Indeed, "clean government" – and not the necessity of armed struggle – was the main theme of their successful election campaign.
The response of Israel and the U.S. has been shock, horror – and a stated refusal to deal with any government dominated by Hamas. U.S. congressional leaders – who unhelpfully passed a resolution prior to the Palestinian poll that demanded Hamas be banned from running – are now calling the entire "peace process" into question. Yet no one acknowledges that the victory of the Suicide Bombers Party demonstrated, in practice, an ancient principle expressed, I believe, by no less an authority than the Bible (Galatians 6:7):
"Be not deceived. God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
This "blowback" principle applies to Hamas not only insofar as Israel was involved in funding and encouraging Mujama, but also, after the consolidation of Hamas as an armed group, due to Israeli military policy. The much-touted "withdrawal," which amounts to Israel giving up Gaza while strengthening its hand elsewhere in the occupied territories, has been grist for the radical Islamist mill, as has the Wall of Separation and the attempt to quash the vote in East Jerusalem. Israel's relentless offensive against its perceived enemies – first Fatah, now Hamas and Islamic Jihad – has created a backlash and solidified support for fundamentalist extremist factions in the Palestinian community.
Likewise, the victory of Hamas will embolden the ultra-Zionists in Israel, who similarly mix a fanatic theology with faith in a military "solution" to the Palestinian "problem." The electoral victory of Hamas was only a few hours old before Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu went on television explaining why any concessions to the Palestinians – including the Gaza pullback – only served to embolden the most radical elements, such as Hamas.
The stricken Ariel Sharon lies in his hospital bed, unconscious – while his unilateral "land for peace" plan suffers from a very similar condition. Sharon's newly-formed Kadima Party is the big potential loser in all this, with Netanyahu's Likud looking to gain bigtime. The irony is that, as defense minister, it was Sharon who helped conceive and oversee the Village Leagues scheme that did so much to implant and empower Hamas. Like some Middle Eastern version of Dr. Frankenstein, he wound up being struck down by his own monstrous creation.
There is a lesson in there, somewhere, though it isn't one the Israelis or their American sponsors seem capable of learning just yet.
The idea that voting is some kind of panacea that will cleanse the Middle East of a self-defeating radicalism is an illusion that died a painful death with the election victory of Hamas. It had earlier suffered near-fatal convulsions with the ascension to power in Iraq of a Shi'ite fundamentalist coalition closely tied to Iran. The bitch-goddess of capital-D Democracy is a fickle and often perversely cruel deity, whose worshippers have been hit with a one-two punch as they seek to transform an entire region according to the canons of their peculiar dogma.

Carter offers to act as "communicator" between Hamas, US, Israel.

This is from Haaretz.
It is a wonder that Israelis talk to themselves given their propensity not to talk with terrorists. Israel and the U.S. want a weak and compliant Abbas to deal with not Hamas even though Hamas is willing to broker a deal. Perhaps Carter will be able to get the long held Israeli soldier held by Hamas released. Even if he does it is unlikely that Israel will give much if anything in return. The refusal of Israel to provide security for Carter is rather astonishing given that they have always provided security for U.S. presidents or ex-presidents.



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Last update - 23:21 14/04/2008
Carter offers to act as 'communicator' between Hamas, U.S., Israel
By Fadi Eyadat, Haaretz Correspondent Reuters

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, defending a contentious plan to meet the leader of Hamas, said Monday he hoped to become a conduit between the militant group and Washington and even Israel.

"Isolating Hamas is counterproductive," Carter said.

Hamas rules Gaza but is ostracized by Israel, the U.S. and Europe as a terror group.


"I think it is absolutely crucial that in the final and dreamed-about and
prayed-for peace agreement for this region that Hamas be involved and Syria will be involved," Carter told a business conference outside Tel Aviv.

"I can't say that they will be amenable to any suggestions, but at least after I meet with them I can go back and relay what they say, as just a
communicator, to the leaders of the United States," he said.

Earlier on Monday, Carter visited the southern town of Sderot, a frequent target of Qassam rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, and met the city's mayor, Eli Moyal, and other municipal officials.

"I think it's a despicable crime for any deliberate effort to be made to kill innocent civilians, and my hope is there will be a cease-fire soon," Carter said during his visit.

Following the visit, Moyal said: "I don't believe that Carter can bring calm and peace and I think his meeting with Meshal is arbitrary and will do nothing to advance Israel's interests," Moyal said, referring to Carter's plans to meet with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Damascus this week.

Olmert's office had no immediate comment.

Carter said Monday that a deal for the release of Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit would top the agenda of his discussions with Meshal.

The Bush administration and close U.S. ally Israel oppose Carter's planned meeting with Meshal, whose Islamist group won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 but was boycotted by the West for refusing to renounce violence and recognize Israel.

Israel and the United States have sought to isolate Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in June from more secular Fatah forces loyal to Abbas. Abbas holds sway in the West Bank and has launched U.S.-backed peace talks with Olmert.

Hamas leaders have offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but the group's 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner, who brokered Israel's first peace treaty with an Arab neighbor, Egypt, signed in 1979, met President Shimon Peres on Sunday but was shunned by most of the political leadership, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

In talks with MK Yossi Beilin in Jerusalem on Monday, Carter said he believed a release deal was possible and intended to make it a central aspect of his discussions with the Islamist leader.

Carter also said he would raise the importance of a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and a halt to rocket fire on southern Israel during the meeting.

The former U.S. leader told Beilin that in his efforts to solve international conflicts, he worked on a principle of talking with all possible sources.

Carter told Haaretz Sunday in an exclusive interview that he intends to check Meshal's willingness to accept the Arab League peace initiative. Carter says that acceptance of this plan by Hamas would be a very positive step.

Shin Bet security service declines request to assist in Carter security detail
Shin Bet security service has declined to assist Carter during his visit, U.S. sources close to the matter said on Monday.

An American source described the snub as an "unprecedented" breach between the Shin Bet and the U.S. Secret Service, which protects all current and former U.S. presidents, as well as Israeli leaders when they visit the United States.

Government sources on Monday described the lack of Shin Bet during Carter's visit to Sderot, an area often hit by rockets from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, as particularly "problematic".

Carter angered the Israeli government with plans to meet with Hamas leaders and for describing Israeli policy in the Palestinian territories as "a system of apartheid" in a 2006 book.

Israel has also rejected Carter's request to meet jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, who is seen as a possible successor to President Mahmoud Abbas, a spokesman for Carter said.

Barghouthi was convicted in 2004 of murder by an Israeli court over the killing of four Israelis and a Greek Orthodox monk in attacks by Palestinian militants. He is serving five life sentences.

American sources close to the matter said the Shin Bet, which helps protect visiting dignitaries and is overseen by Olmert's office, declined to meet the head of Carter's Secret Service security detail or provide his team with assistance as is customary during such visits.

"They're not getting support from local security," an American source said.


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Avneri: Good Morning Hamas

This is from antiwar.com. Avneri is an Israeli peace activist. Note that he takes it for granted that Arafat was murdered rather than died from an illness as is the accepted version in the west. Many Palestinians and a few others believe he was poisoned. As Avneri shows Israel was happy to see Hamas develop at first and thought it would weaken the PLO. Now the tables are turned. Hamas is the danger and the PLO under Abbas are seen as the faction with which peace can be negotiated. However, Avneri thinks that talking with Hamas is crucial to any peace. If Israelis refuse to talk with terrorists they couldn't even talk to themselves!

Good Morning, Hamas

by Uri Avnery
We Israelis live in a world of ghosts and monsters. We do not conduct a war against living persons and real organizations, but against devils and demons which are out to destroy us. It is a war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, between absolute good and absolute evil. That's how it looks to us, and that's how it looks to the other side, too.

Let's try to bring this war down from virtual spheres to the solid ground of reality. There can be no reasonable policy, nor even rational discussion, if we do not escape from the realm of horrors and nightmares.

After the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections, Gush Shalom said that we must speak with them. Here are some of the questions that were showered on me from all sides:

Do you like Hamas?

Not at all. I have very strong secular convictions. I oppose any ideology that mixes politics with religion – whether Jewish, Muslim, or Christian, in Israel, the Arab world, or America.

That does not prevent me from speaking with Hamas people, as I have spoken with other people with whom I don't agree. It has not prevented me from being a guest at their homes, to exchange views with them and to try to understand them. Some of them I liked, some I did not.

It is said that Hamas was created by Israel. Is that true?

Israel did not "create" Hamas, but it certainly helped it along in its initial stages.

During the first 20 years of the occupation, the Israeli leadership saw the PLO as its chief enemy. That's why it favored Palestinian organizations that, it was thought, could undermine the PLO. One example of this was Ariel Sharon's ludicrous attempt to set up Arab "village leagues" that would act as agents of the occupation.

The Israeli intelligence community, which in the last 60 years has failed almost every time in forecasting events in the Arab world, also failed this time. They believed that the emergence of an Islamic organization would weaken the secular PLO. While the military administration of the occupied territories was throwing into prison any Palestinian who engaged in political activity – even for peace – it did not touch the religious activists. The mosque was the only place where Palestinians could get together and plan political action.

This policy was, of course, based on a complete misunderstanding of Islam and Palestinian reality.

Hamas was officially founded immediately after the outbreak of the first Intifada at the end of 1987. The Israeli Security Service (known as Shabak or Shin Bet) handled it with kid gloves. Only a year later did it arrest the founder, Sheik Ahmad Yassin.

It is ironic that the Israeli leadership is now supporting the PLO in the hope of undermining Hamas. There is no better evidence for the stupidity of our "experts" as far as Arab matters are concerned, stemming from both arrogance and contempt. Hamas is far more dangerous to Israel than the PLO ever was.

Did the Hamas election victory show that Islam was on the rise among the Palestinian people?

Not necessarily. The Palestinian people did not become more religious overnight.

True, there is a slow process of Islamization throughout the region, from Turkey to Yemen and from Morocco to Iraq. It is the reaction of the young Arab generation to the failure of secular nationalism to solve their national and social problems. But this did not cause the earthquake in Palestinian society.

Then why did Hamas win?

There were several reasons. The main one was the growing conviction of the Palestinians that they would never get anything from the Israelis by nonviolent means. After the murder of Yasser Arafat, many Palestinians believed that if they elected Mahmoud Abbas as the new president, he would get from Israel and the U.S. the things they would not give Arafat. They found out that the opposite was happening: No real negotiations, while the settlements were getting larger every day.

They told themselves: if peaceful means don't work, there is no alternative to violent means. And if there be war, there are no braver warriors than Hamas.

Also: the corruption in the higher Fatah echelons had reached such dimensions, that the majority of Palestinians were disgusted. As long as Arafat was alive, the corruption was somehow tolerated, because everybody knew that Arafat himself was honest, and his towering importance for the national struggle overrode the shortcomings of his administration. After Arafat, tolerating the corruption became impossible. Hamas, on the other hand, was considered clean and its leaders incorrupt. The social and educational Hamas institutions, mainly financed by Saudi Arabia, were widely respected.

The splits within Fatah also helped the Hamas candidates.

Hamas, of course, had not taken part in previous elections, but it was generally assumed – even by Hamas people themselves – that they represented only about 15-25 percent of the electorate.

Can one reasonably expect the Palestinians to overthrow Hamas themselves?

As long as the occupation goes on, there is no chance of that. An Israeli general said this week that if the Israeli army stopped operating in the West Bank, Hamas would replace Abbas there too.

The administration of Mahmoud Abbas stands on feet of clay – American and Israeli feet. If the Palestinians finally lose what confidence they still have in Abbas, his power would crumble.

But how can one reach a settlement with an organization that declares that it will never recognize Israel and whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state?

All this matter of "recognition" is nonsense, a pretext for avoiding a dialogue. We do not need "recognition" from anybody. When the United States started a dialogue with Vietnam, it did not demand to be recognized as an Anglo-Saxon, Christian, and capitalist state.

If A signs an agreement with B, it means that A recognizes B. All the rest is hogwash.

And in the same matter: The fuss over the Hamas charter is reminiscent of the ruckus about the PLO charter, in its time. That was a quite unimportant document, which was used by our representatives for years as an excuse to refuse to talk with the PLO. Heaven and earth were moved to compel the PLO to annul it. Who remembers that today? The acts of today and tomorrow are important, the papers of yesterday are not.

What should we speak with Hamas about?

First of all, about a cease-fire. When a wound is bleeding, the blood loss must be stemmed before the wound itself can be treated.

Hamas has many times proposed a cease-fire, tahidiyeh ("quiet") in Arabic. This would mean a stop to all hostilities: Qassams and Grad rockets and mortar shells from Hamas and the other organizations;"targeted liquidations," military incursions, and starvation from Israel.

The negotiations should be conducted by the Egyptians, particularly since they would have to open the border between the Gaza Strip and Sinai. Gaza must get back its freedom of communication with the world by land, sea, and air.

If Hamas demands the extension of the cease-fire to the West Bank, too, this should also be discussed. That would necessitate a Hamas-Fatah-Israel trialogue.

Won't Hamas exploit the cease-fire to arm itself?

Certainly. And so will Israel. Perhaps we shall succeed, at long last, in finding a defense against short-range rockets.

If the cease-fire holds, what will be the next step?

An armistice, or hudnah in Arabic.

Hamas would have a problem in signing a formal agreement with Israel, because Palestine is a waqf – a religious endowment. (That arose, at the time, for political reasons. When Caliph Omar conquered Palestine, he was afraid that his generals would divide the country among themselves, as they had already done in Syria. So he declared it to be the property of Allah. This resembles the attitude of our own religious people, who maintain that it is a sin to give away any part of the country, because God has expressly promised it to us.)

Hudnah is an alternative to peace. It is a concept deeply embedded in the Islamic tradition. The prophet Muhammad himself agreed to a hudnah with the rulers of Mecca, with whom he was at war after his flight from Mecca to Medina. (By the way, before the hudnah expired, the inhabitants of Mecca adopted Islam and the prophet entered the town peacefully.) Since it has a religious sanction, its violation by Muslim believers is impossible.

A hudnah can last for dozens of years and be extended without limit. A long hudnah is in practice peace, if the relations between the two parties create a reality of peace.

So a formal peace is impossible?

There is a solution for this, too. Hamas has declared in the past that it does not object to Abbas conducting peace negotiations, on condition that the agreement reached is put to a plebiscite. If the Palestinian people confirm it, Hamas declared that it will accept the people's decision.

Why would Hamas accept it?

Like every Palestinian political force, Hamas aspires to power in the Palestinian state that will be set up along the 1967 borders. For that it needs to enjoy the confidence of the majority. There is no doubt whatsoever that the vast majority of the Palestinian people want a state of their own and peace. Hamas knows this well. It will do nothing that would push the majority of the people away.

And what is the place of Abbas in all this?

He should be pressured to come to an agreement with Hamas, along the lines of the earlier agreement concluded in Mecca. We believe that Israel has a clear interest in negotiating with a Palestinian government that includes the two big movements, so that the agreement reached would be accepted by almost all sections of the Palestinian people.

Is time working for us?

For many years, Gush Shalom was telling the Israeli public: let's make peace with the secular leadership of Yasser Arafat, because otherwise the national conflict will turn into a religious conflict. Unfortunately, this prophecy, too, has come true.

Those who did not want the PLO, got Hamas. If we don't come to terms with Hamas, we shall be faced with more extreme Islamic organizations, like the Taliban in Afghanistan.

US and Israel to boycott Palestinian Unity Govt.

The line that the US and Israel will not negotiate with terrorists is certainly unhelpful in resolving issues. These "terrorists" are democratically elected. So much for democracy. Not all democracies are equal apparently. The situation is ironic because Israel itself used terrorist tactics to gain independence. Also, it has negotiated prisoner exchanges with terrorists in the past. The US is alienating key allies in the Mid-East such as Saudi Arabia by taking this line. Hamas has in effect recognised Israel by the very fact of negotiating and accepting prior agreements. Note that Hamas is also required to renounce the US of violence. Come on, is Israel also going to renounce the use of violence and perhaps destroy its nuclear weapons as well!




US and Israel 'back boycott plan'
The US and Israel will not work with a new Palestinian unity government unless it recognises Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said.
He was speaking a day before three-way talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Ms Rice held separate talks with both men on Sunday.

Publicly, she said the US would "await the formation of a [unity] government before making any decisions".

Hamas, the largest group in the proposed Palestinian unity government, refuses to recognise Israel.

Mr Olmert said a Palestinian government that failed to accept conditions laid down by the quartet of the US, EU, Russia and UN "cannot receive recognition and there will not be co-operation with it".

"I spoke about this on Friday with the president of the United States, and I can tell you the Israeli and US positions are completely identical," Mr Olmert said in televised comments.

Power-sharing deal

The EU, US and Russia have maintained an economic boycott of the Palestinian government since Hamas won legislative elections in January last year.

After weeks of internal fighting, Hamas and the rival Fatah faction agreed last week to form a national unity government.

As a result, Ismail Haniya, of Hamas, resigned from his post as prime minister on Thursday and was asked by Mr Abbas, who heads Fatah, to form a new national unity government.

Ms Rice spent more than two hours in talks with Mr Abbas in the West Bank town of Ramallah. She then held talks in Jerusalem with Mr Olmert.

Before those meetings, Ms Rice said it was an important time to advance the vision of a Palestinian state.

Mr Olmert's comments will add to doubts about whether the US will engage with a new Palestinian unity government.

Many observers wonder whether the two embattled leaders, Mr Olmert and Mr Abbas, are strong enough to take the difficult steps towards peace, says the BBC's Bethany Bell in Jerusalem.

Moderation urged

Speaking after talks with Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Ms Rice said now was "an important time to talk about how we advance the vision of two states living side-by-side in peace and in freedom".


But she and Ms Livni both stressed that any new Palestinian coalition government must recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept past peace agreements.
Hamas' refusal to recognise Israel has led to a crippling ban on Western financial aid since the party came to power.

Meanwhile, factional fighting between Fatah and Hamas has claimed more than 90 Palestinian lives since December.

Mr Haniya now has five weeks to get a new cabinet accepted by the Hamas-dominated parliament.

But if Hamas maintains its position regarding Israel, there is concern that any talks brokered by Washington will be futile, correspondents say.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6372633.stm

Published: 2007/02/18 20:01:44 GMT

© BBC MMVII

What Israel's Right to Exist means to Palestinians

This is an interesting article showing the Palestine side of the discussion of Hamas' recognising Israel's "right to exist". The analogy with aboriginal's treatment in North America might not sit well with their spokespersons.


What 'Israel's right to exist' means to Palestinians
Recognition would imply acceptance that they deserve to be treated as subhumans.
By John V. Whitbeck
JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA - Since the Palestinian elections in 2006, Israel and much of the West have asserted that the principal obstacle to any progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace is the refusal of Hamas to "recognize Israel," or to "recognize Israel's existence," or to "recognize Israel's right to exist."

These three verbal formulations have been used by Israel, the United States, and the European Union as a rationale for collective punishment of the Palestinian people. The phrases are also used by the media, politicians, and even diplomats interchangeably, as though they mean the same thing. They do not.


DEAN ROHRER

In the Monitor
Wednesday, 02/07/07



"Recognizing Israel" or any other state is a formal legal and diplomatic act by one state with respect to another state. It is inappropriate – indeed, nonsensical – to talk about a political party or movement extending diplomatic recognition to a state. To talk of Hamas "recognizing Israel" is simply to use sloppy, confusing, and deceptive shorthand for the real demand being made of the Palestinians.

"Recognizing Israel's existence" appears on first impression to involve a relatively straightforward acknowledgment of a fact of life. Yet there are serious practical problems with this language. What Israel, within what borders, is involved? Is it the 55 percent of historical Palestine recommended for a Jewish state by the UN General Assembly in 1947? The 78 percent of historical Palestine occupied by the Zionist movement in 1948 and now viewed by most of the world as "Israel" or "Israel proper"? The 100 percent of historical Palestine occupied by Israel since June 1967 and shown as "Israel" (without any "Green Line") on maps in Israeli schoolbooks?

Israel has never defined its own borders, since doing so would necessarily place limits on them. Still, if this were all that was being demanded of Hamas, it might be possible for the ruling political party to acknowledge, as a fact of life, that a state of Israel exists today within some specified borders. Indeed, Hamas leadership has effectively done so in recent weeks.

"Recognizing Israel's right to exist," the actual demand being made of Hamas and Palestinians, is in an entirely different league. This formulation does not address diplomatic formalities or a simple acceptance of present realities. It calls for a moral judgment.

There is an enormous difference between "recognizing Israel's existence" and "recognizing Israel's right to exist." From a Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to concede that the Holocaust was morally justified. For Palestinians to acknowledge the occurrence of the Nakba – the expulsion of the great majority of Palestinians from their homeland between 1947 and 1949 – is one thing. For them to publicly concede that it was "right" for the Nakba to have happened would be something else entirely. For the Jewish and Palestinian peoples, the Holocaust and the Nakba, respectively, represent catastrophes and injustices on an unimaginable scale that can neither be forgotten nor forgiven.

To demand that Palestinians recognize "Israel's right to exist" is to demand that a people who have been treated as subhumans unworthy of basic human rights publicly proclaim that they are subhumans. It would imply Palestinians' acceptance that they deserve what has been done and continues to be done to them. Even 19th-century US governments did not require the surviving native Americans to publicly proclaim the "rightness" of their ethnic cleansing by European colonists as a condition precedent to even discussing what sort of land reservation they might receive. Nor did native Americans have to live under economic blockade and threat of starvation until they shed whatever pride they had left and conceded the point.

Some believe that Yasser Arafat did concede the point in order to buy his ticket out of the wilderness of demonization and earn the right to be lectured directly by the Americans. But in fact, in his famous 1988 statement in Stockholm, he accepted "Israel's right to exist in peace and security." This language, significantly, addresses the conditions of existence of a state which, as a matter of fact, exists. It does not address the existential question of the "rightness" of the dispossession and dispersal of the Palestinian people from their homeland to make way for another people coming from abroad.

The original conception of the phrase "Israel's right to exist" and of its use as an excuse for not talking with any Palestinian leaders who still stood up for the rights of their people are attributed to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It is highly likely that those countries that still employ this phrase do so in full awareness of what it entails, morally and psychologically, for the Palestinian people.

However, many people of goodwill and decent values may well be taken in by the surface simplicity of the words, "Israel's right to exist," and believe that they constitute a reasonable demand. And if the "right to exist" is reasonable, then refusing to accept it must represent perversity, rather than Palestinians' deeply felt need to cling to their self-respect and dignity as full-fledged human beings. That this need is deeply felt is evidenced by polls showing that the percentage of the Palestinian population that approves of Hamas's refusal to bow to this demand substantially exceeds the percentage that voted for Hamas in January 2006.

Those who recognize the critical importance of Israeli-Palestinian peace and truly seek a decent future for both peoples must recognize that the demand that Hamas recognize "Israel's right to exist" is unreasonable, immoral, and impossible to meet. Then, they must insist that this roadblock to peace be removed, the economic siege of the Palestinian territories be lifted, and the pursuit of peace with some measure of justice be resumed with the urgency it deserves.

• John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer, is the author of, "The World According to Whitbeck." He has advised Palestinian officials in negotiations with Israel.