by Elliott Abrams
Frequently I have found that when I mention the odious Hamas “Charter” as
the best insight into the group’s current goals, the response is that
the charter is nearly 25 years old and doesn’t mean much nowadays.
In that context, the words of Hamas’ two top leaders in the past few weeks deserve attention.
On Nov. 26, Mahmoud Zahar
(a Hamas co-founder and influential leader) said the following: “Anyone
who wants to liberate Palestine by complaining [to the International
Criminal Court] — I will send him handkerchiefs to wipe his tears.
Whoever wants to really liberate Palestine should pick up a gun.”
Khaled Mashaal,
the top political leader of Hamas, visited Gaza for the first time this
weekend. Here are some of his remarks to a mass rally celebrating
Hamas’ 25th anniversary:
"Palestine, from the
river to the sea, from north to south, is our land. Not an inch of it
can be conceded. We cannot recognize the legitimacy of Israel’s
occupation of Palestine. There is no legitimacy to occupation, and
therefore no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take.
Liberating Palestine, all of Palestine, is a duty, a right and a goal …
we will liberate [Jerusalem] inch by inch, stone by stone, Islamic and
Christian holy places. Israel has no right in Jerusalem. ..."
In regard to the recent
U.N. vote granting Palestine the status of a nonmember state, Mashaal
said: "Liberation first, then the state. The real state is the product
of liberation, not the product of negotiations. Holy war and armed
resistance are the real and right path to liberation and recovery of
rights."
All these remarks
suggest that the mentality that produced the charter, a venomous
anti-Semitic document that makes compromise impossible, remains
dominant. For that reason, I wonder why anyone who seeks peace would
promote reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas and seek to bring Hamas
into the governing of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority. Given
Hamas’ goals, such a role for the terrorist group would make
Israeli-Palestinian cooperation impossible — not just peace negotiations
but the day-to-day cooperation that currently exists with respect to
the West Bank.
The words of Mashaal
and Zahar are also a reminder of why Hamas persists, year after year, in
firing rockets, mortars, and missiles at civilian targets in Israel.
Hamas commits terrorist acts because it is wedded to violence and
terror, and believes that it is fully justified in pursuing its goal of
driving the Jews out of what they call “Israel” and Hamas calls
“Palestine.” Mashaal's claim that “not an inch of it can be conceded”
and Zahar’s urging to “pick up a gun” demonstrate yet again what Hamas
wants and how it plans to get there.
Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on
Foreign Relations. This piece is reprinted with permission and can be
found on Abrams' blog “Pressure Points” here.
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3034
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
1 comment:
Hamas wants what Sheik Abdullah Azzam recommended. "Abdullah Azzam [the mentor of Osama bin Laden and co-founder of al-Qaeda] was linked to Hamas from its inception in December 1987. He viewed Hamas as the spearhead in the religious confrontation against the Jews in Palestine and as followers of the Islamic Movement (a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood), in which he himself had been active in the 1960s. In an interview with al-Jazeera (December 1998), Osama Bin Laden declared that after the outbreak of the intifada, Azzam maintained close contact with Hamas, and his books were widely circulated in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The fact that Azzam and Hamas were allied with the same parent movement – the Muslim Brotherhood – linked them closely. Even more important, however, was the ideological similarity between them. An examination of Hamas’ charter, published on August 18, 1988, alongside Azzam’s philosophical teachings illustrates their shared ideological affinities." Asaf Maliach, Military and Strategic Affairs, Vol 2, No. 2, October 2010 P85-87 The Hamas Charter's call for jihad is even stronger now with the renaissance of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
According to Azzam, to negotiate over what was a part of the dar al Islami is to give up a part of the Islamic faith.
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