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A June 3rd poll conducted by Near East
Consulting based in Ramallah, Palestine shows that the overwhelming
majority of Palestinians support the Prisonerıs Agreement, an
inter-factional agreement signed by one member each of Fatah, Hamas,
Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, and the DFLP inside Israelıs Hadarim prison
this past May. (1) The document implicitly recognizes Israel by
accepting, among other things, a Palestinian state in the lands occupied
by Israel in the June 1967 war.
News reports have paid a lot of attention to the Prisonerıs Agreement in
part because it accepts the Arab League initiative (Saudi Plan)
unanimously adopted by the Arab states in Beirut in 2002 at the height
of the Second Intifada. By calling for an independent Palestinian state
on the 67 lines in return for peace with Israel, both the Saudi Plan
and the Prisonerıs Agreement echo the international consensus on
Palestine since the mid 1970s. Israel has completely ignored the Arab
initiative despite overwhelming support among the Palestinians.
But the Prisonerıs Agreement has also become the focal point of the most
recent crisis in internal Palestinian politics: Palestinian Authority
president and Fatah deputy leader Mahmoud Abbas has called for a
national referendum on the document should Hamas fail to adopt it as
part of their official program. So far, Hamas has refused and has
labeled Abbası actions ³illegal.²
Not surprisingly, there is more to the referendum story than ever makes
it into the press. In this case, the information omitted from the public
record makes it possible for the United States, Israel and their allies
to continue to justify the economic siege imposed on the Palestinian
territories, a siege that is causing Palestinian society to teeter on
the brink of ruin. In their rush to push forward a regional, pro-US and
anti-democratic agenda, those states allied against the Palestine
national movement (including Egypt and Jordan) have created the kind of
humanitarian crisis one would expect to find as the result of a natural
disaster.
No attention has been paid to what the Hamas leadership is actually
saying, or to critical factors such as US efforts to build a 3,500 man
militia around the office of Abbas in an effort to encourage civil
infighting or Israelıs recent approval of a large shipment of arms and
ammunition from Egypt and Jordan for the equipping of the Presidential
Guard. Abbas, who is supported by the US, aims to increase the number of
armed soldiers around him to 10,000. He is also aiming, with US support,
to create a shadow government that will undermine the legitimate one now
controlled by Hamas.(2) It should come as a surprise to no one that, in
the words of Mohammed Nazzal, a member of the Hamas government in exile,
³Hamas will not submit to blackmail² (3) This is essentially the goal
of Abbası call for a referendum. There is no need to bring to a popular
vote support for the Prisonerıs Agreement. Overwhelming popular support
for this and other initiatives, including support for the two-state
solution, has long been documented.
Most of the rhetoric damns Hamas for refusing to follow Abbası
instructions. Hamas remains the reason why states should support the
economic and political blockade on Palestine although this does little
more than fuel the ³War on Terror² by adding another organization to the
blacklist of regional enemies. Labeling Hamas a ³terrorist organization²
obscures the reality, however. Its political leadership and its
electoral/government program (i.e. not its Charter) have put forth both
reasonable and moderate demands. Acceptance of an independent
Palestinian state has long been part of its strategic agenda. Its
reputation as a ³rejectionist² movement stems in part from its
unwillingness to act alone, without reciprocal moves by Israel, a state
whose extremist policies over the past 5 decades have transformed the
physical landscape of Palestine so dramatically that the prospects for a
genuine peace settlement today are bleaker than ever.
In his latest comments on Abbası decision to call the referendum,
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert summed up his governmentıs view of
this effort insofar as it could create a bridge toward peace talks with
Israel. He said, "The referendum is an internal game between one faction
and the other.It is meaningless in terms of the broad picture of
chances towards some kind of dialogue between us and the Palestinians.
It's meaningless." (4) Whether the referendum succeedsı or failsı
therefore, will be of no consequence whatsoever in efforts to resume
negotiations or as form of leverage to end the deadly siege on the
territories.
II. Hamas accepts a two-state solution. When asked by
Newsweek-Washington Post correspondent Lally Weymouth on 26 February
2006 what agreements Hamas was prepared to honor, the new Hamas Prime
Minister, Ismail Haniyeh answered, ³the ones that will guarantee the
establishment of a Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital with
1967 borders.² Weymouth went on, ³Will you recognize Israel?² to which
Haniyeh responded, ³If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian
people a state and give them back all their rights then we are ready to
recognize them.² (5) This view encapsulates the Hamas demand for
reciprocity.
In an interview with CNNıs Wolf Blitzer four days after the PLC
elections, the new Hamas Foreign Minister, Mahmoud Zahar (considered the
partyıs hard-liner) remarked, ³We can accept to establish our
independent state on the area occupied [in] 1967.² Like Haniyeh and
other Hamas members, Zahar insists that once such a state is established
a long-term truce ³lasting as long as 10, 20 or 100 years² will ensue
ending the state of armed conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
(6)
Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad commented to reporters on 10 May
2006, ³Yes, we accept an independent state in the Palestinian
territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War. This
attitude is not new and it is declared in the governmentıs platform.²
(7)
In an effort to clarify the Hamas position on Abbası call for a
referendum, Hamas parliamentary speaker Aziz Duweik explained that it
had nothing to do with a lack of support for the two-state settlement.
³Everybody in Hamas says Yesı to the two-state solution,² he said. ³The
problem comes from the fact that the Israelis so far [have not said
they] accept the 1967 bordersbetween the two states.²(8)
Other leaders are just as explicit. ³Hamas is clear in terms of the
historical solution and an interim solution. We are ready for both: the
borders of 1967, a state, elections, and agreement after 10-15 years of
building trust,² commented Usama Hamdan, the Hamas Chief Representative
in Lebanon. (9) Notable here is that his remarks were made in 2003 well
before the Hamas victory of January 2006. Indeed, it should be pointed
out that most of the on-the-record comments to this effect were made
prior to these elections.
Additional Hamas spokespersons who have made explicit reference to
acceptance of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 lands include
Sheikh Ahmad Haj Ali, a Muslim Brotherhood leader and Hamas legislative
candidate currently imprisoned in Israel (interviewed in July 2005);
Muhammad Ghazal, Hamas spokesperson also currently in an Israeli jail
(Sept. 2005); Hasan Yousef, West Bank political leader (August 2005);
and the Hamas Electoral Manifesto Article 5:1 which calls for ³adherence
to the goal of defeating the [1967] occupation and establishing an
independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.² (10)
In 1989, Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin (assassinated by
Israel in March 2004) stated, ³I do not want to destroy Israel. We want
to negotiate with Israel so the Palestinian people inside and outside
Palestine can live in Palestine. Then the problem will cease to exist.²
(11)
The hard-line Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, assassinated by Israel
in April 2004 commented in 2002 that, ³[T]he Intifada is about forcing
Israelıs withdrawal to the 1967 borders.² This ³doesnıt mean the
Arab-Israeli conflict will be over,² but rather that the armed
resistance to Israel would end.² (12)
In a 2004 report published by the highly regarded International Crisis
Group, ³During the 1987-1993 uprising, Hamas leaders proposed various
formulas for Israeli withdrawal to the June 4th 1967 borders, to be
reciprocated with a decadesı-long truce (hudna).² That same report notes
that, ³In a March 1988 meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon
Peres, and then with Defense Minister Rabin in June 1989, Hamas leader
(now FM) Mahmud Zahar explicitly proposed an Israeli withdrawal to the
1967 boundaries, to be followed by a negotiated permanent settlement.²
The offer was refused. (13)
III. In a CounterPunch article posted on 24 February 2006, I wrote that
the Hamas leadership had ³clearly and repeatedly² called for an
independent Palestinian state on the lands occupied by Israel in 1967.
(14) I received numerous emails demanding ³proof² of this assertion and
calling me a traitor, a liar, a Nazi, a terrorist sympathizer and an
anti-Semite. The statements included in this piece should help put to
rest those accusations. Indeed, the statements made to this effect by
Hamas members here are but a small sampling of similar statements made
over the years that are part of the public (though unreported) record.
Surely, one can find many remarks by Hamas leaders over the years that
are much less conciliatory, indeed even inflammatory and often
disturbing. It would be misleading to suggest otherwise. Nonetheless the
trend especially in the past few years up to the present has been toward
a more conciliatory, indeed more realistic policy. As Crisis Group
analyst Mouin Rabbani has written, ³On Hamas I would not hesitate to say
that the organization as a whole has essentially reconciled itself to a
two-state settlement as a strategic option but has not formally adopted
this as an organisational position. Yasin, Rantisi, Abu Shanab, Mashal,
etc. have all made such statements. Have they made others that
contradict them? Of course. But I think it can safely be concluded the
strategic decisions have been made, the tactics remain unresolved and
the formalities will come last.² The question for us is whether or not
we will give Hamas the chance to translate their words into actions.
Rabbani writes, ³it would be as na?ve to take the above statements on
faith as it would be foolish not to put them to the test.²(15)
As Menachem Klein points out in a recent Haaretz article, ³The political
texts of Hamas indicate that at present the organization is not
fundamentalist.² (16) It has moved away from the ideological demands of
its Charter into a pragmatism that seeks to respond to the demands of
the day without falling into the same traps that Fatah and the Fatah-led
PA fell into over the years. It has respected a one-sided truce for the
past 16 months Ĵthough with the June 9th Israeli artillery attack on a
north Gaza beach in which 7 civilians died, six of them from the same
family, this truce may have come to an end. Hamas has also agreed to
support negotiations between Abbas and Israel.
Haması rejection of Abbası call for a referendum on the Prisonerıs
Agreement has nothing to do with its willingness to accept an
independent Palestinian state on 67 lands and everything to do with its
opposition to those in Fatah and in Israel, the US and EU who are doing
everything in their power to bring down the Hamas government and in the
most depraved manner: by starving the population into submission and
forcing on it the illegal diktats of anti-democratic warlords within the
occupied Palestinian territories such as the US-backed Fatah militia
leader and former head of the Preventive Security Services, Mohammad
Dahlan.
In a June 8th 2006 article in the Financial Times, Henry Siegman
commented on remarks made on Israeli television by Israeli security
expert Ephraim Halevy. He writes, ³Why should Israel care whether Hamas
grants it the right to exist, Mr. Halevy asked. Israel exists and
Hamasıs recognition or non-recognition neither adds to nor detracts from
that irrefutable fact. But 40 years after the 1967 war, a Palestinian
state does not exist. The politically consequential question, therefore,
is whether Israel recognizes a Palestinian right to statehood, not the
reverse.² (17)
Indeed, until Israel actively agrees to withdraw to the June 4th 1967
borders, Hamas should not fall into the trap that Fatah under Yassir
Arafat fell into of conceding more and more for less and less until
there is nothing left. Right now the US-backed annexation/cantonization
program seems likely to bring the whole Palestinian tragedy to a hideous
end. All the maneuverings are a cover for that, the whole discussion
about the referendum included. Fatah should by now know better than to
fall into the hands of US and Israeli overlords in its quest for local
dominance. The fact that it does not should be reason enough for why it
was voted out of power last January. Hamas has good reasons to demand
that Israel, with US urging, show its good faith first. In the meantime
Haması continued opposition to Abbası dubious call for a referendum on
the Prisonerıs Agreement is justified.
ENDNOTES:
1 www.neareastconsulting.com; Press Release: The Palestinian National
Dialogue and call for a Referendum Survey #2, 3 June 2006.
2. See ³PA Chief Abbas aims to expand presidential guard,² by Zeıev
Schiff, Haaretz, 28 May 2006. www.haaretz.com See also ³Talking to
Hamas,² by Alastair Crooke in Prospect, issue 123, June 2006.
3. Ibid, Zeıev Schiff, Haaretz, 28 May 2006.
4. ³Abbas sets Referendum for July 26; Hamas rejects Poll,² Mijal
Grinberg and Assaf Uni, Haaretz, 10 June 2006. www.Haaretz.com
5. ³We do not wish to throw them into the sea,² Interview between Lally
Weymouth and Ismail Haniyeh in the Washington Post, Sunday 26 February
2006.
6. ³Hamas leader sets condition for truce,² on CNN World website, 29
January 2006. www.cnn.com/2006/World/meast/01/29/hamas.interview/
7. ³Abbas delays referendum decision,² BBC News, Tuesday 6 June 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5049346.stm
8.. ³Hamas says ready to accept Palestinian statehood in 1967 border,²
in China View, 10 May 2006; http://news.xinhuanet.com/English/2006-05/10/content_4531847.htm
9. ³Enter Hamas: the challenges of political integration,² International
Crisis Group Report no. 49, Amman/Brussels; 18 January 2006. First
edition (preliminary) report. www.crisisgroup.org
10. Ibid; The Hamas Electoral Manifesto also states, ³Yes to a free,
independent and sovereign state on every portion of the West Bank, Gaza
Strip and Jerusalem without conceding any part of historic Palestine.²
This, of course, will raise red flags for some, which is why I include
it here. I do not want to be accused of leaving out important statements
or phrases. As with other statements, however, it must be measured
against current realities both military and political.
www.crisisgroup.org
11. ³Dealing with Hamas,² International Crisis Group Report no. 21,
Amman/Brussels; 26 January 2004. From an interview in An-Nahar
(Jerusalem), 30 April 1989. Quoted in Ziad Abu Amr, Islamic
Fundamentalism. Op. cit. p.76
12. ³Enter Hamas: the challenges of political integration,"
International Crisis Group report no. 49, 18 January 2006.
www.crisisgroup.org
13. ³Dealing with Hamas,² International Crisis Group report no. 21, 26
January 2004. Amman/Brussels. www.crisisgroup.org
14. ³For Those Who Havenıt Noticed: Watching the Dissolution of
Palestine,² 24 February 2006; CounterPunch, edited by Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair, www.counterpunch.org
15. Mouin Rabbani; personal correspondence. Also in ³Enter Hamas² the
ICG preliminary report on Hamas from 18 January 2006.
www.crisisgroup.org
16. ³Haması Contradictory Voices,² by Menachem Klein, Haaretz, 2 June
2006.
17. ³The Issue is not Whether Hamas Recognizes Israel,² by Henry Siegman,
Financial Times, 8 June 2006.
Jennifer Loewenstein amadea311@earthlink.net
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