[News] No peace without Hamas

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9469.shtml

No peace without Hamas
Mahmoud al-Zahar, The Electronic Intifada, 17 April 2008

[]

In the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip a young boy stands 
against a wall decorated with Hamas graffiti at the funeral of Hamas 
fighter, Munzir Abu Howeshl, who was killed a day earlier in an 
Israeli airstrike, 12 April 2008. (Wissam 
Nassar/<http://maanimages.com>MaanImages)

US President Jimmy Carter's sensible plan to visit the Hamas 
leadership this week brings honesty and pragmatism to the Middle East 
while underscoring the fact that American policy has reached its dead 
end. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acts as if a few alterations 
here and there would make the hideous straitjacket of apartheid fit 
better. While Rice persuades Israeli occupation forces to cut a few 
dozen meaningless roadblocks from among the more than 500 West Bank 
control points, these forces simultaneously choke off fuel supplies 
to Gaza; blockade its 1.5 million people; approve illegal housing 
projects on West Bank land; and attack Gaza City with F-16s, killing 
men, women and children. Sadly, this is "business as usual" for the 
Palestinians.

Last week's attack on the Nahal Oz fuel depot should not surprise 
critics in the West. Palestinians are fighting a total war waged on 
us by a nation that mobilizes against our people with every means at 
its disposal -- from its high-tech military to its economic 
stranglehold, from its falsified history to its judiciary that 
"legalizes" the infrastructure of apartheid. Resistance remains our 
only option. Sixty-five years ago, the courageous Jews of the Warsaw 
ghetto rose in defense of their people. We Gazans, living in the 
world's largest open-air prison, can do no less.

The US-Israeli alliance has sought to negate the results of the 
January 2006 elections, when the Palestinian people handed our party 
a mandate to rule. Hundreds of independent monitors, Carter among 
them, declared this the fairest election ever held in the Arab Middle 
East. Yet efforts to subvert our democratic experience include 
<http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9366.shtml>the American coup 
d'etat<http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9366.shtml> that 
created the new sectarian paradigm with Fatah and the continuing 
warfare against and enforced isolation of Gazans.

Now, finally, we have the welcome tonic of Carter saying what any 
independent, uncorrupted thinker should conclude: that no "peace 
plan," "road map" or "legacy" can succeed unless we are sitting at 
the negotiating table and without any preconditions.

Israel's escalation of violence since the staged Annapolis "peace 
conference" in November has been consistent with its policy of 
illegal, often deadly collective punishment -- in violation of 
international conventions. Israeli military strikes on Gaza have 
killed hundreds of Palestinians since then with unwavering White 
House approval; in 2007 alone the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis 
killed was 40 to 1, up from 4 to 1 during the period from 2000 to 2005.

Only three months ago I buried my son Hussam, who studied finance at 
college and wanted to be an accountant; he was killed by an Israeli 
air strike. In 2003, I buried Khaled -- my first-born -- after an 
Israeli F-16 targeting me wounded my daughter and my wife and 
flattened the apartment building where we lived, injuring and killing 
many of our neighbors. Last year, my son-in-law was killed.

Hussam was only 21, but like most young men in Gaza he had grown up 
fast out of necessity. When I was his age, I wanted to be a surgeon; 
in the 1960s, we were already refugees, but there was no humiliating 
blockade then. But now, after decades of imprisonment, killing, 
statelessness and impoverishment, we ask: What peace can there be if 
there is no dignity first? And where does dignity come from if not 
from justice?

Our movement fights on because we cannot allow the foundational crime 
at the core of the Jewish state -- the violent expulsion from our 
lands and villages that made us refugees -- to slip out of world 
consciousness, forgotten or negotiated away. Judaism -- which gave so 
much to human culture in the contributions of its ancient lawgivers 
and modern proponents of tikkun olam -- has corrupted itself in the 
detour into Zionism, nationalism and apartheid.

A "peace process" with Palestinians cannot take even its first tiny 
step until Israel first withdraws to the borders of 1967; dismantles 
all settlements; removes all soldiers from Gaza and the West Bank; 
repudiates its illegal annexation of Jerusalem; releases all 
prisoners; and ends its blockade of our international borders, our 
coastline and our airspace permanently. This would provide the 
starting point for just negotiations and would lay the groundwork for 
the return of millions of refugees. Given what we have lost, it is 
the only basis by which we can start to be whole again.

I am eternally proud of my sons and miss them every day. I think of 
them as fathers everywhere, even in Israel, think of their sons -- as 
innocent boys, as curious students, as young men with limitless 
potential -- not as "gunmen" or "militants." But better that they 
were defenders of their people than parties to their ultimate 
dispossession; better that they were active in the Palestinian 
struggle for survival than passive witnesses to our subjugation.

History teaches us that everything is in flux. Our fight to redress 
the material crimes of 1948 is scarcely begun, and adversity has 
taught us patience. As for the Israeli state and its Spartan culture 
of permanent war, it is all too vulnerable to time, fatigue and 
demographics: In the end, it is always a question of our children and 
those who come after us.

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a surgeon, is a founder of Hamas. He is foreign 
minister in the government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, which 
was elected in January 2006. This essay was originally published by 
The Washington Post.




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20080417/dfbf6343/attachment.htm>