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<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9469.shtml" eudora="autourl">
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9469.shtml<br><br>
</a>No peace without Hamas <br>
Mahmoud al-Zahar, <i>The Electronic Intifada,</i> 17 April 2008 <br><br>
<img src="http://electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/2/080417-zahar-hamas.jpg" width=483 height=315 alt="[]">
<br>
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/<a href="http://maanimages.com">MaanImages</a>) <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9366.shtml">the American
</a><i>coup
d'etat</i><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9366.shtml">
that created the new sectarian paradigm</a> with Fatah and the continuing
warfare against and enforced isolation of Gazans.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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?<br><br>
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 <i>tikkun olam</i> -- has corrupted itself in the detour
into Zionism, nationalism and apartheid.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<i>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 </i>The
Washington Post. <br><br>
<br><br>
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