Hamas refuses to free Israeli soldier in return for lifting Gaza blockade

Hamas has flatly rejected Israel’s demand that it free a captive soldier in return for lifting the blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian movement called instead for international pressure on Israel to force the borders open to relieve the humanitarian crisis after last month’s war.

Mousa Abu Marzook, the deputy leader of Hamas, accused Israel of backtracking over a truce agreement and warned that Corporal Gilad Shalit would only be released in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. “We will not change our position,” he told the Guardian in Damascus yesterday.

On Wednesday Israel’s security cabinet agreed to maintain the blockade and to hold back from any truce until the release of Shalit, who was captured in June 2006 near the Gaza boundary fence. Until then it seemed a new truce was imminent.

Hamas and Egypt, which is mediating between the Palestinians and Israelis, had been treating the two issues as separate. But Ehud Olmert, Israel’s outgoing prime minister, has been pressing to put Shalit at the heart of any deal. Olmert has just weeks left in office following this month’s elections and is keen to secure the soldier’s freedom before his term is up.

“Israel and Egypt and Hamas have known for two years that the Shalit file is completely separate from other issues,” protested Abu Marzook, just back in the Syrian capital from the truce talks in Cairo. “We are ready to start negotiating about Shalit, but the issue is not linked to any other as far as we are concerned. This is not acceptable to us.”

The soldier is believed to be alive but his whereabouts are unknown and he has not been seen by the International Red Cross. “It’s good that they [the Israelis] don’t know where he is, otherwise they would have killed him,” he claimed.

Abu Marzook signalled however that fresh information about Shalit might be provided if Israel moved Palestinian prisoners being held in solitary confinement to normal cells, released unwell female prisoners and published information on the Hamas fighters Imad and Adel Abdullah, said to have been abducted by Israeli forces.

He said contacts between Hamas and European and US representatives had multiplied since the war, despite Hamas being formally designated as “terrorist” by the US and EU over its refusal to recognise Israel, renounce violence and abide by interim peace agreements. “There’s been a big change since the war. But a lot of the people we’ve met have asked us to keep the talks confidential.”

Hamas has sent a letter to President Barack Obama via US senator John Kerry who yesterday visited Gaza, the BBC reported. There was no information about the letter’s contents.

Abu Marzook welcomed Obama’s appointment of George Mitchell as special envoy for Middle East peace, describing the former senator as a “non-Zionist American representative” who had criticised Israeli settlements and helped to broker peace between Britain and the IRA. But despite hints of a potential shift in Washington, there was no sign that Mitchell would meet Hamas; he failed even to visit Syria on his first regional tour this month.

Abu Marzook said Hamas favoured reconciliation talks with Fatah, led by the western-backed Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank. Ending internal divisions is seen as key to lifting the Gaza blockade, enforced since the Islamist movement won elections in 2006, and tightened the following summer.

The 22-day war, which Israel launched with the aim of halting Palestinian rocket fire, killed at least 1,300 Palestinians, many of them civilians, destroyed about 5,000 homes and ruined much of Gaza’s already rickety infrastructure. But it was a Palestinian victory because Israel failed to achieve its goals, argued Abu Marzook.

“Now there is global support for Hamas and not just in the Arab and Muslim worlds,” he said. “This is a moral judgment against Israel. Israel has had moral support and legitimacy since the second world war and its propaganda has described Hamas as a terrorist group. There’s been a real change on those two points – but this mass support has not managed to break the blockade of Gaza.”

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Clerics urge new jihad over Gaza

At a weekend meeting in Istanbul, 200 religious scholars and clerics met senior Hamas officials to plot a new jihad centred on Gaza.

The BBC’s Bill Law was the only Western journalist at the meeting.

In a hall crowded with conservative Sunni Muslim sheikhs and scholars, in a hotel close to Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport speaker after speaker called for jihad against Israel in support of Hamas.

The choice of Turkey was significant. Arab hardliners were keen to put aside historic differences with the Turks.

As one organiser put it: “During the past 100 years relations have been strained but Palestine has brought us together.”

Many delegates spoke appreciatively of the protest by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who stormed out of a Davos debate on Gaza two weeks ago.  
 Gaza gives us power, it solves our differences… Palestine is a legitimate theatre of operations for jihad

Mohsen al-Awajy, Saudi religious scholar

The conference, dubbed the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign, also gave impetus to Sunni clerics concerned about the growing power of Hezbollah, the Shia movement backed by Iran, which rose to international prominence in its own war with Israel in 2006.

“Gaza is a gift,” the Saudi religious scholar Mohsen al-Awajy told me. He and other delegates repeatedly referred to the Gaza war as “a victory”.

“Gaza,” he continued, “gives us power, it solves our differences. We are all now in a unified front against Zionism.”

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Israel: Two-thirds of Palestinians killed in Gaza fighting were terrorists

Israel says that about two-thirds of the Palestinians who were killed in the Gaza fighting were members of terror organizations who took part in the fighting, Channel 2 News reported Thursday.

These include the Hamas police cadets who were killed in an Israeli air strike at the beginning of the operation.

Channel 2 cited a report issued by Military Intelligence and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, listing 1,134 Palestinian fatalities, 673 of which belonged to Hamas and other groups.
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Only 288 were innocent civilians, the report says. The Palestinians reported 1,330 fatalities but did not submit their names.

The intense three weeks of fighting, which erupted on December 27, has killed more than 1,300 people and injured thousands in Gaza. A shaky cease-fire was being implemented by both sides and a formal deal for a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas could be signed by next week, according to Hamas officials.

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Gaza victory was a miracle: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

TEHRAN – Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, likened the victory of the Palestinian resistance movement against Israel in the 22-day war to a “miracle”.
“What really happened in Gaza was truly like a miracle,” the Leader noted in a meeting with visiting Palestinian Islamic Jihad chief Ramadan Abdallah.

“The Gaza events were in fact at the hands of God which came true through the faith and firm determination and the jihad of resistance forces and the Gaza people,” the Leader noted.

The Supreme Leader again congratulated Palestinians on their victory over the Zionist regime’s army and praised the resistance movement’s leaders for their “decisive and united” position.

“Truly, the people of Gaza took a good test and the officials and managers also emerged successful in this test for their good performance and decisive and united position.”

Ayatollah Khamenei also said the effect of the world public opinion was very influential in the Gaza event.

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No holocaust in Gaza

MUSLIM leader Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali says the Israeli incursion into Gaza last month was “another Holocaust”. No it wasn’t. The Holocaust was an act of German state policy, a systematic attempt to murder every Jew in Nazi-controlled Europe. It was not a mass execution of political prisoners or the killing of enemy combatants. It was an attempt to slaughter an entire people. When they were not murdering Jews, the Nazis and their allies were happy to kill as many gypsies and Slavs and homosexuals as they could. But the death camps existed primarily to kill Jews.

In contrast, the Israelis went into Gaza to stop Hamas terrorists firing rockets into Israel. Certainly, 1200 people, at least half of them civilians, died. There is no denying the Hamas regime in Gaza and the Government of Israel both have innocent blood on their conscience. However, for Hamas to incite Israeli attacks in urban areas was to invite casualties. Given Israeli firepower, it is astonishing there were not more. But civilians were not — not — the targets. If Sheik Hilali does not know this, he has no interest in the facts of the Middle East conflict. But if he is aware of the evidence but uses “holocaust” to save him the trouble of calmly debating the continuing crisis in the Middle East, he can play no useful role in helping the people of Gaza. There are different dictionary definitions of “hyperbole” and “hysterics”. In the case of this claim by Sheik Hilali, the words are synonyms.
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Solving the “Palestinian Problem”

Israel’s war against Hamas brings up the old quandary: What to do about the Palestinians? Western states, including Israel, need to set goals to figure out their policy toward the West Bank and Gaza.

Let’s first review what we know does not and cannot work:

Israeli control. Neither side wishes to continue the situation that began in 1967, when the Israel Defense Forces took control of a population that is religiously, culturally, economically, and politically different and hostile. 
A Palestinian state. The 1993 Oslo Accords began this process but a toxic brew of anarchy, ideological extremism, antisemitism, jihadism, and warlordism led to complete Palestinian failure. 
A binational state: Given the two populations’ mutual antipathy, the prospect of a combined Israel-Palestine (what Muammar al-Qaddafi calls “Israstine”) is as absurd as it seems. 

Excluding these three prospects leaves only one practical approach, that which worked tolerably well in the period 1948-67:

Shared Jordanian-Egyptian rule: Amman rules the West Bank and Cairo runs Gaza.  Read more

Hamas Leaders: ‘The Gaza Victory Has Paved the Way to Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, the Negev, and the West Bank’

Hamas officials, headed by Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mash’al, are contending that Hamas’ victory in Gaza has paved the way to Jaffa and Haifa, and are calling on the Palestinian Authority to join the jihad and the resistance.

Following are excerpts from statements by Hamas leaders:

Mash’al: “The Resistance Entered Every Home, and Has Become an Ideal Among the Arab Nation and Worldwide”

“What happened in Gaza was the first real serious war [fought by] our people on their territory, and therefore it constitutes a turning point in the war with the Zionist enemy. The occupation has failed both politically and in the [battle]field, in that it was compelled, after three weeks, to stop the fighting unilaterally, with no agreement, binding conditions, or stipulations restricting the resistance.

“Two weeks prior to the ceasefire, the Zionist entity, through mediators, attempted to impose on us conditions of surrender, [i.e.] stopping the resistance in Gaza by [declaring] a long-term tahdia [calm] and disarming it.

“However, we staunchly held our ground both in the [battle]field and in the political arena. We rejected these conditions, and they were forced to stop their aggression, [admit] defeat, and withdraw unconditionally. We were adamant in our rejection [of these conditions], since we put our trust in our people’s choices and rights…

“The enemy leaders wanted to achieve several objectives: to break the resistance, defeat it, and expel it from Gaza; [and] to inculcate our nation with defeatism, end Hamas’s rule, and stop the firing of missiles. What was the outcome? The resistance showed fortitude and became an element equal to [the Israeli army], despite the difference in resources. The firing of missiles continued; our people rallied around the resistance and stood fast. Hamas, which [the Israelis] had set out to destroy, gained strength; the resistance has entered every home and has became an ideal among the Arab nation and worldwide.”

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Gaza victims describe being used as human shields by Hamas

Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

Members of a Gaza family whose farm was turned into a “fortress” by Hamas fighters have reported that they were helpless to stop Hamas from using them as human shields. They told the official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper that for years Hamas has used their property and homes for military installations from which to launch rockets into Israel, dig tunnels and store arms. According to the victims, those who tried to object were shot in the legs by Hamas.

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