The Goldstone Report – A Study in Bias

Israel is appalled and disappointed by the report published on 15 September 2009 by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Gaza Fact Finding Mission. The Report unfairly describes Israel’s defense of its citizens as war crimes, while ignoring the deliberate strategy of Hamas to operate from within or behind the civilian population. Read more

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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Hamas dissmiss Blair’s condition for talk

Hamas has dismissed a condition set by Mideast Quartet Envoy Tony Blair that the movement must recognize Israel before starting talks.

Mushir al-Masri, the head of Hamas’s parliamentary bloc, said Saturday that raising this “suggestion” testifies that Blair is not familiar with the situation in the Middle East.

He termed Blair’s suggestion as “utterly foolish and useless.”
In an interview with The Times published Saturday, Blair said Hamas must be involved in the Middle East peace process; however, the movement have to recognize Israel’s right to exist and renounce ‘violence’.

The former British Prime Minister admitted that any effort to exclude Hamas from efforts to establish a Palestinian state would be doomed to failure.

“I do think it is important that we find a way of bringing Hamas into this process, but it can only be done if Hamas are prepared to do it on the right terms,” Blair said.

Hamas is the democratically-elected ruler of the Gaza Strip by winning the majority in the 2006 Palestinian elections.

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Abbas sets conditions for dialogue with Hamas

By Alaa Shahine

 

CAIRO (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday ruled out dialogue with Hamas unless it recognizes the supremacy of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), deepening the split between the two main Palestinian groups.

 

He was responding to a proposal by the Islamist movement Hamas for the Palestinians to replace the PLO, which is dominated by Abbas and the factions loyal to him.

 

“Now we say … no dialogue with those who reject the Palestine Liberation Organization,” Abbas said in a speech at a Palestinian hospital in the Egyptian capital Cairo.

 

“They must admit without equivocation or ambiguity that the organization is the sole and only representative of the Palestinian people. Then there will be dialogue,” he added.

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Hamas rules out permanent truce with Israel

TEHRAN (AFP) – The political supremo of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, on Sunday ruled out any “permanent ceasefire” until Israel ends its crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, meanwhile, in talks with Meshaal urged him to be prepared for new hostilities with archfoe Israel.

“The resistance is against a permanent ceasefire,” Meshaal said at a news conference in Tehran, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported.

“While the occupation continues, a permanent ceasefire has no meaning,” Meshaal said at the conference, jointly held with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

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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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