19.12.06

Your quite hard on hamas and quite kind to abbas. I dont support either;
but hamas seems to be more honourable and abbas is favoured by israel & co
which says something i think. If hamas become more 'political', will that not
just mean toeing the line and accepting western politics? Its not that israel
and the west works by diplomacy or something - they work as militants and
pretend politics. Isnt this the mistakes made by palestinian leadership in the
past? ie osloWhat palestinians are suffering now is horrendous; but probably
they would be suffering just as bad if fateh had won the elections - just in
different, hidden, ways?
Zayna

Terms like Honour do not mean anything but stubbornness in this context. And that is exactly what Hamas are, a group of stubborn, dogmatic and incompetant politicians. you are right the US Aministration and Israel are just as militarised in their actions as Hamas is, they are all stubborn and dogmatic, so I am not favouring any party in this stupid chaos were living. I am not asking Hamas to accept Western Political conditions. Hamas can go on and do what it wants. But in a framework that has been dictated on us by the pragmatic line of post Oslo Fateh politicians, Hamas cannot take what it likes and throw away what does not suit her. In the 10 months they have been in government, they have engaged in weeks of useless National Dialogue which ended in June by accepting the Prisoners Document. This was followed by weeks and months of dialogue to form a new government, which ended in NOTHING, NIENTE, NADA, RIEN.
My problem with Hamas is that they have not signaled, not for once, that they are taking the current crisis seriously. Which means that they have do not value the lives and living standards of the normal Palestinians. At least Fatah governments where much quicker to react to these needs, and that's what we should expect from democracy as opposed from a non-democratically elected government.
My only message to Hamas is: democracy is not about the number of ballots in the polls, but rather about how responsible you are to your people.
And people talk about Abbas's 'support' from Israel and US. Let us not forget that Hamas would not have come into existence had Israel not adopted the "American" tolerance policy towards Islamist movements which were mushrooming around the word during the time when it was better dead than red.

2 comments:

Ze said...

Merry christmas, Eid mubarak, Happy new year!
I dont know if Hamas could acheive anything however pragmatic they were, I just dont think the power is in the palestinian leaders hands.
And what do you mean about the tolerance policy of the americans and israel towards islamist movements? (Im genuinely interested)
Zayna

Ned said...

In the mid-late 70's the Americans, in the middle of their cold war with the communists saw that political Islam can create a major force that will stop the communists tide in the Middle East. Uncle Sam thought they could use those Islamists as a proxy in their war against the Russians, and they did so successfully in 1979 in Afghanistan. Americans tried to replicate that in more than one situation, they even forced Sadat to release Muslims Brotherhood activists in order for them to go fight the war in Afghanistan- most notable amongst those is Ayman Dawahiri. Israel used a similar policy in the 80's as it was worried by the increased activity of the marxist Palestinian movements in particular, and the PLO in general, thus it "tolerated" the growth of Hamas while cracking down on PLO factions. The idea was to allow a force to grow that will undermine the legitmacy of the PLO's claims as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. Hamas, to date, has a problem with this notion.