Yes we did suicide attacks, but we are not terrorists

[pp05]

Interesting story from Sydney Morning Herald interviewing Hamas govt.

A 15-minute drive to Ramallah from the centre of Jerusalem along a road cut through rocky ancient hills on top of which sit the red-roofed houses of the settlements, looking down on Palestinian villages below.

This road, which was built to allow the settlers to travel safely from their homes to Jerusalem and beyond, leads to the VIP checkpoint through which diplomats, the media and aid workers pass to enter the city, the administrative capital of the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank. For Palestinians wishing to travel between the towns and villages, there is a separate network of roads and checkpoints. This means driving in circles rather than straight lines, and with the ever-present possibility of hours of delay at a checkpoint, an ordinary daily life is impossible.

The West Bank is a patchwork of sealed off Palestinian towns and villages and enclaves, often isolated from each other and certainly isolated from the settlements and from Israel proper.

The Palestinian Legislative Council building is near the centre of Ramallah, not far from the bustle and traffic chaos of Al Mannarah Square, where just a few days ago an alleged Palestinian collaborator was severely beaten by a gang of Fatah thugs, and where Israeli assassination squads are said to have shot members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade as they sat drinking coffee.

In the upstairs offices of the council building, Hamas is preparing to present its cabinet for a vote of confidence.

Aziz Dweik, the Hamas-nominated Speaker of the council, sits in his office juggling mobile phones, all with a different piece of stirring music as the call sign. He has the air about him of a politician enjoying his victory.

Dr Dweik, by way of introduction - warm, smiling, welcoming - wants to make it clear that the Hamas cabinet consists mainly of people like him, professionals and academics, some of whom, like him, have studied abroad.

The idea, he says, that Palestinians are all ignorant terrorists is a lie cooked up by the Israelis and the Bush Administration.

Dr Dweik, a longtime Hamas member and leader, studied for his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania and has fond memories of his time there. He professes great affection for many Americans and says some are still his close friends.

As for the Israeli elections, the outcome matters, though he has no great hope that any outcome can help the Palestinians. The Israelis are occupiers who have subjected his people to countless acts of humiliation, made their lives unbearable. The election won't change that.

"So those who were oppressed in Europe are now the oppressors in Palestine," he says.

"They should know better. The Nazis tried to erase them and they survived. Now they try to erase us and we will survive. They of all people should know you can't erase a people."

Though he sits beneath portraits of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, he is contemptuous of their dealings with Israel, which brought only more misery for Palestinians. And he is contemptuous of the demands by the US and the Europeans that Hamas disavow terrorism and recognise Israel before there can be any contact or aid to a Hamas government.

"What should we recognise? We are trapped in 62 separate enclaves on the West Bank. Our people are imprisoned in Gaza. We are killed and humiliated every day. What should we recognise? Our enslavement? This is the real terrorism. Let the Americans and Europeans keep their money. We don't need it. We will get our aid if we need it, from elsewhere."

All this is said with great charm, and Dr Dweik, asked how he can justify the Hamas suicide bombers, reaches for a piece of paper and writes an equation. It reads "Oppression + Hopelessness = Death".

He goes on to say that he does not want to throw the Israelis into the sea, not at all. He values human life and Hamas has stuck by its declared truce and will continue to stick by it.

If Israel came up with a deal that offered Palestinians a true state, that too would be considered.

"In the meantime, we have work to do, laying down the ground for real democracy and transparency and getting rid of corruption. That is our first priority. We want to repair our economy. Then we must give our people some measure of social justice. And we want to promote international peace. We want international support.

"OK, yes, it happened, we did suicide attacks but now there is a truce. We deplore any action where civilians are killed, yes, including Israeli civilians. We are a moderate Islamic movement. We are not terrorists. We are freedom seekers. Please, tell your readers, please help us secure this goal."

article: http://smh.com.au/news/world/yes-we-...441083304.html

[Taz]

Similar argument to the ANC in South Africa. What do people think of Nelson Madela today...and what did they think of him in the 60's and 70's?

[RVF500]

Similar argument Taz but different MO. Only time will tell.

[iranu]

If Israel came up with a deal that offered Palestinians a true state, that too would be considered.

Since the conception of Israel the Palestinians have been offered their own state a number of times (I can't find the exact number but it is very high, more than 30). The best of which was brokered under the Clinton administration. All have been turned down. The original UN/League of nations plan was for a Jewish state, a Palastinian state and an International Jerusalem. Funnily enough this is exactly what was on the table 5 years ago. Nothing changes.

[pp05]

Israel simply does not want peace and always places small conditions that they know are unnaceptable to the other side and so back to square one while the land grab continues. 30 times can be 50 for all we care, Jewish state was fine for palestinians but what stalled the deal was the Palestinians who had fled to neighbouring countries and have been living in refugee camps since leaving not being granted a passage home. That was all the Palestinians wanted and Israel refused that.

[@if ®afiq]

Since the conception of Israel the Palestinians have been offered their own state a number of times (I can't find the exact number but it is very high, more than 30). The best of which was brokered under the Clinton administration. All have been turned down. The original UN/League of nations plan was for a Jewish state, a Palastinian state and an International Jerusalem. Funnily enough this is exactly what was on the table 5 years ago. Nothing changes.

Have you ever seen any maps of these "proposals"? I suggest you do so, before slating the Palestinians for turning these "offers" down.

[TheAnimus]

Israel simply does not want peace and always places small conditions that they know are unnaceptable to the other side and so back to square one while the land grab continues. 30 times can be 50 for all we care, Jewish state was fine for palestinians but what stalled the deal was the Palestinians who had fled to neighbouring countries and have been living in refugee camps since leaving not being granted a passage home. That was all the Palestinians wanted and Israel refused that.

I wouldn't say its because they don't want peice, its more that they don't want to give anything away.

Its also very important to remeber the strong jewish US lobby, if you don't agree with them, you become labeled antisemetic, and popular press likes to call people nazi's because it sells papers and its very easy to make someone rational appear like a faccist.

[iranu]

Have you ever seen any maps of these "proposals"? I suggest you do so, before slating the Palestinians for turning these "offers" down.

The simple fact of the matter is that there has never been a country with recognised borders called Palestine. The West Bank was invaded and occupied by Jordan and the Gaza strip was occupied Egypt due to the 1948-49 war. If anything these countries should accept blame for the current situation. Unfortunately that would mean dealing with issue and the Palestinians, something that all Arab governments fail to do. They treat them like second class citizens (even though Jordan officially offered citizenship to al Palestinians on it's creation). As for the Israelies not wanting peace I would say that it is the other way around. The Arabs do not want peace because the Palestinian issue is a really nice political tool to use for gathering of popular support (sometimes religious, sometimes nationalistic) amongst their own populations.

here is an excellent short history http://www.masada2000.org/historical.html with maps.

An excellent quote is this one and provides a good basis for my argument.

"From 1948 to 1967, Egypt ruled Gaza, Syria ruled the Golan Heights, while Jordan ruled the West Bank. They could have set up independent Arab-Palestinian states in any or all of those territories, but they didn't even consider it. Instead, in 1967 they used the Golan Heights, Gaza and the West bank to launch a war that was unambiguously aimed at destroying Israel, which is how Israel came into possession of those territories in the first place."

[@if ®afiq]

The simple fact of the matter is that there has never been a country with recognised borders called Palestine. The West Bank was invaded and occupied by Jordan and the Gaza strip was occupied Egypt due to the 1948-49 war. If anything these countries should accept blame for the current situation. Unfortunately that would mean dealing with issue and the Palestinians, something that all Arab governments fail to do. They treat them like second class citizens (even though Jordan officially offered citizenship to al Palestinians on it's creation). As for the Israelies not wanting peace I would say that it is the other way around. The Arabs do not want peace because the Palestinian issue is a really nice political tool to use for gathering of popular support (sometimes religious, sometimes nationalistic) amongst their own populations.

So it is the fault of the surrounding Arab countries that the Palestinians no longer have a home? That's a strange logic.

....snip....

Hmmm...anything from a non-Zionist site?

[nichomach]

...snip...

How about a different perspective on the history of the situation from another Israeli?

From "Democracy or Ethnocracy: Territory and Settler Politics in Israel/Palestine", by Oren Yiftachel. Oren Yiftachel teaches political geography and public policy at Ben Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel.

...The territorial restructuring of the land has centered around an all-encompassing and expansionist Judaization (de-Arabization) program adopted by the nascent Israeli state. The flight and expulsion of close to 800,000 Palestinian refugees during the 1948 war created large "gaps" in the geography of the land, which the authorities were quick to fill with Jewish migrants and refugees who entered the country en masse during the late 1940s and early 1950s.2 The Judaization program was premised on a hegemonic myth cultivated since the rise of Zionism that the land (ha'aretz) belongs solely to the Jewish people. An exclusive form of territorial ethnonationalism developed in order to quickly "indigenize" immigrant Jews and to conceal, trivialize or marginalize the existence of a Palestinian people on the land prior to the arrival of Zionist Jews...

...With the establishment of the state, the Jewish settlement project swung into full gear with a mission to de-Arabize the country with a drive to control Palestinian Arab land. Prior to 1948, only about seven to eight percent of the country was in Jewish hands, and about ten percent was vested with the representative of the British Mandate. The Israeli state, however, quickly increased its land holdings and it currently owns 92 percent of the state area within the Green Line. The lion's share of this land transfer was based on expropriation of Palestinian refugee property, but even about two-thirds of the land belonging to Palestinians who remained as Israeli citizens was expropriated. At present, Palestinian Arabs, who constitute around 16 percent of Israel's population (including the Druze), own only around three percent of its land.

Legal unidirectionality was a central aspect of Jewish land transfer as Israel created an institutional and legal land regime whereby confiscated land did not merely become state land, but jointly belonged to the entire Jewish people, and was prohibited from being sold. This ensured that all land transfers moved in one direction--from Palestinians to the state--and never vice versa.5

During the 1950s and 1960s, following the transfer of land to the state, more than 700 Jewish settlements were constructed, creating the housing infrastructure for Jewish immigrants who continued to pour into the country. The Jewish Agency and Jewish National Fund, two bodies representing world Jewry, were granted legal rights to settle and develop the land on behalf of the state and the Jewish people.

The upshot was the penetration of Jews into most Palestinian areas, the encirclement of most Palestinian villages by exclusively Jewish settlements (where non-Jews are not permitted to purchase housing), and the practical ghettoization of the Palestinian minority. In the process, the Palestinian citizens of Israel not only lost individual property, but were also dispossessed of many collective territorial assets since nearly all state land was earmarked for Jewish use.

A particularly sophisticated system of exclusion was formulated in rural areas where Jewish settlements were allocated state land by a method known as a "triple contract." Under this arrangement, land is held jointly by the Jewish village, the Israel Land Authority and the Jewish Agency. The landholding powers of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund create a situation in which Israel's Palestinian citizens effectively are prevented from purchasing, leasing or using land in over 75 percent of the country."

LINKAGE

[iranu]

Ok so answer the question I put in Bold please. If the Arabs were keen on giving Palestinians a home (which they already had when Jordan was created) why did they not bother when they had control of the west bank, gaza strip and golan heights? Answers on a postcard please! Go on answer it, please I wish to know.

The simple fact remains that Palestine was split in two to create Jordan for the Arabs and (British) Palestine for the Jews. Palestinians are not a race. They are arabs and have never been a nation state nor a nationalised people until very recently

I am not saying that Israel has behaved impeccably but people must get away from the false pretence that the West bank and Gaza Strip are occupied. It is simply not the case. The territory was already a part of Jewish Palestine until it was invaded. I'm sorry if truth and history gets in the way but people fail to recognise this when they comment on the situation.

When you look at the demographics and the cartography it becomes very clear that succesive Palestinian leaderships have let their people down irrespective of whether Israel has led a campaign of settlement in these areas. They have now removed all settlements (as far as i know) in the Gaza Strip and free elections are granted. The same will happen in the West Bank. A Palestinian (arab) nation state has always been on the table but no leader has had the courage to take it. Jerusalem has always been the traditional sticking point, but then again Palestinian leaderships have never been those that wish to compromise.

If Israel had wished to take back this land and de-arabise it, then it would have done so on the back of previous wars post 1967 with full justification (the river jordon forms a natural barrier) - it certainly did not have a policy of increasing it's land by holding onto the Sinai desert, only one of a strategic, defensive nature until Egypt was brought to heal by th UN, ditto the Golan Heights.

Israel could easily have ensured repatriation to Jordan and Egypt of those Palestinians within it's borders (bearing in mind the security risk these people proposed) yet chose not to. As such it has endured years of unrest and intifada.

[nichomach]

The action or inaction of the other Arab states is immaterial when determining the rights of Palestinians. Your question is a nonsense.

Whether there has ever been a nation state of Palestine or not is likewise irrelevant; the fact is that 800,000 indigenous Arabs were forcibly displaced from their homes in Palestine by a combination of outright military conquest and terrorism. By the same token there is no such thing as "the" arab state. It is true to say that there were and are, however, indigenous populations in those territories who were forcibly dispossessed and are continuing to be forcibly dispossessed.

Oh, on the truth and history thing? Under the 1947 partition plan almost all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were envisioned as being part of the Arab state. They were actually defined as separate areas under the terms of the armistice following the 1948 Arab/Israeli War. Consequently the West Bank and Gaza were never part of "Jewish Palestine". There was an abortive attempt to take Gaza and Sinai in 1956 by an alliance of Israel, the UK and France (you might have heard of the Suez Crisis?), but it was not taken by Israel until the Six Day War. The status of both the West Bank and Gaza is currently as follows; they are not a part of Israel, they are occupied territories not a de jure part of any state. It is not necessary for there to have been a pre-existing Palestinian state in those territories to establish that they are occupied. The land is not Israel's, but they are in possession of it by military force. The UN's established that, as has the ICJ. Israel can dispute that, but the objection is akin to a child with its fingers in its ears shouting "lalala I'm not listening". Just a bit of truth and history for you.

Israel has been effectively de-arabising swathes of both territories by supporting the construction of illegal settlements on those territories and using military force to defend them. Any wonder that there's been armed resistance?

Oh, and where a river happens to be on a map has nothing to do with determining the border of a country.

Edit: And calling the forcible removal of people from their homes in areas where they were the indigenous population and their dumping in the borders of another state "repatriation" actually manages to be at least as obscenely illogical and offensive as calls from white supremacists to "repatriate" black people to countries that they've never been near. Or, for that matter, the labelling of the mass murder, rape and dispossession of Bosnian Muslims as ethnic "cleansing".

[@if ®afiq]

Here is quite an interesting report about Hamas calling an end to suicide bombings...even after the US and the EU have punished the Palestinian people for democratically electing a party of their choice!

Let's hope Israel can show some similar restraint and stop it's assinations/war crimes for long enough, so that Hamas is given a chance to bring the other groups on board...

[RedPutty]

Palestine was on maps and did have clear borders.

No, an article that puts Palestine in quotes as if to pretend it doesn't exist won't back that up but it is true nonetheless.

As mentioned by others the deals on offer usually had some unnacceptable terms in them to ensure they weren't accepted. I have to wonder what kind of deal I would accept if e.g someone invaded my house and tried to take it for themselves. If they said "ok, ok you can have the WC, one bedroom and the dining room but the rest is ours" what am I likely to say?

Likewise a lot of truces were broken by the israelis using their military to attack civilian areas.

Of course when you use a helicopter gunship you aren't a terrorist even if your goal is causing terror and death

[Betty_Swallocks]

Palestine WAS a nation state at the same time that the Jewish people originally lived in the area.

The people we now call Palestinians were previously known as the Philistines in biblical times.

[RVF500]

Well another act of self defense (if you take the Hamas view) has been responded to with an act of self defense (from the Isreali viewpoint). The thing is it's not going to stop. It's not going to stop for the very reasons that have been argued here. The historical rights and wrongs. In this case largely since the 1940's. One side seeking to blame the other. Who wronged who first? Fac tof the matter is if that continues no one will give ground and the killing will continue well beyond the lifetime of anyone here.

If you don't believe me then have a look at the Balkans or Azerbijan and Armenia as examples. As soon as the shackles of powerful central govt were off they were at each others throats for differences that go back to the middle ages.

Instead of playing the blame game and trying to get one side or the other to accept responsibility perhaps people should try living in the here and now and realise that today both sides share responsibility for the ongoing cycle of violence and the only way to break it is to accept that and find a solution that is acceptable to the majority on both sides today. Not seeking to atone for past injustices either percieved or real. You'll never please everybody so no point in trying. But until an agreement with the stamp of authority from majorities of both sides is reached then the bodies will continue to pile up.