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Why Israel Should Begin Talking
With Hamas
By
Yvonne Ridley
11/09/07 "ICH" -- - -I
recently spoke to someone from Hamas and
told them I was coming here this evening. I was very
enthusiastic on several different levels and was rather
crestfallen when he just sneered, shrugged his shoulders and
looked singularly unimpressed.
When I pressed him and asked surely it was important for all
sides to talk, he shrugged his shoulders again and then said:
“Why do we need to talk? Why do we need to do anything? Time is
on our side. We have waited 50 years for our country and we can
wait another 50 years”.
I
mentioned this to Jewish American author Dr Alice Rothchild, an
amazing, compassionate woman who had just returned from the
region and surprisingly she nodded in agreement.
According to Alice the so-called Zionist lobby in America is
weakening by the day because young Jewish Americans no longer
want to move to Israel and many want to forget about the
so-called Promised Land because it was making them confront
uncomfortable ideas about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
from their land. A case of the abused becoming the abuser is
simply too unpleasant for some jewish people to contemplate.
But
while it appears a growing number of young Jewish people from
the West are content to remain in the West, the millions of
young Palestinians living around the world are growing in their
determination to return and demand the right to return to
Palestine.
So
you see, this could be why Hamas in particular and other
Palestinians aren’t that bothered about talking to people who
have no wish to talk to them or even discuss the notion of the
right to return which could be demanded by as many as 7 million
Palestinians.
May
be 50 years down the line no one but the Palestinians will
really care about the return.
As a journalist,
I am deeply saddened by the censorship by omission which runs
deep in western media coverage on Israel, especially in the US.
Hamas is
dismissed as a “terrorist group sworn to Israel’s destruction”
and one that “refuses to recognise Israel and wants to fight not
talk”.
The truth is
that Israel is bent on Palestine’s destruction. Moreover,
Hamas’s long-standing proposals for a ten-year ceasefire are
loudly ignored, along with a recent, ideological shift within
Hamas itself that amounts to a historic acceptance of the
sovereignty of Israel.
“The [Hamas]
charter is not the Quran,” said a senior Hamas official,
Mohammed Ghazal. “Historically, we believe all Palestine belongs
to Palestinians, but we’re talking now about reality, about
political solutions... If Israel reached a stage where it was
able to talk to Hamas, I don’t think there would be a problem of
negotiating with the Israelis [for a solution].”
The very fact
that Israel is mentioned in the Hamas charter is surely proof in
itself that Hamas recognizes the Zionist state.
Someone I spoke to who is very keen to see the Israeli political
leaders sit down and talk with Hamas is former Tory Government
minister Michael Ancram – this is the politician who sat down
and began talking to the IRA on behalf of the British Government
months before anyone knew what was happening behind the scenes.
When news leaked out what was happening he was pilloried and
told he had blood on his hands. Some people said he was
contaminated and Unionists refused to speak to him.
The
talks continued – even though some of the bombing continued
which piled huge pressure and personal angst on Michael Ancram.
But, if he had any doubts then that he was doing the right thing
he must look at the long term result today and be very comforted
by the growing peace in Ireland, and an environment where Gerry
Adams can work amicably alongside Ian Paisley.
Part of the trouble is that the history of Israel has often been
portrayed as the triumph over tragedy of a people marked for
extinction … the people who emerged from Nazi death camps to
establish their own country in 1948.
I
am not a Holocaust denier and nor do I want to play down the
horrors and sufferings of European Jews, but the Holocaust
Industry as described by Professor Norman Finkelstein does tend
to protect and fireproof Israel against the charge of a
devastating colonization by falsifying history and denying the
awful future with which it now challenges the Jews, the West and
the Muslim world.
The
Zionists have now managed to shoehorn themselves into a space
between two historical enemies, the capitalist West and Islam,
and by using the strength of the former against the latter, it
has created and nurtured fertile conditions for a conflict that
is growing by the day.
But
if my good friend from Hamas and Dr Alice Rothchild are right,
then time really is on the side of the Palestinians and not the
architects of Zionism or the Zionist state. They would have us
believe that the emergence of
Israel is a sensational triumph of good over evil, the evil
coming from Europe's centuries-old anti-Semitism, in particular
the demonic Nazi master plan to wipe out the Jewish people.
Theodore Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, was convinced
that Zionism would only thrive if anti-Semitic Europe could be
persuaded to push for its success. It is true that Jews and
anti-Semites have been historical enemies, that Jews have been
the victims of Europe's religious witchunt since Rome became
Christianity’s capital.
While Arabs and Jews have lived in harmony over the centuries,
the hate and suspicion towards Jewish people has always come
from the West.
So,
for the Zionist project to succeed, a new enemy, common to the
West and the Jews would have to be created. In choosing to
locate their colonial-settler state in Palestine - and not in
Uganda or Argentina as once mooted - the Zionists created a
bogeyman that would deepen their partnership with the West.
The
Islamic world was a great deal more likely to ignite the West's
imperialist and evangelical designs than Uganda or Argentina.
And
so, Israel became the west’s watchdog right in the heart of the
Islamic world; guarding over the strategic crossroads of Asia,
Africa and Europe.
And
so it sits today, monitoring developments in the Gulf with its
vast reserves of oil and gas. For the West as well as Europe's
Jews, this was an opportunity to monopolise.
Without the help of the West, there is no way the Zionists could
not have created Israel on their own.
The
net effect has been to humiliate the Muslim world, making each
new generation more resentful than the last.
And
with US puppets, dictators and despots placed to lead Islamic
countries this has further driven Muslims to embrace
increasingly radical ideas and methods to recover a lost dignity
and power.
Watching Arab leaders bow and scrape before Israel to please
their western masters, as the Palestinians are enduring a slow
genocide, has been too much for some to endure.
The
roots of 9/11 are buried deep in the soil of the Middle East
along with Bali, Madrid and the London bombings.
The
net result has been to drive the West into a direct
confrontation against the Islamic world. We in the West are now
staring deep into an abyss.
Hamas might not want to sit down with Israel but it is in Israel
and the West’s interests that the Knesset realizes that it must
sit down and negotiate with Hamas.
And
the first thing Israel needs to do is cut out its victim
mentality and the pointless invective about terrorism.
As
we all know one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. We
all know Margaret Thatcher called Nelson Mandela a terrorist and
we all know what Ian Paisley thought of his new best friend
Gerry Adams a few years ago.
And
before any of you continue to cite terrorism as a counter
argument for not sitting down and talking to Hamas it might be
worth remembering that the first aircraft hijacking was carried
out by Israel in 1954 against a Syrian civilian airliner.
Grenades in cafes were first used by Zionists against
Palestinians in Jerusalem on 17 March 1937.
Delayed-action, electrically timed mines in crowded
marketplaces were first used by Zionists against Palestinians in
Haifa on 6 July 1938.
Blowing up a ship with its civilian passengers still on board
was first carried out by Zionists in Haifa on 25 November 1940.
The Zionists did not hesitate to blow up their own people in
protest at the British policy of restricting Jewish immigration
to Palestine. The ship, Patria, was carrying 1,700 Jewish
immigrants.
Blowing up of government offices with their civilian employees
and visitors was first carried out by the Zionists against the
British in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946. The toll was 91 Britons
killed and 46 wounded in the King David Hotel. Menachim Begin,
who masterminded and carried out the attack and later became
Israeli prime minister, admitted that the massacre was
coordinated with and carried out under the instruction of the
Haganah.
Letter bombs sent to politicians was first used by the Zionists
against Britain when 20 letter bombs were sent from Italy to
London between 4 and 6 June 1947.
I could go on – but I won’t.
Israel really
needs to sit down and talk with Hamas … if for nothing more than
to secure its own long term future.
Yvonne Ridley is a political analyst on Middle East and Asian
affairs, as well as a presenter for The Agenda show on Press TV.
Her website is:
www.yvonneridley.org
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