Palestine Updates: Speaking frankly about Israel and Palestine
by Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter says his recent book is drawing knee-jerk accusations of anti-Israel bias.

By Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States. His newest book is “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” published last month. He is scheduled to sign books Monday at Vroman’s in Pasadena.
December 8, 2006

I signed a contract with Simon & Schuster two years ago to write a book about the Middle East, based on my personal observations as the Carter Center monitored three elections in Palestine and on my consultations with Israeli political leaders and peace activists.

We covered every Palestinian community in 1996, 2005 and 2006, when Yasser Arafat and later Mahmoud Abbas were elected president and members of parliament were chosen. The elections were almost flawless, and turnout was very high — except in East Jerusalem, where, under severe Israeli restraints, only about 2% of registered voters managed to cast ballots.

The many controversial issues concerning Palestine and the path to peace for Israel are intensely debated among Israelis and throughout other nations — but not in the United States. For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.

It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. Very few would ever deign to visit the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza City or even Bethlehem and talk to the beleaguered residents. What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land.

With some degree of reluctance and some uncertainty about the reception my book would receive, I used maps, text and documents to describe the situation accurately and to analyze the only possible path to peace: Israelis and Palestinians living side by side within their own internationally recognized boundaries. These options are consistent with key U.N. resolutions supported by the U.S. and Israel, official American policy since 1967, agreements consummated by Israeli leaders and their governments in 1978 and 1993 (for which they earned Nobel Peace Prizes), the Arab League’s offer to recognize Israel in 2002 and the International Quartet’s “Roadmap for Peace,” which has been accepted by the PLO and largely rejected by Israel.

The book is devoted to circumstances and events in Palestine and not in Israel, where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status.

Although I have spent only a week or so on a book tour so far, it is already possible to judge public and media reaction. Sales are brisk, and I have had interesting interviews on TV, including “Larry King Live,” “Hardball,” “Meet the Press,” “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” the “Charlie Rose” show, C-SPAN and others. But I have seen few news stories in major newspapers about what I have written.

Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely to visit the occupied territories, and their primary criticism is that the book is anti-Israel. Two members of Congress have been publicly critical. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for instance, issued a statement (before the book was published) saying that “he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel.” Some reviews posted on Amazon.com call me “anti-Semitic,” and others accuse the book of “lies” and “distortions.” A former Carter Center fellow has taken issue with it, and Alan Dershowitz called the book’s title “indecent.”

Out in the real world, however, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I’ve signed books in five stores, with more than 1,000 buyers at each site. I’ve had one negative remark — that I should be tried for treason — and one caller on C-SPAN said that I was an anti-Semite. My most troubling experience has been the rejection of my offers to speak, for free, about the book on university campuses with high Jewish enrollment and to answer questions from students and professors. I have been most encouraged by prominent Jewish citizens and members of Congress who have thanked me privately for presenting the facts and some new ideas.

The book describes the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine’s citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. An enormous imprisonment wall is now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers. In many ways, this is more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid. I have made it clear that the motivation is not racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine, and then to forcefully suppress any objections from the displaced citizens. Obviously, I condemn any acts of terrorism or violence against innocent civilians, and I present information about the terrible casualties on both sides.

The ultimate purpose of my book is to present facts about the Middle East that are largely unknown in America, to precipitate discussion and to help restart peace talks (now absent for six years) that can lead to permanent peace for Israel and its neighbors. Another hope is that Jews and other Americans who share this same goal might be motivated to express their views, even publicly, and perhaps in concert. I would be glad to help with that effort

Choice a cornerstone of Islam
by Jacqueline Ann Surin

Source : The Sun

Islam grants freedom to its adherents because submission to God – which is what “Islam” means in Arabic – cannot take place through force or compulsion, a noted scholar said.

The director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London, Dr Azzam Tamimi, said freedom of expression and freedom of choice were the cornerstones of Islam.

He noted that in the early days of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad’s freedom of expression was crucial in ensuring that God’s message was shared with the people.

At the same time, freedom of choice was essential for the people to choose Islam over existing traditions, he added.

“Submitting to Allah also means not accepting the authority of any human being without questioning,” Azzam said on Monday (Nov 20, 2006) at a talk titled “The Concept of Freedom in Islam” at Universiti Malaya’s Asia Europe Institute.

“The early part of Islam was about freeing the minds of people so that they would not follow the traditions of their forefathers blindly,” he said, noting that after the Prophet Muhammad, all persons are considered fallible.

Azzam was in Malaysia at the invitation of the Muslim Professional Forum to launch his book Hamas, the Unwritten Chapters.

He said because there was no compulsion in Islam, some scholars have argued that it was not right for a Muslim to invite his or her non-Muslim spouse to convert lest it be seen as compulsion.

He added that it was also wrong for someone to convert just to marry a Muslim, adding: “Conversion should be because one believes that Islam is better than other religions, not because one loves someone.”

Azzam, the author of several books and a commentator on Al-Jazeera and the BBC, also said Muslims should not make such a big deal of those who chose to leave the religion.

“If submission to Allah involves free choice, then the same principle must apply if one wants to leave the faith,” he said.

He noted that the Quran did not stipulate any punishment for apostates at all, and the punishments spelt out by the hadiths had to be contextualised.

“In Islam’s formative years, going in and out of Islam was used to sabotage the community, and hence was viewed as treason.

“But if one leaves the religion out of free choice, let them become what they want.”

He said Muslims should be more confident. “Nothing will happen to Islam if people leave the religion.”

Text rumour tests religious ties
by Claudia Theophilus

A widely circulated text message is being blamed for stoking religious tensions in Malaysia.

The SMS sent this month led to hundreds of Muslim protesters gathering outside a Roman Catholic church in the northern town of Ipoh to try to stop a rumoured conversion of 600 Muslim students to Christianity.

The incident on November 5 outside the Our Lady of Lourdes church is being investigated under Malaysia’s sedition act.

Police have said they intend to question Harussani Zakaria, the mufti of the northern state of Perak, and Azhar Mansor, a locally famous sailor, who were both named in the message.

Officials said they were trying to find out whether the allegations – that Azhar would be leading 600 Muslim students through baptism – originated from a talk Harussani gave at a mosque programme this month.

Neither man could be contacted. However, Harussani has since identified a woman in her 40s as the source of the SMS, which he said he sent to representatives of Muslim groups out of concern.

But, speaking to reporters this week, he said he had cautioned against any protest without evidence.

Verbal threats

Bernard Paul, a parish priest in Ipoh, said that about 100 children were in his church when he saw between 200 and 300 protesters approaching.

“We heard chanting of anti-apostasy slogans,” he said. “Police were trying to seal off the roads around the church but that attracted more curious onlookers. The protesters ignored warnings to disperse until about noon.

“Senior officers assured us that everything was under control but the crowd kept swelling. There were verbal threats of burning down the church and someone threw firecrackers into the compound.

“That night, a motorcycle gang rode past the church chanting and hurling rocks. A lady was hit on the thigh and later lodged a police report. We made similar report earlier over the disruption of a religious service.”

Paul said that police had asked him about conversion procedures and the presence of Malays in the church about three weeks ago.

“But if police already knew about the allegations, why didn’t they do anything to verify the facts’ They could have informed the church and we could have easily cleared the air in a statement to diffuse the tension,” he said.

Recent years have seen a series of anti-apostasy protests by Muslim groups claiming that Islam is being undermined by liberal Muslims and Malaysians who demand that their right to religious freedom under the constitution be upheld.

Just over 60 per cent of Malaysia’s population of 27 million are ethnic Malay-Muslims.

According to the Malaysian constitution a Malay is defined, among others things, as being a Muslim.

Hermen Shastri, the general-secretary of the Council of Churches, Malaysia, described the reaction to the SMS rumour as “very worrying”.

“There definitely needs to be a defined policy on SMS messages,” he said. “This is not the first time such a message has been circulated.”

He said he had frequently received circulated SMS relating to the case of Lina Joy, a Malay woman who is trying to remove the word Islam from her national identity card.

The landmark case is currently awaiting a decision from the country’s highest court.

‘Intimidation tactic’

Hermen blamed “people with malicious and ill-intent” for circulating the SMS and trying to agitate more Muslims into taking to the streets stoke inter-religious tensions.

“The government has to come up with rules,” he said.

“If there are any grievances, people should lodge a police report. This is an intimidation tactic to instill fear. The rule should be that no one should go to places of worship of other faiths and interfere in their worship.”

Musa Mohd Nordin, founding member of the Muslim Professionals Forum ‘ a body which aims to increase understanding of Islam in the English-speaking world – condemned the reaction.

“No ethnic or racial group should be acting on hearsay,” he said. “If the group of Muslims had congregated at the church based on an SMS and not evidence, I think that is very unfortunate and unbecoming for a Muslim group.

“A particularly inflammatory issue like this must be based on clear evidence. Even if the allegations were true, it was uncalled for them to demonstrate. A negotiation or meeting with the church would have been a better way to handle the situation.”

He also warned liberal Muslims against linking Sunday’s “isolated” incident with other anti-apostasy protests and said it was dangerous to use words such as “hate ideology”.

‘Despicable act’

Zaitun Kasim of women’s rights group Sisters In Islam apologised for what she said was the “fear and anxiety” caused by the “actions of a small, ill-informed group of Muslims”.

“The despicable act of writing and forwarding the SMS itself was designed to sow hatred and ill-will,” she said.

“Islam, as with other religions, does not in any way condone any form of violence.”

She said she was “gravely disappointed that the actions of some Muslims have not only brought the religion into disrepute but have caused harm to other Malaysians”.

Citing a recent spate of incidents, Zaitun said that the Ipoh case pointed to “a regressive and damaging trend where individuals and groups have deliberately used religion to drive a wedge between the different ethnic groups”.

Source: Al Jazeera

Interesting Read: Al-Jazeera launch
by Michael Binyon

Ten years after it began broadcasting, al-Jazeera launched its first English-language news channel at noon today. Michael Binyon of The Times tuned in to watch the channel’s explosive start, which he says, could attract a loyal following around the world

It made its name with dramatic pictures of conflict and exclusive scoops: the war against the Taleban, Bin Laden’s tapes, the bombings and US-led attack on Baghdad, the war in Lebanon, the rising anger in the Middle East. Al-Jazeera quickly became the voice of the Arab street, a must-watch station for Arabs and for newsmen around the world – assuming they could follow the Arabic.

Today everyone can watch. After much hype, slick publicity and a long delay, al-Jazeera’s English-language world service was lauched from its headquarters in Qatar. It began with a bang, focusing, naturally, on what had made its name: hard-hitting news from the world’s trouble spots.

First came the inevitable preview, with flashy images of earlier scoops during the broadcaster’s 10 year existence. Then there was a news summary – usual format of two presenters, man and woman, sharp, smart and standing up in the studio – and a preview of the features, interviews and exclusives for the next hour.

Luckily, al-Jazeera had a ready-made moving story, literally. A tsunami had been generated by a Pacific earthquake, and was expected to hit Japan – in five minutes. Talk about breaking news! More on that later.

Then it was back to the main report. It was the misery in Gaza. Well, al-Jazeera is an Arab station, and Gaza is, as Tony Blair and many have said, the core grievance in the Middle East. And the report was as grim as the pictures: the reality of “life under sanctions, siege and shellings”. We saw pathetic scenes of children in hospitals, mothers weepers, smashed houses and the latest disaster – malnutrition caused by the international sanctions on Hamas.

There was little to quarrel with politically – though David Chater, the commentator did talk about “so-called terror organisations” which might raise an eyebrow in Jerusalem or Washington.

For balance we then went straight to Jerusalem, and Jackie Rowland – yet another ex-BBC frontline reporter wooed over to the new channel – to hear how Israeli public opinion reacted to shelling from Gaza. She was, like the mood there, blunt and uncompromising: Israeli military doctrine was to attack whenever people felt threatened.

Then back to Gaza for an exclusive interview with Khaled Meshaal, a Hamas political leader, who said he had offered Israel a ceasefire which it had scorned. Then on to another Middle Eastern tragedy, Darfur. There was no siding with Sudan on this one: the reporter, Andrew Simmons, was as hard-hitting as the pictures of the refugees and the squalor, which seems far more telling than those seen on Western channels. He also had a good scoop – an interview with the rebel leader of the refugees.

At last, a break with an update on the tsunami. I’d been wondering what had happened. The answer, according to the quick switch to the Kuala Lumpur studio, was nothing. No waves yet.

And now came one of the stars – Rageh Omaar, the “scud stud” of the Iraq war, lured at reportedly great expense from the BBC. He was in Tehran to look at the impact of Tony Blair’s recent speech. There didn’t seem to be any. No one cared. But he found an excited professor to excoriate the West’s impudence for demanding Iranian help while maintaining sanctions and pressure.

So far it had been a rather depressing diet. All were hard-hitting stories. All were the stuff that generates anger and turmoil in the world. And in a masterstroke, al-Jazeera also had its own man in Zimbabwe, where the BBC is banned, and broadcast a damning indictment of “policies that are destroying Zimbabwe”. It may find its correspondent doesn’t last there long.

I had no political quarrel with the coverage. Yes, it gave plenty of time to issues from and about the Middle East. That’s natural. It was pretty careful not to distort or to use loaded language. It was slick, fast-paced and thoroughly professional.

Earlier, in a puff for its own coverage in the first 10 years, it showed Donald Rumsfeld’s denunciation of the station as “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable”. Well, he’s gone now. Al-Jazeera is still there. And I think, judging by its launch, it will find a loyal market in the wider world.

Zainah Anwar’s Hate Ideology: Desecularization or DeIslamization, or Both?
by Marzuki Mohamad

In a blow by blow narration of supposedly Islamist’s face-off with religious pluralism and modern liberalism, Zainah Anwar eloquently advances her -hate ideology- thesis. Her narrative is simple, and yet pretty convincing. She begins by highlighting the symptoms of what she believes as Malaysian Muslim’s growing intolerance toward religious pluralism and modern liberalism. The symptoms enlisted in her article, -Hate Ideology a Threat to National Unity-, appeared in her Friday column in the New Straits Times (20/10/2006), are death threats to a lawyer who champions Muslim’s right to convert, a fatwa by ulama’ advising Muslims against participating in kongsi raya celebrations, Muslims’ fierce reaction toward Article 11 initiative for freedom of, in and from religion, and a directive by Takaful’s head of Shari’ah department prohibiting the insurance company’s staff from sending out Deepavali greetings.

Assuming that such intolerant attitudes were absent in the past, she blames a host of Islamist organizations for their role in overly asserting Muslim’s religious identity, and in that process, disseminate what she calls a hate ideology. This, which she aptly argues, is a serious threat to national unity. She singles out these organizations as Badan Anti-IFC (Anti-IFC Organization, BADAI), Pertubuhan-Pertubuhan Pembela Islam (Organizations of Defenders of Islam, PEMBELA), Peguam Pembela Islam (Lawyers Defending Islam, PPI), Muslim Professionals Forum (MPF), Allied Coordination Council of Islamic NGOs (ACCIN), Front Bertindak Anti-Murtad (Action Front Against Apostasy, FORKAD) and Mothers Against Apostasy. These Islamist organizations, Zainah believes, are out to create a new Shari’ah-based social contract, replacing the existing secular one, upon which the distinct cultural and religious groups within Malaysia’s plural society lay the basis for national unity. The crux of her argument is that the existing social, legal and political order is essentially secular; national unity is based on continued existence of such secular order; and the Islamist’s crusade against such an order is a serious threat to national unity.

Clive Kessler’s recent posting in Asian Analysis, an online newsletter jointly published by the Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University and the Asean Focus Group (http://www.aseanfocus.com/asiananalysis/latest.cfm?#a989), seems to lend credence to Zainah’s argument. Professor Kessler argues in his short article, The Long March Towards Desecularisation, that Malaysia’s progressivist political phase has now come to an end. In its place now is a new Islamist political force, which -has not merely come of age but moves towards and is now capturing the centre of Malaysian political life-. Like Zainah, Kessler also argues that the existing social, political and legal order is essentially secular, and the new Islamist force is out to desecularize it. He traces the seeds of such movement for desecularization up to the days of contentious Malay politics in the post-independence era, during which -Islamist policy auction- between the Islamist party PAS and the ruling Malay nationalist party UMNO had driven the state to instituting an overarching Islamization policy. Ever since, there has been escalating contest for Islamic legitimacy between the two parties and, in that process, reversed -the implicit secularisation of Malaysian life and the state that the 1957 constitution set in train and intended implicitly to promote-.

While Kessler finally predicts -the return, at the head of the ‘new generation Islamist forces’, of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to the centre of Malaysian politics-, however incongruent it might be, Zainah on the other hand offers a stereotype understanding of Islam and Islamist organization as heavily orthodox in orientation and totally anti-modern and anti-secular in practice. Unfortunately, by lumping Islamist organizations of all persuasions together, Zainah misses the finer points of Islamist engagement in civil society and acceptance of modern constitutionalism in her picture of the Islamists. The Islamist’s struggle for political, social and economic reform; incessant call for repeal of repressive laws and restoration of judicial independence; involvement in charity and humanitarian relief work; respect for the rights of the non-Muslims to practice their religion in peace and harmony; and acceptance of the Federal Constitution, which is neither completely secular nor fully Islamic, as the supreme law of the land are all missing in Zainah’s depiction of the Islamists.

Zainah also disregards the fact that the more moderate and progressive elements among the Islamists she demonizes have been working very closely with secular civil society actors in a number of significant civil society initiatives such as the anti-ISA movement, campaign for electoral reform, crusade against the University and University Colleges Act, and more recently, protest against the unfair terms of the proposed Free Trade Agreement with the United States. By accusing those opposing Article 11 coalition of rejecting the supremacy of the Federal Constitution, she obviously fails to direct her mind to PEMBELA’s latest memorandum to the Council of Rulers and the Prime Minister on the special position of Islam, which states very clearly the Islamists’ commitment to the supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law, while reaffirming the cultural terms of the 1957 constitutional contract which guarantees special constitutional position for Islam. Failure to consider these salient facts about Islamist’s engagement in civil society and respect for modern constitutionalism cast serious doubt to the validity of the whole of Zainah’s argument.

What Zainah’s -hate ideology- seems to be suggesting is, by highlighting the most extreme elements within the Muslim society, as well as some fringe perspectives which do not in any way reflect the mainstream views, that Malaysian Muslims are growing intolerant and extreme in their approach to religious pluralism and modern liberalism. If numbers do not fail us, recent survey by the Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research shows that this assumption erred. 97 percent of Muslims surveyed say that living alongside people of other religions is acceptable, though 70 percent identify themselves as Muslim first rather than Malay or Malaysian first. While 98 percent believe that apostasy is wrong, 64 percent want the Shari’ah laws to remain as it is under the modern Constitution. 73 percent think that Malaysia is an Islamic state, but 74 percent reject the Iranian model of theocracy. This shows that although majority of Malaysian Muslims are assertive about their religious identity, they are at the same time tolerant to multiculturalism and modern constitutionalism.

Yet there is another mind boggling conjecture that Zainah believes is the root cause of religious extremism among Malaysian Muslims. Obviously, according to Zainah, it is Islamist organizations’ recent campaign against the so-called Liberal Islam that contributes to alarming religious extremism among Muslims as indicated by the Deepavali greetings saga. But Zainah misses one salient point that the Islamist’s campaign itself is a response to a larger socio political transformation that Zainah herself knows very well.

This socio-political transformation relates to the development in the economic and political spheres. After decades of rapid economic development, massive urbanization, upward social mobility across ethnic groups, and expanding multiracial middle classes, there has been greater valorization of the virtues of democracy and human rights among the multiracial and multi-religious Malaysian public. Up to the 1990s, it is not uncommon to find conventional secular human rights groups to form alliances with Islamic groups in their struggle for greater democratic space, repeal of repressive laws, independence of judiciary, sustainable development, etc. Both Islamic and secular human rights groups find commonality in their goal to dismantle state authoritarianism and promote social justice.

But of late, a new variant of human rights struggle has emerged. Rather than targeting state authoritarianism, this new struggle debunks a particular social construct which its proponents view as unliberating. This includes social practices and mores that lay emphasis on patriarchal traditional values, moral vigilantanism and religious strictures. It seems that this new variant of human rights struggle, perhaps, find affinity with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) libertarian struggle in the West, rather than the anti-apartheid movement for liberation in South Africa. Not surprisingly, the main targets of the new variant of human rights activists have been Islamic religious strictures and its moral code. Campaigns against Islamic and municipal moral laws, Muslim polygamous marriage, state clampdown on deviant teachings, and until recently, prohibition against Muslims to convert are manifestations of this new variant of human rights struggle.

At the heart of this new struggle is a particular notion that the Muslim society needs to be transformed into a fully secular society along the same trajectory that the Christian West had experienced in the past. They need to be able to divorce their religious and moral worldviews from public life. They must also accept the primacy of individuals over the family, the community and the state when it comes to matters of personal faith. What should be the (dis)order of the day is a complete freedom of, in and from religion. In other words, the Muslims must undergo a thorough de-Islamization process before a complete secular life can be set in motion. What appears to be a conventional human rights struggle for individual freedom is indeed a larger cause for complete -Secularization of Islamic Society-. So far, there have been alignment and realignment of positions and alliances between and among the new human rights groups, state sections, international foundations and broader civil society actors in this larger pursuit of secularization.

Looking from this angle, Kessler’s -The Long March Towards Desecularization-, on which Zainah heavily relies in advancing her -hate ideology- thesis, does not tell the complete story of the contest for moral, legal and political authority in Malaysia. It is a story half told. Alongside the long march toward desecularization, there has also been a similar march toward de-Islamization, to which various sections within the Islamist forces are now responding, some are quite moderate and some others are even more extreme in their reactions. The more extreme the de-Islamization forces attempt to bulldoze its secular worldview into the religious fabric of the assertive Muslim society, the more extreme the reaction is from within the Islamist forces. In short, the de-Islamization forces have also had an equal share in triggering religious extremism within the Muslim society.

Given the contest between the two forces has become more acute lately, and the significant impact it bears on Muslim’s as well as non-Muslim’s perspective about politics and society, the government has so far been juggling between the two poles of Islamic conservatism and modern liberalism in making policy pronouncements. While it shot down the liberals’ proposal to form an interfaith commission, the government also reprimanded the conservative Federal Territory Islamic Religious Department for setting up a group of moral vigilantes which was tasked to hunt down moral criminals. It seems that the UMNO and PAS’s contest for Malay votes is no longer the sole determinant of the depth and breadth of government’s Islamization policies. The need to respond to the new de-Islamization forces, the attendant non-Muslim’s sentiments and the international exposes compels the government to be more cautious in dealing with its official policy on Islam. So far, the pattern of government’s responses to the contest has been like a pendulum swing – sometimes to the right (Islamic conservatism) and sometimes to the left (modern liberalism) and then back again, rather than a constant movement in any one direction.

While the divisive tendency of the current Islamic debate continues to gaining steam, it is worth the while of the actors of the debate to sit back and do some sort of soul searching. It is true that both sides of the political spectrum have moved to the far end of each side, widening the gap between the two, and leaving the middle ground seemingly out of everyone’s reach. But as we live in a deeply multi-religious society, where the divisive tendency, once unleashed, can be highly uncontrolled and potentially devastating, it is not too late for everyone to move back to the middle and try to reach out to each other again. It is high time for everyone to once again champion the middle ground.

MARZUKI MOHAMAD (marzuki.mohamad@anu.edu.au) is a Research Scholar of Political Science at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. He is also a member of Central Executive Committee of Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM).

Interesting Read: Al-Jazeera, a media revolution
by Azzam Tamimi

October 25, 2006 06:18 PM

Source Link

As al-Jazeera International, which will be predominantly in English, prepares for its launch this coming November, its older Arabic service al-Jazeera celebrates its 10th anniversary. The first of November 1996 witnessed a media revolution not just in the Arab world but across the globe. Al-Jazeera, which was born out of the abortion of a joint venture between the BBC and Saudi Arabia, soon attracted the attention of Arab viewers worldwide to an exciting style in broadcasting never ever before adopted by an Arab sponsored media outlet.

A year or so earlier, the Saudi Orbit Satellite bouquet sought to provide Arab satellite viewers with a reasonably “respectable” Arabic TV news service by means of contracting the news and current affairs segment to the BBC, well-respected in the Arab world for its Arabic radio service that is listened to by millions from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Peninsula.

For several months London-based Arab experts and commentators were hosted by the service in its BBC TV Centre studios at White City. At times guests would be warned not to be too harsh on Saudi Arabia if the news they were commenting on or the issues they were discussing had anything to do with it or its royals. A mild indirect critique of Arab governments was acceptable but not a direct blunt criticism of the Gulf states. Yet, the BBC kept receiving complaints from the Saudis objecting to the appearance of certain guests or to the way in which certain issues were addressed. They were particularly annoyed at the appearance on the news bulletins or the talk shows of members of the Saudi opposition. Riyadh authorities preferred to pretend they never existed. Guest commentators could not help but perceive the growing tension that eventually ended in an abrupt divorce between the BBC and Orbit.

Certain influential players within the ruling family in Saudi Arabia’s much smaller neighbour Qatar had apparently been following the deterioration of the BBC-ORBIT marriage upon whose collapse they moved in, contracted the bulk of the BBC Arabic TV service staff and flew them to Doha. The Qataris, who suffered no shortage of money, seized the opportunity to acquire an entire team of highly professional and experienced TV producers and presenters. Anyone looking to launch a near perfect satellite service would not have been luckier. To guarantee the success of the project, the Qataris added to the professionalism of the team and the generous budget they allocated for the operation another essential element: editorial freedom.

Unlike the Saudis, the Qataris did not suffer internal problems that might be considered threatening or even news worthy. With a small population sitting on an ocean of oil and natural gas, governor-governed relations have been at their best since the current Amir seized power from his father. Since then, poverty in Qatar has been, literally, nonexistent and political dissent is considered an internal family affair that is usually resolved in a traditional fatherly fashion that leaves all those concerned happy and content. Each Qatari citizen is guaranteed a job and a minimum standard of living – including all essential services such as housing, health, education and even recreation – that is well above anything a western liberal society may dream of. In a nutshell, Qatari citizens have little to complain from.

One of the earliest decisions taken by the current Amir upon coming to power was to cancel the Information ministry and end all forms of government control over the media. It was in this climate that al-Jazeera was born with the declared objective of giving platform to “the opinion and the other opinion”. Indeed, all kinds of ideas and personalities from the extreme right to the extreme left and from among the Islamists and the secular nationalists have regularly been debating issues on al-Jazeera. Hundreds of Arab activists and thinkers, whose own national media would never give them platform, rose to fame because al-Jazeera hosted them. In many instances, other media outlets, who otherwise would not have been bothered, were soon forced to pay attention to these rising stars.

The liberal west initially welcomed al-Jazeera seeing it as a tool of greatly needed and long-aspired-for liberalisation of the Arab region. Indeed, the channel’s news bulletins and talk shows seemed to leave no stone unturned in the Arab political and social terrain. However, Arab regimes that are usually identified as close friends and strategic allies of the leading power in the west, the USA, could not conceal their anger and frustration at what Qatar’s al-Jazeera was doing to them. The suppressed voices of political activists, opposition leaders and spokespersons for NGOs – particularly in the field of human rights and civil liberties – struggling for reform across the Arab region found in al-Jazeera a powerful agency to communicate their ideas, concerns and hopes to the millions of viewers who had free uncontrolled access to the channel via the satellite dish. The al-Jazeera TV debates about some of the most taboo issues in Arab politics encouraged members of the public to think loud and discuss freely. News and current affairs programs produced by national television stations, which were tightly controlled and severely censored, became deserted. Pressure was building within these institutions in order to ease the restrictions so that viewers could be won back.

Technology, money and political will combined together to provide al-Jazeera with an edge that was almost impossible to surpass. The United Arab Emirates tried to pull the rug from underneath al-Jazeera by liberalising its Abu Dhabi satellite channel. Initially, Abu Dhabi seemed to compete well; some of al-Jazeera’s staff were lured by extremely generous packages that were, at times, more than double the salary they had been earning. With such irresistible offers some of them resigned their jobs at al-Jazeera and joined Abu Dhabi. However, soon most of them regretted the decision; some of them jumped re-applied to al-Jazeera and asked for their jobs to be given back to them. The authorities in the UAE could not maintain the open platform for long; their channel could compete in many ways except in the ability to maintain such a wide margin of freedom; only al-Jazeera was prepared to guarantee its staff and viewers alike such freedom.

In another bid to outdo al-Jazeera the Saudis opened their al-Arabiya satellite channel and the Americans their al-Hurra. The Saudi owned al-Arabiya did quite well in the beginning and managed to take away a chunk of viewers from al-Jazeera but that too was short-lived. It became clear soon that the purpose of al-Arabiya was not to compete with al-Jazeera but rather to settle scores with the critics of the Saudi Royal family. It is widely believed the US created al-Hurra Arabic satellite TV channel for the purpose of providing Arab viewers with the US side of the story in contrast to what al-Jazeera offers. The project has anything but succeeded.

The US contentment with al-Jazeera started fading away soon after 9/11 with the launch of the war on terrorism that started with the invasion of Afghanistan followed by the invasion of Iraq. Al-Jazeera’s coverage of events in both arenas annoyed the US and prompted several US senior officials in the George W. Bush administration to openly criticise the channel. Sensing the US unease with al-Jazeera, an Arab leader, who al-Jazeera had also apparently annoyed, was reported to have suggested during the US invasion of Afghanistan that the US president should spare one of his Tomahawk missiles for al-Jazeera headquarters in Doha. Several Arab governments, including Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia had at different occasions expressed anger that at times manifested itself in the closure of al-Jazeera offices or the brief detention of its correspondents and at times took the form of calling back their own ambassadors in Doha.

Soon, the US frustration with al-Jazeera manifested itself in more than verbal condemnation of the channel; its offices in Kabul and then in Baghdad were shelled by US occupation troops. In the latter instance al-Jazeera correspondent in Baghdad Tariq Ayoub was killed. Two of al-Jazeera’s staff members have been accused of terrorism as a result of their coverage of events in Afghanistan: correspondent Taysir Allouni, who was arrested, charged, tried and imprisoned in Spain for interviewing Osama bin Laden; and cameraman Sami Al-Hajj, who was kidnapped while still in Afghanistan and has been held in Guantanamo Bay detention centre for the past five years.

The US administration considered further drastic action. Citing a Downing Street memo marked top secret, the British Daily Mirror reported in November 2005, that the US President, George Bush, planned to bomb al-Jazeera operation in Doha. According to a five-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and the British prime minister, Tony Blair, during Blair’s 16 April 2004 visit to Washington, Blair talked Bush out of launching a military strike on the station.

Now we know this was not just an American concern. In an interview for Channel 4’s Dispatches the former British home secretary, David Blunkett, indicated that he thought the bombing of al-Jazeera’s Baghdad TV transmitter was, in his opinion, justified. When I visited al-Jazeera in Doha for a talk show in 1997, it occupied a very small compound consisting of a few administrative offices, a newsroom and a studio. Today al-Jazeera is an empire with a huge operation in Doha and scores of offices around the world. Ten years on, al-Jazeera is the undisputed voice of the free in an Arab world that remains in shackles.

Interesting Read: Suddenly, I’m an ‘Islamic Fascist’
by Jonathan Cook

“One does not need to be a psychologist to understand that those with no legitimate way to vent their rage, even to have it recognized as valid, become consumed by it instead. They seek explanations and purifying ideologies. They need heroes and strategies. And in the end they crave revenge. If their voice is not heard, they will speak without words.

So I find myself standing with Bush’s “Islamic fascists” in the hope that – just possibly – my solidarity and that of others may dissipate the rage, may give it meaning and offer it another, better route to victory.”

It occurred to me as I watched the story unfolding on my TV of a suspected plot by a group of at least 20 British Muslims to blow up planes between the UK and America that the course of my life and that of the alleged “terrorists” may have run in parallel in more ways than one.

Like a number of them, I am originally from High Wycombe, one of the nondescript commuter towns that ring London. As aerial shots wheeled above the tiled roof of a semi-detached house there, I briefly thought I was looking at my mother’s home.

But doubtless my and their lives have diverged in numerous ways. According to news reports, the suspects are probably Pakistani, a large “immigrant” community that has settled in many corners of Britain, including High Wycombe and Birmingham, a gray metropolis in the country’s center where at least some of the arrested men are believed to have been born.

Britain’s complacent satisfaction with its multiculturalism and tolerance ignores the facts that Pakistanis and other ethnic minorities mostly live in their own segregated spaces on the margins of British life. “Native” Britons like me – the white ones – generally assume that is out of choice: “They stick to their own kind.” Many of us rarely come into contact with a Pakistani unless he is serving us what we call “Indian food” or selling us a packet of cigarettes in a corner shop.

So, even though we may have been neighbors of a sort in High Wycombe, my life and theirs probably had few points of contact.

But paradoxically, that changed, I think, five years ago when I left Britain. I moved to Nazareth in Israel, an Arab – Muslim and Christian – community on the very margins of the self-declared Jewish state. In the ghetto of Nazareth, I rarely meet Israeli Jews unless I venture out for work or I find myself sitting next to them in a local restaurant as they order hummus from an Arab waiter, just as I once asked for a madras curry in High Wycombe. When Israeli Jews briefly visit the ghetto, I suddenly realize how much, by living here, I have become an Arab by default.

Living on the margins of any society is an alienating experience that few who are rooted in the heartland of the consensus can ever hope to understand. Such alienation can easily deepen into something less passive, far more destructive, when you find yourself not only marginalized but your loyalty, rationality, even your sanity, called into question.

As we approach the fifth official anniversary of the “war on terror,” the foiled UK “terror plot” has neatly provided George W. Bush, the “leader of the free world,” with a chance to remind us of our fight against the “Islamic fascists.” But what if the war on terror is not really about separating the good guys from the bad guys, but about deciding what a good guy can be allowed to say and think?

What if the “Islamic fascism” President Bush warns us of is not just the terrorism associated with Osama bin Laden and his elusive al-Qaeda network but a set of views that many Arabs, Muslims, and Pakistanis – even the odd humanist – consider normal, even enlightened? What if the war on “Islamic fascism” is less about fighting terrorism and more about silencing those who dissent from the West’s endless wars against the Middle East?

At some point, I suspect, I joined the Islamic fascists without my even noticing. Were my name different, my skin color different, my religion different, I might feel a lot more threatened by that realization.

How would Homeland Security judge me if I stepped off a plane in the U.S. tomorrow and told officials not only that I am appalled by the humanitarian crises in Lebanon and Gaza but also that I do not believe the war on terror should be directed against either the Lebanese or the Palestinians? How would they respond if, further, I described as nonsense the idea that Hezbollah or the political leaders of Hamas are “terrorists”?

I have my reasons, good ones I think, but would anyone take them seriously? What would the officials make of my argument that, before Israel’s war on Lebanon, no one could point to a single terrorist incident Hezbollah had been responsible for in at least a decade? Would the authorities appreciate my comment that a terrorist organization that doesn’t do terrorism is a chimera, a figment of the president’s imagination?

Equally, what would they make of my belief that Hezbollah does not want to wipe Israel off the map? Would they find me convincing if I told them that Israel, not Hezbollah, is the aggressor in the conflict: that following Israel’s supposed withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000, Lebanon experienced barely a day of peace from the terrifying sonic booms of Israeli war planes violating the country’s airspace?

Would they understand as I explained that Hezbollah had acted with restraint for those six years, stockpiling its weapons for the day it knew was coming when Israel would no longer be satisfied with overflights and its appetite for conquest and subjugation would return? Would the officials doubt their own assumptions as I told them that during this war Hezbollah’s rockets have been a response to Israeli provocations, that they are fired in return for Israel’s devastating and indiscriminate bombardment of Lebanon?

And what would they say if I claimed that this war is not really about Lebanon, or even Hezbollah, but part of a wider U.S. and Israeli campaign to isolate and preemptively attack Iran?

Thank God, my skin is fair, my name is unmistakenly English, and I know how to spell the word “atheist.” Chances are when Homeland Security comes looking for suspects, no one will search for me or be interested – not yet, at least – in my views on Hassan Nasrallah or the democratic election of a Hamas government for the Palestinians.

My friends in Nazareth, and those Pakistani neighbors I never knew in High Wycombe, are less fortunate. They must keep their views hidden and swallow their anger as they see (because their media, unlike ours, show the reality) what U.S.-made weapons fired by American and Israeli soldiers can do to the fragile human body, how quickly skin burns in an explosion, how easily a child’s skull is crushed under rubble, how fast the body drains of blood from a severed limb.

Sitting in London or New York, the news that Gaza lost 151 souls, most of them civilians, last month to Israeli bombs and bullets passes us by. It is after all just a number, even if a high one. At best, a number like that from a place we don’t know, suffered by a people whose names we can’t pronounce, makes us pause, even sigh with regret. But it cannot move us to anger.

And anyway, our news bulletins are too busy to concentrate on more than one atrocity at a time. This month it is Lebanon. Next month it will probably be Iran. Then maybe it will be back to Baghdad or the Palestinians. The horror stories sound so much less significant, the need for action so less pressing, when each is unrelated to the next. Were we to watch the Arab channels, where all the blood and suffering blends into a single terrible Middle Eastern epic, we might start to make connections, and maybe suspect that none of this happens by accident.

But my Arab friends and High Wycombe’s Pakistanis have longer memories. Their attention span lasts longer than a single atrocity. They understand that those numbers – 151 killed in Gaza, and in a single incident 33 blown up in a market in Najaf, Iraq, and at least 28 crushed by rubble from an Israeli attack on Qana in Lebanon – are people, flesh and blood just like them. They can make out, in all the pain and death currently being inflicted on Arabs and Muslims, the echoes of events stretching back years and decades. They see patterns, they make connections, and maybe discern a plan. Unlike us, they do not sigh, they burn with fury.

This is something President Bush and his obedient serf in Britain, Tony Blair, need to learn. But of course, they do not want to understand because they, and their predecessors, are responsible for creating those patterns and for writing that epic tale in blood. Bush and Blair and their advisers know that the plan is far more important than the rage, the “red” alert levels at airports, or even planes crashing into buildings and plunging out of the sky.

And to protect that plan – to preserve the Middle East as a giant oil pump, cheaply feeding our industries and our privileged lifestyles – those who care about the suffering, the deaths, and the wars must be silenced. Their voices must not be heard, their loyalty must be questioned, their reason must be put in doubt. They must be dismissed as “Islamic fascists.”

One does not need to be a psychologist to understand that those with no legitimate way to vent their rage, even to have it recognized as valid, become consumed by it instead. They seek explanations and purifying ideologies. They need heroes and strategies. And in the end they crave revenge. If their voice is not heard, they will speak without words.

So I find myself standing with Bush’s “Islamic fascists” in the hope that – just possibly – my solidarity and that of others may dissipate the rage, may give it meaning and offer it another, better route to victory.

Islam is for freedom of choice and freedom of speech
by Azzam Tamimi

From Rushdie to the Pope, Islam has been wronged in the name of freedom of speech though in fact it is the one religious tradition that has always stood for freedom of choice and speech

So much injustice has been done to Islam over the issue of freedom of speech. Certain quarters choose to champion the cause of freedom of speech by indulging in acts whose primary objective is to tarnish the image of Islam through unfounded claims and to demonize it or demean its Prophet Muhammad through what they describe as literary or art works. Muslims have been put on the defensive episode after episode since the despicable novel by Salman Rushdie through the ugly Danish cartoons all the way down to the irresponsible remarks by Pope Benedict XVI. Muslims had every right to be offended because as they saw it these were not innocent exercises of freedom of speech but deliberate abuses that say nothing but untruth about Islam and its Prophet. However, the resort by some Muslims to violence has damaged their cause even further. Islam has been the victim at times of deliberate abuse and at times of irrational responses to such abuse by ignorant Muslims.

In fact, Islam – as shown clearly by its history and as its sources reveal – has always been a struggle for freedom of choice and of speech.

For thirteen years since receiving the first Qur’anic revelation in Mecca in 610 CE, Prophet Muhammad responded to the ‘elders’ who rejected his call to worshipping the One and Only God, Allah the Creator, by challenging them not to ‘obstruct the way’ between him and the people. “Let the people choose” was his slogan. Instead, the elders of the tribe of Quraysh, who feared the loss of their power and prestige, used every resource at their disposal in order to prevent any public discussion of what the Prophet had to say about the paganism the Arabs inherited from their forefathers. And it was not just paganism but a way of life littered with some of the most heinous atrocities committed against the weak and the vulnerable. Prophet Muhammad’s message was perceived as a revolution, a rebellion aimed at liberating minds and souls from human-imposed shackles and restrictions.

There is no better proof to the fact that Islam stands for freedom of thought and of expression than the esteemed status “the seeking of knowledge” is assigned in the Qur’an as well as in Prophetic traditions. The first word of revelation was iqra’, meaning read or learn or recite. “Learn in the Name of your Lord who Created man, out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood; learn in the Name of your Lord, the Most Bountiful, Who taught (the use of) the pen and taught man that which he knew not.”

Before Islam came to them, the Arabs prided themselves of being an illiterate community; very few of them learned anything apart from poetry and elementary astronomy enough to help them cross the desert at night. Still, very few of them ever left Arabia or interacted with the bastions of civilizations to the north and the south. While the Arabs despised Jews and Christians, the Qur’an called them the ‘People of the Book’ and linked itself to their religious traditions. Despite having been revealed first to the Arabs, the language of the Qur’an spoke in universal terms to the global human community. From day one, this was not meant to be a religious tradition for a particular racial or ethnic group but for the whole of mankind claiming direct link to all preceding divine missions from Noah through Abraham and Moses all the way down to Jesus.

As an eternal guarantee of the human freedom to choose, the Qur’an declared that “there is no compulsion in religion” and that no person’s conversion to Islam would be acceptable if not out of an absolute free will. Yet, Islam spread out of Arabia in all four directions in record time and the Ummah rapidly grew into a huge community. There is no evidence whatsoever that conversion was coerced although incentives might have been introduced by political regimes at times either in favour of conversion or in favour of discouraging it. What attracted millions of people was the liberating message of the new religion which declared that “an Arab is no better than a non-Arab, a white is no better than a black and a yellow is no better than a red.” The two great empires of the day, that of Byzantium and that of Sassania, had been oppressive powers that suppressed and persecuted the nations that came under their influence. Wars of attritions between the two empires augmented the suffering of millions of people who were being turned into fuel for a conflict that raged for several decades. Not only did the rising Islamic power provide a better alternative but it also emancipated many nations that had been enslaved by the two decaying powers.

It did not take long for Islam to provide humanity with great centres of civilization where scholarship flourished like never before. Philosophers and scientists – Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Sabian alike – turned cities such as Baghdad, Cordova and Seville into minarets of enlightenment for the benefit of all humanity not only innovating but also building on the legacies of the Hellenistic and Persian civilizations. Without the contributions of such centres of learning Europe today would still be in total darkness.

Today, most Muslims live in countries that are governed by despots who, like the elders of Quraysh, fear for their prestige and influence. In majority Muslim countries the police and intelligence services have no job other than muzzle people and make sure that nothing but what pleases the autocratic ruler is said or even whispered. It is not unusual for a person to lose his or her life for speaking out in public in contradiction to the wish of the despot. The largest number of prisoners in any given Muslim country happens to be prisoners of conscience. Few criminals or thieves are in prison because the real thieves are those in power. In fact, much of the struggle that has been going on in Muslim countries from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans is about freedom. People are fighting for the freedom not only to say what they wish but even the freedom to dress the way they like. It is here that the roots of ‘terrorism’ happen to be. The reason why some people resort to violence in Muslim countries is the lack of space for discussion about issues that matter and the brutality with which people who dare speak out are met.

Those of us Muslims who live in the liberal West appreciate more than anybody else the great bounty of being able to say what we like and to be able to lead the way of life we choose. It is because of this that many of us are gravely concerned that one of the repercussions of the U.S.-led war on terrorism is that the liberal West is undermining one of its most treasured achievement. The defence of freedom of speech in the USA and Europe is becoming increasingly selective. This was supposed to be a political right to be employed by those who are governed against those who govern. Now, authorities in the alliance for war in Afghanistan and Iraq are heading in the direction of stifling the public so as not to question policy or criticize the perpetration of blunders. What is of greater concern is that leading authorities in the liberal West are the backers of some of the most autocratic regimes across the Muslim world.

Freedom of speech is not about the right to publish offensive cartoons or to claim about Islam what is false and unfair but it is to stand up to tyrants and oppressors and prevent them from doing in our name what we abhor and detest. What is frequently claimed to be freedom of speech today is nothing but abuse most intended to settle scores or accomplish fame or perhaps infamy.

The Rise of Hamas and its role in Palestine Politics? part 2
by Azzam Tamimi

JAIR Annual Conference
Tokyo
13-15 October 2006

The Human Bomb
Hudnah was Sheikh Ahmad Yassin’s solution to the crisis created by Hamas’ human bomb campaign. In April 1994 Sheikh Ahmad Yassin was visited inside his prison cell by Israeli army and intelligence officers in the hope of obtaining from him a statement that might dissuade Hamas’ military wing from carrying out more ‘suicide’ or ‘martyrdom’ operations.

A series of devastating human bomb attacks were launched by Hamas in April 1994 in retaliation for the massacre perpetrated on 25 February 1994 by an American-born Jewish settler. Baruch Goldstein, who is believed to have secured the assistance of Israeli troops to sneak into Al-Haram al-Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, opened fire and threw hand grenades at worshippers as they kneeled half way through the early morning Fajr (dawn) prayers killing twenty nine of them and wounding scores others.

The series of revenge acts started on 6 April 1994 when Ra’id Abdullah Zakarnah, a Hamas Brigades member, drove a booby-trapped vehicle with an Israeli registration number plate into Afula bus station and detonated it at around noon. Nine Israelis were killed and more than 150 were injured. A statement issued by Hamas military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, soon afterwards claimed responsibility for the bombing and warned the Israelis to evacuate the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. With clear reference to what Goldstein had committed inside the mosque, Hamas vowed to make Israelis pay for what pain and harassment Jewish settlers inflict on the Palestinians under occupation.20

The second attack was carried out on 31 April 1994 by Ammar Amarnah, another member of Al Qassam Brigades. The target this time was an Israeli Egad bus working on line 8 at Al-Khadirah (Hadera) to the northwest of Tulkarm. Amarneh blew himself up on the bus killing five Israelis and wounding more than thirty. More operations were carried out that same year; many more were carried out over the years that followed, mostly in response to attacks on Palestinian civilians by Israeli troops or Jewish settlers.

Sheikh Ahmad Yassin told his Israeli prison guests that if they wished to see an end to these attacks they should make a deal that can be limited or comprehensive. In its limited format the hudnah would at least spare civilians on both sides; in its more comprehensive format it would entail an end to hostilities of all types between the two sides. There is no evidence to suggest that the Israelis have ever taken the offer of hudnah seriously.

Many Palestinians were initially shocked by the human bomb tactic. Some argued against it from a purely pragmatic point of view; in their assessment the human bomb tactic could only harm the Palestinian cause. The operations were also opposed on the ground that they were, by their very nature, indiscriminate and resulted in killing innocent civilians, something the critics believed could not be justified or legitimized under any circumstance. The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority opposed the operations primarily on the grounds of its commitments to the peace process and the potential damage they could cause to its role in peace-making.

Resorted to out of utter desperation, the ‘martyrdom operation’ was not without controversy when it was first launched. Hamas spokesmen maintained that such a tactic was the only means available to the Palestinians in order to deter the likes of Goldstein from ever attacking the defenseless Palestinian population under occupation. In time, an increasing number of Palestinians accepted that the human bomb was necessary to offset the balance that had been totally in favor of the Israelis who managed to acquire highly advanced military technology from the United States of America and Europe.

On the whole, Palestinians have generally appreciated and admired the heroism and altruism of the men and women who volunteered their bodies and souls to go on sacrificial missions on behalf of the cause. The more the Palestinians felt vulnerable the more they supported martyrdom operations and even demanded more of the same. It did not take much to convince those who had qualms that nothing else seemed to work as a means of self-defense or deterrence. Nevertheless, Palestinian public support for martyrdom operations has varied. Polls conducted at different times gave rise to different results but rarely has support for these operations dropped below fifty per cent. A poll conducted in the Gaza Strip by the Norwegian pollster Fafo in the first week of September 2005 indicated that a majority of 61% of those quizzed agreed with the statement that “suicide bombings against Israeli civilians are necessary to get Israel to make political concessions.” Fafo conducted a face-to face survey with 875 respondents to monitor Palestinian views on the Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Gaza strip.21 The Jerusalem Post reported on 16 October 2003 that a poll had shown that seventy-five percent of Palestinians supported the suicide bombing of the Maxim restaurant in Haifa on 4 October 2003. The opinion poll was conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in Ramallah.22 An earlier poll conducted by the PNA’s State Information Service (SIS) between 11 and 13 June 2002 in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip revealed that 81 per cent of the sample polled objected to the PNA’s designation of martyrdom operations as terrorist acts. Fifty two per cent of them said the PNA resorted to labeling these operations as terrorist because of ‘international pressure’. The total number of those polled was 1137 aged 18 years and above, 456 of them from the Gaza Strip and 681 from the West Bank. Incidentally, the poll also revealed that 86 per cent of the sample “supported military attacks against Israeli occupation troops and Jewish settlers inside the Palestinian territories.” Sixty nine per cent believed that the objective of carrying out martyrdom operations inside Israeli towns was to force an end of the occupation while 13.4 per cent believed the objective was to undermine the peace process and 11.3 per cent said the operations aimed to weaken the Palestinian Authority and embarrass it before the international community.23

Until employed in Palestine, the human bomb was seen as alien to the Sunni community within Islam. It had been more commonly associated with Shi’ism; the Iranians are believed to be the first Muslims to employ it. They did so quite successfully in the war with Iraq throughout the 1980s. Hundreds of Iranian young men were sent on martyrdom missions along the borders between the two countries to deter the well-equipped and armed to the teeth Iraqi troops, thanks to Western and Arab support. The tactic served the Iranians well because their Iraqi counterparts, many of whom had not been convinced of the legitimacy of the war their government waged on their neighbor, were not prepared to make similar sacrifices.

The tactic then moved to Lebanon in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion in 1982. The first martyrdom operation within Lebanon took place on 11 November 1982 when Ahmad Qasir, identified as a member of the Islamic Resistance, drove his Mercedes car into the headquarters of the Israeli military governor in Tyre and detonated its 200 kg of explosives killing 74 Israelis. From then on the human bomb became a routine weapon employed by the Lebanese resistance against Israeli occupation troops. The most memorable of all suicide bombings in Lebanon were the two simultaneous attacks carried out on 23 October 1983 against the US Battalion Landing Team headquarters and the French paratroopers’ base situated just four miles (6km) apart in Beirut. The two suicide bombers, both of whom died in the attack, were named as Abu Mazen, 26, and Abu Sij’an, 24. A previously unknown group called the Free Islamic Revolutionary Movement (FIRM) claimed responsibility for the two attacked that killed 241 American and 58 French soldiers. FIRM was believed to have been made up of Lebanese Shi’a Muslims associated with the Amal militia. Hezbollah had not emerged yet but FIRM might have been its precursor. Lebanon also produced the first female suicide bombing in the Arab world; her name was Sana’ Mhaidli. Her car bombing of an Israeli military convoy on 9 April 1985 was claimed by the secular Syrian Nationalist Party.

The Lebanese Hezbollah, founded with Iranian backing as a Muslim Shi’te response to the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon, inherited the resistance and the tactic of the human bomb, which it continued to employ until Israel withdraw unilaterally from South Lebanon in May 2000 when the cost of occupation could no longer be borne.

Elsewhere in the world, the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, who struggle for an independent Tamil state, began carrying out suicide bombings in 1987. It is estimated that they have since perpetrated over 200 such attacks. The Tamil suicide bomb attacks were employed primarily to assassinate politicians opposed to their cause. In 1991, they assassinated former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and in 1993 they assassinated President Premadassa of Sri Lanka in 1993. In 1999, the Tigers attempted to assassinate Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga using a female suicide bomber. While the Tamils tend to prefer female bombers Islamic groups in Lebanon and Palestine did not deem it appropriate to do so until the eruption of the second Intifada. Hamas was reluctant to recruit female bombers but removed the ban under pressure from female members some of whom threatened to go it alone or in association with other factions. The first female bomber in Palestine was 26 year old Wafa Idris who detonated in Yaffa Stree in Jerusalem on 28 January 2001. She was followed by ten other female ‘martyr bombers’ the last of whom was Zaynab Ali who detonated on 22 September 2004. The campaign was launched by Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and was soon joined by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

It is very likely that Hamas was persuaded to employ the human bomb when it became clear that the tactic was delivering results in Lebanon. It could not have been a coincidence that the first martyrdom operation was carried out in Palestine nearly a year following the return of Hamas and Islamic Jihad deportees from South Lebanon where for a year they had ample time to listen and learn. But this brought pressure to bear on Hamas political leaders who, while defending the tactic, were keen not to be associated directly with planning the operations or authorizing them; they attributed them to the movement’s military wing Izziddin Al-Qassam Brigades (IQB). Hamas spokesmen were at pains to explain the relationship between the political and the military wings of the movement, which also had relief, media and educational institutions that needed to be saved from Israeli reprisals or from punitive measures by the international community.

An attempt was made to compare the political and the military within Hamas with the IRA-Shin Fin dichotomy. The political leadership of Hamas was said to draw the general policy of the movement whereas the military wing, known as the Brigades of Izziddin Al-Qassam, was an independent body that functioned in total freedom away from any coordination with the political leadership but in accordance with the general policy that would be drawn by the political leadership.24 The Israelis were never convinced nor were the Americans or the Europeans. By 2003 Hamas and many of the organizations identified as having been associated with it directly or indirectly were proscribed and put on the terrorism list. A number of Hamas political leaders were targeted for assassination by the Israeli army or by the Mossad. Some escaped but many took direct hits.

Human Bombs: Tactic or Desperate Act
There has been much debate over whether resorting to the ‘human bomb’ is prompted by dire economic conditions or is simply part of a strategy aimed at achieving certain political objectives. It would be wrong to suggest that it has to be an ‘either/or’ case. Many visitors to the occupied territories have privately or publicly expressed an understanding as to why the Palestinians resort to these operations. While it is true that the majority of ‘martyrs’ do not come from poor desperate backgrounds, and that many of them are well-educated and well-positioned inside the community, the general condition of despair and frustration contributes to the motivation. However, from the organizational point of view these operations are not simply reactions, though they are occasionally presented as such, to the dire economic crisis caused by occupation. More so, they are seen as the only means of pressuring the Israelis, both state and society, to recognize the rights of the Palestinians and to agree to a cease-fire deal that would at least spare the civilians.

Hamas is explicit in its objectives. In the abovementioned document entitled -This is what we Struggle for,- the movement declares that martyrdom operations -are in principle directed against military targets.- It explains that -targeting civilians is considered an aberration from Hamas’ fundamental position of hitting only military targets; they represent an exception necessitated by the Israeli insistence on targeting Palestinian civilians and by Israel’s refusal to agree to an understanding prohibiting the killing of civilians on both sides; an understanding comparable to the one reached between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.- This is a reference to the agreement concluded between Hezbollah and Israel in the aftermath of the Qana massacre in the mid-90s. Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who repeatedly offered the Israelis a truce, is quoted in this same document as saying: -Hamas does not endorse the killing of civilians, but that is sometimes the only option it has if it is to respond to the murdering of Palestinian civilians and the cold-blooded assassination of Palestinian activists.- He himself was assassinated by Israel in March 2004.

Tahdi’ah
Hamas only resorted to the human bomb in the hope of forcing the Israelis to agree to spare the civilians on both sides and still better to negotiate a long-term ceasefire agreement. Following his release from detention and return to Gaza in October 1997, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin offered to suspend Hamas martyrdom operations if the Israelis were ready to -stop their attacks on [Palestinian] civilians, end land confiscation and house demolitions, and release the prisoners and detainees.- This is not quite the same as the long term truce which he said his movement was ready to engage in provided that Israel withdrew from the West Bank and Gaza and dismantled its Jewish settlements.25

The offer of truce was reiterated in October 1999 by Hamas armed wing, the Izzidin al-Qassam Brigades, who said it was ready to stop attacks on Israeli civilians -provided Israel stops its settlement activities and land confiscation and provided Israeli troops and Jewish settlers stop attacking Palestinian civilians.-26

There were at least three occasions on which a ‘temporary hudnah,’ usually referred to as tahdi’ah (calming), was unilaterally declared by Hamas and other Palestinian factions. The most recent tahdi’ah was agreed upon during the Cairo talks of March 2005; it was supposed to last until the end of 2005 but went well beyond that.

The first tahdi’ah, however, was in 2002; it was brokered by EU emissary Alistair Crooke. The tahdi’ah was shattered several weeks later when the Israelis assassinated Hamas leader Salah Shihadah on 22 July 2002.

On 29 June 2003 Hamas and Islamic Jihad declared a unilateral truce. The decision to observe this tahdi’ah was announced by Hamas leader Abd Al-Aziz Al-Ranitisi who explained that it was a gesture to give a chance to newly appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas to sort things out with the Israelis. The tahdi’ah came to an end seven weeks later after Israel assassinated Hamas leader Isma’il Abu Shanab on 21 August 2003. Israel alleged that the assassination was in retaliation for the bombing of a Jerusalem bus that left twenty-one Israelis dead and more than a hundred wounded.

In fact, the Israelis never recognized or appreciated the unilateral truce declared by the Islamic factions in Palestine. They pursued their strategy of eliminating whoever they considered a potential threat to their security. Throughout the month of July 2003 several Palestinians were assassinated in Nabulus and Hebron. The attack in Jerusalem on 19 August 2003 was carried out by Ra’id Misk, a native of Hebron, who retaliated for the assassination of some of his friends in the town by Israeli army special units in the aftermath of the declaration of the truce. It transpired later that Hamas members in Hebron were ordered to observe the truce despite the Israeli provocations. However, they could not remain indifferent while their colleagues were being hunted down one after the other. The Israeli campaign of targeted assassinations in the Hebron area started before Hamas declared its unilateral truce and included the murder of a local Hamas leader, Sheikh Abdullah Al-Qawasimi, on 22 June 2003.

Israel’s refusal to reciprocate led many Palestinians to lose confidence in the usefulness of declaring a unilateral truce. The sense of frustration was augmented when the European Union decided in August 2003 to proscribe Hamas and place it on the terrorism list. Encouraged by the EU decision, Israel made its first attempt to assassinate Sheikh Ahmad Yassin on 6 September 2003. An Israeli fighter jet dropped a 500lb bomb on a residential building in Gaza City where Sheikh Yassin was visiting in the company of a number of Hamas figures including Isma’il Haniyah who in 2006 became Prime Minister. Fifteen Palestinians were wounded and Sheikh Yassin escaped with scratches.

The Israelis also attempted to assassinate Dr. Mahmud Al-Zahar. The air strike on his family home leveled it to the ground. Dr Al-Zahar escaped with injuries but lost his elder son in the attack that left his wife permanently paralyzed and his daughter seriously wounded. At a rally held in November that year, Sheikh Yassin announced that the movement found it futile to observe a cease-fire unilaterally: He said: -We declared a truce in the past, but it failed because Israel did not want peace or security for the Palestinian people.- Addressing the same rally, Hamas leader Al-Zahar urged the Palestinians to resume armed resistance.27

What comes after hudnah?
Hamas is silent about what happens when a long-term hudnah signed with the Israelis expires. While its leaders have left open the length of the hudnah term, considering this to be a subject for negotiation with the Israelis once they accepted the principle, they generally suggest that the future should be left for future generations.

It is usually assumed that a long term hudnah will likely last for a quarter of a century or more. That is seen as too long a time for someone to predict what may happen afterwards. There will always be the possibility that the hudnah will come to an end prematurely because of a breach. If that happens it is highly unlikely that the breach will come from the Hamas side for the simply reason that it is religiously binding upon the Islamic side to honor the agreement to the end unless violated by the other side. Should the hudnah last till the prescribed date, one scenario is that those in charge then will simply negotiation a renewal.

Another scenario that is prevalent within the thinking of some intellectual Hamas quarters is that so much will change in the world that Israel as a Zionist entity may not want, or may not have the ability, to continue to be in existence. As a matter of principle Muslims, Christians and Jews can live together in the region as they lived together for many centuries before. What Islamists usually have in mind is an Islamic state, a Caliphate, which is envisaged to encompass much of the Middle East in an undoing of the fragmentation the region was forced to undergo due to 19th century colonialism and then in accordance with the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. The entities created in the process became separate ‘territorial states’ in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman order in the second decade of the 20th century. While Israel as an exclusive state for the Jews in Palestine is something an Islamic movement such as Hamas can never recognize as legitimate, the Jews can easily be accommodated as legitimate citizens of a multi-faith, multi-racial state governed by Islam. The post-Israel scenario, which has become a subject for debate within the movement, is one that envisages a Palestine, or a united Middle East, with a Jewish population but no political Zionism. This is a vision inspired by the South African reconciliation model that brought Apartheid to an end but kept all communities living together. Zionism is usually equated to Apartheid and its removal is seen as the way forward if Muslims, Christians and Jews were ever to coexist in peace in the region. It would be impossible for such a scenario to translate into a reality without a long-term hudnah that for the life time of an entire generation provides communities and peoples in the region with the opportunity to restore some normalcy into their lives.

Those who are skeptical about the hudnah may argue that it means nothing but a prelude to finishing Israel altogether. But without hudnah too the Palestinians will still dream of the day on which Palestine, their country, is free and their right of return to their homes is restored. Without a hudnah there is no guarantee that they will cease to pursue that end using whatever means that are at their disposal. The advantage of the hudnah is that it brings to an end the bloodshed and the suffering because of the commitment to do so for a given period of time. In the meantime, let each side dream of what they wish the future to look like while keeping the door open for all sorts of options. Under normal circumstances, the best option is the least costly option.

From Resistance to Governance
Following the eruption of the Intifada, and for many months and years, the Israelis spared no effort to crack down heavily on Hamas arresting wave after wave of its leaders and activists, deporting several hundreds of them to Lebanon and assassinating hundreds others including some of the most senior leaders such as its founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and several of his colleagues. As early as 1989, the merciless Israeli campaign against the movement prompted its leadership to transfer all executive powers to the Palestinian Ikhwan outside Palestine; the move was intended primarily to protect the organization from total collapse under the impact of the Israeli hammer. In response to the brutality of Israeli occupation troops, an increasing number of Hamas members decided to go underground and organize themselves in small cells in order to plan and carry out reprisal attacks against the Israelis. It was in these circumstances that the Hamas military wing, Martyr Izziddin Al-Qassam Brigades, came into existence. The combat tactics used by the Brigades were to a large extent proportionate to the Israeli measures. The more the Palestinians suffered the more willing were the Brigades to employ new methods that were primarily intended to deter the Israelis. As mentioned earlier, in April 1994 the Brigades introduced the ‘human bomb’ tactic in response to the massacre perpetrated on 25 February 1994 by American-born Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein inside Al-Haram al-Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron killing twenty nine Muslim worshipers and wounding scores others.

Hamas willingness to challenge the occupation and, in doing so, make considerable sacrifices won the movement the hearts and minds of an increasing number of Palestinians who had been disillusioned with the peace process and angered by the rampant corruption within the PLO and its main faction, the Fatah movement, which signed the Oslo Accords with the Israelis in 1993 and set up the Palestinian National Authority in 1994. The rise of Hamas coincided with a popular conviction among the Palestinians that the entire peace process had been intended right from day one to stifle Palestinian resistance against the Israelis and bring the Intifada to an end. It was natural, therefore, that Hamas would be seen as the victim and the main target of this new alliance between the PLO and Israel conceived at Oslo not for the purpose of regaining Palestinian rights and creating peace but of aborting the resistance project and prolonging the subjugation of the Palestinians to Zionist oppression.

Hamas’s popularity inside Palestine and around it continued to grow despite the ever intensifying pressure on it and in spite of the campaigns launched against it by Israel, the Palestinian Authority Jordan and the United States of America and its allies in Europe. The electoral success of January 2006 was the decisive verdict testifying to the popularity of Hamas, which had until then been winning municipal, trade unions and students elections but never before took part in parliamentary ones. The earlier legislative elections of 1996 were boycotted by the movement which did not at the time believe the elections were likely to be fair and free. In 1996, the Fatah organization was in full control and could with the backing of the Israelis manipulate the election to produce a Legislative Council (PLC) that fitted the criteria agreed on between the two sides in the Oslo Accords.

The decision to participate in the elections this time was not without lengthy discussions among the various ‘chapters’ of Hamas. Hamas members in the Gaza Strip were most enthusiastic about participating. They felt confident that they could win a comfortable majority especially that Israel had already withdrawn unilaterally from Gaza and Fatah had been in a mess following the death of its father-figure Yassir Arafat in late 2004. In contrast, Hamas members in the West bank were least supportive of the idea. Mixed feelings were expressed by Hamas members inside the prisons whereas Hamas members abroad were cautiously supportive of participation. The outcome of all these deliberations was submitted to the highest authority in Hamas, the Al-Istishari (consultative) Council, which took the decision that Hamas should seize the opportunity of the election and participate in full.

Several factors contributed to boosting Hamas confidence that the political breeze was blowing in a favorable direction: the utter failure of the peace process; the disappearance of Yassir Arafat from the political scene; Israel’s decision to disengage unilaterally and end its occupation of the Gaza Strip; the general belief among Palestinians that it was the resistance by Hamas and other factions that forced the Israelis out of Gaza; and the disarray within the Fatah movement and the disillusionment of the public with the PNA because of corruption and because of the failure of the peace process.

Observers came out with an array of explanations as to how or why the movement managed such an electoral success. The most widely adopted explanation was the assumption that voters chose Hamas to punish Fatah, who had been in charge since the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994.

Hamas massive win has been attributed to a number of factors. Some of those who said they voted for Hamas gave one or more reasons for having decided to vote for the movement. The first reason pertains to Hamas loyalty to the Palestinian dream. Most Palestinians, including those who did at one stage express readiness to settle for less, would love to see Palestine, the whole of it, completely free. They dream of the day when millions of Palestinian refugees will return home to the towns and villages from which they or their parents were driven out when Israel was created in 1948. Hamas, which believes that the State of Israel is an illegitimate political entity that will one day disappear just as the 11th century Crusader Kingdoms in Palestine and Syria disappeared, keeps the dream alive. The 1988 Fatah-dominated PLO decision to recognize Israel’s right to exist in exchange for being recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people was the turning point for many Palestinians. It was from then on that Hamas, which had been in existence for no more than a year, started being perceived by an increasing number of Palestinians as the alternative to the derailed Fatah.

The second reason pertains to the record of the Muslim Brotherhood and then Hamas as a service provider. Many Palestinians could hardly manage without the social, educational and medical services provided by the United Nations and an army of NGOs the most efficient of which had been the ones set up and run by Hamas. As Israel collectively punished the Palestinians and destroyed the infrastructure of their society and authority it provided Hamas, so unwittingly, with the greatest of opportunities. The rampant corruption that spread across the rank and file of Hamas main rival, Fatah, and throughout the Palestinian Authority, was being compared by many Palestinians with the clean hands Hamas officials had. The Palestinians could not help but admire the decency, honesty and transparency with which Hamas conducted its affairs and provided its services to the public. Despite channeling millions of dollars worth aid to those in need every year, top Hamas officials continued to live as they had always done; their living standards were average and many of them resided inside the refugee camps as part of the people and close to their minds and hearts. Sheikh Yassin, who lived all his life in a refugee camp at a standard of living hardly distinguishable from that of his neighbors in the same camp provided a stark contrast to the leaders of Fatah many of whom had made fortunes and built empires out of peace making with the Israelis.

The third reason is Hamas Islamic ideology, which – unlike the secular nationalism of Fatah – is fully compatible with the powerful inclination toward Islam within Palestinian society. Since the early seventies, Palestine has seen a massive Islamic revival that was in part a reaction to the failure of secular Arab nationalism, blamed by Palestinians for the loss of the rest of Palestine to the Israelis in 1967. Additionally, and as an increasingly religious community, Palestinians identified more with the moral code espoused by Hamas that with the more libertine agenda of the leaders of Fatah. Many previously diehard Fatah members, who in more recent years had become more religious, found themselves closer to Hamas than to the organization they had been affiliated to.

The forth reason is to do with the failure of the peace process between Israel and the PLO right from Oslo to the Road Map. Rather than deliver the Palestinians from their misery the open-ended process seemed only to augment their suffering. Hamas had predicted all a long that Israel would not deliver, that it was using peace-making in order to expropriate more land, and that only jihad would force the occupation to come to an end. Israel proved Hamas right when it turned against its own partners in the peace process destroying the PNA institutions and imposing a siege around its leader, Yassir Arafat, whom many Palestinians believe was eventually poisoned. The unilateral withdrawal from Gaza only served to further vindicate Hamas which claimed that it was its struggle that forced Sharon to withdraw settlers and troops unconditionally.

As a gesture, Hamas leaders, who were hoping that the new Israeli leadership would choose to reciprocate and perhaps negotiate a long-term cease-fire arrangement, decided to extend the unilateral truce the movement had been observing. Additionally, having proven to the Palestinian people its unwavering loyalty to the cause of resisting Israeli occupation, Hamas hoped to be given the chance to provide a model of good governance.

However, the Hamas electoral success was immediately met with U.S. and EU unwillingness to deal with the new authority unless it agreed to three conditions. It had to recognize Israel’s right to exist, it had to renounce violence and disarm and it had to honor all the agreements signed earlier between the PLO and Israel. But there was no way Hamas would agree to any of these conditions. Doing so would destroy its credibility and negate the very essence of its claim to provide a better alternative to the bankrupt Fatah. Hamas leaders responded by asserting that if the Americans indeed wished to see peace prevail in the region they should put pressure on Israel so as to end its occupation and not on the Palestinians who are the victims and not the oppressors. It would seem that the Americans felt embarrassed by Hamas’s success because they were the ones who insisted on conducting the elections as a means of effecting political reform in the territories. It puzzled people that the Americans should have known better; Fatah, their favorite, was in a rather bad shape and it simply stood no chance of winning.

With no signs of yielding on the part of Hamas, the United States, Israel and the European Union forged an alliance to force Hamas to change or exit the political game altogether. A series of processes were put in place and a number of tactics were employed one after the other to ensure one of the two outcomes. World nations were told not to give Hamas a chance; not to deal with it or grant it recognition. The war on Hamas soon turned into a collective punishment of the entire Palestinian people inside the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The Palestinians have long been divided: Fatah supporters see no exit apart from a compromise on the part of Hamas in the form of compliance with the demands of the ‘international community’ while Hamas supporters insist that such a compromise is out of the question. The atmosphere is reminiscent of the days the preceded the eruption of Intifada I and Intifada II; many expect Intifada III to erupt at any time.

The Rise of Hamas and its role in Palestine Politics? Part 1
by Azzam Tamimi

JAIR Annual Conference
Tokyo
13-15 October 2006

Introduction
On 25 January 2006, the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine (Hamas) made a sweeping win in one of the fairest democratic exercises ever allowed to take place in the Arabic-speaking world. For more than a decade Hamas has been a major player not just in the Palestinian arena but within the entire Middle East region.

Outside Arab and Muslim circles many of those who wrote about Hamas could only see it through an Israeli lens. Most of the books written on it have adopted the Israeli point of view and their authors relied heavily on security agencies’ reports including confessions extracted from Palestinian detainees under duress. One such example has been the recent book authored by Matthew Levitt, who when the book was published in 2006 was deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department. Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad depicts Hamas as a terrorist organization that uses -its extensive charitable and educational work to promote its foremost aim: driving Israel into the sea.- Hamas’s reputable charity activities are condemned as nothing but a device for recruiting new soldiers to its -holy war- against Israel. The movement’s sponsored mosques, schools, orphanages and sports leagues are portrayed as -integral parts of an overarching apparatus of terror.-2

In contrast, Hamas sees itself as an organization of Palestinians who happen to be both Arab and Muslim and who perceive themselves as the immediate victims of an unjust world order that saw fit to create a ‘European’ Jewish state in their own country at the very centre of Arab and Muslim heartlands. Hamas founders and affiliates see the Israelis as their oppressors who dispossessed them and their fellow countrymen and who have, since then, been persecuting them generation after generation. Resisting Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and Israeli oppression of the people of the land is one of several elements that inform the thinking of the movement and instruct its activism. The womb out of which Hamas was born was essentially a social project motivated by philanthropy and dedicated to charity, and that explains the network of civic services and activities in which the movement continues to engage.

Roots
Hamas was born out of the Association of Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimun (the Muslim Brotherhood), best described by its affiliates as a comprehensive reform movement. The Ikhwan was originally Egyptian but has since its creation grown into a global network. The mother organization was founded by Hassan Al-Banna (1906-1949) in the Egyptian town of Al-Isma’iliyah in 1928 where he taught at a primary school not far from the headquarters of the British occupation troops’ garrison. Combining elements of spirituality acquired from his association with the Hasafiyah Sufi order with the pristine monotheistic teachings of Islam learned inside the Salafi school of Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865-1935) – a disciple and close associate of Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905), Al-Banna’s project had a great popular appeal.

It did not take long for Al-Ikhwan movement to grow, quite rapidly, within Egypt and beyond it. Inside Egypt, it had four branches in 1929, 15 in 1932, 300 by 1938 and more than 2000 in 1948. By 1945, it had half a million active members in Egypt alone and between 1946 and 1948 it opened branches in Palestine, Sudan, Iraq and Syria.

Al-Ikhwan’s long-term goals were: first, to free the Islamic homeland from all foreign authority; and second, to establish an Islamic state within the re-united Islamic homeland. But the movement’s founder Al-Banna taught his followers that neither objective could be achieved without first attending to the more immediate needs of society. His project was, above all, an endeavor to ‘rehabilitate’ the Ummah starting with the individual, then the family and ending up with society as a whole through a process of gradual reform.

These two same goals have been pursued, using the same methodology of gradual reform, by Al-Ikhwan offshoots across the Arab region including Palestine where the Palestinian Ikhwan took root immediately after the end of the Second World War. Having initially opened a few local branches in the Gaza Strip, the edifice of the movement neared completion with the official inauguration on 6 May 1946 of its Central Office in Jerusalem in the presence of local dignitaries as well as guests who arrived from Cairo to represent the mother movement in Egypt.

The creation of Israel in two thirds of Palestine in 1948 led to a de facto split of the Palestinian Ikhwan into two separate organizations one in Gaza, which came under Egyptian military rule, and the other in the West Bank, which was annexed to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The occupation of the rest of Palestine in the aftermath of the six-day war in June 1967 was a blessing in disguise for the group. From 1967 to 1977 the Ikhwan of Palestine endeavored to unite their ranks and put their house in order. Within a few years they managed to regain some of the ground they had lost to the secular nationalist movements that gained their popularity from mounting resistance against the Israeli occupation but that were also dealt fetal blows as a result of the loss of confidence across Palestine and the Arab region in Arab nationalism, as exemplified by Nassirism, which was held responsible for the major defeat of the Arabs and the loss of much more land to Israel in 1967.

However, as they rose in popularity and enhanced their appeal, the Ikhwan were being challenged to take a stand against the Israeli occupation, which the Palestinian populations of the West Bank and Gaza could no longer tolerate. Palestinian student communities, initially in Egypt and Kuwait but soon afterwards in the newly emerging Palestinian universities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, played a significant role in revolutionizing the thinking within the movement as a whole prompting its leadership to take a decision in 1977 to start planning for the launch of their own resistance project that saw the light ten years later with the outburst of the Intifada.

This decade preceding the Intifada saw the creation of major institutions by the Ikhwan in Gaza, such as the Al-Mujammah’ Al-Islami and the Islamic University, which provided Palestinian society with essential services in social, medical and educational spheres and contributed significantly to boosting the movement’s standing and to enhancing its popularity. As Israeli oppressive policies took their toll on the Palestinians, deepening their sense of humiliation and entrapment, the late eighties saw the transformation of the Ikhwan into a resistance movement, more widely known today for its acronym HAMAS, a day after the incident on 8 December 1987 that sparked the first Intifada.3

What Hamas Stands for
A document authored by Hamas Political Bureau in the mid-1990s begins with the following assertion: -The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is a Palestinian national liberation movement that struggles for the liberation of the Palestinian occupied lands and for the recognition of Palestinian legitimate rights.- The refined political discourse of this document is a far cry from the overly religious language in which the Hamas Charter was coined. Representing the first attempt by the movement to produce a written document for others to learn what Hamas stood for, the Charter, known in Arabic as Al-Mithaq (the Covenant), was released to the public on 18 August 1988, less than nine months following the birth of the movement. Since then, however, it has hardly ever been referred to or quoted by the top leaders of Hamas or its official spokespersons.

The Charter aside, the discourse of the Hamas leaders could hardly be distinguishable from the discourse of freedom fighters in Latin America, South Africa or East Asia. Consider for instance the following statement made by Hamas leader in Gaza Dr. Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rantisi on 7 March 2004 just ten days before Israel assassinated him:

Hamas’ strategy is underpinned by four principles: 1) We have a homeland that is in its entirety usurped; we cannot concede one inch of it; 2) there is an obvious imbalance of powers in favor of the Zionist enemy; 3) we do not possess the armament our enemy possesses but we possess a faith that generates a will that does not recognize defeat or retreat short of accomplishing the goals, a faith that demands sacrifice for the sake of faith and homeland; and 4) there is an Arab and Islamic Ummah that is weak, feeble and broken and therefore cannot support the people of Palestine, and there is an international community that is hostile to the hopes and aspirations of the Palestinian people and that supports Zionist terrorism. Hamas’ strategy proceeds in two parallel lines: 1. resisting occupation and confronting Zionist aggression; and preserving the unity of the Palestinian people and protecting the Palestinian ranks from the threat of internal fighting which would only distract everyone from resisting the occupation.

Ironically, the Hamas Charter has been more frequently invoked by the movement’s opponents and critics as proof of either its inflexibility or its anti-Semitism. When it was written the Charter honestly represented the movement’s ideological and political stands at that point in time; it is a reflection of how the Ikhwan, out of whom Hamas was born, perceived the conflict in Palestine and how they saw the world then.

In the months leading up to the election of January 2006, Hamas political leadership was becoming increasingly convinced that the Charter had to be re-written. Apparently, the idea of writing and publishing a charter while the movement was still in its infancy was never given enough consideration. Once written, the document never went through proper consultation. According to Khalid Mish’al, Hamas Political Bureau Chief, the Charter was hastily released to meet what was perceived at the time as a pressing need to introduce the movement to the public. It was never studied carefully within the movement whose leading institutions inside and outside Palestine had no opportunity to evaluate before it went public. He, therefore, does not consider it to be a true expression of the movement’s overall vision, which -has been formulated over the years by inputs from the movement’s different institutions.- As far as he is concerned, the Charter is a historical document from which one may learn how the movement conceived of things at the time of its birth but -should not be treated as if it were the fundamental ideological frame of reference from which the movement derives its stances or on the basis of which it justifies its actions.-4

Until recently, very little debate had been taking place within the movement over the Charter despite the fact that much of the criticism leveled against Hamas has involved references to the Charter. It is as if Hamas totally forgot that it had a Charter or as if its leaders were completely oblivious to critique, or attacks, directed against the movement thus far.5 It is only recently that some of them have been voicing their concern that it might have taken them too long to say that -the text of the Charter does not reflect the thinking and understanding of the movement- and that this may -constitute an obstacle or a source of distortion or a misunderstanding vis-à-vis what the movement stands for.-6

It was in the aftermath of 9/11 that urgency was felt for an image-building initiative to counter the endeavors by certain academic and media quarters to lump all Islamic movements and organizations in one basket together with Al-Qaeda. A series of consultations conducted in Beirut and Damascus between the beginning of 2003 and the end of 2005 bolstered the conviction by several top Hamas political bureau officials that it was time the Charter was re-written. The consultations concluded with commissioning work on a draft for a new Charter. However, in the aftermath of the Palestinian legislative elections of 25 January 2006, the project was put on hold until further notice lest the new Charter is seen as a compromise forced by outside pressure.

Hamas leaders, today, recognize the need to express the ideas that relate to fundamental and immutable positions within the Charter in a language that appeals to both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Instead of adopting an overwhelming religious discourse, the new Charter would tell, albeit briefly, the story of the Palestinian problem as it unfolded tracing its roots to the Jewish problem in 19th Century Europe. This would constitute a more universally accepted argument than the idea that Palestine is a waqf (endowment) -consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day.-7 As article eleven of the Charter itself explains, the lands conquered by the Muslims from the time of the second Caliph Omar onwards were all assigned as waqf and therefore were not distributed as booties among the conquering troops. The same designation applies equally to Iraq, Persia, Egypt, North Africa and even Spain. The reference in the Charter to this issue was in the context of condemning those who were willing to give away any part of Palestine to the Israelis as part of a peace agreement. Hence is the phrase -it is not permissible to concede it or any part of it or to give it up or any part of it; that is not the right of any single Arab state or all the Arab states together nor any king or president or all the kings and presidents together nor any single organization or all the organizations together whether Palestinian or Arab. This is so because the land of Palestine is an Islamic waqf (endowment) property consecrated to the generations of Muslims up to the Day of Resurrection; and who can presume to speak for all Muslim generations to the Day of Resurrection?-8 It is widely accepted today within Hamas that this matter is strictly jurisprudential and that the Charter is not the best place for addressing it.

However, the biggest problem in the Charter is its treatment of the Jews. Part of the problem here is language. Israelis are referred to by an average Palestinian as yahud, which is the Arabic equivalent for Jews. Terms such as ‘Zionist’ or ‘Israeli’ figure mostly in the writings and conversations of the secularly cultured elite. They are not current in the public lexicon and have until recently been absent from the Islamic discourse. When Arabic literature with references to the Israelis as yahud is translated into European languages it may indeed sound anti-Semitic.

In his series of ‘testimonies’ broadcast on Aljazeera Arabic satellite station between 17 April and 5 June 1999, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin refers to the Israelis interchangeably at times as Al-Isra’iliyun (the Israelis) and at times as Al-Yahud (the Jews). In the second episode of the ‘testimony’ broadcast on 24 April 1999 he said: -The Israelis usually deal with the Palestinian people individually and not collectively. Even inside the prisons, they would not agree to deal with (the prisoners) except individually. However, we forced our will on them despite them and refused to deal with them except through a leadership elected by the Palestinian (prisoners) to face the Jews and resolve the problems with them.- This is just one sample paragraph of what his style was like. Most Palestinians and Arabs unconsciously do the same thing. Leah Tsemel, an Israeli lawyer who has been defending Palestinians in Israeli courts for some 30 years, notes that her clients routinely describe soldiers or settlers as al-yahud – the Jews. They complain for instance that -al-yahud (the Jews) took my ID card,- or -al-yahud (the Jews) hit me,- or -al-yahud (the Jews) destroyed this or that.- She expresses anxiety at the fact that Israel in the minds of its Palestinian victims becomes identified with all the Jews in the world and fears that as a consequence all the Jews in the world may be seen as soldiers and settlers. 9

This problem is not confined to Palestine but exists across the region where Jews once lived in large numbers but had, with few exceptions, long been gone. Following the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine in 1948 Jews living in various Arab countries were encouraged, at times intimidated so as, to migrate to Israel which, having expelled close to a million Palestinians, was in dire need of beefing up its population.10 Additionally, Jews from Iraq, Yemen and Morocco provided a source of cheap labor and performed functions not ‘befitting’ for the Ashkenazim (Easter European Jews) who presided over the Zionist colonial project in Palestine and treated themselves as first class citizens of the newly founded ‘Jewish’ state in contrast to Sephardic Jews who came from the Arab countries.11

Until the beginning of the twentieth century Muslims, Christians and Jews coexisted peacefully throughout the Muslim world where, for many centuries, the Islamic empire, whose terrain extended over three continents, provided a milieu of tolerance under a system that guaranteed protection for what is today referred to as minorities. Islam, whose values and principles governed the public and private conduct of Muslim individuals and communities, recognized Christians and Jews as legitimate communities within the Islamic State and accorded them inalienable rights. The followers of both Christianity and Judaism participated on equal footing with the Muslims in building the Arab-Islamic civilization on whose fruits European renaissance philosophers were nourished.

In contrast, Jews repeatedly suffered persecution in the European lands. Whenever that happened they sought refuge in the Muslim lands where they were welcomed and treated as ‘people of the book’ in accordance with the ‘Covenant of God and His Messenger.’ Such Muslim perception of the Jews remained unchanged until the Zionist movement, which was born in Europe, started recruiting Jews in the Muslim lands for a project that was seen by the Muslims as an attack on their faith and homeland. The change in the Muslim attitude toward the Jews came as a reaction to the claims of the Zionist movement, which associated itself with the Jews and Judaism. Despite the secular origins of the Zionist project and the atheism of many of its founding fathers, the Zionist discourse justified the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinians in religious terms. The Bible was invoked by Zionist pioneers, although few of them really believed in it or showed any respect for it, in a bid to bestow religious legitimacy on their project and gain the support of the world’s Jews, most of whom had initially been opposed to political Zionism.12

It is for this reason that the Hamas Charter conceives of the problem in Palestine as a religious strife between the Jews and the Muslims. This notion continues to be dominant in many parts of the Muslim world today. The continued association of Israel with the Jews and the Jews with Israel only reinforces the conviction of many Muslims that the conflict in the Middle East between the Palestinians and the Israelis is indeed a religious one. Many Arabs and Muslims find it extremely difficult to accept that anti-Zionist Jews, who not only criticize Israel but also refuse to recognize its legitimacy, do exist.13

One of the major weaknesses of the Charter is that it adopts conspiracy theory. It bases its analysis of the conflict in Palestine on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a false document that purports to represent the ideas of a secret society of Jewish elders for conquering the world. What the author of the Charter wished to convey was a direct correlation between an ongoing Jewish quest for global domination and the occupation of Palestine. Following a common trend among Muslim writers of the time, the author of the Charter invoked the Qur’an and Hadith (Prophet’s sayings) to substantiate his claim of an ongoing Jewish conspiracy against Islam and the Muslims that goes back all the way to the early days of Islam. Such selective reading, or convenient interpretation, of the Scripture is not uncommon in contemporary Muslim writings. In this particular case the Qur’anic chastisement of bad conduct and ill-manners by some of the Israelites in Biblical times or by some of the Jews during Prophet Muhammad’s time are taken out of their historic context and then universalised. It is astonishing that in spite of the fact that conspiracy theory is in essence un-Islamic it was, until the early nineties of the twentieth century, widely espoused by Muslim intellectuals across the Arab world. The permeation of such thinking has been a symptom of decline and backwardness, which in turn precipitate a deep sense of desperation and frustration.

The only positive reference to the Jews in the Hamas Charter is seen in Article thirty-one which states that -in the shade of Islam it is possible for the followers of the three religions Islam, Christianity and Judaism to live in peace and security.- It is expected that, while underlying this historical fact, the new Hamas Charter will be cleansed from all the ludicrous claims of a Jewish conspiracy. It will instead emphasize the racist nature of the Zionist project and explain that many Jews are opposed to it. The idea that not every Jew is a Zionist is already widely accepted by the Islamists who previously thought this was a myth invented by Palestinian secular nationalists.

By shedding light on the roots of the conflict the charter will appeal to the world’s public opinion to sympathize with the Palestinian victims rather than with their Israeli oppressors. To reach out to peoples and nations across the world, it will have to adopt a universal ‘human rights’ discourse. The new Hamas charter is also expected to assure the Jews, as Sheikh Ahmad Yassin did several times until he was assassinated by the Israelis in 2004,14 that Hamas does not have a problem with the Jews because of their faith or race and that it does not believe the conflict in the Middle East to be between the Muslims and the Jews or between Islam and Judaism. It will stress that Islam does recognize Judaism as a legitimate religion and accords its adherents with respect and protection. As a matter of principle, the Charter needs to stress a position that has been expressed repeatedly by Hamas leaders over the past fifteen years or so, namely that contemporary Jews and Muslims can, as did earlier Muslims and Jews for many centuries, live together in peace and harmony once the Palestinians’ legitimate rights are recognized and restored.

Hudnah (Truce)
The one thing a new Hamas Charter will keep unchanged is the movement’s position vis-à-vis the State of Israel. If Hamas is to remain loyal to its founding principles it cannot afford to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Born out of the Intifadah (uprising) of 1987, Hamas declared that it had emerged -in order to liberate the whole of Palestine, all of it.-15

The movement came to existence partly in response to the oppressive treatment the Palestinians suffered under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and partly because Fatah, the Palestinian national liberation movement, had faltered. Like Fatah before it, most of Hamas’ members and supporters had been refugees or children of refugees whose real homes were not the appalling camps in which they were born or where they grew up. Their real homes are on the other side of the so-called “green line” where Jewish immigrants, who had come from Europe and elsewhere in the world, now colonize. Like millions of Palestinians inside Palestine and in the Diaspora the founders of Hamas felt betrayed when the leadership of Fatah, having hijacked the PLO, decided to give a way their right of return to their homes.

It is highly unlikely, therefore, that Hamas will ever recognize the legitimacy of the state of Israel or its right to exist. The movement regards Israel as nothing but a colonial enclave planted in the heart of the Muslim world in order to obstruct the revival of the Ummah (global Muslim community) and to prolong Western hegemony in the region. On the other hand, Palestine is an Islamic land that has been invaded and occupied by a foreign power; it would contravene the principles of Hamas’ Islamic faith to recognize the legitimacy of the foreign occupation of any Muslim land let alone one that is home to the Muslims’ first Qiblah (the place worshippers face during prayer) and third most important mosque on earth.

This position is not exclusive to Hamas. Muslim scholars, with a few exceptions, have constantly expressed their absolute opposition to recognizing the legitimacy of the creation of a “Jewish State” in Palestine. Over the past century Ulama (Muslim scholars and jurists) issued numerous fatawa (pl. of fatwa: religious edict) declaring null and void any agreement that legitimized the occupation of any part of Palestine. The first collective fatwa on this issue predates the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine. On 26 January 1935, more than two hundred Islamic scholars came to Jerusalem from around Palestine to issue a fatwa prohibiting the forfeiture of any part of Palestine to the Zionists. Similar conferences were held and fatawa issued at various junctures in the history of the Middle East conflict. During the Nassirist era (1952-1970) in Egypt, the prestigious Al-Azhar Islamic institution in Cairo maintained the position of prohibiting recognizing the State of Israel or any peace-making with it. Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, one of the most authoritative scholars of contemporary times, repeatedly expressed that position affirming that it was unanimously adopted by more than three hundred Islamic scholars from around the Muslim world during a meeting of the Islamic Jurisprudential Council in Kuwait in the mid-1990s. He explained that the fatwa which prohibited recognizing Israel was based on the consideration that -Palestine is an Islamic land that cannot be forfeited voluntarily.- He added that the same fatwa was re-issued at a later Islamic Jurisprudence conference in Bahrain.16

However, such a dogmatic position does not deny the right of the Jews to live in Palestine provided their existence in it is not the outcome of invasion or military occupation. Nor does it bar the Muslims, including the Hamas movement, from negotiating a cease-fire agreement with the Israeli State in order to put an end to the bloodshed and to the suffering on both sides for as long as can be agreed on.

The idea of a hudnah (truce) with Israel originated in the early nineties. It was referred to by the Amman-based Head of Hamas Political Bureau, Musa Abu Marzuq, in a statement published by the Amman weekly Al-Sabeel , the organ of the Jordanian Islamic Movement, in February 1994. A similar first reference to it inside Palestine was made around the same period in 1994 by Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin from his prison cell. He proposed the hudnah as an interim solution to the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Both Abu Marzuq and Sheikh Yassin repeated the offer on several occasions thereafter but failed to interest the Israelis. Of late, hudnah has been routinely referred to by various Hamas spokesperson.

Hudnah is recognized in Islamic jurisprudence as a legitimate and binding contract whose objective is to cease fighting with the enemy for an agreed period of time. The truce may be short or long depending on mutual needs or interests.17 A truce treaty would be different from the ‘Oslo peace accords’ according to which the PLO recognized the State of Israel and its right to exist. The difference is that under the terms of hudnah the very issue of recognition will not come up simply because Hamas cannot, as a matter of principle, accept that the land the Israelis seized from the Palestinians has become theirs; the movement has no authority to renounce the right of the Palestinians to return to the lands and the homes from which they were forced out in 1948 or at anytime afterwards. It can however say that under the present circumstances the best it can do is regain some of the land lost and secure the release of prisoners in exchange for a cessation of hostilities. This would be somewhat similar to the IRA agreeing to negotiate an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland without recognizing British sovereignty over the territory. The Irish Catholics continue to hope or dream that one day the whole of Ireland will be united and that British rule will come to an end. Negotiating an end to violence in Northern Ireland was never conditioned upon the IRA first renouncing its dream of reuniting Ireland; had this been the case no peace would ever have prevailed.

In justifying hudnah, Hamas leaders look to the example of what happened between the Muslims and the Crusaders in the last decade of the 12th century. The conflict between the two sides in Palestine and around it lasted for nearly two hundred years. Of particular interest to Hamas in this regard is the Ramleh treaty Salah Al-Din Al-Ayyubi (Saladin) concluded with Richard the Lionhearted on 1 September 1192 CE. The truce, which marked the end of the third Crusaders campaign, held for a period of three years and three months during which the Crusaders maintained control of the coast from Jaffa to Acre and were allowed to visit Jerusalem and had the freedom to carry out their commercial activities with the Muslims.

Reference is often made, as well, to the first hudnah ever in the history of Islam. Known as Al-Hudaybiyah, which was the name of the location on the outskirts of Mecca where it was concluded, the agreement saw the suspension of hostilities between the Muslim community under the Prophet’s leadership and the tribe of Quraysh inside Mecca. The duration of the hudnah agreed to by both sides was ten years. However, it came to an end less than two years later when Quraysh breached it with the unlawful killing of some members of the tribe of Khuza’ah that was allied to the Muslim side.

Once hudnah is concluded it is considered sacred and fulfilling its obligations becomes a religious duty; so long as the other side observes it the Muslim side cannot breach it for doing so is considered a grave sin. As in the case of other international treaties, a hudnah is renewable upon the expiry of its term by mutual agreement.

The overall long-term hudnah proposed by Hamas stipulates as a first condition an Israeli withdrawal to the borders of 4 June 1967, which means a return of all the land occupied by the Israelis as a result of the six-day war including East Jerusalem.18 Such measure would entail the removal of all Jewish settlers from those areas.19 In addition, Israel would have to release all Palestinians held in its prisons and detention camps. It is highly unlikely that Hamas would settle for anything less in exchange for a long term truce that may last for a quarter of a century or longer.