Hamas 'ready to talk to Israel'

[lord of the mark]

evidently his tone is different when hes not in front of a BBC mike

February 7, 2006 No.1087

Hamas Leader Khaled Mash'al at a Damascus Mosque: The Nation of Islam Will Sit at the Throne of the World and the West Will Be Full of Remorse – When it's Too Late

The following are excerpts from an address by Hamas leader Khaled Mash'al at the Al-Murabit Mosque in Damascus. The address was delivered following the Friday sermon at the mosque, and was aired on Al-Jazeera TV on February 3, 2006. To view this clip, visit: http://www.memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1024.


TO VIEW OTHER CLIPS ON HAMAS VISIT: http://www.memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S5&P1=151.

"We Say to This West... By Allah, You Will Be defeated"

Khaled Mash'al: "We apologize to our Prophet Muhammad, but we say to him: Oh Prophet of Allah, do not be saddened, your nation will be victorious.

"We say to this West, which does not act reasonably, and does not learn its lessons: By Allah, you will be defeated. You will be defeated in Palestine, and your defeat there has already begun. True, it is Israel that is being defeated there, but when Israel is defeated, its path is defeated, those who call to support it are defeated, and the cowards who hide behind it and support it are defeated. Israel will be defeated, and so will whoever supported or supports it.

"America will be defeated in Iraq. Wherever the [Islamic] nation is targeted, its enemies will be defeated, Allah willing. The nation of Muhammad is gaining victory in Palestine. The nation of Muhammad is gaining victory in Iraq, and it will be victorious in all Arab and Muslim lands. 'Their multitudes will be defeated and turn their backs [and flee].' These fools will be defeated, the wheel of time will turn, and times of victory and glory will be upon our nation, and the West will be full of remorse, when it is too late.

"They think that history has ended with them. They do not know that the law of Allah cannot be changed or replaced. 'You shall not find a substitute for the law of Allah. You shall not find any change to the law of Allah.' Today, the Arab and Islamic nation is rising and awakening, and it will reach its peak, Allah willing. It will be victorious. It will link the present to the past. It will open up the horizons of the future. It will regain the leadership of the world. Allah willing, the day is not far off.

"Don't you see that every act of deceit they contrive is being turned against them by Allah? Don't you see that they make every effort to defeat us militarily, but fail to do so? Israel and the occupation forces in Iraq are supplied with the entire Western military arsenal, yet they fail and are defeated.

"Don't you see that they believe they are capable of using democracy to deceive the people, but then democracy is turned against them? Don't you see that they are spending their money in efforts to block the way of Allah, to thwart Hamas, to defeat it, and to help those whom they want, but that [this plot] is turned against them? They are not acting reasonably.

"They do not understand the Arab or Muslim mentality, which rejects the foreigner. Our Arab forefathers, before the advent of Islam, rejected the aggressors and the foreigners.

[...]

"I bring good tidings to our beloved Prophet Muhammad: Allah's promise and the Prophet's prophecy of our victory in Palestine over the Jews and over the oppressive Zionists has begun to come true."


"I Say to Europe: Hurry Up and Apologize"

Mash'al: "I say to the [European countries]: Hurry up and apologize to our nation, because if you do not, you will regret it. This is because our nation is progressing and is victorious. Do not leave a black mark in the collective memory of the nation, because our nation will not forgive you.

"Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination, but a fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing. Apologize today, before remorse will do you no good. Our nation is moving forwards, and it is in your interest to respect a victorious nation.

[...]

"Our nation will be victorious. When it reaches the leadership of the world, and controls its own decisions, then it will prevent this overt interference [in our affairs], and its pillaging of natural resources, and will prevent these recurring offenses against our land, against our nation, and against our holy places - then you will regret it.

"The Western countries must stop the fools. Are these reasonable people? They allow offenses against Allah and the prophets. They are offending not only Muhammad, but all the prophets. But when an historian among them talks about the Holocaust, it is the sin of all sins. If anybody criticizes the Jews, this constitutes anti-Semitism. By law, they hold their own people accountable [for that]. The West, which waved the slogans of liberty after the French Revolution, three centuries ago, does not respect its own principles or slogans today. It violates them."


"You Have No Way of Overcoming Us"

Mash'al: "This victory, which was clearly evident in the elections, conveys a message to Israel, to America, and to all the oppressors around the world: You have no way of overcoming us. If you want war, we are ready. If you want democracy, we are ready. Whatever you want - we are ready. You will not defeat us. The time of defeat is over. Defeat within six days, defeat within hours, the defeat of armies - all this is over.

"Today, you are fighting the army of Allah. You are fighting against peoples for whom death for the sake of Allah, and for the sake of honor and glory, is preferable to life. You are fighting a nation that does not tire, even after 1,000 years of fighting. Today, you are facing peoples filled with faith, with the love of Allah, with the love of Allah's Prophet, with bravery, glory, and pride - a nation that knows its way, a nation that knows what it is, a nation that respects itself. How can you possibly defeat us?

"There is a chasm between you and our defeat. You will be the ones to be defeated, Allah willing. The time of defeat is gone, and the day of victory has come, Allah willing. Wherever you turn, you will fail."

Crowd: "Death to Israel. Death to Israel. Death to America."


"Before Israel Dies, it Must Be Humiliated and Degraded"

Mash'al: "Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day. America will be of no avail to them. Their generals will be of no avail to them. The last of their generals has been forgotten. Allah has made him disappear. He's over. Gone is that Sharon behind whose back they would hide and find shelter, and with whom they would feel relatively secure. Today they have frail leaders, who don't even know where our Lord placed them.

"Allah willing, we will make them lose their eyesight, we will make them lose their brains.

[...]

"Their weapons will be of no avail to them. Their nuclear weapons will be of no use to them. They thought that they had hegemony over the region with their nuclear weapons, but suddenly Pakistan popped up with Islamic nuclear weapons, and they are afraid of Iran and several Arab countries have some chemical weapons.

"Israel has begun to sense that its superiority has come to an end. Its army, which has superior conventional weapons - the air force, the armored corps, and the missiles - there are no longer wars in which these are used.

"The Arabs have said: We don't want [conventional] wars, thank you very much. Leave the war to the peoples. Today, the Israeli weapons are of no use against the peoples. We have imposed a new equation in the war. In this equation, our tools are stronger. That is why we will defeat them, Allah willing.

[...]

"If you fight them, they will turn their backs on you, and will not be victorious." But the problem is that we need to fight them first. If we sleep at home, how are we to beat them?! 'If you fight them...' - that is a divine promise... 'If' - It is conditional: 'If you fight them, they will turn their backs on you and will not be victorious.' And indeed, when we began to fight, and we armed ourselves with a will to fight, we defeated them.

[...]

"That is why Allah akbar [Allah is greater]. We say that every day - Allah akbar. Yes, Allah is greater than America. Allah is greater than the oppressors. Allah is greater than the superpowers. Allah is greater than the tyranny of the oppressing world, and Allah is greater than Israel. Since Allah is greater, and He supports us, we will be victorious."

[Arrian]

I love his rhetorical question "Are these reasonable people?" That's pretty funny.

-Arrian

[lord of the mark]

"The West, which waved the slogans of liberty after the French Revolution, three centuries ago,"

this one would make a pretty good historical What if.

French revolution in 1706. Whats the Point of departure. Things go worse in the war of the Spanish Succession, Louiv XIV, senile,clamps down. But it wont look like 1789, before the philosophes, before the Am Rev. More like the Fronde writ large. What happens next?

[Nostromo]

And when they'll get to talk to Israel, here's what they'll say:

"We're gonna **** you up the ass"

[Dinner]

Hamas has declared Denmark, France, and Norway to be enemies of Islam for having private newspapers with in those countries who published the satire cartoons. The real question is will Europe continue to stupidly side with the Palestinians or will then begin to understand the fanaticism which the Israelis have been trying to counter.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
And the PLO was in exile while that happened, not in power a qassem rockets range from Israeli towns. They were NOT allowed into power in the territories until they changed. That was the deal - a Pal civil authority, in exchange for recognition of Israel. This represents a sundering of that deal.

Sadly, I have no choice but to agree. The deal was they renounce terrorism and Israeli gives them autonomy with land for peace being the final step. The Palestinians have no voted to go back to terrorism so they should have their land reoccupied and any Palestinian who illegally has arms should be shot. They have said they want war so they should receive war in all of its harsh realities and not some candy coated war where they attack civilians and then squeel for the protections of the Geneva Convention which they have ignored.

The only real and lasting peace which can be made must be based upon partisian and population transfer. Anything else just sets the stage for continuing the conflict.

[Arrian]

We in Hamas demand that Israel agree a package deal

By Ghazi Hamed
Commentary by
Thursday, February 09, 2006


The response by the international community to Hamas' parliamentary election victory has unfortunately been hasty and unwise. Before Hamas has even had a chance to form a government and clearly formulate policy, the international community showered the party with demands and preconditions for it to be deemed acceptable to even talk to.

Essentially, Hamas was exposed to cheap blackmail from day one. The movement was asked to do three things: recognize Israel, accept all previous agreements signed between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel and denounce the armed resistance. In return, Hamas was expected to accept nothing other than continued development aid for a PA whose status is unclear and whose borders are fluid.

Two things need to be said here. One is practical, the other political. On a practical level, it is not at all clear to Hamas that the international community's bluster is anything more than that. The point has been made, but it bears repeating: withholding funding and aid to the PA will not harm Hamas, which has its own sources of funding; but it definitely will harm the Palestinian people.

What good will that do? The Palestinian people have already made it clear that they are capable of defying the international community - after all they voted Hamas into power in the first place - and Palestinians do not trust the international community's intentions vis-a-vis the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. American backing for Israel is seen as one of the fundamental reasons for the failure of the peace process. Should the international community, led by the United States, stop funding the PA and thus punish ordinary Palestinians, Palestinians will blame not Hamas but the international community.

Furthermore, there are alternative sources of funding. Countries such as Iran have been suggested. It is not clear that the international community, especially the European Union, will want to see their primary source of political influence wither in favor of regional powers.

Then there is the political level. Hamas' position is that the main problem in the last decade of negotiations with Israel has been that Palestinians have been asked to compromise and have gotten nothing in return. That is the mistake Hamas will not repeat. It wants to create a new dynamic.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb

This is where the conditions of the

international community come in. If Hamas is to recognize Israel, will Israel recognize Palestine? If Hamas is to honor previous agreements signed by the PA, will Israel honor its agreements? And if Hamas is to end the armed resistance, will Israel end its belligerent military occupation of Palestinian areas? Without any answers to these three questions, the position of Hamas is clear and has been voiced already: There is nothing to talk about.

Hamas is not against a political compromise. It is not against a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. Israel, it is often said, is a de facto reality. But so are Palestinian refugees. There are 4.1 million registered Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. These people cannot and should not be ignored.

Hamas wants a solution to all of these problems. And it wants it in one package. The previous agreements and negotiations between the PA and Israel have not led us any closer to a solution on any of these issues. It should be obvious to even the most casual observer that rather than bring us closer to peace, the process based on stages has failed. Israel has not lived up to its commitments under the Oslo Accords or under the so-called "road map" plan for peace, and has thus cancelled both. It is time for a new approach to be tried.

The world should, without pre-conditions, at least sit and talk with Hamas to hear what ideas the movement has for resolving the conflict.


Ghazi Hamad is editor in chief of Al-Risala newspaper and was a parliamentary candidate for Hamas' Change and Reform list in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons.org, an online newsletter which publishes contending views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

First thought: hey, wait, didn't Israel already recognize Palestine, or at least the concept of a Palestinian state?

Second thought: this fellow does a fairly good job of sounding like a reasonable person who wants to find a solution.

Third thought: does this guy have much influence w/in Hamas?

-Arrian

[lord of the mark]

international community come in. If Hamas is to recognize Israel, will Israel recognize Palestine?

Israel recognizes the Palestinian Authority, which under Oslo has civil authority over most of the areas of Gaza and the West Bank which are inhabited by Palestinians, and full control over the the more densely inhabited ones. In some areas there is Pal Civil control but Israeli military control, and in some (the settlements, and certain uninhabited or lightly inhabited areas) Israel retain civil and military control. These are referred to as Areas A, B and C, and ill be damned if i can remember which is which. During the spring of 2002 the IDF went back into areas that had been under Pal Military control, in response to what the State of Israel considered a terrorism crisis, and to Pal violations amounting to a state of war.

Since then they have withdrawn from most, if not all(?) those areas. In the Gaza withdrawl, Israel withdrew from areas that Oslo allocated to Israeli control. It did so unilaterally, and not as part of a negotiating process.

The Oslo accords defer agreement on the final status of the Pal areas to a negotiated settlement. It has been generally understood by the Israeli Labour party that such would be a "state" though with some limitations on armaments, etc. Likud prior to the Sharon administration rejected this. Sharon accepted Palestinian statehood in principle. A Palestinian state was part of the proposals made by Ehud Barak at Camp David and at Taba. Those proposals were rejected, and there is some dispute as to whether they should serve as the baseline for subsequent negotiations, or whether said negotiations should start from a clean slate.

It is most unlikely that any Israeli govt will grant full recognition to a Pal state except as part of a final settlement. Israel feels that withdrawl from most of the territories and setting up the PA were the quid pro quos for recognition of Israel. Recognition of Palestine will be one of the quid pro quos for ending the conflict.

If Hamas is to honor previous agreements signed by the PA, will Israel honor its agreements?

Yes, although as is the case with these things, some will dispute whether they are in compliance.

And if Hamas is to end the armed resistance, will Israel end its belligerent military occupation of Palestinian areas?

Not of the areas that are designated as under Israeli control in the Oslo accords, some of which are likely to end up under Israeli sovereignty (possibly in exchange for other lands) under a final accord. Again, the PA is to maintain order and use its resources to stop terrorism. That is the basis for setting up the PA in the first place. The fact that Fatah may be replaced by Hamas does not change that.

Without any answers to these three questions, the position of Hamas is clear and has been voiced already: There is nothing to talk about.

Not with Hamas. There remains the possibility of continuing talks between Israel and Abu Mazen.



edit: note, that the Wye River Accords slightly modified the administrative arrangements of Oslo, esp wrt the city of Hebron.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords

[Sirotnikov]

Third thought: does this guy have much influence w/in Hamas?

no.

[Arrian]

That's unfortunate. You might not agree with all that he says, but he comes across (at least in that article) as a reasonable person who could be worked with.

-Arrian

[Sirotnikov]

this fellow does a fairly good job of sounding like a reasonable person who wants to find a solution

this is exactly what a good PR publicist does for a living

[Sirotnikov]

Originally posted by Arrian
That's unfortunate. You might not agree with all that he says, but he comes across (at least in that article) as a reasonable person who could be worked with.

-Arrian

this is silly.

supposdly reasonable people are a bunch a dozen. I'm sure that around 50% of the palestinians are reasonable.

the tone is set, as you said - by influential people. For instance - Khalid Mash'al.

[Arrian]

Umm, was I disagreeing with you?

-Arrian

[Spiffor]

Maybe I should have posted this in the cartoon theme, but this hem of Meshal's deserves to be here IMO

From Le Monde:

e chef du bureau politique du mouvement islamiste palestinien Hamas, Khaled Mechaal, dont la formation vient de gagner les élections législatives, a appelé à l'apaisement. "Le mouvement est disposé à jouer un rôle pour apaiser la situation entre le monde islamique et les pays occidentaux à condition que ces pays s'engagent à mettre fin aux atteintes aux sentiments des musulmans", a-t-il déclaré lors d'une conférence de presse à Doha, au Qatar.

Meshal sez: "Hamas is ready to play a role to bring calm in the situation [the cartoon affair] between the Muslim World and the West, provided the west promises to stop the offenses to the feelings of Muslims"

[Az]

WHAT?!!! THEY ARE READY TO TALK, AREN'T THEY?!!