Below is an interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Damascus. The interview was conducted by Steve Clemons, of Palestine Note.
The excerpts below were chosen by the blog, although I highlighted the parts I found interesting. Specifically, I like Meshal's point, that Hamas is a nationalist movement using religion as its discourse and framework. In my opinion, the Palestinian struggle for statehood is actually one of the last anti-colonial movements in the world. It is not a religious battle rooted in primordial hatreds, rather it is the struggle of the oppressed against the colonial oppressor.
The original post can be found here.
Clemons: What is [your] vision for a united Palestine, particularly after the occupation? Is there a positive, constructive vision for Palestine that someone like you in leadership can see and talk about that exists beyond the darker side of the Israeli occupation?
Meshal: We want to not have wars in the region, but after our people get their rights...Our people look forward to achieve this goal through any peaceful means, but unfortunately our people were affected or let down by many of its surroundings. That's why they sought the struggle through resistance, which is a means not a need. If they were to find a peaceful ways to get their rights, they would deal with it seriously.
Clemons: You have been...very critical of ... Mahmoud Abbas and his position on the Goldstone report. One of [my] questions is ... [how] has your own thinking evolve[ed] because of the Goldstone report?
Meshal: If the [Goldstone] report or any other side has any reservations on Hamas' actions, we are ready to explain them and we will form an honest and neutral investigative committee in Gaza to give Goldstone and its committee and the international community the facts. Hamas does not aim to kill civilians. Hamas does not want to target the civilians. Hamas defends itself, but because it has simple abilities and its rockets are inaccurate in targeting, so it reaches the civilians, but we do not intend to do that. That cannot be compared. We are the victims...Hamas and the Palestinian people are the victims and Israel is the hangman, the occupier and the attacker. As a result, the Goldstone report is important because for the first time the Palestinian people felt there is an international side that was fair to the Palestinians and accused who should be accused, which is Israel.
Clemons: [Are you] a Palestinian patriot or a Muslim patriot? Obviously from an American perspective too many Americans look at...Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbullah, Hamas and they say they are all al-Qaeda, which I know is wrong but I would like to hear how you characterize this.
Meshal: Hamas is a movement of national liberation....We adopt the Islamic thought, because we are part of [a] region that is Arab and Muslim. This is a normal thing, just like when there is a movement in Europe it is Christian. We are a liberation movement but we are an Islamic movement too because we are part of this region naturally.
We are against extremism in the Islamic thought. We support moderation, and this is the real Islam as we see it. We carry out the resistance but we do not practice violence [that is] legitimate resistance against the occupier. We do not carry out [resistance] abroad, but we carry it out in Palestine against the Israeli occupier. ... we believe in dialogue between civilizations and not through the clash of civilizations.
Clemons: Can Hamas be...an active and constructive player in peace negotiations... with Israel, in a way, or does that undo your basic charter? And...if you were to give smart council to president Obama and his team on how to reach this region in a more effective way, what would be some of the things that you would share with the president?
Meshal: Hams has announced that it is ready to cooperate with the law and with any international or regional effort to reach real peace in the region. We and all the Palestinians and Arabs accept the borders of June 4, 1967. The problem is not with the Palestinians, Hamas, Fatah or the Arab. The problem is with Israel. The problem is not whether we accept or not, but the question is does the Obama administration and the international community has the will, the desire and the ability to pressure Israel to force her to accept that?
I advise the Obama administration to get to know the psychology of this region and its history. They should realize that the way to change the current scene in the region...is not by pressuring the Arabs and Palestinians again. ...the strategy must change. Israel is the obstacle. Pressuring Israel is what will change the scene.
1 comments:
Who is the colonial power? Europe? America? The UN. Zionists? Jews as a whole? This comment confuses me.
If Hamas is all right with the 1967 borders then Israel has the "right to exist." I am not sure all of Hamas, nor any Hezbollah representatives currently embrace this position. My feeling is they allow for this position so that they can return to pre 1967 borders, so that they can continue the struggle they were involved with which precipitated the Six Day War in the first place. The reason, Israel's very existence. Certainly, this is the mindset of the Israeli governments, both liberal and conservative, that have been dealing with this conflict since 1948.
As for Hamas acting the way it does simply because of its Islamic and Arabic contexts seems overly simplistic. This suggests that the struggle would take the same form even if they were Hindi, Buddhist, Christian, or atheists. Can we let go of the lack of tolerance that has been historically linked to Islamic movements that easily? If we accept only 20% of what Philip Jenkins says in his book "The Lost History of Christianity" as true, the implication is that Christianity and Judaism have been swept from the Middle East by means of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Mr. Jenkins suggests that this process has been on going for a thousand years or more. Ergo Israel's fear of future genocide and ethnic cleansing. We come full circle to my previous comments regarding Mr. Kohn suggesting that current Israeli thinking would benefit from "getting over the holocaust."
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