Gaza – Hamas Leader: No Peace with Israel

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    Moussa Abu Marzouk (AP)Gaza – A Hamas leader said Thursday that if his militant group came to power in a future Palestinian state, it would not abide by any previous Palestinian peace deals with Israel.

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    Moussa Abu Marzouk, the Islamic militant group’s number two figure, said any potential deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, even if ratified in a Palestinian referendum, would be considered only as a temporary truce.

    “We will not recognize Israel as a state,” he told the Jewish Daily Forward, a Jewish-American newspaper in an interview published Thursday. It was the first such interview by a senior Hamas leader to a Jewish publication. Israeli newspapers reported it on Friday.

    Hamas has ruled Gaza since expelling rival Fatah forces in 2007. The Palestinian Authority, headed by Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas, rules parts of the West Bank.

    Abu Marzouk’s remarks emphasized the doctrinaire position of the Islamic militant group’s exiled leadership, ruling out accommodation with Israel. Some local Hamas figures have hinted they would accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza as a first stage toward the eventual elimination of Israel.

    Some see that as a way for Hamas to finesse its official position, which does not recognize a place for a Jewish state in an Islamic Middle East.

    The U.S., EU and Israel consider Hamas a terror organization. They say they will not accept Hamas as a Palestinian political player unless it first recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accept previous peace accords with Israel.

    Hamas, an Arabic acronym which means Islamic Resistance Movement, has carried out suicide bombings and other attacks against Israeli citizens and soldiers, killing hundreds. Palestinian militants have fired thousands of rockets and mortars at Israel since Hamas took power in Gaza.

    An editor of the Jewish Daily Forward wrote that he met with Abu Marzouk in Cairo. The Hamas leadership left its longtime base in Syria because of the unrest there.

    “Why am I here?” Larry Cohler-Esses of the Forward asked Abu Marzouk at the beginning of the interview.

    “We don’t have … something against the Jew as a religion or against the Jew as a human being,” Abu Marzouk said. “The problem is that the Israelis kicked out my family. They have occupied my land and injured thousands of Palestinians.”

    The Hamas leader alluded to the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews during World War II. He said what happened to Jews in Germany and Poland was “very bad” and that “anyone (whose) father or grandfather did something like that, he should be ashamed.”

    Hamas has traditionally refrained from acknowledging the Holocaust and has protested against the subject being taught in U.N.-run schools in Gaza.


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    3 Comments
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    11 years ago

    Dog bites man is not news. Hamas has this hatred at its very core. It should never be a recognized participant in talks or negotiations. Upon provocation, these barbaric savages should be eliminated. There is no other response that has any effectiveness. The position of Hamas is not even in the best interests of other Palestinians or Muslims. Fry ’em.

    Critical_Thinker
    Critical_Thinker
    11 years ago

    Stop hating on Hamas. Finally, honest Arabs! Thank god! They actually speak what they believe and tell us exactly what they want. This is far less insidious than the two-faced lying PLO/PA. Israel can deal with Hamas just fine. It’s the clever Palestinian Authority which uses diplomacy and activism against Israel that’s the real threat!
    Additionally, perhaps it’s time we took a page out of Hamas’s book. Notice how Moussa Abu Marzouk said the Jews kicked out people from “my land?” Its about time Jews started to proudly state “this our my land, it has always been our land, and everyone else who claims it as their’s better watch their backs”.