Hamas is a Cancer in Palestinian Society

Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar of Hamas said on Friday 20th Oct 2006, that Israel is an abomination in the Middle East that will some day disappear. Does this not resemble Iran’s President Mohammed Ahmadinajad’s rhetoric against Israel? The Palestinian factions – Hamas and Fatah, are on the eve of a civil war between them. Perhaps the renewed violence between the various Palestinian factions can be postponed by the one faction outdoing the other on anti-Israel rhetoric. After a period of relative calm, the firing of Qassam rockets into southern Israel has commenced again.

Egypt has once again shown its inability to prevent weapon smuggling from its borders into the Gaza strip via thirteen tunnels that were discovered by the Israeli Security Forces. Are the Egyptians ignoring this or are they incapable of preventing the smuggling of weapons through its borders? To date, the Egyptians have done nothing to prevent that despite their lip service to the contrary.

If one were to examine Hamas’s contribution to the improvement of the Palestinian People’s condition it does not take much imagination to conclude that they have done nothing for their people. Their strength lies in their anti-recognition-of-Israel stance and they believe that they can continue receiving grass roots support from the Palestinians while they remain intransigent towards negotiations with Israel. At the same time, Palestinian suffering will increase further because of lack of much needed foreign funds.

Since Hamas won the elections, they have achieved nothing for the Palestinian People. There is no programme of rehabilitation, building up infrastructures destroyed because of Palestinian violence and Israeli Army retaliations. Programmes for improvement of the various structures of running a state are absent. Civil servants have not received salaries for months and this has exacerbated the situation. They have replaced the corrupt Fatah regime with a regime that is autocratic, evil and a threat to stability in the Middle East. They have been consistent in three things:

1. They have refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist.


2. They have encouraged violence and destruction against Israel.


3. They have ensured that the Palestinians remain ungovernable due to factional fighting which will result in a civil war.

Surely any regime that is so totally obsessed by hate of Israel and its people will never be able to achieve an independent Palestinian State alongside Israel.

Hamas has adopted an uncompromising attitude towards Israel (View clip 1293) and still dreams of one day destroying Israel and establishing an extreme Islamic state in its place whereby non-Muslims will be second class citizens, subjected to Sharia (Muslim Law). Surely this racism is even worse than the despicable apartheid regime of White South Africa of the past! Assuming that Hamas does achieve this nightmarish scenario, people will be punished severely if they show any disagreement to the Hamas regime. In other words, what has happened in Gaza is that Hamas has utilized the so-called democratic institutions to win the elections in January 2006 in order to establish an extremist Islam regime that will be intolerant of non-Muslims. The Nazis gained power in Germany by democratic means in 1933.

Hamas has built an unstable regime. They have proved that after 10 months in power they are capable of hate rhetoric but not governing! The Palestinians are in a crisis and are in great need of foreign capital. This capital will not arrive unless Hamas shows willingness to change its uncompromising attitude towards Israel. Time is not on their side. Iran will find a reliable ally in Hamas. They both share a common hate of Israel. Maybe for a while, Iran will send money into Gaza in order to strengthen its influence in the same way that it invested in Hezbollah in Lebanon.

President Mahmoud Abbas has very few options. He is unable to negotiate any peace deal with Israel while his shaky Hamas-Fatah coalition is paralyzed. Both factions in his coalition are pulling his government apart weakening him even further. Trying to negotiate with President Mahmoud Abbas is a futile exercise in polemics that will achieve nothing. There is only one option left for Abbas and that is to dismantle the coalition and appoint a government of technocrats. It is unlikely that he will take this step. He will remain sitting on the fence watching impotently as the factions continue their violence against each other. According to the latest reports from Al Bawaba 20th October 2006, Fatah and Hamas officials agreed on Friday to take steps to end violence between the two movements. Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said an Egyptian security delegation had brokered the talks, Reuters reported. However, it is unlikely that this agreement to end the violence between the two sides will last.

Israel will continue to raid Gaza in order to prevent the firing of Qassam rockets into southern Israel. This will result in further hardships for the Palestinians. Israel will soon launch a heavy strike against Gaza due to Hamas’s terrorist activities. Hamas has also threatened to kidnap more Israeli soldiers to use as bargaining chips to achieve their ends of releasing Hamas prisoners who were involved in planning terrorist attacks against Israel. The stakes for the release of the kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit is rising and there is still no light at the end of the dark tunnel as to his fate.

The blame for the Israeli Army retaliations against Palestinians must be laid at the door of Hamas. The latter has done nothing to improve the economic situation of the Palestinian People. Hamas has taken the road of destruction of Palestinian society in the same way that cancer destroys its victims. In reality, Hamas is an abomination to the Middle East and to the Palestinian People that it claims to represent.