RE: A Hamas official insists that a 'legacy of suffering' under Israel is what fuels Palestinian resistance: By Mousa Abu Marzook

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From: lbarrios@jjay.cuny.edu
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:00:11 -0500
Subject: A Hamas official insists that a 'legacy of suffering' under Israel is what fuels Palestinian resistance: By Mousa Abu Marzook

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-marzook6-2009jan06,0,7077954.story

latimes.com



Opinion



Hamas speaks



A Hamas official insists that a 'legacy of suffering' under Israel is 

what fuels Palestinian resistance.



By Mousa Abu Marzook


January 6, 2009



From Damascus -- While Americans may believe that the current violence 

in Gaza began Dec. 27, in fact Palestinians have been dying from 

bombardments for many weeks. On Nov. 4, when the Israeli-Palestinian 

truce was still in effect but global attention was turned to the U.S. 

elections, Israel launched a "preemptive" airstrike on Gaza, alleging 

intelligence about an imminent operation to capture Israeli soldiers; 

more assaults took place throughout the month.



The truce thus shattered, any incentive by Palestinian leaders to 

enforce the moratorium on rocket fire was gone. Any extension of the 

agreement or improvement of its implementation at that point would have 

required Israel to engage Hamas, to agree to additional trust-building 

measures and negotiation with our movement -- a political impossibility 

for Israel, with its own elections only weeks away.



Not that the truce had been easy on Palestinians. In the six-month 

period preceding this week's bombardment, one Israeli was killed, while 

dozens of Palestinians lost their lives to Israeli military and police 

actions, and numerous others died for want of medical care.



The war on Gaza should not be mistaken for an Israeli triumph. Rather, 

Israel's failure to make the truce work, and its inevitable resort to 

bloodshed, demonstrate again that it cannot permit a future built on 

Palestinian political self-determination. The truce failed because 

Israel will not open Gaza's borders, because Israel would rather be a 

jailer than a neighbor, and because its intransigent leadership 

forestalls Palestinian destiny and will not make peace with history.



This week's war is not an attack on the Izzidin al-Qassam units -- our 

movement's military wing -- but is simply aggression targeting the 

people, infrastructure and economic life of Gaza, designed to sow terror 

and loose anarchy; it aims to establish new "facts on the ground" -- 

that is, heaps of rubble with bodies trapped beneath -- in advance of 

the coming American administration.



Israel claims loudly that it had no other choice this week but to rain 

death on refugees in camps, killing dozens of women and children, while 

Defense Minister Ehud Barak (the once and would-be prime minister) -- 

his eye fixed on February elections -- employs mass murder as his 

party's latest vote-getting appeal, an electoral strategy fit to shame 

the most hardened Chicago political operative.



But, of course, options remained available. Israel might have relented 

months ago, for the sake of the truce, in its criminal determination to 

starve Gaza, cutting off much of its fuel and choking all commerce to a 

trickle, blocking relief organizations from delivering food and 

medicine, and consigning Gaza's citizens to famine rations. Only the 

most cynical observer would call this grinding attrition "good faith" 

adherence to the truce. Blockades, after all, are explicitly acts of 

war.



Palestinians everywhere mark the closing of the Bush era with relief; 

nevertheless, skepticism runs high that any justice for our people might 

come from a new president who remained ominously silent in the presence 

of the latest Israeli onslaught, and who has aligned himself so 

thoroughly with Israel's interests, so long in advance of taking power. 

Barack Obama's helicopter ride two years ago above the Holy Land was not 

unusual in the annals of American parliamentarians junketed on "fact 

finding" trips by Israel's lobbyists; yet his fond remarks on what he 

saw -- "houses and streets like ones you might find" in any American 

suburb -- were notable for their silence as to any troubling sights. Did 

he miss the security roads and checkpoints that riddle the West Bank, or 

the construction of the wall, or the illegal settlements? Perhaps his 

helicopter flew too high.



But now, amid Israel's latest attack on our people, as the death toll 

rises in the hundreds, with thousands wounded -- all victims of American 

taxpayers' largesse -- Palestinians wonder how Obama will react to the 

escalating crisis. They demand of the next White House a new paradigm of 

respect and accountability, because when Palestinians see an F-16 with 

the Star of David painted on its tail, they see America.



Palestinians are understandably guarded about the coming administration, 

noting its appointments with trepidation. The soon-to-be secretary of 

State is unforgettable for urging years ago U.S. recognition of 

Jerusalem as Israel's "undivided" capital, while the administration's 

chief of staff bears the stain of his father's service in the banned 

terrorist Irgun paramilitary, a Zionist group responsible for numerous 

atrocities.



Renewed calls today for our movement to "recognize the right of Israel 

to exist," in the face of murderous onslaught, ring as hollow as 

Israel's continuing claims to be acting in "self-defense" as her jets 

bomb civilians. Without debating here the Zionist state's fictive, 

existential "right," which of the many Israels, precisely, would the 

West have us recognize? Is it the Israel that militarily occupies land 

belonging to three of its neighbors, ignoring international law and 

scores of U.N. resolutions over decades? Is it the Israel that illegally 

settles its citizens on other people's land, seizes water sources and 

uproots olive trees? Is it the Israel that in 60 years has never 

acknowledged the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their farms and 

villages as the foundational act of its statehood and denies refugees 

their right to return?



Through bitter experience, when we hear demands for "recognition" of 

Israel as a precondition to dialogue, what we hear is a call for 

acquiescence in its crimes against us, validating the injustices that 

have been wrought in its name.



Our spirit to fight on is the legacy of collective suffering: With tens 

of thousands dead or wounded by decades of the "peace process," you 

cannot find a family in Palestine -- Muslim or Christian, Hamas, Fatah, 

PFLP or Islamic Jihad -- without a son or daughter killed, injured, 

jailed or tortured, or which does not count itself or its kin among the 

millions of refugees living in U.N. camps.



Hamas is not a handful of leaders. Israel may kill all of the current 

leadership in this round of violence, including me, and its organic, 

social infrastructure will not go away. We are, simply put, a homegrown 

national liberation resistance movement, with millions of people who 

support our struggle for freedom and justice.



President-elect Obama spoke courageously in his campaign for a policy of 

open dialogue, absent preconditions, with those deemed inimical to U.S. 

interests, and we were listening. One former U.S. president -- a true 

peacemaker -- has dared to visit with us and hear our side of this 

struggle, while offering us no shortage of criticism. It has been a 

refreshing exchange. Now is the time for the next U.S. president to do 

the same.



No American leader has ever visited a Palestinian refugee camp anywhere, 

much less in Gaza -- a startling fact, considering the central role 

America has played in our people's narrative. None has dared to look our 

refugees in their faces and experience their suffering directly.



In observance of the storied tradition of Arab hospitality to guests, 

and anticipating that day when an American president fulfills his 

promise of change, we extend the invitation now, and we will put the 

kettle on.



Mousa Abu Marzook is the deputy of the political bureau of Hamas, the 

Islamic Resistance Movement.



 Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times





http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-marzook6-2009jan06,0,7077954.story

Luis Barrios, Ph.D., BCFE
Professor & Chair
Department of Latin American & Latina/o Studies
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
City University of New York
445 West 59 Street, Room 4115-N
New York, NY 10019
Office: (212) 237-8747
FAX (212) 237-8664
E-mail: lbarrios@jjay.cuny.edu

Web Page: www.jjay.cuny.edu

 

Most teachers teach facts, good teachers teach ideas, great teachers teach how to think.  Jonathan Pool

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. Dante

 

La ignorancia es el peor enemigo de la civilizacion y la ignorancia suele ser, en sus efectos y frecuentemente en sus impulsos, tan malvada como la misma maldad. Eugenio Maria de Hostos
 

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