Doc's Talk: HAMAS ON THE ROPES

Friday, June 27, 2014

HAMAS ON THE ROPES

Neri Zilber

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With a massive Israeli crackdown under way, the militant Palestinian movement is struggling to determine its true identity.

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Ramallah, West Bank -- "The whole region...is in crisis," Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a prominent West Bank leader of Hamas, told me recently. "And Hamas is also in crisis."

Later that same day, June 12, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped while hitchhiking outside the West Bank settlement of Gush Etzion. Israeli authorities quickly blamed the terror attack on Hamas, and Yousef was arrested the next night by the Israeli army in his home outside Ramallah in the early stages of a rescue operation that has now evolved into a wider crackdown on Hamas personnel and infrastructure.

Israeli authorities haven't released all they know, including direct evidence of Hamas's culpability, due primarily to concerns about ongoing operations. On Thursday, though, Israeli's internal security service, the Shin Bet, did name two known Hamas operatives, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aysha, as the prime culprits behind the kidnapping. The two men, who are from the southern West Bank city of Hebron, simply disappeared on the day of the kidnapping. For its part, Hamas has coyly refrained from taking responsibility for the abduction, while at the same time publicly lauding the act.

Yet the more interesting question on the minds of security professionals and analysts in Israel is whether the act was sanctioned by at least part of the group's leadership, or undertaken by a rogue cell working out of Hebron. "We are confident Hamas is behind this attack and that the operatives are Hamas," Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman, stated last week. "But we can't say whether they received a directive from Gaza or abroad."

Yousef's admission that Hamas is in crisis came as part of a discussion on the recent reconciliation agreement signed between the Islamist movement, which since 2007 has ruled the Gaza Strip, and its secular rival Fatah, which controls the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA).

When I met Yousef in his tidy, dimly lit offices in Ramallah, I pointed out that the implementation of the deal didn't seem to be going in Hamas's favor. If anything, it seemed Fatah was dictating the terms: The new "unity" government formed this month retained most senior ministers close to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas but not one Hamas representative, while an estimated 40,000 public-sector workers in Gaza loyal to the Islamist group had still not been paid their salaries. Moreover, the committee tasked with vetting the Hamas employees for integration into PA institutions would not even begin its work for a few months. And, according to sources in Ramallah, it too did not include a single Hamas representative but, rather, PA "technocrats" from various ministries.

Yousef didn't refute any of these points, but instead let out a short laugh. "We are present on the ground, and you can't deny our existence," he said with a wry smile. "We're satisfied by the public support [we have], underground."

The problem for Hamas, though, is that its failing seven-year experiment governing Gaza has cost it significant public backing. According to a poll released this week by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, if elections were held today for PA president, Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Meshaal would only garner a combined 15 percent in Gaza -- compared to Abbas's strong plurality of 30 percent. Indeed, a remarkable 70 percent of Gazans agreed with the sentiment that Hamas should maintain a cease-fire with Israel, and a majority even stated that Hamas should accept Abbas's position of renouncing violence against Israel -- all indications of the Palestinian public's lack of faith in Hamas strategy.

The Islamist group is clearly under pressure, in particular from Egypt. The fall of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo last summer and the subsequent military-led crackdown on the smuggling tunnels connecting Gaza to the Egyptian Sinai have cut off Hamas's main source of revenue, effectively bankrupting the movement. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, official unemployment in the coastal enclave is over 40 percent -- and the actual number is likely even higher. Meanwhile, Hamas personnel have gone unpaid for some eight months, and humanitarian conditions -- food security, electricity, water, and sanitation -- have all deteriorated. Many PA officials I spoke to in Ramallah explained Hamas's seeming capitulation in the reconciliation process as a function of the Islamist group's now untenable hold over Gaza.

The Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza appears to have finally succeeded. Despite his claims that the "international siege" of Gaza had failed, Yousef went on to argue that the responsibility of governance was a millstone around any party's neck. "The sovereign loses," Yousef declared. "We [tell Abbas] 'take.' Hamas is [now] responsible for nothing."

There is one tool that Hamas retains in its arsenal that the PA has officially relinquished -- the willingness to use violence against Israel. While Yousef extolled the "wisdom" and "flexibility" of Hamas's recent political moves, he did emphasize ominously that Hamas still retained "many options," unlike the PA, "which only has the option of negotiation." Yousef then went on to issue an open threat against Israel if the situation in Gaza continued in its downward trajectory, declaring that an "explosion would happen...and that Israel will be the first target of this explosion."

Despite such rhetoric, it was far from clear that Yousef was looking for an immediate confrontation. The sheikh is a leader in Hamas's political bureau, a faction thought to be more moderate than the militants in Hamas's military wing and elite Ezzedine al-Qassam terror brigades. Two days before our meeting, he had been assaulted by PA security forces during a rally for Palestinian administrative detainees held in Israeli jails -- but instead of escalating the situation, he sufficed with a formal complaint to the Palestinian Authority. His Hamas cadres chose to "surrender our rights," he told me, as "we don't want to make the situation tense -- we want to calm the situation down."

Such outward pragmatism was either a feint or a sincere statement that fell on deaf ears. Hours later, alleged Hamas operatives kidnapped the three Israeli youths, Yousef was on his way back to Israeli prison, the IDF was embarking on its largest military operation in the West Bank in a decade, and the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation deal was in imminent danger of collapse. The situation had indeed become tense.

For the Israeli authorities, whether the kidnapping was sanctioned by the Hamas leadership or the work of a rogue cell appears to be a distinction without a difference. Israel has already moved beyond the narrow initial objective of bringing the boys home to striking a blow against Hamas's infrastructure in the West Bank. According to the IDF, three additional infantry brigades have been deployed to the Palestinian territory, making for a total of nine brigades in the field -- as well as special operations forces, intelligence, and aerial assets. Over the past two weeks, approximately 1,200 separate locations have been raided or searched all across the West Bank, from refugee camps to universities, caves to water wells. As one senior IDF officer put it to me, "Hamas has to pay a substantial price for supporting and striving for such attacks."

Given that the kidnappers likely emanated from Hebron, however, the IDF has focused most of its attention on that Palestinian city, the West Bank's largest. On the night following the abduction, Israeli forces raided the home of Osman Qawasmeh, 26; he is now one of nearly 400 Palestinians, overwhelmingly from Hamas, detained since the kidnapping.

One day last week, I visited the Qawasmeh family's home off of Hebron's main Ein Sara Street in the densely packed neighborhood of el-Haras. The house is a modest and sparse dwelling, with walls of peeling paint and three faded couches in the living room. The Qawasmehs are one of Hebron's largest clans, with deep ties to Hamas. Indeed, a long line of Qawasmeh kin have been Hamas fighters and suicide bombers in the past -- including Osman's uncle, Abdullah Qawasmeh, who was Hamas's military chief in Hebron until he was killed by Israeli forces in 2003 not far from where I now sat over coffee and watermelon with Osman's mother and father.

Now, another Qawasmeh, Marwan, is wanted by the Israelis for his involvement in the kidnapping. While neither Osman nor his parents have been directly implicated in the incident, this was the social and political milieu from which the kidnappers would have sprung.

Osman's father, Abu Abdullah, 65, an electrician by trade, is a slight man with a full gray beard, pious and soft-spoken. As three of his grandchildren played between the couches, Abu Abdullah emphasized that he was "a peaceful man...but I can't pressure my sons and others to adopt my thinking...They grow up to see oppression against them."

I was curious to know what Abu Abdullah and his wife thought of the reconciliation deal Hamas had struck, as well as the recent kidnapping. Did the Hamas rank and file in a place like Hebron see things differently than their leaders? Was all the recent talk about Palestinian "unity" meaningless to those on the ground?

For the Qawasmeh family, reconciliation with the PA seemed a long way off. The concerned parents began the discussion not with politics but with a lengthy disquisition about their recently arrested son and, graphically, the finer points of the Palestinian security services' interrogation methods. Osman, they said, had spent the last few years shuttling between Israeli and Palestinian jails, and had only recently begun university studies.

In Abu Abdullah's telling, the prisoner issue was a small example of the larger system of oppression directed at the Palestinian people by "the two authorities" -- meaning not just Israel but the Palestinian Authority as well. Both Abu Abdullah and his wife saved their most excoriating comments for the PA, which they saw as "servants and puppets" of Israel and "Blackwater-type" mercenaries.

Given such sentiments, I inquired, what did my hosts make of the recent unity deal between Hamas and this very same PA? Like many West Bank Palestinians I interviewed in recent weeks, both Abu Abdullah and his wife supported intra-Palestinian reconciliation, although like many interviewees they made cryptic comments regarding those "who benefit from lack of reconciliation," and who might have reason to break the deal.

Yet Abu Abdullah was skeptical that things would change. First, he said, the salaries of the Hamas public-sector workers in Gaza weren't paid. Moreover, he wanted to know, "if this was true reconciliation then why are the PA security forces still harassing its critics," such as Hamas leaders like Sheikh Hassan Yousef? Finally, security coordination between the PA and Israel -- something Hamas leaders had declared, implausibly, would be criminalized -- was still ongoing.

"The PA provides security for the settlements," Abu Abdullah said, "and the Palestinian people get...lots of money from abroad to cover the salaries of the PA security forces, instead of food for all Palestinians."

Despite the political exigency of a Hamas in crisis heeding Hassan Yousef's appeal for calm so as to mend ties with Fatah, Abu Abdullah was evidently well-versed on the reasons to remain wary of the reconciliation deal. The timing of the kidnapping may not have had the conscious goal of scuttling the deal and leading to a military confrontation with Israel, but it may well have led to both outcomes.

Whether Hamas's leadership sanctioned the abduction or not, the movement's current strategy seems to be to straddle the line between political integration and armed resistance. Just as Hassan Yousef's pragmatic statements held within them the implied threat of violence, so too did Abu Abdullah's outwardly pluralistic worldview contain the seeds of extremism.

Right before I left his home, Abu Abdullah declared, encouragingly, that all the monotheistic faiths -- Islam, Christianity, and Judaism -- shared the same God. "Our God," he added a moment later, rather less encouragingly, "will bring us victory."

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Neri Zilber, a visiting scholar at The Washington Institute, is a journalist and researcher on Middle East politics and culture.

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The IDF’s Minorities in Numbers and Pictures

In honor of IDF Diversity Week, we present diversity through numbers and pictures. Each year, more and more Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin and immigrants from around the world take on the responsibility of defending Israel.

MUSLIMS:

Muslim Arab Israelis are not required to draft in the IDF, but there are many who volunteer. In 2013, there were over 200 Muslims serving in the IDF and over 300 in the reserves.

Bedouins:

Bedouins are nomadic Muslims who were in Israel when modern borders were set in place and are now considered Israeli citizens. They are not required to draft but a growing number choose to enlist. In 2012, there were over 1,400 Bedouin Muslim soldiers doing regular IDF service and almost 1,500 in the reserves.

Read more:http://www.idfblog.com/2014/02/27/truth-idf-numbers-pictures/#more-34027

Are you aware that in 2013, Middle class taxes go up-significantly?

In January of next year, the federal income tax rate for middle-class taxpayers is scheduled to rise from 25 percent to 28 percent, and the payroll tax is scheduled to rise from 13.3 percent to 15.3 percent… This drives the marginal tax rate based on the aforementioned three taxes to 48.12 percent. Add in state and local property, corporate, excise, and other state and local taxes, and the percentage of each additional dollar that is taxed hovers around 50 percent… When half of each additional dollar earned is taxed away, taxpayers experience a disincentive to start businesses or expand existing ones. This leads to fewer jobs being created.

Why is HAMAS Inside Tampa Schools?

Clare Lopez

Kelly Miliziano, who teaches history classes at Steinbrenner High School in the Tampa, Florida area apparently thinks it’s perfectly OK to invite a senior official of a HAMAS-affiliated organization into her classroom to discuss Islam with her students. According to local media reports, not only has this been going on for years, but in spite of the civil and criminal proceedings that could result from such reckless negligence, the Hillsborough County school superintendent, Mary Ellen Elia, and the chairman of the school board, Candy Olson, also expressed approval for students under their responsibility to be exposed repeatedly to guest speaker, Hassan Shibly, who is the Executive Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the Tampa area.
More...

Did You Know... Ignoring the Call to Islam will Bring Jihad

‘Conquest through Da’wa [proselytizing] that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da’wa.’
-- Yousef al-Qaradawi , Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader The Arabic word ‘Da’wa’ means the “call to Islam.” But do not think that Da’wa is the same thing as an invitation to an optional holiday event. The classical Islamic doctrine of jihad mandates that enemies must be given the opportunity to convert to Islam or pay the jizya tax before it is permissible to attack them.
Clare M. Lopez

Who is being discriminated-facts tell the truth

Religious bias

Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,409 offenses reported by law enforcement. A breakdown of the bias motivation of religious-bias offenses showed:

65.4 percent were anti-Jewish.
13.2 percent were anti-Islamic.
9.5 percent were anti-other religion, i.e., those not specified.
4.3 percent were anti-Catholic.
3.8 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.
3.3 percent were anti-Protestant.
0.5 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2010/narratives/hate-crime-2010-incidents-and-offenses.

On March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview

with PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here's what he said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, a PLO executive, said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism."

"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

The Arab Apartheid

Ben-Dror Yemini
In 1948, the Arab countries refused to accept the UN partition proposal and they launched a war of annihilation against the State of Israel which had barely been established. All precedents in this matter showed that the party that starts the war - and with a declaration of annihilation, yet - pays a price for it. Between 550,000 and 710,000 Arabs fled because of the war and a larger number of 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries (the "Jewish nakba").
Population exchanges and expulsions were the norm at that time, occurring in dozens of other conflict points and affecting about 52 million people. In all the population exchange precedents that occurred during or at the end of an armed conflict, there was no return of refugees to the previous region, which had turned into a new national state.
Only the Arab states acted completely differently from the rest of the world. Instead of assimilating the refugees, they crushed them despite the fact that they were their coreligionists and members of the Arab nation - instituting a regime of apartheid. So the "nakba" was not caused by the actual dispossession, which had also been experienced by tens of millions of others. The "nakba" is the story of the apartheid, oppression, abuse and denial of rights suffered by the Arab refugees at the hands of the Arab countries. (Maariv)

International Law and Military Operations in Practice - Col. Richard Kemp

"Islamist fighting groups study the international laws of armed conflict carefully and they understand it well. They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it. They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy's main weaknesses. Their very modus operandi is built on the correct assumption that Western armies will normally abide by the rules, while these insurgents employ a deliberate policy of operating consistently outside international law. "

Lost Historical Moments

What Rabin’s last Knesset speech really said:repudiation of a Palestinian state

Rabin ruled out a fully sovereign Palestinian state :

“We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority.”

Rabin ruled out a total withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and thus a return to the pre-June 1967 borders :

“The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.”

Rabin ruled out withdrawing form the Jordan Valley:

“The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.”

Rabin ruled out uprooting settlement blocs, like the Gush Katif bloc in Gaza (which was subsequently uprooted by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon):

“The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

AND

Rabin ruled out removing any settlement before coming to a full peace agreement with the Palestinians:

“I want to remind you: we committed ourselves, that is, we came to an agreement, and committed ourselves before the Knesset, not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the interim agreement, and not to hinder building for natural growth.”

Rabin insisted on Israel retaining full security control of the borders with Egypt and Jordan, contrary to Israel’s relinquishment of the Philadelphia Corridor on the border with Egypt:

“The responsibility for external security along the borders with Egypt and Jordan, as well as control over the airspace above all of the territories and Gaza Strip maritime zone, remains in our hands.”

Correcting Oslo Myths-Part 2

3) Kuttab laments that the post-1993 Oslo process resulted in a Palestinian Authority "whose ministers and legislators are not guaranteed passage between Gaza and the West Bank ...."

Before free passage or other perquisites, PA leaders were obligated, among other things, to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, end anti-Israeli, antisemitic incitement in schools, mosques, and communications media, and resolve all outstanding issues through peaceful negotiations. They met none of these commitments, sometimes bolstering terrorism and greatly increasing incitement.

4) Kuttab complains that under Oslo the PA got "lightly armed police ---- but no real sovereignty over the land or contiguity between our communities in Gaza and the West Bank."

Oslo agreements repeatedly were revised, regardless of Palestinian non-compliance, until the authorized number of police grew from 8,000 to 40,000. Though they were to be the only armed forces in the territories, Israeli estimates early in the second intifada put the number of gunmen - police, "security services," terrorists, and armed gangs - at 85,000. Their armament reportedly included not only heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, but also anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.

Sovereignty was to be negotiated in the envisioned 1998 "final status" talks - after a five-year period of confidence-building. Palestinian leadership chronically undermined the process. Palestinian terrorism made the 1993 - 1998 Oslo period more deadly for Israelis than the 15 years preceding it.

The United States doesn't have contiguity between the lower 48 states and Alaska and Hawaii; territorial contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza Strip - that is, through the 20 miles of Israeli territory between them - was never promised and would destroy Israeli contiguity.

5) "Palestinians have been made to endure hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank, an eight-foot wall deep in our territories, and tight Israeli control over borders."

The security barrier is not "deep in Palestinian territories," but rather encompasses less than 8 percent of Judea and Samaria, and is mostly a fence, rarely a wall; the land in question is not "our [Palestinian] territories" but disputed territory to which, according to the authors of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, Jews as well as Arabs have claims; and there are no international borders, only the 1949 armistice lines with Jordan. Under 242, borders remain to be negotiated. As for checkpoints - like the security barrier and "tight Israeli control" - Palestinian Arabs precipitated these measures themselves. No terrorism and there would be no fence or tight Israeli control and few checkpoints - like before the first intifada.

Correcting Some Oslo Myths

1) In Oslo "Israeli, Palestinian and other world leaders promised that ... Palestinian sovereignty would be solidified."

No, they didn't. The 1993 Declaration of Principles and subsequent Oslo agreements outlined a process by which final status negotiations about the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be reached. The process required an end to anti-Israel terrorism and incitement and a commitment to peaceful negotiations. The PA, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other terrorist groups, sabotaged the process from the start.

2) "The reality is that, in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which states that it is inadmissible to occupy land by force, Palestinian territories are still under foreign military occupation."
Wrong again. Resolution 242 (1967) does note "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." It also affirms the right of every state in the area "to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." There were no "Palestinian territories." Jordan occupied the West Bank, Egypt controlled Gaza. Israel did not have "secure and recognized boundaries," so retention of some of those territories was possible under 242. Israel is not a "foreign" military occupier in the West Bank but, pending final negotiations, the lawful military administrator as a result of a successful war of self-defense.

Doc's Talk