WILL WONDERS NEVER CEASE??
Telegraph in UK
By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem
(Filed: 08/30/2006)
HAMAS CHIEF ATTACKS 'STUPID ANARCHY' OF THE PALESTINIANS
A senior member of Hamas has broken a taboo by calling on Palestinians to stop blaming Israel for all their ills and look instead at their own failures.
Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas government's official spokesman, said Palestinians had been "attacked by the bacteria of stupidity."
"The anarchy, chaos, pointless murders, the plundering of lands, family feuds … what do all of these have to do with the occupation?" he asked in the opinion piece published in the Palestinian newspaper, al-Ayyam. "We have always been accustomed to pinning our failures on others, and conspiratorial thinking is still widespread among us."
He was particularly scathing about the failure of the Palestinians to make a success of the Gaza Strip, the territory that Israel effectively surrendered a year ago.
"When you walk around in Gaza, you cannot help but avert your eyes from what you see: indescribable anarchy, policemen that nobody cares about, youth proudly carrying weapons.
From time to time you hear that so-and-so was murdered in the middle of the night, and the response comes quickly the next morning. Large families carry weapons in tribal wars against other families.
"The reality in which we are living in Gaza can only be described as miserable and wretched, and as a failure in every sense of the word."
His description resonates with what many outsiders find when they leave the orderly roads and fields of Israel and cross into Gaza, a dirty, crowded coastal strip teeming with 1.4 million people.
Israel can be blamed for many of Gaza's problems but there is plenty of evidence to support Mr Hamad's thesis, that the kidnapping, lawlessness and social chaos are, at least partly, homegrown.
He said his article was his private opinion.
But it is a sign of growing division between Hamas members living in the Palestinian territories and exiles living elsewhere, including the leadership in Damascus.
The exiles take a hard-line attitude, insisting on militants continuing to fire Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel. But people, such as Mr Hamad, who live in Gaza seem to have lost patience with these tactics.
The rockets have killed only four Israelis, yet hundreds of Palestinians have died in Israeli retribution.
COULD THIS BE THE START OF THE END OF THE "ISLAMICIC BAME GAME"??
In the welter of factional fighting and self-pity that characterises the Gaza Strip, it is refreshing to hear a Palestinian voice urging its inhabitants to take responsibility for the mess they have made.
In the newspaper article, Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for Hamas, the governing party in the Occupied Territories, writes that life since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza a year ago has become "a nightmare and an intolerable burden". He describes Gaza City as a place of "unimaginable chaos, careless policemen, young men carrying guns and strutting with pride and families receiving condolences for their dead in the middle of the street."
While acknowledging the brutality of the Israeli occupation, he would prefer the Palestinians to be self-critical, rather than blaming others for their mistakes. "We've all been attacked by the bacteria of stupidity," he concludes. "We have lost our sense of direction."
Mr. Hamad's article is a reminder of the ruinous differences among Palestinians: between Hamas and Fatah, one of whose founding members, Mahmoud Abbas, is president of the Palestinian Authority; between Hamas, which has stopped firing rockets from Gaza into Israel, and other groups that haven't and have thereby invited heavy Israeli retribution; and between the Hamas leadership in the territories and that in Damascus. It is not surprising that Palestinians admire the unity shown by Hizbollah in confronting Israel in Lebanon.
Mr Hamad's article might not signify a transformation in Palestinian attitudes. But it should prompt reconsideration of a policy that, through refusing to renounce violence and recognise Israel, has left the Occupied Territories starved of funds from foreign donors and cut off from the Israeli market.
The stock response of the Palestinians to this crisis is to ascribe all their ills to a Zionist/American plot. In graphic terms, Mr Hamad is denouncing this conveniently facile reaction as self-indulgence. By failing to take proper responsibility for their actions, Palestinian leaders from both Fatah and Hamas are betraying the people who elected them.
By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem
(Filed: 08/30/2006)
HAMAS CHIEF ATTACKS 'STUPID ANARCHY' OF THE PALESTINIANS
A senior member of Hamas has broken a taboo by calling on Palestinians to stop blaming Israel for all their ills and look instead at their own failures.
Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas government's official spokesman, said Palestinians had been "attacked by the bacteria of stupidity."
"The anarchy, chaos, pointless murders, the plundering of lands, family feuds … what do all of these have to do with the occupation?" he asked in the opinion piece published in the Palestinian newspaper, al-Ayyam. "We have always been accustomed to pinning our failures on others, and conspiratorial thinking is still widespread among us."
He was particularly scathing about the failure of the Palestinians to make a success of the Gaza Strip, the territory that Israel effectively surrendered a year ago.
"When you walk around in Gaza, you cannot help but avert your eyes from what you see: indescribable anarchy, policemen that nobody cares about, youth proudly carrying weapons.
From time to time you hear that so-and-so was murdered in the middle of the night, and the response comes quickly the next morning. Large families carry weapons in tribal wars against other families.
"The reality in which we are living in Gaza can only be described as miserable and wretched, and as a failure in every sense of the word."
His description resonates with what many outsiders find when they leave the orderly roads and fields of Israel and cross into Gaza, a dirty, crowded coastal strip teeming with 1.4 million people.
Israel can be blamed for many of Gaza's problems but there is plenty of evidence to support Mr Hamad's thesis, that the kidnapping, lawlessness and social chaos are, at least partly, homegrown.
He said his article was his private opinion.
But it is a sign of growing division between Hamas members living in the Palestinian territories and exiles living elsewhere, including the leadership in Damascus.
The exiles take a hard-line attitude, insisting on militants continuing to fire Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel. But people, such as Mr Hamad, who live in Gaza seem to have lost patience with these tactics.
The rockets have killed only four Israelis, yet hundreds of Palestinians have died in Israeli retribution.
COULD THIS BE THE START OF THE END OF THE "ISLAMICIC BAME GAME"??
In the welter of factional fighting and self-pity that characterises the Gaza Strip, it is refreshing to hear a Palestinian voice urging its inhabitants to take responsibility for the mess they have made.
In the newspaper article, Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for Hamas, the governing party in the Occupied Territories, writes that life since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza a year ago has become "a nightmare and an intolerable burden". He describes Gaza City as a place of "unimaginable chaos, careless policemen, young men carrying guns and strutting with pride and families receiving condolences for their dead in the middle of the street."
While acknowledging the brutality of the Israeli occupation, he would prefer the Palestinians to be self-critical, rather than blaming others for their mistakes. "We've all been attacked by the bacteria of stupidity," he concludes. "We have lost our sense of direction."
Mr. Hamad's article is a reminder of the ruinous differences among Palestinians: between Hamas and Fatah, one of whose founding members, Mahmoud Abbas, is president of the Palestinian Authority; between Hamas, which has stopped firing rockets from Gaza into Israel, and other groups that haven't and have thereby invited heavy Israeli retribution; and between the Hamas leadership in the territories and that in Damascus. It is not surprising that Palestinians admire the unity shown by Hizbollah in confronting Israel in Lebanon.
Mr Hamad's article might not signify a transformation in Palestinian attitudes. But it should prompt reconsideration of a policy that, through refusing to renounce violence and recognise Israel, has left the Occupied Territories starved of funds from foreign donors and cut off from the Israeli market.
The stock response of the Palestinians to this crisis is to ascribe all their ills to a Zionist/American plot. In graphic terms, Mr Hamad is denouncing this conveniently facile reaction as self-indulgence. By failing to take proper responsibility for their actions, Palestinian leaders from both Fatah and Hamas are betraying the people who elected them.
posted by loki at 12:00 AM
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