The militant Islamic organization Hamas has indicated it will halt the firing of rockets and mortars on Israel as part of a shift in its resistance to Israeli occupation of territories claimed by Palestinians.
“Violence is no longer the primary option,” Taher al-Nounu, a spokesman for Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya
His remarks followed a number of reports that Hamas was swearing off violence. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas
This week in Cairo, Mr. Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal are scheduled to discuss ways to implement the reconciliation deal they signed in May but have not yet fulfilled.
Non-violence sounds good, but can Hamas be believed?
The group has always had its advocates of non-violence. In 1987-88, during the first intifada when Hamas was formed, its approach was to use nothing more than rocks in facing down Israeli troops and tanks.
Hamas would later move to small arms and bombs in its campaign against Israeli occupation. But in 2005, shortly after Mr. Meshaal became the group’s leader, he renounced the practice of suicide bombings, the image of which is embedded in Israeli and Western minds.
And, for the past six years, Hamas has carried out none against civilian targets; not even during Israel’s punishing 2008-09 war on Hamas in Gaza.
Ahmed Yusef, a leading Hamas figure in Gaza, explained in an interview that the practice of suicide bombings had been a mistake as it gave Hamas nothing but a bad reputation.
The vigilant Israeli analyst Barry Rubin
“Hamas is building support bases and arms-manufacturing facilities including those for building rockets” in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula that borders both Gaza and Israel, Mr. Rubin says,
Libyan weapons, liberated during the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi, also are finding their way to Sinai. These weapons, he notes, include Russian-made shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles that could be turned on flights into and out of Israel.
Noting the growing strength of Islamist parties in Egypt, he asks: “Who is going to order Egypt’s army to crack down on Hamas and to close its facilities?”
Israeli would be well advised to treat Hamas’s declaration skeptically, but would be unwise to dismiss it outright.
The shift, Hamas insiders say, is intended to fulfill one of the three conditions for negotiations set down in 2006 by the Quartet of peace-brokering parties (Russia, the United States, the United Nations and the European Union).
The insiders add that Hamas is willing even to negotiate a peace agreement with Israel if those conditions are revised. Hamas will accept the foundation of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, they say, but it stands firm in refusing to acknowledge the state of Israel.
Hamas’s move comes even as the group is severing some of its ties to Syria, relocating its offices from Damascus to Cairo and Amman, and learning to live without support from Iran. Tehran, a major backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
Demonstrating Hamas’s emphasis on new allies, Mr. Haniya announced Monday he will soon travel to Turkey, Bahrain, Qatar and Tunisia.
Origin
Source: Globe
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