GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - The U.S. government and Hamas agree on at least one point: More than half a year of economic strangulation of the Palestinian government has yielded no results.
The radical Islamic group, target of a crippling aid boycott since taking power last March, is no closer to moderating itself and no closer to falling.
For Israel, the Palestinians and the international community, time and options are running out, with civil war looming in the West Bank and Gaza, poverty soaring and prospects for peacemaking disappearing.
"All the crises that we have been through in the past seven months proved even to the Americans that there is no way that this government is going to fall by economic pressure," said Abdel Rahman Zeidan, a cabinet minister in the Hamas-led government.
After seven months, it's become clear Hamas will not accept the international community's No. 1 condition for doing business with it: recognizing the Jewish state's right to exist. And the international community is not about to accept Hamas's proposed solution: a long-term truce, or "hudna," while it maintains its goal of eliminating Israel.
It's also become clear that the person calling the shots in Hamas is not Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh or any other local leader in the West Bank or Gaza. It's the exiled Khaled Mashaal, the hardline ideologue sheltered by Syria and funded by Iran.
Speaking at a news conference in Damascus on Thursday, Mashaal said again that Hamas will not recognize Israel.
Jacob Walles, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, acknowledged this week that the pressure on Hamas has not worked and called for a new Palestinian government.
"We've been looking for the last six months to see if there was any sign of a change. We don't see any sign," he told Palestinian reporters.
The international community's latest strategy to defuse the crisis, a US$816 million donation from Europe and a new U.S. push to open a Gaza Strip border in time to export this season's harvest of cherry tomatoes, strawberries and carnations, is also fraught with pitfalls.
The initiatives are designed to strengthen the hand of the Palestinians' moderate president, Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah party. But they could end up undermining him politically by aligning him with the West in the eyes of ordinary Palestinians. And by easing economic pressure, the moves could also keep Hamas in power.
For now, the situation in the Palestinian territories is as bleak as it's been since the darkest days of the intefadeh, or Palestinian uprising, four years ago. Schools are barely functioning, public workers go unpaid and Israel is imposing increasingly harsh restrictions on the movement of people and goods.
A UN agency reported this week that Israel's network of military checkpoints and road barriers in the West Bank has grown by 40 per cent in the past year. The Israeli group Physicians For Human Rights said Thursday that Israel's domestic intelligence agency routinely denies sick Palestinians access to essential medical treatment in Israel.
And Israel has been tightening its restrictions on entry to the Palestinian territories, by denying entrance to foreign nationals and Palestinians with foreign passports who have ties to the West Bank, often people who work in non-governmental organizations, universities and key financial institutions.
The failure of Fatah and Hamas to come together in a national unity government has exacerbated tensions between the two groups, spilling over into bloodshed on the streets, including gunbattles earlier this month that killed 12 people in the worst internal Palestinian violence since Hamas took power.
"People are becoming convinced that if you don't kill, you will be killed," said Alaa Herzallah, 25, an employee of the agriculture ministry, one of some 165,000 public workers who've gone largely unpaid in the past six months.
Maher Abu al-Hattal, the grieving father of a 15-year-old boy killed in the crossfire of Fatah-Hamas gunbattles on Oct. 1, said the two groups fought over who would sponsor his son's funeral, but that he refused to let either do so.
"They are all fighting over a rotten plate of food," he said, referring to what he called a powerless Palestinian government cowed by Israel. "Whoever wins will still be a loser."
There has been talk of a meeting between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, possibly in November, an attempt to restart some sort of peace process with the Fatah-dominated PLO despite the Hamas government.
But the despair in the Palestinian territories, combined with the continued captivity of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier seized by Hamas-linked militants on June 25, provides a very poor backdrop to peace talks.
Proposed solutions for bypassing Hamas have come against insurmountable hurdles. Hamas politicians in the West Bank proposed setting up a national unity government made up of apolitical technocrats who would let the PLO negotiate with Israel. But Prime Minister Haniyeh squashed the plan, calling that sort of unity government a ploy to oust Hamas from power.
Some Palestinians want Abbas to dissolve the Hamas-run legislative council and call new elections. But Hamas and Fatah are roughly tied in opinion polls, so a new vote probably wouldn't solve the crisis. Many would argue that it's better to have Hamas inside the political system than outside it, given the group's past role as a violent spoiler of peace moves.
It took years of negotiations in the 1990s for Israel and the PLO to recognize each other. Hamas' ascent to power has turned back the clock on that issue, and Israel says it will accept nothing less than full recognition as a condition for dealing with Hamas.
"We strongly still want to not be with the Palestinians under our rule," said Miri Eisin, the Israeli prime minister's spokeswoman. "But that doesn't mean that the solution itself right now is to negotiate with somebody who up front says we're not going to recognize you. It just doesn't work that way."
Haniyeh's political adviser, Ahmed Yousef, argued that Hamas has come a long way toward moderating its stances, and that Israel and the world should consider its "hudna" proposal and its willingness to allow the PLO to negotiate on its behalf and to respect the past peace accords it deems desirable.
"In the whole world people analyzing Hamas have said this is excellent, a drastic change," he said. "But you can't make that big step in one day or two. You have to give the moderates time to spread their message ... We have very conservative people among the Islamists."
Fatah spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa said time is running out on Hamas to recognize Israel.
"They can't wait 40 years to get to this stage like Fatah did. The world will not wait for them."
This is something that Sassy and others wouldn't want you to read or wouldn't care because they think Muslims are less than human. States so themselves.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061014...DoO0yNEY7bZvaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTA0cDJlYmhvBHNlYwM-
The radical Islamic group, target of a crippling aid boycott since taking power last March, is no closer to moderating itself and no closer to falling.
For Israel, the Palestinians and the international community, time and options are running out, with civil war looming in the West Bank and Gaza, poverty soaring and prospects for peacemaking disappearing.
"All the crises that we have been through in the past seven months proved even to the Americans that there is no way that this government is going to fall by economic pressure," said Abdel Rahman Zeidan, a cabinet minister in the Hamas-led government.
After seven months, it's become clear Hamas will not accept the international community's No. 1 condition for doing business with it: recognizing the Jewish state's right to exist. And the international community is not about to accept Hamas's proposed solution: a long-term truce, or "hudna," while it maintains its goal of eliminating Israel.
It's also become clear that the person calling the shots in Hamas is not Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh or any other local leader in the West Bank or Gaza. It's the exiled Khaled Mashaal, the hardline ideologue sheltered by Syria and funded by Iran.
Speaking at a news conference in Damascus on Thursday, Mashaal said again that Hamas will not recognize Israel.
Jacob Walles, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, acknowledged this week that the pressure on Hamas has not worked and called for a new Palestinian government.
"We've been looking for the last six months to see if there was any sign of a change. We don't see any sign," he told Palestinian reporters.
The international community's latest strategy to defuse the crisis, a US$816 million donation from Europe and a new U.S. push to open a Gaza Strip border in time to export this season's harvest of cherry tomatoes, strawberries and carnations, is also fraught with pitfalls.
The initiatives are designed to strengthen the hand of the Palestinians' moderate president, Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah party. But they could end up undermining him politically by aligning him with the West in the eyes of ordinary Palestinians. And by easing economic pressure, the moves could also keep Hamas in power.
For now, the situation in the Palestinian territories is as bleak as it's been since the darkest days of the intefadeh, or Palestinian uprising, four years ago. Schools are barely functioning, public workers go unpaid and Israel is imposing increasingly harsh restrictions on the movement of people and goods.
A UN agency reported this week that Israel's network of military checkpoints and road barriers in the West Bank has grown by 40 per cent in the past year. The Israeli group Physicians For Human Rights said Thursday that Israel's domestic intelligence agency routinely denies sick Palestinians access to essential medical treatment in Israel.
And Israel has been tightening its restrictions on entry to the Palestinian territories, by denying entrance to foreign nationals and Palestinians with foreign passports who have ties to the West Bank, often people who work in non-governmental organizations, universities and key financial institutions.
The failure of Fatah and Hamas to come together in a national unity government has exacerbated tensions between the two groups, spilling over into bloodshed on the streets, including gunbattles earlier this month that killed 12 people in the worst internal Palestinian violence since Hamas took power.
"People are becoming convinced that if you don't kill, you will be killed," said Alaa Herzallah, 25, an employee of the agriculture ministry, one of some 165,000 public workers who've gone largely unpaid in the past six months.
Maher Abu al-Hattal, the grieving father of a 15-year-old boy killed in the crossfire of Fatah-Hamas gunbattles on Oct. 1, said the two groups fought over who would sponsor his son's funeral, but that he refused to let either do so.
"They are all fighting over a rotten plate of food," he said, referring to what he called a powerless Palestinian government cowed by Israel. "Whoever wins will still be a loser."
There has been talk of a meeting between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, possibly in November, an attempt to restart some sort of peace process with the Fatah-dominated PLO despite the Hamas government.
But the despair in the Palestinian territories, combined with the continued captivity of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier seized by Hamas-linked militants on June 25, provides a very poor backdrop to peace talks.
Proposed solutions for bypassing Hamas have come against insurmountable hurdles. Hamas politicians in the West Bank proposed setting up a national unity government made up of apolitical technocrats who would let the PLO negotiate with Israel. But Prime Minister Haniyeh squashed the plan, calling that sort of unity government a ploy to oust Hamas from power.
Some Palestinians want Abbas to dissolve the Hamas-run legislative council and call new elections. But Hamas and Fatah are roughly tied in opinion polls, so a new vote probably wouldn't solve the crisis. Many would argue that it's better to have Hamas inside the political system than outside it, given the group's past role as a violent spoiler of peace moves.
It took years of negotiations in the 1990s for Israel and the PLO to recognize each other. Hamas' ascent to power has turned back the clock on that issue, and Israel says it will accept nothing less than full recognition as a condition for dealing with Hamas.
"We strongly still want to not be with the Palestinians under our rule," said Miri Eisin, the Israeli prime minister's spokeswoman. "But that doesn't mean that the solution itself right now is to negotiate with somebody who up front says we're not going to recognize you. It just doesn't work that way."
Haniyeh's political adviser, Ahmed Yousef, argued that Hamas has come a long way toward moderating its stances, and that Israel and the world should consider its "hudna" proposal and its willingness to allow the PLO to negotiate on its behalf and to respect the past peace accords it deems desirable.
"In the whole world people analyzing Hamas have said this is excellent, a drastic change," he said. "But you can't make that big step in one day or two. You have to give the moderates time to spread their message ... We have very conservative people among the Islamists."
Fatah spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa said time is running out on Hamas to recognize Israel.
"They can't wait 40 years to get to this stage like Fatah did. The world will not wait for them."
This is something that Sassy and others wouldn't want you to read or wouldn't care because they think Muslims are less than human. States so themselves.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061014...DoO0yNEY7bZvaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTA0cDJlYmhvBHNlYwM-
