Ray Hanania
Time to destroy Hamas
Islamic movement morally corrupt, a cancer in Palestinian dream
East Jerusalem - Occupation of the Gaza Strip by the Hamas terrorist organization and the destruction there of the democratically elected government system should make it clear to all that there is no compromise with Islamic fundamentalism.
Hamas is and always has been an organization premised on Islamic superiority, not on the goal of achieving nationalism for the Palestinian people.
But if there is a silver lining in the Hamas-led civil war there, it is that the conflict could serve as the basis for secular Palestinian leaders in the remaining government institutions in the West Bank to re-engage in the peace process with Israel.
A coalition can be formed that would re-energize a new peace initiative with Israel while destroying Hamas and the Islamicist movement that threatens not only the West but all Palestinians who believe in an independent state based on secular nationalism and true democracy.
Since it was founded during the first Intifada as an armed Islamic movement, Hamas has never compromised on its two main goals, destroying the Jewish State and undermining the Palestinian secular existence.
In their extremist religious eyes, there is no difference between Israel and the Israeli people, and a secular Palestine and its secular leadership.
That Hamas was able to take control of the Gaza Strip, a hell hole of economic disaster and political turmoil where more than 1.35 million Palestinians live, should not be a surprise.
Although Hamas fronted representatives to participate in the democratic elections held in January 2006, their organization has been neither democratic nor driven by the goal of creating a democratic state.
They took over control of the Palestinian National Authority only because the larger, more popular secular Palestinians split their votes. Although Hamas won the January 2006 elections, the organization never won a majority mandate from Palestinians.
Yet Hamas used its power not to build on the democracy and to pursue peace, but as an opportunity to undermine the secular lifestyles of the majority Palestinians through intimidation, militant confrontation and by using violence designed to provoke the Israeli military occupation to create greater Palestinian hardship that plays into Hamas’ long term goals.
As long as there is no hope for peace, no movement towards compromise and continued suffering and frustration for Palestinians living under an oppressive Israeli military occupation, Hamas militancy, not their religious fanaticism, will remain an attractive choice to the emotionally racked Palestinian people.
Ismail Haniyeh, who was ousted as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority that his organization intentionally destroyed in the Gaza Strip, is frank in declaring that his goal is to transform the Palestinian movement into a religiously-governed movement, not a secular democratic state.
Haniyeh is disingenuous when he claims that the conflict is the result of the corruption of his secular rival party, the Fatah organization founded by the late Yasir Arafat.
In truth, while the Fatah-dominated government had serious corruption problems, the Hamas organization is morally corrupt. It used violence not as a weapon of resistance, although that is what they claimed, but as an immoral tool to block the very peace process that gave legitimacy to the election system that allowed Hamas to rise to "minority control" of the PA.
It is so important to understand that the peace process failed not solely because of the difficult hurdles on the Palestinian refugees and the City of Jerusalem that both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators failed to overcome, but because Hamas intentionally used suicide bombings at each and every junction where peace talks were poised to make headway.
Religious fanatics cannot compromise
Hamas is as much responsible for the collapse of the peace process and the return to violence as was Ariel Sharon, the extremist Israeli prime minister who rose to power in the five years after one of his followers assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who launched the peace process with Arafat.
Hamas does not want peace. It is a cancer in the Palestinian dream for statehood. They will trade off anything to survive as a movement driven by blind faith, not reasoned and free public choice.
Mahmoud Abbas is not only the successor to Arafat, he is the symbol of the secular political movement that places individual choice and real democracy above religious fanaticism.
For the sake of Palestinian unity, he has stood by while Hamas government leaders have violated the fundamental basis upon which they were elected, asserting undemocratic policies such as Sharia Law on the Palestinian populations where they have rule.
They have sat back while Islamic terrorists have threatened to "slit the throats of women from ear to ear" who appear on Palestinian TV without wearing the "Hijab," or Islamic religious head covering.
But their real goal is not the imposition of the Hijab on women, but the subjugation of women, Christian Palestinians and secular Muslims by denying them an equal voice in Palestinian society. Hamas terrorists firebombed symbols of secular lifestyle, including restaurants that have served alcohol, nightclubs that have permitted intermingling of young men with women and dancing.
Worse, though, Hamas has allowed their armed factions to act outside of the authority of the PA, firing Qassam rockets into Israel not as acts of defensive resistance but as a provocation to create increased conflict that allows their political counterparts to exploit the Palestinians who are then the victims of Israeli retaliation.
Hamas cannot claim they are both a resistance movement and the majority leadership of the secular Palestinian Democratic government.
They have played both sides not for the sake of achieving Palestinian goals of democratic statehood, but to strengthen their base as an Islamicist power that has exploded into a mini-Hamastan State.
Abbas and the true democratic representatives of Palestinian hope in the PA have a choice. Either they can continue to try to appease the unappeasable Hamas cancer, or they can act forcefully to destroy Hamas and remove it from all aspects of Palestinian leadership and society.
The fear of a civil war is long past. This is a civil war that Hamas has begun by its actions in the Gaza Strip where dozens of Palestinians from rival political groups have been murdered in cold blood and their buildings, homes and offices burned to the ground.
If the secular Palestinians do not take a stand today to stop Hamas, Hamas will eventually bring its religious fanaticism to the West Bank where a final civil war will be fought.
In the battle against religious fanaticism, secular forces always seek to compromise while the religious extremists, driven by faith, cannot compromise on their faith and continue to seek the destruction of the other side.
At stake today is the survival of Palestinian secular society and the hope for a negotiated peace with Israel.
Ray Hanania is an Award Winning Palestinian American columnist, author and standup comedian. Writing from Eeast Jerusalem, Hanania can be reached at www.hanania.com.
