[Peace-discuss] Why the West wants to destroy Hamas

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Tariq Ali: 'Why the West wants to destroy Hamas'

[The writer and activist Tariq Ali spoke at a Stop the War 'Israel out of Gaza' 
rally in London on Thursday of last week. Here are edited extracts of his speech.]

Let us remember what colonisers and occupiers have done throughout the past 150 
years. They divide in order to rule.

They have done it everywhere – south east Asia, the Maghreb, India, Africa, 
Ireland, Cyprus. And they have done it in Palestine. This has to be the starting 
point.

Our Palestinian brother referred to the unity of the Palestinian people and 
their cause. I say very bluntly that those who broke this unity are also 
partially responsible for what is happening in Gaza today.

We know how that unity was broken. It started with the 1993 Oslo Accords. The 
late Edward Said – a Palestinian intellectual who we miss in these times – said 
that treaty was the Palestinian Versailles. It was a surrender.

The leaders who negotiated that treaty bent over backwards to appease the 
Israeli regime. They bent so far that their spine broke. The logic of that was 
to capitulate, to collaborate, to accommodate.

There was no such thing as the Palestinian Authority, if the truth be told. The 
Israeli army determined what happened even in the lands that were not occupied. 
There was never meaningful independence or sovereignty for the Palestinians.

So what did those leaders do? They lined their own pockets. They grew rich. 
That’s all they could do. Little was done for the Palestinian people. And when 
the first chance came for the Palestinian people to vote, in January 2006, they 
got rid of the leaders who had collaborated and elected those who had not.

Collaboration

We know now, because of an article by David Rose published in the magazine 
Vanity Fair, of the systematic collaboration between the security apparatuses of 
Fatah and the US.

The whole plan to try to defeat an elected government by carrying out military 
actions against it was organised by Washington and Cairo in league with Mohammed 
Dahlan, one of Fatah’s leaders, who met George Bush three times.

This was a decision taken by people who could not accept being defeated 
democratically. In one interview Dahlan tells the journalist that he pleaded 
with the Americans to delay the elections indefinitely because Fatah would lose.

The Americans were convinced they were going to win because they thought a few 
PR actions like they carried out in Ukraine and elsewhere would bring them a 
victory.

They thought the Israelis would kill off enough Hamas leaders in the meantime. 
They thought money could be used. They thought the Egyptians would have more 
influence than they did. And they failed.

That failure haunted them. So they tried a military coup in Gaza – organised by 
Dahlan, backed by the Egyptians, Mossad and the US – to try to kick Hamas out.

That coup failed because the people supported the organisation they had elected. 
They knew they had elected this group because it didn’t behave like those they 
had electorally defeated.

The entire strategy of the so called Quartet – the US, the European Union (EU), 
Russia and the United Nations – was to try to impose sanctions until Hamas 
agreed to do what they wanted.

They treated the Palestinian electorate and its elected leadership as if it were 
some third rate NGO totally dependent on Western money. Well Hamas showed that 
they weren’t.

Campaign

And this assault on Gaza is part and parcel of the campaign to get rid of Hamas. 
That is what they are trying to do. That is why the Israelis informed the US and 
got the backing of the US.

That is why the EU has been unable to do anything about Gaza – because they knew 
about it. What is the point of calling for a “ceasefire”? The demand is very 
clear – you don’t need a ceasefire, you have to ask the Israelis to get out of Gaza.

But the Israelis’ problem is not just the Hamas leadership – it is the people 
who elected them. And it is not easy to dissolve the people and elect a new one.

So what is to be done? What will happen after the Israelis withdraw, as sooner 
or later they will have to? The Palestinian people have hard choices to make. 
But one choice, in my personal opinion, is no longer there – a two state solution.

We have seen since Oslo that the only Palestinian state that the Israeli regime 
will tolerate is a puppet state, a protectorate. The only meaningful two state 
solution would be if the Palestinians got a share of the land proportional to 
their population, if it was contiguous land, if it was a state whose sovereignty 
wasn’t dependent on Israel, the West or anyone else.

I do not believe the Israelis will accept that. So for me the only serious 
alternative is what many of us socialists have long called for – a single state 
solution.

That means one Israel-Palestine in which Jews, Christians, Muslims and anyone 
else live together as equal citizens. The argument against this from the Zionist 
establishment is that it would no longer be a Jewish state. The answer to that 
is that it would be state of all its citizens including the Jews.

In the long term this would benefit everyone in that region, regardless of who 
is in a numerical majority.

The other course is a dangerous one – not just for the Palestinians but also for 
Israel. The great historian Isaac Deutscher was initially in favour of Israel. 
But in his last interview, after the 1967 Six Day War, he gave them a very 
severe warning.

He said, “You have become the Prussians of the Middle East. Be careful, because 
you may triumph yourselves to death.”


See a video of the full speech » uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kvyccXBFa-A
Socialist Worker 2134, 17 January 2009
www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=16833