It is official. The elected leadership of the Palestinians will become targets for assassination if there is a suicide attack in Israel and Tel Aviv decides that Hamas is responsible. No evidence will be needed. Israel’s defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, has said so. This chilling threat demonstrates the contempt in which Israel and Washington hold the democratic process if the result of the election does not suit them.
The world rightly condemned the 2001 slaying of hard-line Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi by PFLP militants. The Palestinian Authority was no less strident in deploring the crime but called upon Israel to stop the murders of leading Palestinians. That policy of eradicating key opponents, however, continued, culminating in the assassination of the two top Hamas leaders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Al-Rantissi in 2004.
Now that the Israelis have stated publicly that they will, if they wish, kill Hamas politicians chosen by the electorate just six weeks ago, it will be instructive to see which Western governments, if any, denounce the policy for the international political thuggery that it is. The world ought to be looking closely also at the way that the new premier designate, Ismail Haniyeh, has been setting out his political aims, taking advantage of the invitation to visit Russia when other countries were hamstrung by their refusal to talk to Hamas. There is still no sign that Hamas will recognize Israel’s right to exist until it ends the occupation nor renounce the violence which they see as a legitimate response to Israeli aggression. Such changes depend upon a corresponding agreement from the Israelis.
Meanwhile, Haniyeh is making it refreshingly clear that Palestine must no longer be used as a political football by outsiders intent purely on strengthening their own political agendas. Saddam Hussein obscenely offered to leave Kuwait if the Israelis pulled out of the West Bank and Gaza. Indonesia’s Jemmah Islamia justified its crimes in the name of the plight of the Palestinians. And now Al-Qaeda’s No. 2, Ayman Al-Zawahiri has once again tried to identify his terrorist organization’s depravities with the Palestinian cause. Hamas’ reaction has been to suggest Zawahiri and his partners in crime mind their own business. The Palestinian cause is no longer going to be hijacked by others. This is an act of statesmanship which demonstrates a Palestinian confidence and maturity that the outside world should take careful note of. For all the apparent complications of the Hamas election victory, the issue of Palestine may actually have become simpler. Palestinians have tried moderate, soft-talking leaders who, since Oslo, have been strung out by the Israelis and betrayed by the international community. Now maybe for the first time, Palestinians can negotiate with Israelis as equals, not oppressed supplicants. Israel of course will do what it can to avoid substantive talks by discrediting Hamas any way it can. Zawahiri’s headline-grabbing intervention on Al-Jazeera might have helped them had not Hamas so swiftly and decisively rejected it.
