The Peace Accords that were secretly negotiated in Oslo always had two enemies. Pointing out these enemies is not to equate, but to describe. The historic understanding between the Israeli government led by Yitzhak Rabin and the leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, was one of the exceptional breaths of hope that the world has had.
The agreements negotiated in the Norwegian capital implemented the United Nations resolution of 1947, giving rise to the creation of the Palestinian State that should have been born, together with Israel, in 1948, but could not because the Arab countries did not accept the UN decision.
That year only one State was born and the “Nakba” began, a tragedy of the Palestinians who were displaced from their homes as soon as the first Arab-Israeli war ended, which had broken out when the echo of Ben Gurion’s voice still reverberated in the Theater. from the Tel Aviv Opera House, where he proclaimed the founding of Israel.
The enemies of the process by which the PLO and its leader, Yasser Arafat, returned to Palestinian territory after a long exile, first in Beirut and then in Tunisia, are the ultra-Islamist organization Hamas, on the Palestinian side, and Benjamin Netanyahu and the ultra-religious Hebrew parties on the Israeli side.
The womb of Hamas was a religious entity of mutual aid (a kind of Muslim version of Caritas) whose creator, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was a disciple of the Egyptian Hasan al Banna, founder of the matrix of all Arab fundamentalist organizations: the Brotherhood Muslim.
In 1987, during the Intifada (uprising of young Palestinians who stoned the Israeli army), Ahmed Yassin converted that charitable organization into a political-military apparatus: Hamas.
From the beginning, Hamas and its armed wing, Ezzedim al Kassem, posed two enemies: the Jewish State, which they set out to destroy, and the PLO and Al Fatah (Arafat’s party), because they were secular and advocated a secular Arab State. , following the Nasserist ideology that had dominated the post-colonial era.
When the agreement secretly negotiated in Oslo was announced to the world, Hamas became a staunch enemy determined to destroy it because it implied the joint existence of the two enemies on which it had separately declared war in 1897: the Jewish State and a Palestinian State but not Islamist, that is, religious, but secular.
In 2007, after winning a legislative election the previous year, Hamas took full power in Gaza, expelling ANP officials and the Gazan Fatah leadership, many of whom were gunned down and others thrown from buildings in front of the view of the people.
The inhabitants of the Gaza Strip became a hostage population of a criminal and ruinous regime, which destroyed the economy and employment, while preventing the existence of minimum freedoms and independent and truthful information. The Palestinians of the Gaza Strip were left at the mercy of an organization of jihadist lunatics.
They do not find out what happens outside of that minimum space they inhabit, but rather what Hamas tells them happens. When Israel’s missiles fall, they only agree to Hamas’ version of the attack that massacres them and destroys their homes. And the bulk of them, the little food and medicine they receive, is given to them by Hamas, which distributes crumbs of the succulent financing it receives from Qatar, Iran and Arab anti-Semitic millionaires.
These people can do nothing against the bloodthirsty jihadism that subjugates them and whose true missiles are not the rudimentary Qassam rockets, nor the Katiusha, nor the more powerful and longer-range rockets that Iran has sent them in recent years. Hamas’ real missiles are the Palestinians massacred in every Israeli retaliation.
Its attacks are the tactical step, while the strategic objective is the Israeli response, because Hamas fights its long-term battle in the dimension of Arab and world public opinion.
Netanyahu loses all battles in that dimension. The ultraconservative leader and his partners from Jewish fundamentalism are functional to Hamas and vice versa. Both want to destroy their respective secular and centrist spaces, as well as the peace negotiation that must lead to the birth of a Palestinian State within a viable territory.
Netanyahu is the Israeli enemy of that peace process. He shouted his accusation of “traitor” against Yitzhak Rabin, until a religious fanatic named Yigal Amil assassinated the prime minister who sought peace. And when he came to power, Netanyahu froze the negotiation and began to destroy it by multiplying settler settlements to turn the West Bank into an unviable territory for the existence of a Palestinian State.
He also ignored and humiliated the ANP and its president, Mahmud Abbas, in every way possible. And since he associated himself with extremist parties to entrench himself in power and not end up imprisoned for corruption, he began to break the agreements on the religious side, for example allowing Jews to pray on the esplanade of the mosque but maintaining the prohibition that Muslims pray at the Wailing Wall.
The most extremist government in the history of Israel had been in long, convulsive months of authoritarian drift, facing massive protests against its attempt to destroy Israeli democracy to erect a religious State. But before that, it was clear that Netanyahu is the worst enemy of the peace process on the Israeli side, just as Hamas is on the Palestinian side.
Therefore, the best post-conflict scenario, the one that the Islamic Republic of Iran wants to avoid by burning the Middle East, is one in which Hamas no longer exists and in which Netanyahu’s extremist government is replaced by a centrist government, that saves secular democracy and revives the peace process with the Palestinians. l
