Hamas Open for Negotiations with Israel

By Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondent

"We'll negotiate [with Israel] better than the others, who negotiated for 10 years and achieved nothing," Sheikh Mohammed Abu Tir, second on the Hamas national list for the Palestinian parliamentary election, told Haaretz recently.

Abu Tir does not dismiss future negotiations with Israel. He makes a great effort to explain to Israel and the world, which are attempting to come to terms with his organization's expected good showing in the elections later this month, that Hamas is playing by new rules.

According to Abu Tir, the movement's decision to enter the elections - as well as the decision to remove from its election platform sections in its constitution calling for Israel's destruction - are not only tactical measures. Rather, they represent a strategic shift.

"In the past, it was said that we don't understand politics, only force, but we are a broad, well-grounded movement that is active in all areas of life. Now we are proving that we also understand politics better than the others," Abu Tir said.

Abu Tir, 55, from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Umm Tuba, does not have a high media profile in either the West Bank or Israel. However, he is considered one of Hamas' most prominent individuals. He was released from an Israeli prison about six months ago, after spending most of the last 30 years in administrative detention or serving sentences for membership in a terror organization, weapons possession and directing the activities of the Hamas military wing, Iz al-Din al-Qassam. Following his release, Abu Tir was recruited by the Hamas leadership to head its national list after the group's Gaza leader, Ismail Haniyeh.

"The use of the word muqawama [resistance in Arabic, used by Hamas and many other organizations to signify the armed struggle] in the platform does not necessarily refer to weapons and the use of force," Abu Tir said.

When asked whether Hamas would negotiate with Israel after the elections, he said, "We will not give Israel the justification and the legitimacy to occupy our lands." But he immediately added that "we are not saying 'never.' The question of negotiations will be presented to the new parliament and, as with every issue, when we reach the parliament it will be discussed and decided in a rational manner."

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/670203.html

The Hamas terror group has charged a major leftwing Israeli newspaper with distorting facts in order to make the group look more pragmatic, as if it were a potential negotiating partner for Israel.

Last week, the Haaretz newspaper published an article saying that the Hamas struck a plank out of its election platform calling for the destruction of Israel, jihad, and an the establishment of an Arab state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

In another article, the paper quoted Sheikh Mohammed Abu Tir, a Hamas candidate for the PA parliament who lives in Jerusalem, with a statement implying that the terror group was willing to negotiate with Israel. Haaretz interpreted Abu Tir?s statement as indicative of a new pragmatic line in the Hamas.

Haaretz quoted Abu Tir as saying that the word ?struggle? or ?resistance? in the Hamas election platform ?did not necessarily refer to weapons or the use of force.?

Haaretz quoted Abu Tir as saying that the word ?struggle? or ?resistance? in the Hamas election platform ?did not necessarily refer to weapons or the use of force.?

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=96826

Hamas rallies to 'martyr' mother
Jon Swain, Gaza



ONE objective burnt deep in the heart and mind of Mohammed Farhat when, rifle in hand, he attacked a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip: to kill as many Israelis as possible.
The 17-year-old Palestinian dispatched five settlers before being shot dead. In later military operations his two brothers were killed by the Israelis, who also tried to blow up the Farhats’ home.



Today, with the intifada in Gaza and the West Bank over and Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip completed, Mariam Farhat, the mother of the three dead youths, insists that the struggle must go on. But this time she has chosen the ballot box over the bullet.

Across the Arab world the 56-year-old mother is an icon of the resistance as she campaigns in Gaza as a candidate for the Islamic militant group Hamas in Palestinian parliamentary elections on January 25.

Hamas has been the deadliest of the Palestinian militant groups. It has always stood for the obliteration of the Jewish state and was responsible for suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israelis over the past five years.

Farhat still mourns her sons. Nidal, her eldest, was killed in 2003 while preparing an attack and Rawad was blown up last year in an Israeli airstrike on his car, which was laden with rockets.

The mother regards her candidacy for the Palestinian Legislative Council as a logical extension of the armed struggle she encouraged her sons to die for. She denies that Hamas’s decision to join mainstream Palestinian political life contradicts its military goals.

“The jihadist project completes the political one and the political project cannot be completed without jihad,” she says. “The resistance needs the political project to support it through the legislative council.”

The Israelis consider her an enemy, pointing to a video in which she is seen grasping Mohammed’s rifle and advising him on tactics before his attack on the Gaza settlement.

In Israel, where Hamas still arouses hostility and suspicion, Farhat’s candidacy is seen as an indication that, while embracing a political role, it remains the same unreconstructed terrorist organisation that sent suicide bombers into Israeli cafes and onto buses.

On Thursday, Ehud Olmert, who has been the acting Israeli prime minister since Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke on January 4, expressed fears that a strong Hamas showing in the election would give legitimacy to terrorists. “There can be no progress with an administration in which there are terrorist organisations as members,” said an aide.

But Alvaro de Soto, the United Nations peace envoy to the Middle East, welcomed an election with Hamas’s participation, calling it “a step towards Palestinian democratic statehood”.

Hamas’s 1988 charter specifically calls for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state in its place. But UN officials noted that the party did not include this demand in its election manifesto last week.

Although Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, said there was no possibility that it would enter negotiations with Israel or disarm, other Palestinians have detected increasing ambiguity in leaders’ statements as the group begins to shift away from the extremes of Palestinian politics towards the centre.

The process of redefinition, they say, has been stunningly swift as Hamas has transformed itself into a potent fighting force on the campaign trail. It has organised huge rallies across Gaza, door-to-door electioneering and a sophisticated media campaign including mobile phone messages and e-mails, and has set up its own television channel.


Its campaign manager is Naje al-Serhay, a slick, tweed-jacketed professional. Yet the ringtone on his mobile phone is a burst of gunfire, perhaps a warning of the violence that could erupt amid any post-election power struggle between Hamas and militias such as the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, linked to the ruling Fatah organisation.
If recent opinion polls are any guide, Hamas is going to do extremely well on Wednesday next week. Some polls suggest it will win as many as 40% of the 132 legislative council seats, securing a stake in the new Palestinian cabinet and weakening the decades-old grip of Fatah, which was founded by the late Yasser Arafat and is now led by Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.



Even Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator with Israel and one of Fatah’s most easily recognisable leaders, is not guaranteed re-election thanks to a vigorous challenge by Hamas in Jericho.

The appeal of Hamas is easy to see in the dusty, teeming streets of Gaza, where the election campaign has been taking place against a background of lawlessness and chaos, including the brief kidnapping of westerners such as Kate Burton, the British peace activist.

Hamas’s rising popularity is built partly on a campaign against Fatah’s corruption and failure to control crime, and partly on the credit the group claims for driving Israeli settlers out of Gaza through its armed operations.

Hamas has been campaigning under the banner of “change and reform”. Fatah is polarised and immersed in turmoil. Some in Gaza warn of serious violence between their militias if Zahar makes good his threat to put corrupt Fatah officials on trial.

A muscular Hamas performance at the polls would also be a challenge to both Israel and America, which condemn it as a terrorist organisation. There is a risk the Palestinians will lose some significant western funding.

Farhat’s immediate concerns are closer to home, where she has put pictures of her three dead sons on the wall along with a photograph of her cradling a rifle.

She has three other sons who are prepared to take up armed struggle. If the election proves to be a step towards a Middle East peace, it could save them from their brothers’ fate.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1985840_2,00.html

Here you have an interesting video

http://www.youtube.com/w/Carnaval-Palestino?v=nX5nRmEweQk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Felpaisdeestepais%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F