Issue No. 605
Special
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26 Sept. - 2 October 2002 Issue No. 605 Special |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Hamas: resistance is the option
Hamas spokesman Abdul-Aziz Al-Rantisi is considered one of Hamas' most uncompromising leaders. A veteran of Israeli and Palestinian Authority jails, Rantisi is strongly convinced that Israel will never come to terms with Palestinian rights, or even accept the very humanity of the Palestinian people, unless it is forced to do so. Armed struggle, he admits, is painful and very costly to the Palestinians. However, he argues that succumbing to Israel's brutality and arrogance of power would eventually spell extinction of the Palestinian people. This week, Al- Ahram Weekly spoke with Rantisi in Gaza.
Israeli repression has reached unprecedented levels of brutality while the world, including the Arab world, remains virtually silent. What should the Palestinians do in the face of this harsh reality?
There is no alternative to the Intifada against this criminal occupation. We simply can't discontinue the resistance while the occupation, with all its criminal manifestations, continues unabated. The resistance is the effect and the occupation is the cause; the effect will continue to exist as long as the cause does.
Israel says it is forced to take harsh measures to combat Palestinian terror.
Israel is occupying our homeland and enslaving our people as never happened in the history of mankind before. It is raping our people's right to freedom and basic human dignity, and is bullying us to accept perpetual military occupation and apartheid. Israel doesn't even recognise our very humanity on both the individual and collective levels. This is why her criminal army is blithely and indiscriminately murdering Palestinian civilians en masse. We are actually experiencing a slow-motion holocaust. As to the question of terror, I can tell you that we are the real victims of terror. Look what they are doing to us. They are killing our children on a daily basis, they are destroying our homes, they place bomb in our schools forcing three million human beings to remain indoors, they are depriving our children of their right to education.
Al-Rantisi
And after all this, this oppressive world still has the audacity to repeat the canard that we are terrorists.
Some Palestinian intellectuals argue that it isn't enough to be right, one has to be wise as well.
It is always possible to review the Intifada and learn from our mistakes. However, one thing can not be reconsidered and that is the choice of the uprising. And the reason is the continuing Israeli genocide against our people. Besides, we are facing Ariel Sharon, a certified war criminal of Hitler's ilk. A Gandhi approach simply will never work in our situation.
But non-violent resistance does often work by depriving Sharon of the pretext to further murder and torment the Palestinians.
Tell me a single country that earned its freedom without sacrifices and armed struggle? I'm not suggesting that we should completely rule out passive resistance. What I'm saying is that passive resistance should complement rather than supplant our struggle.
Before the assassination of [Hamas military leader] Salah Shehada on 21 July, Hamas reportedly agreed to observe a cease-fire and stop suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. Is Hamas still willing to stop the bombings?
As I said, if the Zionists stopped targeting our civilians and destroying our towns and population centres, we would stop our martyrdom operations. But if they don't, we won't.
Would you at least stop operations inside Israel property?
Well, you should first ask them to stop their terror and criminal aggression in Nablus and Ramallah and Gaza. It is unfair to demand of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups not to carry out attacks in Tel Aviv while the Israeli army is rampaging in the heart of our population centres. Moreover, why should we draw a distinction between resistance attacks inside 1948- Palestine and those taking place in the West Bank and Gaza. Does Israel make a distinction between Tel Aviv and Kiryat Arba'a [a Jewish settlement outside Hebron]?
But the suicide bombings have turned much of the world public opinion against the Palestinians and gave Sharon a free hand to kill and maim more Palestinians.
Well, the world public opinion forgot us utterly for the past 55 years. What did the world public opinion do when Sharon perpetrated the Sabra and Shatilla massacre? What did it do when his criminal army destroyed the Jenin refugee camp recently? It did nothing. Moreover, can anybody guarantee that Sharon will stop the killing if we stopped the martyrdom operations? In fact, there were no bombings for close to seven weeks, but Sharon kept up the killing of our civilians. We are a defenceless people, we don't have an army, we don't have a single tank, a single warplane, a single artillery piece, we are brutalised and murdered round the clock, seven days a week, 365 days a year. We only have our bodies to resist this criminal enemy.
Is the Oslo Agreement dead?
Oslo died a long time ago. Its papers were torn into smithereens by the treads of Israeli tanks. What is strange is that the Palestinian Authority is still harrowing after the torn papers.
Why do you think the PA is still clinging to Oslo?
Because its very existence depends on its embrace of Oslo. Oslo and the PA are inextricably entwined. The PA is the Oslo Agreement.
In your opinion what was the main blunder of the PA?
The PA committed numerous blunders the most serious of which was its attempts to build a state without ending the Israeli occupation first. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking is still rife in the PA rank and file as we keep hearing about forming a new government and the proposed appointment of a prime minister and holding elections, etc. This whole thing is irrelevant and meaningless as long as we are not really free from the occupation. The real task facing the Palestinian people is ending the occupation, not building a state. Once the occupation is over, the state will be a forgone conclusion.
Will Hamas take part in the next election when and if it is held?
I don't like to speak about elections. Liberation from this evil occupation is my priority now.
Will there be elections?
I don't think so.
What are Sharon's designs vis-a-vis the Palestinians?
Sharon wants to alter the demographic map in Palestine. He hopes to be able to effect a massive expulsion of hundreds of thousands or millions of Palestinians from their ancestral homeland. This is a very real matter, and no Palestinian, Arab and Muslim should underestimate the gravity of these evil designs.
Are you worried that the US may target Hamas in the context of its war on the so-called terror?
The US has never stopped attacking and targeting us through the Zionist regime. The US is giving Israel a carte blanche to exterminate the Palestinians. The US doesn't need to do it directly since Sharon is doing the job without a big clamour.
Don't you see any chance for peace?
In the absence of justice, there can be no peace. That is why Oslo failed.
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