Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist and a former professor of journalism at Princeton University. Here's how he thinks Gaza should be governed after the war is over:
The answer for the question of what happens next should be clear. The Palestine Liberation Organization, which doesn’t include Hamas, needs to forge an agreement with Hamas and other Palestinian factions in Gaza.
The PLO’s executive committee, of which Abbas is the current chair, should be expanded to include individuals close to or nominated by Hamas. Similarly, the Palestinian Authority, which rules in the West Bank, should be reconstituted as an expanded emergency national unity government in which all Palestinian factions are part of a collective power-sharing arrangement.
This is insane. Hamas is openly and explicitly dedicated to the destruction of Israel. You don't have to approve of Israel's scorched-earth campaign in Gaza to recognize that recommending a power sharing agreement with Hamas is about like recommending a power sharing agreement with al-Qaeda. But Kuttab not only thinks it's reasonable, it "ought to be demanded by the international community and even by Israel."
It's true that no one can tell the Palestinians in Gaza who they're allowed to vote for. But if they vote for and support a terrorist group that's not only dedicated to Israel's destruction, but willing to prove it periodically, they can hardly expect anyone else to approve of it.
It isn't just that Hamas has failed to change the dire conditions in Gaza, but that they need those conditions to exist.
Their ambition is that war should be a permanent state,
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/world/middleeast/hamas-israel-gaza-war.html
at least until Israel is obliterated. And, if they achieve that, what then? They'll have nothing but still more permanent war.
@cld, if what you say is true, then Hamas seems pretty bad.
https://nitter.net/chriguth2/status/1722764716257194334#m
Can you explain like I'm five years old how poorly trained and poorly equipped Hamas tricycle terrorists are going to "obliterate" Israel?
I'll wait here.
I don't know, why don't you ask Hamas?
Reason and human decency aren't their thing.
They are Arabs, they don't need to be rational.
‘Where once Israeli forces faced stones and molotov cocktails thrown by Palestinians, they now confront weapons such as laser-guided missiles and antitank munitions. Hamas has been “arming itself to the teeth,” one military analyst said.“
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/11/hamas-antitank-weapons-gaza-israel/
Here’s more:
Hamas and its fighters — an estimated force of 30,000 or more — are so fully-armed and well-trained that its brigades, designated as terror organizations by the United States, resemble “state armies,”
So, while they still don’t have the ability to win a war,against Israel they are a very formidable force. Well armed and trained. They are not the same Hamas of when you were 5.
They would have to put down arms, but resistance groups must be integrated into the political process. If not, then you are not serious about peace. And the "terrorism" will continue.
Since you opened the subject of Israel, Palestinians, etc., I'll ask this here - and it's sincerely just a question: Has Israel ever recognized the right of the Palestinian people to exist? (Without requiring them to relocate, of course...) The Palestinian Authority explicitly recognized Israel's right to exist in 1990, so I wondered whether this was ever reciprocated. Google was of no help.
The question doesn't make sense. Unless a group is openly and explicitly advocating genocide (as Hamas did up until a few years ago) they implicitly acknowledge the right of a people to exist.
Perhaps "without requiring the relocate" is doing the heavy lifting in your question. If you're asking, "Has Israel ever said they would turn over territory to the Palestinians" then the answer to that is also yes...which is more than can be said of the Arab countries that have expelled Palestinians.
If you look at what Irael has done as opposed to what they say they will do, they have been taking over the West Bank since obtaining control in 1973. Part of Netanyahu's lastgovernment was a settlers party take explicitly called for the removal of all Palestinian from the West Bank.
First, I won't defend Netanyahu, let alone Smotrich et al. I agree that what they've has been reprehensible. The question was not "Has Israel treated Palestinians well" or even fairly. The question was, "Is Israel willing to let them exist" and the answer to that is yes.
Look at what Israel has done? Well, they turned over Gaza to Palestinians, dragging settlers out (sometimes literally). Another part of what they've done is to chip away/steal bits of the land in the West Bank *that they gave to Palestinians*. That's a crappy thing to do. It's not consistent with a country that wants them not to exist.
Netanyahu’s recent Amalekite comments cannot be interpreted as anything other than a call for genocide. Remember that as part of that story, Saul was punished for not being as thoroughly genocidal as God demanded.
So your answer is no, with a lot of extra stuff thrown in. And no, I'm not interested in having you rephrase my question.
There are a lot of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and in the Knesset.
Likud is demonstrably against a Palestinian state, as such, but no one, no one taken seriously, has said they shouldn't exist at all, as Hamas does of Israel.
Likud and Hamas need one another because without an existential threat everyone would simply see them as lunatics. But some lunatics are more insane than others and I think it's obvious Likud would form a peace treaty with a unified Palestinian state if there were an external movement to establish it among the regional powers.
By unified I mean contiguous, not in separated parts, and for which someone will have to in some way purchase an area of the Sinai. Israel can't do that, can't even propose it, but anyone else could.
And then, imagine if that happened --what would result? It would be a massive criminal enterprise, but a criminal enterprise has some intention of having a future not just an eternal present of eternal war, which is the Hamas state of Gaza now.
Listen to Ezra Klein's latest podcast, "What Israelis Fear the World Does Not Understand". The answer is complicated.
yeah, i listened to that today, it was good. if you haven't you should check out the previous one with a palestinian writer as well.
I've been listening to his whole series on the topic.
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
Re: the "right to exist"
No, to the best of my knowledge, and if it ever occurred, it would be on all the front pages, Israel refuses to recognize any such thing as "Palestine". Lately, they have also been denying there were ever such things as "Palestinians."
Moreover, I have yet to see Israel recognize the right of the United States of America to "exist." Or any other country, other than themselves.
Then this standard should be applied evenly and fairly to Israel re: the Palestinians as well. That's only fair. Demanding that Hamas be exiled from legitimate politics is a reasonable demand, but the reasonable counter-ask is that Likud either abandon enormous chunks of its ideological commitments (for all the grousing people do about the phrase "from the river to the sea" Likud literally has that in its charter!) or be exiled from legitimate politics as well.
Having said that, it seems worth noting that the Palestinians in Gaza don't get to have anything like free and fair elections. THAT should be unilaterally imposed demand before we can even start talking about how to treat the victors in those hypothetical elections.
That makes perfect sense. Opposition to the existence of a country (by definition comprised of civilians) is exactly the same as opposition to an enemy military.
That said, Netayahu et al have been quite generous to Hamas. Smotrich (before he was elected) described Hamas as "an asset" and the PA as a "liability". Israeli policy under Netanyahu reflected that. They deliberately aided Hamas (under the table) while doing their best to cut down the PA. The plan was to prop up Hamas as a scary threat that only Netanyahu could face down, while weakening anyone who might actually make peace. It worked great*, until they got complacent about the threat they'd enabled.
*Great for Netanyahu and his coalition, not for Israel
I agree though to be fair Likud isn't that bad compared to some of the other Isreali parties whose names could easily be changed to "Kill all the Arabs".
Beyond that, I don't know how you stop Hamas from participating. It's not like there's some sort of master list of all Hamas members. Which means they can easily re-consitute themselves under a different name and no one would know.
I'm not sure what happens next, now that the Allies have crossed the Rhine, but eventually someone's going to have to forge a power-sharing agreement with the Nazi regime.
I'm calling for an immediate cease-fire. Too many German civilians are in harm's way.
👍👍👍👍👍
+1000
While no analogy is perfect, not every bomb or artillery barrage or volley of gunfire expended by the Allies killed fighters and civilians every time. No matter how imprecise their weapon. And even more tellingly and especially when the bulk of the enemy soldiers weren't underground. And the high command not even in country.
None of that really addresses the point, which is that when your army is still in the field, still fighting, and still losing, you generally don't get an armistice.
Typically, to get an armistice, an army needs to either surrender unconditionally or make a strong enough showing in the field that the enemy is willing to accept something short of unconditional surrender.
Hamas hasn't yet achieved either of these things.
I favor a cease-fire myself. And I think the way to get there is for the various Palestinian militant forces to surrender unconditionally, lay down their arms, release their prisoners, and march into captivity. Like defeated armies do.
This is of course correct. But I think you are thinking with pixie wishes. A surrendered army doesn't fight. And the proximate emergency is over. But it doesn't resolve the issue, that the sons will take up. In fact, I say double down. Why pussy foot around? Finish them. They have the capacity. Who cares if the final number of dead civilians is 10K or 20K? Or even 50K? They've already started, why spoil a good start? Finish like the Allies did. Scratch that - no nukes.
Well after WW2 the allies engaged in massive ethnic cleansing and it was quite successful in preventing wars between Germany and France or Germany and Poland.
+1!
Well, there are two issues regarding Hamas.
First, it's actually a bunch of factions -- think warlords -- of Hamas that rule the Gaza Strip. Not all of the Hamas Organization held the core belief that Israel must be eliminated.
Second, at some point Hamas -- or at least factions of Hamas -- must be allowed (given) the choice to transform into purely political entities and renounce the core belief that Israel must be eliminated.
I see this as the only way to co-opt Hamas' claims to be freedom fighters.
Some elements of the Nazi regime became leaders in the post-war government.
Some elements of the CSA regime served in government posts during and after reconstruction.
In both cases, the path from belligerent to peaceful participant in the new regime involved unconditional surrender and the laying down of arms. The defeated army had to throw itself upon the mercy of the victor, who punished war criminals as they saw fit.
Lot of people are trying to skip those important steps in this war.
Indeed.
If we look back, the current Palestinian Authority is basically the PLO, only now they are a bunch of old corrupt men willing more or less to live in peace with Israel rather than the terrorists of their youth who were, well, terrorists.
I think that the hope was that Hamas would similarly "mature" once they had actual ruling responsibilities in Gaza. So far I am not seeing that though, sadly.
Drum seems to come at the Israeli issue the way that Biden does, with views that were formed decades ago when the Palestinians were thought of as people in the story of Israel. When I read the column above I thought it was simplistic, but understandable given where Drum comes from. But then I linked on the article by Kuttab, and he answers every point Drum makes here, with Drum not responding to any of it.
The comparison to al qaeda is of limited value. A better comparison might be to the Taliban because Hamas is more than just a terrorist organization, it has a governing role, and has at least factional support among an occupied people. The situation which seems most comparable to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the troubles in Northern Ireland. And there the IRA was clearly a terrorist organization dedicated to the end of British rule in North Ireland, and yet it had a political wing which was essential to bringing about a peace deal. But Kuttab mentions these examples, so they should not be knew to Drum.
Kuttab is talking about the more specific job of what would give legitimacy and stability to post-incursion Gaza. The inclusion of Hamas might be necessary for that. But as for any attempt towards moving to a resolution of the conflict overall, there are clearly only two choices. One is to work to weaken Hamas by showing the Palestinians that they have a future through negotiations between Israel and the PA. But that would require actually noticeably improving the situation in the West Bank, both by using the military to control the settlers, and removing settlements to give the Palestinians more freedom of movement and growth potential. The other is to incorporate Hamas into the negotiations.
Israel seems to have no interest in the first path. But then they have shown little interest in the latter either, preferring to leave Hamas outside of negotiations and then to point to the existence of Hamas as proving the fruitlessness of negotiations. That is Hamas was used as an excuse to not negotiate with them or to negotiate without them, and so no need to negotiate.
As Kuttab notes, Hamas' history with regards to peace is more complex than Drum suggests. It certainly has not been good. But they have at times seemed open to negotiations that are not made at the expense of Hamas.
I have generally thought that the better approach would be to make negotiatons actually pay off for the Palestinians rather than being yet another way to play the Palestinians for suckers. But given that Kuttab seems to understand the situation a lot better than Drum does, I am not inclined to dismiss Kuttab's view out of hand. It is what worked in Northern Ireland, after all.
There's also the FARC in Colombia. Part of the peace process involved guaranteeing them a set number of seats in the Congress. And the ANC is the dominant political party in South Africa.
That's like saying "No, the republican party should not be part of the U.S. government."
Well, they shouldn't.
That's not a lie.
Here's the thing: The most likely path for ending a politically violent movement is through assimilation into the legitimate political process. It's happened repeatedly through history.
Who is there to negotiate with in Gaza other than Hamas? There is no popular alternative, in large part because Netanyahu made sure there would be no alternative.
Unfortunately, I am about as pessimistic as ever that a peaceful solution can be found, at least within my lifetime. The issues involving territory and security/sovereignty has dramatically worsened since the Camp David Summit in 2000. The final settlement of East Jerusalem/Temple Mount is as distant a goal as ever. The right of return, beyond a token number, is something that could effectively destroy Israel as it currently exists but has always been a core Palestinian demand.
There is no willingness or desire of the current leaders on all sides to this conflict to work towards a solution. No chance of a peaceful outcome is possible until that changes.
One name: Marwan Barghouti. If it's not too late. And no, that Israel accused him of terrorism doesn't disqualify him because (1) Israel itself elected Menachim Begin, and (2) his trial was a sham. It's always a bit surprising to see Israeli intelligence services being less rabid than the government, but it's so right now when it comes to Gaza and it was also so during Barghouti's years in an Israeli prison where he still is.
The more general point being that the Palestinian people, if there are elections, should have more choices than between Hamas on the one hand and toadies of Israel on the other. But those choices seem to be in jail. And this fits into Netanyahu's self-avowed strategy of politically splitting the West Bank from Gaza. It also means that there's no-one credible to negotiate with.
It would be a welcome development if Americans, starting with the president and members of Congress and working down through the vast punditocracy and blogosphere, stopped telling grown-ups in the Middle East how to run their affairs. God knows what Biden and Blinken think they are doing, but the result is that they will cop the blame for the outcome of this war, which is guaranteed to please just about nobody. Washington politicians haven't spent the last two years offering gratuitous advice to Putin and Zelenskyy about how to reorder Ukraine. They refrain wisely from lecturing India and Pakistan about how to solve the Kashmir problem. They've long since stopped pretending they have practical proposals to end hostilities on the Korean Peninsula. Yet for some reason they've spent the last 75 years obsessed with devising a solution to the Israel/Palestinians conflict. They're no good at it. In fact they suck. It's time they realised it, and stopped.
the US can't avoid responsibility for Israel's actions just by remaining silent in public. it's widely believed/understood that the US provides a tremendous amount of military, political, and financial support to Israel.
this isn't an India/Pakistan situation. anything Israel gets up to reflects on the US as well.
I wasn't referring to that. I was talking about the never-ending attempts to "find a solution", as if Americans were somehow wiser in the affairs of the Middle East than the people who've lived all their lives there. They reached their farcical nadir when the Kushner boy convened discussions to resolve the Israel/Palestinians conflict, without the participation of the Palestinians. And now Kevin takes it upon himself to bark that Hamas must not be part of any future Palestinian government. Frankly, it's none of his goddam business.
This war and the slaughter of innocents is a nightmare for both sides.
But it must be pointed out that Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, has spent the last 40 years or so working diligently to make sure no Palestinian state can exist. In some ways they have similar, if opposite, goals.
If elections were to take place. Palestinians haven't had elections for president or the legislature in 17 years. Israelis have had five inconclusive elections in the last four years. If someday both peoples decide to elect leaders who are serious about achieving peaceful coexistence, there can be meaningful negotiations. Until then, they and the world can look forward to continual cycles of killing.