[Palestinians have long warned that Israels blockade and repeated
aggressions would eventually lead to an explosion. But few of us in
Gaza expected this.]
[[link removed]]

GAZA SHATTERS THE FACADE OF ‘CALM’  
[[link removed]]


 

Mohammed R. Mhawish
October 8, 2023
972 Magazine [[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Palestinians have long warned that Israel's blockade and repeated
aggressions would eventually lead to an explosion. But few of us in
Gaza expected this. _

Firefighters try to put out burning cars at the scene where a rocket
fired from Gaza landed in a residential area in Rishon LeZion, October
7, 2023., Yossi Aloni/Flash90

 

More than 24 hours have passed since Hamas broke out of its Gaza cage,
launching an unprecedented attack
[[link removed]] that caught
the Israeli army completely off guard. The infiltration of Palestinian
militants across the separation fence, as well as by air and sea —
already described as Israel’s most significant intelligence and
military failure since the Yom Kippur War of 1973 — has resulted in
the deaths of over 700 Israeli citizens from shooting attacks and
rocket fire, and the kidnapping of dozens who have been brought to
Gaza. 

For those of us watching from within the besieged Gaza Strip, the
situation has been nothing less than terrifying. Shortly after the
attack began, Israel declared a state of war, initiating a relentless
barrage of airstrikes targeting a wide range of locations across the
strip, including hospitals, public spaces, and residential compounds.
The death toll in Gaza has already surpassed 350, with thousands more
wounded, and it appears inevitable that the worst is yet to come. 

Since news of the attack first emerged on Saturday morning, I have
been living a daytime nightmare together with my wife, our 2-year-old
son Rafik, my sister, and our parents. In moments of Israeli
bombardment, we all huddle together, gripping each other’s hands
tightly. We try to conceal our fear, wearing a mask of calm even as
the attacks draw nearer. Our prayers, usually so strong, now feel
fragile — a stark reminder that we’re powerless to protect
ourselves. 

This isn’t our first experience with Israeli wars on Gaza. My
son experienced his first
[[link removed]] in 2021 while still in
his mother’s womb. My parents have endured this tragedy since 1967.
I have lived through five wars in just two decades. But the idea that
we can normalize fear is a fallacy. Each conflict feels like the
first, with our hearts trembling from the moment the first airstrike
hits until a ceasefire is finally announced.

This new attack from resistance groups in Gaza follows a series of
intense weeks of Israeli state
[[link removed]] and settler
violence
[[link removed]] across
the occupied territories, which played a considerable role in leading
us to this current crisis. Palestinians have been sounding the alarm,
warning that the blockade, persistent impoverishment, repeated Israeli
aggressions, and fragmentation of their communities would eventually
lead to an explosion. The Palestinian leadership and resistance heard
the calls of the people to counterattack Israel’s policies of
aggression, so a reaction was expected. 

Israeli security forces patrol in the southern Israeli city of Sderot
after Hamas units infiltrated from Gaza, October 7, 2023. (Oren Ben
Hakoon/Flash90

What has surprised most Palestinians, however, both at home and in the
diaspora, is the scale and intensity of this attack — as Israeli
authorities continue to release more names of the dead while
Palestinian resistance operations are ongoing in southern Israel.

Trapped in an open-air prison

Daily life in Gaza has rapidly deteriorated over the past sixteen
years of Israeli siege. Today, approximately 97% of the water in the
strip is considered unsafe for drinking
[[link removed]];
over half of the population lives under the poverty line;
[[link removed]] 80%
of the strip’s population relies on foreign aid
[[link removed]]; and the
future for most youth is uncertain, with 64% of them unemployed
[[link removed]] and their dreams and
aspirations stifled by the limitations of the blockade. 

The majority of Palestinians residing in Gaza are refugees living in
perpetual exile from their ancestral homes, after being expelled by
Zionist and Israeli forces in the Nakba of 1948. Back in 2018 and
2019, the demand to lift the siege and return to their homes resonated
around the world as tens of thousands of Palestinians protested at the
fence during the Great March of Return — protests that were revived
in recent weeks
[[link removed]].
Israel killed hundreds
[[link removed]] during these marches
and inflicted thousands of injuries
[[link removed]],
deliberately targeting many with live fire to their limbs. Those
wounds, both physical and psychological, have not yet healed.

The world has watched as we’ve lived here, trapped in this open-air
prison [[link removed]],
yearning for freedom. We’ve endured this existence for decades, and
despite it all we’ve clung to our hope and our determination to
resist: if we ever had the chance, we would.

What Israel and much of the world calls “calm” is the eerie
stillness that lingers before the storm, before Gaza is once again
plunged into chaos. This so-called calm is deceptive because, in our
reality, it is anything but peaceful. “Calm” is when Gaza is
bombed [[link removed]], while villages,
towns, and cities across the rest of our occupied lands are invaded
[[link removed]],
homes bulldozed [[link removed]],
journalists shot [[link removed]],
ambulances attacked, mosques vandalized, schools tear-gassed, and
Palestinians massacred. 

Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike that
killed five people in central Gaza City, October 8, 2023. (Mohammed
Zaanoun)

But this facade of calm shatters when Palestinians, driven to the
brink, finally respond to the unrelenting pressure. The world may look
on in shock, but for us, it is the culmination of years of suffering
and despair. It is the moment when we defend our very existence and
right to live peacefully in freedom.

While it is true that Israel’s intelligence failures allowed Hamas
to catch them off guard, it is also the result of a failure of
imagination, empathy, and basic decency. It is a failure to comprehend
that a people cannot be expected to endure decades of occupation
stoically and passively.

It is essential to recognize that the siege itself is a provocation.
Forcing people to live in an open-air prison — a deliberate act of
keeping an entire population in a state of constant vulnerability —
is itself a form of violence. What is driving the escalation that we
are seeing now is the fact that we Palestinians are fed up with living
under constant conditions of occupation and colonization. These are
the issues that need to be addressed for any meaningful resolution to
occur.

The right to resist

Israel has been waging a war against the Palestinian people for over
seven decades through ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid
policies, and a brutal siege on Gaza. Yet despite their vastly
superior fighting power, recent events have highlighted the bankruptcy
of Israeli leaders’ rhetoric and their inability to bring about
peace and security.

The scene where a rocket fired from Gaza which caused damaged in the
southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, October 7, 2023. (Yossi
Zamir/Flash90)

What the world fails to understand is that the Palestinian people have
the right to utilize armed resistance in the struggle for freedom and
to defend themselves against Israeli aggression. Indeed, many of those
currently condemning Hamas’ attacks on civilians have been awfully
quiet while Israel has committed unspeakable crimes against the
Palestinian people, including imposing collective punishment against
the residents of Gaza. Any analysis or commentary that fails to
acknowledge this reality is not only hollow but also immoral and
dehumanizing.

At times like this, it is crucial to keep the stories of struggle in
Gaza — and the Palestinian people at large — in mind and to help
amplify our calls for dignity as we continue to endure unimaginable
assaults on our existence in the quest for justice, peace, and
equality.

For years now, families in Gaza like mine have lived with the
constant, unsettling need to have our important belongings packed and
ready at all times, in case we have to leave with only a moment’s
notice. They contain the essentials for survival in the midst of
chaos: medicines, documents, mobile chargers, personal belongings, and
hygiene kits. Having these bags ready at all times reflects how scary
life can become in an instant in Gaza.

Now, as I write these words, my family and I are hastily gathering our
emergency bags to leave the house after being told that our
neighborhood is about to be bombed. I have lived through five wars on
Gaza, but I have never felt this much horror or seen this amount of
destruction.

_xxxxxx MODERATOR: PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ADDITIONAL MATERIAL_

MOHAMMED R. MHAWISH is a Palestinian journalist and writer based in
Gaza. He is a contributor to the book ‘A Land With A People —
Palestinians and Jews Confront Zionism’ (Monthly Review Press
Publication, 2021).

+ 972 MAGAZINE – Did you appreciate this article? Here’s how you
can help.

We are in an unprecedented and dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The
Israeli extreme right government has made its plans crystal clear. It
wants carte blanche to shoot-to-kill Palestinians on both sides of the
Green Line, legalize every settlement outpost, dismantle the
independence of the judicial system, deport African asylum seekers,
delegitimize human rights activists, and silence the free press.

This is an escalation we all should resist. But it is not an
aberration or a bug. For the past 12 years, we at +972 have been
warning against the poisonous outcomes of Israeli society’s growing
racism, the entrenched occupation, and an increasingly normalized
siege on Gaza.

Our work has never been more crucial. And as dark as it seems, there
are still glimmers of hope. The popularity of outright fascism has
woken people up, both in Israel-Palestine and across the world, to the
dangerous repercussions of what may soon come. Palestinians and
Israelis who believe in a just future are already organizing and
strategizing to put up the fight of their lives.

Can we count on your support? +972 Magazine is the leading media voice
of this movement, a place where Palestinian and Israeli journalists
and activists can tell their stories without censorship. Our
journalism disrupts the skewed mainstream coverage and aims to promote
justice and equality for everyone between the river and the sea.

ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH EXCHANGE FIRE RAISING REGIONAL TENSIONS
[[link removed]]

_Israeli forces say they hit a Hezbollah post in Lebanon, while the
armed group says it launched rockets at three Israeli posts._

ALJAZEERA 

October 8, 2023

Israel has exchanged fire with the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah,
raising the prospect of a broader regional conflict on Sunday, a day
after an unprecedented surprise attack
[[link removed]] on
southern Israel by Hamas that killed at least 250 Israelis.

More than 300 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombardments of
the besieged Gaza enclave in the wake of the large-scale Hamas attack
that took Israel by surprise. The Palestinian enclave has effectively
been under an Israeli land, sea and air blockade since 2007.

Hamas and other Palestinian factions have been calling for the
blockade to end and have organised protests at the fence that
separates the territory from Israel.

Hezbollah, a powerful armed group backed by Iran, said it had launched
guided rockets and artillery onto three posts in Shebaa Farms “in
solidarity” with the Palestinian people. Shebaa Farms, which is
claimed by Lebanon, was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

“On the path to liberate the remaining part of our occupied Lebanese
land and in solidarity with the victorious Palestinian resistance and
the steadfast Palestinian people, the groups of the martyr commander
Hajj Imad Moghniyeh in the Islamic Resistance carried out an attack
this Sunday, October 08, 2023, targeting 3 Zionist occupation sites in
the occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms region,” Hezbollah said in a
statement.

The Israeli military said on Sunday it fired artillery into an area of
Lebanon from where cross-border mortar fire was launched. Israel’s
military said one of its drones struck a Hezbollah post in the area of
Har Dov, an area in Shebaa Farms.

Israel said its forces “are now attacking with artillery fire the
area in Lebanon from where shooting was carried out a few minutes ago
into Israeli territory”. The Israeli forces said they were
“prepared for all scenarios, and will continue to protect the
security of the residents of the State of Israel”.

Tel Aviv has held the Shebaa Farms, a 39-square-km (15-square-mile)
patch of land, since 1967. Both Syria and Lebanon claim the Shebaa
Farms are Lebanese.

There was no comment from the Lebanese authorities on the incident.

CHICAGO PROTEST TODAY: HUNDREDS OF PALESTINIANS MARCH DOWNTOWN AS
DEATH TOLL RISES IN ISRAEL, GAZA
[[link removed]]
_Jewish Federation of Chicago's Ofer Bavli speaks with ABC7 from his
Jerusalem home_
CATE CAUGUIRAN WLS TV
October 8, 2023

‘THERE’S GOING TO BE A LOT OF SOUL-SEARCHING IN ISRAEL WHEN THIS
IS OVER’
[[link removed]]
_Former U.S. peace negotiator Dennis Ross weighs in on Hamas’ attack
on Israel and the “missed opportunities” that led to the war._

MICHAEL HIRSH 

Politico

October 7, 2023

Fatima Shbair/AP

No American diplomat is more familiar with the long history of enmity
between Israelis and Palestinians than Dennis Ross, who played a
leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace
process in both the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton
administrations. As special envoy, Ross was one of Washington’s key
Middle East negotiators in the Oslo peace process, beginning with the
historic agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation
Organization in 1993 and 1995. Ross also served as director of the
State Department’s Policy Planning Staff in the first Bush
administration, and later as special assistant to President Barack
Obama and special advisor on Iran to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton.

On Saturday, just hours after the Islamist militant group Hamas
launched a surprise attack on Israel unprecedented in its scope,
POLITICO Magazine reached out to Ross to help explain how and why the
conflict began — and how it might ultimately be resolved.

_This interview has been edited for length and clarity._

MICHAEL HIRSH: Hamas’ military leader was quoted as saying that it
launched this new war because “enough is enough.” Why is this
happening now and why are they doing it?

DENNIS ROSS: I think the main reason this is happening now is because
of the prospect of the U.S.-Saudi-Israeli deal. Hamas understands this
is a huge transformative event, and they are trying to create a
circumstance where it will be difficult for Saudi Arabia to do it
right. This is not spur of the moment. What’s interesting is you had
the Iranian supreme leader giving a speech this past week where he
attacks the idea of normalization with the Zionist entity. This attack
was clearly something planned over a long period of time: the fact
that they had hang gliders, they had prepared to breach the fence,
they did a barrage of rockets as a way of overwhelming Israel’s air
defense system, Iron Dome.

There are reports I have seen that yesterday, Hezbollah [a Lebanese
militant group backed by Iran that has links to Hamas] was telling
UNIFIL [United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon] to stay on their
bases. Meaning, they knew this was coming. The scope of the
intelligence failure in Israel is almost equivalent to literally 50
years ago [when a coalition of Arab states attacked Israel on Yom
Kippur, starting the Yom Kippur War]. This surprise is equivalent,
although in 1973 we’re talking about Arab conventional armies. Now
we’re talking about non-state actors, although backed by a state,
Iran. [Tehran, Israel’s avowed enemy, has long supported proxy
groups opposed to Israel].

HIRSH: In 1973, you also had much more of an equivalence of forces to
the point where Israel almost lost. I mean, now you have a modern
military and air force going against Hamas as a non-state actor, as
you say. It seems almost like an act of communal suicide by Hamas to
do this.

ROSS: It is, but think about what they’ve done. They have grabbed
hostages. And they’re hoping the hostages will be a deterrent
against Israel coming in on the ground. To show you the stakes, they
were prepared to do this knowing what the likely Israeli response is
going to be. And in a sense, Hezbollah is sort of being held at this
point as kind of a possible hammer that if you [the Israelis] come in,
then we’ll come in from the north. They have the ability to do
something similar, at least in terms of grabbing and holding for a few
days, or taking hostages back to Lebanon. There are Israeli villages
that are close to the border in the north so that’s a very real
option. And no doubt right now it’s affecting the Israeli choice on
how and what they’re going to do in response.

HIRSH: To what extent do you think the government of Iran and
Hezbollah were actively involved in planning this, if they were?

ROSS: I believe they were. There clearly is very close to
coordination between Hezbollah and Hamas. As I said, if it’s true
that Hezbollah was telling UNIFIL to stay in their bases yesterday,
they for sure had advance warning.

When you look at the character of Israeli intelligence to be surprised
in this fashion, it’s like any strategic surprise: In retrospect,
you may find you had all the information that you needed to have, but
you had made a series of [wrong] assumptions about how the other side
is operating. Also, in the last couple of weeks, you had Hamas going
back to sending protesters to the border in Gaza, creating turmoil.
Then there were negotiations [indicating] that Hamas just wanted to
get the Israelis to increase the number of workers in Israel and Gaza.
And to me, it now looks like this was all part of a feint.

HIRSH: In some respects, the most astonishing thing about this is the
intelligence failure. Is it fair to ask to what extent do you think
the Biden administration might be responsible? They were caught by
surprise as much as the Israelis were.

ROSS: There’s no particular reason why the U.S. would be training
enormous intelligence assets on Hamas, which has never been a threat
to us. So it’s pretty hard to say this was a failure on our part.
But I think it’s unmistakable that it’s an Israeli intelligence
failure.

HIRSH: Can you talk more about why Hamas felt this was necessary to
do now, and how this is related to the Israeli deal with Saudi Arabia?

ROSS: I think this is where the hand of Iran is also a very prominent
one — that Iran clearly began to think that if there is this kind of
a normalization deal, it’s a transformative event in the region. And
not because suddenly it’s this coalition arrayed against them.
It’s that you’re taking the religious content of the Arab-Israeli
conflict out by having the custodian of the two holy mosques be in
accord with the nation state of the Jewish people. In addition, there
is just the prospect that you’re going to see these countries that
are successful economically joining together and becoming more
successful at a time when Iran economically is continuing to fail.
They call themselves the resistance coalition but in truth, they’re
the coalition of the failed and the failing states. So [Iran and
Hamas] are being confronted by what could make them lag even farther
behind.

HIRSH: You co-wrote a _Washington Post_ op-ed piece a few weeks ago
with David Makovsky about how Oslo could still be revived because
there’s still no alternative. How do you see that prospect now in
the face of what’s going on today?

ROSS: During the heat of what is now a war and what looks to be a
terrible one, I think no one is going to be thinking about the future.
When this is over there is going to be this reality that’s going to
cut in two different ways. There are going to be those who will say
something has to be done with the Palestinians or we’re going to
continue to face things of this sort. And others will say, look, we
have no margin for error. You saw what the threat is and so forth. So
you’ll have that debate. There’s going to be a lot of
soul-searching in Israel when this is over. We cannot ignore the
Palestinians as an issue — this will be part of the discussion after
this war is over.

HIRSH: Let’s talk a little bit about the history of this, because
Benjamin Netanyahu has been very, very involved going back to the late
nineties, his first stint as prime minister. And there was a sense
that Netanyahu’s goal even then was to destroy the Oslo peace
process. And it seemed as if he succeeded, but without putting up any
kind of alternative other than the Iron Dome and pretending that what
effectively became a giant concentration camp, which is Gaza, wasn’t
there. Could you talk a little bit about that?

ROSS: Look, one of the most interesting things is he was obviously a
major critic of Oslo, but when he first became prime minister, he
said, “We’ll respect it.” And the truth is he did the Wye River
and Hebron accords, [two agreements that furthered implementation of
the Oslo process in the late 1990s]. And even now he has said, you
know, they’ve said we don’t want the Palestinian Authority to
collapse. So in a sense, he has certainly acted in a way that weakened
the P.A. over time, even as he understands there isn’t a real
alternative to it. I always felt historically that in the end, he
understood you have to reach some kind of deal with the Palestinians
because they’re not going to go away, but he always wanted to build
Israel’s leverage. Look at how he talks about the breakthrough with
Saudi Arabia. He said once this happens, this will help with the
Palestinians, too, because they’ll have to become more realistic in
terms of what’s possible.

HIRSH: But “realistic” is a loaded term, one that came up after
Jared Kushner’s effort to resolve the conflict, because what it
meant was essentially that the Palestinians were going to simply going
to have to accept Israeli diktat, which meant no state and no
military, and no one expected that that would ever happen. So is
Netanyahu’s approach a realistic one or was it always sort of
blowing smoke?

ROSS: I don’t know that it was always blowing smoke, but I think
you have two poles of opinion. You recall [then-Secretary of State]
John Kerry saying that nothing would be possible with any Arab states
until you solve the Palestinian issue. And then you have the Abraham
Accords where Arab states were saying, look, we’re not going to deny
ourselves what’s in our interest because we have to wait for the
Palestinians who we think have a leadership that will never allow them
to do anything. And you see what’s been going on with the Saudis,
once again reflecting that, “Yeah, we need to do something for the
Palestinians, but we’re not going to wait until the end of the
occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state with borders and a
capital.” So the Abraham Accords was, “Let’s do something that
materially improves life for Palestinians and allows you to ensure
that two states remains as an option.” So it’s a far cry from
where things used to be.

The irony for me is how far Hamas is going, given what the potential
for destruction in Gaza is going to be.

HIRSH: What do you expect the Israelis to do now, looking ahead?

ROSS: They will hit hard from the air. They will try to carry out
some operations that will be just as surprising to Hamas as what Hamas
has done to them. You can bet that all of Hamas’ leaders went deep
underground. There’s just the general reality we’ve seen over
time, that every time there’s a war of this sort there’s a lot of
sympathy to begin with for Israel, but the longer it goes on and the
more they inflict on the Palestinians, especially in Gaza, the more
there’ll be pressure to try to bring this to an end.

Israel also faces the prospect of a multi-front war with some extreme
Israeli Arabs trying to disrupt movement within Israel itself. So they
have to think about that. Hamas has hostages in Gaza, and the Israelis
are not going to simply turn a blind eye to that. They will try to
find out where they are. They’re going to try to rescue them. But
Hamas won’t keep them in one place, they will disperse them.
They’ll also have them deep underground. Hamas has literally tens of
miles of tunnels. And all the tunnels are booby-trapped where the
entrances are. So Israel’s options are very difficult.

But Israel, in the end, will also want to inflict an unmistakable
defeat. Israel will want to destroy as much of Hamas’s military as
possible. With Gaza being a dense population, it means there’s going
to be a lot of Gazans who get killed in the process as well. And Hamas
did this knowing full well what the likely consequences would be.

HIRSH: Do you think that this is as consequential as, say, the 1973
war?

ROSS: I don’t see it that way for the reasons that you said at the
outset, that there are no Arab states involved. Then you had over
2,800 Israelis dead; now you have probably hundreds dead. But I think
it’s still a kind of earthquake within Israel. Israel’s sense of
security will have been fundamentally altered. There’s certain to be
a kind of state commission after this to investigate how this kind of
a surprise could have happened. In 1973, the recommendation was just
for the head of military and intelligence to be the ones to pay the
price. The reservists came out in the streets and forced [Prime
Minister] Golda Meir and [Defense Minister] Moshe Dayan to resign. I
don’t see anything like that now, but we’re going to see a very
thorough soul-searching in the aftermath of this in Israel as well.

HIRSH: Is there any possibility at all, do you think, this becomes a
wider war, given Iran’s alleged involvement already, and the other
Arab states?

ROSS: I don’t know whether Arab states will become involved. Israel
will not attack Iran right now because it will have enough that it’s
doing with Gaza potentially as well. You’re going to see them
bolster the northern border. To try to anticipate that Hezbollah might
try to do exactly what Hamas has done. It is inconceivable that Israel
won’t go in on the ground in Gaza at this point, but they don’t
want to go into Gaza in a way that plays into what and where Hamas is
kind of positioning itself to deal with this.

HIRSH: What, if anything, can the Biden administration do right now
to help Israel?

ROSS: There is a high probability of exhausting Iron Dome missiles,
so the Americans should be prepared to provide that help, though
Israel isn’t going to need a lot. Also additional money for supply
lines and the like and publicly not just standing by Israel, but
saying Israel has the right of self-defense and then resisting calls
for an early cease-fire. An early cease-fire means that Hamas has a
big victory. The worst thing in the world for the Middle East is for
Hamas to look successful and say this is the answer for dealing with
Israel. You don’t want Hamas to determine Saudi Arabia’s future.

HIRSH: Is there any reason to think that Russia is involved, given
the closer relations it has with Iran, including weapons sent to aid
Russia in its conflict in Ukraine?

ROSS: I don’t know that they’re involved, but they’re not
unhappy. They’d like everyone’s attention to be diverted. So the
idea that there can be turmoil elsewhere, from their standpoint,
that’s a positive.

HIRSH: Going back a few decades, do you think anything could have
been done differently? I’m thinking in particular of Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to withdraw from Gaza and then the
2006 elections that brought Hamas to power. And then, of course, they
seized power undemocratically. Those elections were pushed by the
George W. Bush administration at the time.

ROSS: At the time I said to Sharon, “Your declaration of withdrawal
is perfect, but it should be tied to some behaviors by the
Palestinians assuming responsibility.” One of my arguments was that
you don’t want to put Hamas into a position where they can claim
credit. Their violence drove you out. The Bush administration should
have brokered a set of understandings about how to do some test cases
to show that the P.A. was in control so that the withdrawal was the
victory of [President of the Palestinian Authority] Abu Mazen and the
Palestinian Authority, not a victory for Hamas.

What Sharon said to me is, “I can’t let their irresponsibility
define our future.” Meaning, if they don’t do what they’re
supposed to do, then I’m stuck there forever. It was a powerful
argument, but it overlooked that at least this should have been
tested. I was not in favor of the elections when they were held by
Sharon at the time. People forget that Hamas boycotted the original
election in 1996 because we had criteria in there that you were
supposed to be against violence and supposed to be signing agreements
and so forth. And I was saying to the Bush administration in 1996:
“Apply the same standard.”

_MICHAEL HIRSH is the former foreign editor and chief diplomatic
correspondent for Newsweek, and the former national editor
for _POLITICO Magazine_._

_POLITICO is the global authority on the intersection of politics,
policy, and power. It is the most robust news operation and
information service in the world specializing in politics and policy,
which informs the most influential audience in the world with insight,
edge, and authority. Founded in 2007, POLITICO has grown to a team of
700 working across North America, more than half of whom are editorial
staff._

* Gaza
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* siege
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* Hamas
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* armed struggle
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* Israel
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*
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*
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*
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