Similarly, Yasser Arafat, whose Palestine Liberation Organization was considered a terrorist group by Israel and the West, recognized Israel’s right to exist in a pivotal 1988 speech, paving the way for the Oslo peace process. Leaders of the two organizations, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, later became prime ministers of Israel.
In the years before Israel’s birth, they had been responsible for a horrific massacre in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin and the Irgun bombing of the King David Hotel, killing ninety-one people. After all, Israel itself had been birthed in part by the Irgun and Stern Gang (or Lehi), groups considered terrorist by the British and the UN. “The continuation of this situation,” Haniyeh wrote to Bush, “will encourage violence and chaos in the whole region.”Ī few lonely voices in the United States and Israel urged that the moment be seized and Hamas coaxed toward moderation.
This essentially added up to an offer of de facto recognition of Israel with a cessation of hostilities-two of the key US and Israeli demands of Hamas. “We are so concerned about stability and security in the area that we don’t mind having a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders and offering a truce for many years,” Haniyeh wrote to Bush. In his June 2006 hand-written note to President Bush that Jerome Segal delivered to the State Department and the National Security Council, he requested a direct dialogue with the administration.ĭespite Hamas’s charter calling for the elimination of Israel, Haniyeh’s conciliatory note to the American president conveyed a different message. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, suddenly responsible for governing and facing a mounting economic, humanitarian and political catastrophe, sought to defuse the situation. In the wake of the elections, Hamas was no longer the militant opposition to a ruling Fatah party, but a legally elected government operating under siege. Which brings us back to that Washington-bound letter from Gaza. These punitive measures were to remain in place until Hamas renounced violence (including stopping its cross-border rocket attacks), recognized Israel, and accepted all previous agreements based on the Oslo peace accords. As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed. Avi Shlaim, a veteran of the Israeli army, author of numerous books on Middle East history, and professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, wrote:Īmerica and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracizing and demonizing the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. Human rights organizations denounced the measures as collective punishment.
Child welfare groups began to report a sharp rise in poverty and chronic child malnutrition, anemia, typhoid fever and potentially fatal infant diarrhea.
“We have to make much thinner, but not enough to die.” Only years later did researchers prove that Weisglass was speaking literally: Israeli officials had restricted food imports to levels below those necessary to maintain a minimum caloric intake. “It’s like meeting with a dietician,” remarked Dov Weisglass, a top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The Quartet suspended economic aid and Israel severely curtailed the flow of goods in and out of Gaza. Bush strongly pressured Abbas not to join a unity government. Nevertheless, Israel and “the Quartet”-the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations-refused to recognize the outcome of the democratic elections, labeling Hamas a “terrorist organization,” which sought Israel’s destruction.
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