Abbas has no right to ask Hamas to recognize Israel

By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Palestine The de facto chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas is once again asking Hamas to recognize Israel as a precondition for the formation of a prospective national unity government. In a speech in Ramallah on Saturday, 28 February, Abbas said any Palestinian unity government " will have to be committed to our values and respect agreements previously signed by the Palestinian Authority.” Abbas didn’t explicitly say that Hamas would have to recognize Israel. However, this is exactly what every Palestinian listening to his speech understood from his statements. Well, it is really sad and lamentable that the Palestinian political discourse has stooped to this level of national apostasy. Palestinian leaders from time immemorial never stopped urging our masses to resist Zionist aggression, and never give up the dream of earning our freedom from the cruel hands of Zionism. Hence, the fact that a late comer shamelessly urges his own people to recognize the legitimacy of their oppressors and dispossessors, who have just incinerated hundreds of children in Gaza using White Phosphorus bombs, is more than demeaning and injurious to our collective national spirit. First of all, Abbas should realize, in case he doesn’t, that recognizing Israel would mean a full-embrace of the Zionist narrative, a blaspheme by any other name. It would mean a recognition, or at least an acknowledgement, that Israel had the right to wrest Palestine from its rightful owners by way of employing murder, terror and ethnic cleansing. It would mean that all the massacres and atrocities Israel perpetrated were legitimate. In other words, Abbas is effectively demanding that Hamas and other Palestinians morph themselves into full-fledged Zionists. But Israel seeks more than just a mere recognition of its “right to exist.” The nefarious entity insists that all Palestinians (and all Arabs) recognize her as a Jewish state. In real terms, this would imply that the sizeable Palestinian community in Israel, whose existence in their ancestral land, had preceded the advent of modern Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe by numerous centuries, will have to be expelled, partially or wholly, at some point in the future? So, one might really wonder if the PA leader is asking Hamas to recognize Israel’s “right” to expel more than 1.5 million Palestinians on the ground that Israel is a “Jewish state” and that non-Jews have only a transient right to live within the state? Indeed, one would be stating the obvious by arguing that neither Abbas, nor Fatah, nor Hamas, not even the 23 Arab kings and presidents-for-life, have the right to speak on behalf of these admirable Palestinians who clang to their homes despite all the harassment and institutionalized persecution meted out to them by successive Zionist governments. Apart from Zionist criminality, there are a thousand other reasons why no dignified Palestinian leadership should not recognize Israel. The PLO, which everyone is trying to rehabilitate these days, lost its chastity when it was duped into recognizing Israel through the scandalous Oslo Agreement. And instead of receiving a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, as the famous mantra goes, in exchange for that unethical recognition, it got more Jewish-only colonies, narrower horizons for the Palestinian masses and a Nazi-like gigantic wall that effectively transformed Palestinian towns and villages into open-air prisons. So, I want to ask Mr. Abbas and his cohorts. Did Israel recognize a viable and sovereign Palestinian state in exchange for that stupid PLO recognition? I am asking this question because even the stupidest and most demented Palestinian wouldn’t have given Israel a free recognition? Furthermore, I want to ask you Mr. President, which Israel do you want Hamas to recognize? Is it Israel according to the partition plan? Is it Israel according to the 1949 armistice agreement? Is it Israel according to the pre-1967 borders? Is it Israel with East Jerusalem? Is it Israel with the Golan Heights? Is it Israel with Shaba Province? Or is it Greater Israel which according to some rabbinic authorities includes Jordan (Eastern Yeretz Yisrael!!), Syria, Lebanon, as well as large parts of Egypt, Iraq and northern Saudi Arabia? I am posing these questions because until today, Israel has no fixed borders. Didn’t you hear the gurus of Zionism claim during the recent blitzkrieg in Gaza that Israel had the right to prevent any international ship to access the blockaded and thoroughly starved coastal territory? More to the point, could you tell me Mr. President why a Palestinian government of national unity would have to recognize Israel when the Israeli government refuses to recognize Palestine? Aren’t you aware that the government which the notorious pathological liar, Benyamin Netanyahu, is trying to form will include manifestly fascist parties such as Habayt ha’yahudi (the Jewish Home), Ichud Leumi (National Union) Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is our Home) and Shas? Even Netanyahu himself doesn’t believe in a Palestinian state as evident from his vacuous charade about effecting economic prosperity in the West Bank. You are supposed to be an expert on Zionism and sufficiently familiar with the Nazi-like ideologies espoused by these racist parties. So, why haven’t you insisted on parity and reciprocity with Israel by demanding that the PA wouldn’t negotiate with any Israeli government that doesn’t recognize a truly sovereign and territorially contiguous Palestinian state on at least 100% of the occupied territories? I really can’t understand why the Palestinians have to give up all their “bargaining cards” when Israel continues to kill any realistic prospects for the creation of a Palestinian entity that is worthy of the name? Mr. President, one doesn’t have to be especially smart to tell Hillary Clinton and other western emissaries that they have no right to demand that Hamas recognize Israel and abandon armed struggle as long as the Israeli government includes fascist political parties that not only deny our right to freedom and self-determination but also go as far as demanding our enslavement, banishment and even physical extermination. You may examine their declared and undeclared platforms and see for yourself the evilness of their designs against our people. Yes, one doesn’t have to have a specially high IQ to utter these most logical words and put up a brave and dignified stance on behalf of our people. But one does have to be courageous, a character that the present PA leadership obviously doesn’t possess. Finally, we all know that there is not the slightest chance in hell that Hamas will recognize a Zionist Israel, mainly for religious and moral reasons. A Hamas that recognizes a Zionist Israel simply loses its raison d’etre.