Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Hamas' choice: Recognition or resistance in the age of Obama


Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 6 July 2009

"....This is the dilemma that every Palestinian leadership, and perhaps almost every liberation movement, has eventually had to confront. It is a choice, as political scientist Tamim Barghouti has pointed out, between recognition and legitimacy.....


Some Palestinians worry that despite such assurances, Hamas has already set off down the very path Meshal warned about and risks squandering the sacrifices Palestinians made, especially in Gaza. Haidar Eid, an independent analyst in Gaza, wrote before Meshal's speech that some of the early enthusiastic Hamas responses to Obama's Cairo speech, as well as acceptance of the two-state solution, indicated "the beginning of a process of deterioration -- even Osloization -- not only in rhetoric, but also in action." This writer has heard similar fears voiced by Palestinians from the West Bank and recently in Amman. Given that many Palestinians consider that a previous generation of resistance leaders turned their backs on their people's most fundamental interests and rights -- all the while claiming to uphold them -- such fears are far from irrational or uncommon....... "

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