Post #4134777

@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl The point about Gazans as Hamas' hostages is something often said by e.g. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (a Palestinian American peace activist), in fact his book “Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages” has just been released today. So I'd say it's a valid perspective. That said, it's a fairly optimistic one. It presupposes a population to which Hamas' ideology is foreign, who want basically what people in Western societies want, just waiting to be liberated from Hamas' yoke to focus on their own development. If this is the case, we should think all the polls showing Hamas with a huge lead are heavily skewed, and we should expect them to lose in the planned November Palestinian legislative election, and for constructive forces to win – maybe even Salam Fayyad's list. A less optimistic view is that Hamas' ideology of eternal unrelenting fight for the destruction of Jewish state is actually ubiquitous in Palestinian society, with Hamas being just one religious embodiment of it — and Fayyad's peaceful constructive vision is marginal. If this is true, then it's not a question of removing Hamas as if they were a foreign occupying force. The whole society would need to redefine itself and change its governing ideology to wanting to build something for themselves next to the Jewish state. We'll see, I guess.