{"id":24534,"date":"2012-12-11T11:20:23","date_gmt":"2012-12-11T07:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=24534"},"modified":"2012-12-11T11:20:29","modified_gmt":"2012-12-11T07:20:29","slug":"what-meshals-visit-really-means-for-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/showcase\/what-meshals-visit-really-means-for-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"What Meshal’s Visit Really Means for the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A few days ago, Khaled Meshal made a triumphal, first-ever visit to Gaza to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Hamas\u2019 founding and the movement\u2019s \u201ctriumph\u201d in Operation Pillar of Cloud.\u00a0 Hundreds of thousands of Gazans greeted him as he delivered a hardcore message of defiance to Israel.\u00a0 He avowed, in a statement that likely deliberately echoed the Likud motto, that the resistance would liberate every inch of Palestine from \u201cthe river to the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am not about to defend the extremism or intransigence of Meshal\u2019s message.\u00a0 But I will explain the important aspects of this speech, his visit to Gaza, and what they portend for the future.\u00a0 First, while Meshal may\u2019ve delivered an unyielding speech, he is known as a far more moderate and flexible leader than his Gaza-based Hamas counterparts.\u00a0 Mahmoud Zahar, for example, the Hamas foreign minister, has refused to participate in any public events with Meshal.<\/p>\n

That means to me that there was a certain element of political theater in Meshal\u2019s speech.\u00a0 He was in a sense coming into the lion\u2019s den in Gaza.\u00a0 A place that had just successfully resisted an Israeli onslaught and won major concessions from Israel in the ceasefire agreement.\u00a0 He could not very well sound like Mahmoud Abbas or Salaam Fayyad before such people.<\/p>\n

There were several important aspects of this speech that should be noted.\u00a0 In what must\u2019ve been a shocking moment for many who attended, the flags of Fatah joined those of Hamas in the crowd.\u00a0 Instead of warring with each other, the rivals buried the hatchet, at least for the day if not longer.\u00a0 Meshal made a point of affirming it is critical that Palestinians unite and solve their differences.\u00a0 This may signal the resurgence of a move toward a national unity government, a goal that has eluded both factions for the past six years, since Fatah launched a failed coup attempt at the behest of Elliot Abrams and the Bush administration in 2007.<\/p>\n

Several observers have commented on Meshal\u2019s future ambitions.\u00a0 It\u2019s fairly clear that there is substantial resistance to his moderate course among the Gaza Hamas leadership, including Haniyeh and especially Zahar.\u00a0 The group\u2019s ultimate leader announced a few months ago that he would be stepping down from his position.\u00a0 Egypt allegedly requested that Meshal remain Hamas\u2019 leader for the time being.\u00a0 But he won\u2019t stay forever.<\/p>\n

If Hamas and Fatah can mend fences there will be new Palestinian elections.\u00a0 It is quite possible that Meshal might run for president of the PA.\u00a0 Replacing Abbas, someone who\u2019s outlived any usefulness he ever had, would breathe new life into the PA under a unified banner.<\/p>\n

All of this is deeply alarming to the Likudist government, which sees Palestinian unity as a dagger in Israel\u2019s heart.\u00a0 The loss of a quiescent PA under the Fatah-led rump regime would be a major blow to the Occupation.\u00a0 Israel wants either to maintain the status quo of Israeli domination of a feeble PA or to negotiate an agreement that offers little to the Palestinians and much to the Israelis.\u00a0 With Meshal leading the PA, the Palestinians would likely present a far tougher negotiating position.<\/p>\n

It is not Meshal\u2019s terrorist past or his rejectionist rhetoric that Israel fears.\u00a0 It is his status as an effective leader who might actually deliver a real peace deal, but one which would demand more compromises than Israel is willing to make.<\/p>\n

If Israel and especially the Obama administration were far-sighted and pragmatic they\u2019d realize that a PA under Meshal, that represented all the Palestinian people, would be a political entity that could negotiate a real, lasting peace agreement with Israel.\u00a0 They would free Marwan Barghouti from an Israeli prison so that he could become prime minister under Meshal and lead a true unity coalition.\u00a0 But they are neither pragmatic nor far-sighted and will not rise to the occasion.<\/p>\n

If Obama continues to reject Hamas, he runs the risk of maintaining a U.S. policy that becomes so out of touch with reality on the ground that events take their course without this country being able to play any meaningful role.\u00a0 This is precisely the posture we were forced to adopt during the Arab Spring.\u00a0 Our former strongmen allies fell and we were so neutered by our support for discredited oppressive regimes, we couldn\u2019t take up the cause of democracy and reform as we should.\u00a0 This will happen with Hamas as well unless we change our tune.<\/p>\n

There will be those among the pro-Israelists here who will quarrel and say that anyone who has called for the liberation of all of Palestine and said Israel was illegitimate is someone with whom peace is impossible.\u00a0 To them I say, Yitzhak Shamir once bombed the King David Hotel and assassinated Count von Bernadotte.\u00a0 Begin once massacred Palestinians at Deir Yassin.\u00a0 Sharon slaughtered Palestinians at Kfar Qassem and encouraged the Sabra and Shatilla massacre.\u00a0 Yitzhak Rabin called for breaking the bones of Palestinian protesters.<\/p>\n

Politicians say lots of things which they may or may not mean when they say them, while their future actions belie those earlier statements.\u00a0 What interests me is not the boilerplate praise for the resistance, but the concrete evidence that he is a leader who understands the need for flexibility in resolving the conflict.<\/p>\n

A final important note on a major mistranslation of one particular phrase in Meshal\u2019s speech as covered by the Observer and the Guardian.\u00a0 It was especially disconcerting that this error was reported by Harriet Sherwood, who is an otherwise excellent Guardian Israel correspondent.\u00a0 Their original reports quoted<\/a>\u00a0 Meshal saying:<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t kill Jews<\/strong> because they are Jews. We kill<\/strong> the Zionists because they are conquerors and we will continue to kill<\/strong> anyone who takes our land and our holy places \u2026 We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone.<\/p>\n

As Electronic Intifada pointed out<\/a>, the Arabic root for \u201ckill\u201d and \u201cfight\u201d are similar.\u00a0 But any Arab speaker would know that the specific form of the word Meshal used in the speech meant the latter and not the former.\u00a0 In fact, the Guardian corrected the mistranslation and noted the error.\u00a0 Though the original version will doubtless be heralded by MEMRI and all the other hasbara outfits that live for this stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: The words were predictably fiery and pugnacious but Meshal’s visit points to a new direction for Palestine. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":468,"featured_media":24538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,82,483,119,60,482],"tags":[4655,16079,18300,8468,575,278,227,18311,726,5632,9901,192,12607,2317,18297,1747,4302,1808,2204,6084,16077,1541,18302,16074],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/468"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}