Hamas changing?
Hamas, the Islamist group that runs the Palestinian government, said on Thursday it could never have imagined the vast international pressure it would come under after winning democratic elections earlier this year.In a candid article published in the Palestinian press, Ahmed Youssef, a political adviser to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, said the group had been shocked by the strength of opposition to its electoral victory.
“It went beyond all imagination,” wrote Youssef.
“The government … did not expect the pressures and the siege imposed on our people would be so harsh, so strong and so large in scale.”
Youssef’s is the latest in a series of articles by Hamas officials in recent weeks either seeking to explain themselves or calling on the Palestinian community to refrain from violence and think more carefully about how it opposes Israel.
That last line is especially encouraging. A Hamas that renounced violence and agreed to peaceful means to settle its disputes with Israel could indeed help bring a lot of change to a region that sorely needs it.
A Hamas which renounces violence would not be Hamas. It’s only reason for existing is to violently destroy Israel and supplant it with an Islamist, fundamentalist, theocratic dictatorship.
Hamas will either continue in accordance with its charter and violent raison d’etre, or it will be militarily defeated. No other options are possible.