Getting up close and personal with Hamas

Getting up close and personal with Hamas
Joel Brinkley

Sunday, June 24, 2007
IN THE GAZA Strip last week, Hamas fighters grinned and preened as they drove around in new Jeep Cherokees seized from Fatah leaders in their successful coup. Hamas is now in undisputed control of Gaza, but calling that a pyrrhic victory may be too generous.

While President Bush and other Western leaders stumble over each other as they scramble to embrace Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader, the leaders of Hamas are locked away in their new Gaza kingdom. Within days, tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid will begin sluicing into Fatah bank accounts -- while little more than emergency assistance trickles into Gaza. Israel is still debating whether to resume deliveries of gasoline. The Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, said it best early last week: "'The Palestinians have come close to putting, by themselves, the last nail in the coffin of the Palestinian cause." That's a time-worn truism about the Palestinians, but the way events developed through the week, it seemed to fit Hamas best.

I know the leaders of Hamas. And I am certain they will be the last people on earth to realize that their coup has backfired. During three decades in daily journalism, working in more than 50 nations around the world, I have never met as determined a group of dogmatic ideologues. During a reporting trip in Gaza a few years ago, I set out to meet and interview each of the five major Hamas leaders. I got to four of them. This was before the elections last year that put Hamas in power -- before, even, the Israeli air strikes that killed several of them.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/06/24/EDGONP1JNA1.DTL

More than a year in power has changed them not at all. They have proved themselves incapable of looking beyond their dogma.

..but it depends on what is more important. There are those who actually do care for the lives and way of life of the palestenains...and there are those who believe that the israeli occupation is the "evils of evils" and that its removal is far more important than anything else...including the lives and quality of life of the palestenians.

Before the israeli withdrawl perhaps it wasnt clear to some that there is actually a difference between removing the occupation and palestenian quality of life, but i would suggest that the short sightness of that is possibly a result of the 'instant gratification generation"...where one cant see past an immediate problem to take a larger view.

That said it should at least be clear to some:

pre intifada I gaza had one of the fastest growing economies.....in a secular society

post israeli withdrawl, gaza is now occupied by a fanatical gang of religious thugs, who have no use for "human rights" with a "dead economy" a locked in population.
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I'm sure those in the westbank are looking over at gaza, at the new occupiers and are wondering if there is a better way to "remove the israeli occupation" then via violence....or if they are even ready for independance. The most interesting question of all, is are those nice "useful idiotes" even willing to listen to the palestenians?

imagine the advances that could be made.

But they cannot change: "They have proved themselves incapable of looking beyond their dogma."