Danny Rubinstein elaborates on some of the points Zvi Bar’el made.
“The Palestinians distinguish between extremists and moderates in Hamas, and those who accept that distinction have long made note of the way foreign Hamas officials take a harder line than Hamas leaders in the Palestinian territories.”
“The distinction could be seen in the last two years, with regard to the hudna (cease-fire), which last summer the government of Mahmoud Abbas managed to cobble together.”
The important point to take away from this article, is an extension of what we noted yesterday. Even in the world of extremism, there are nuances and differences. Israel has refused to understand and deal with the reality of Hamas, and instead prefers to treat Hamas as a projection of Hamas-as-Israel-sees-it. But this is true not just of the Hamas, but of the Palestinians in general. Israel refuses to deal with the Palestinians and their leadership as they are. Rather it believes it can choose for the Palestinians who their leaders are, by political manipulation or assassination.
Ari Shavit had an article the other day where he laid out the Army’s justification for the assassination. Essentially the Israeli army concedes that in the short term these assassinations will lead to the death of more Israelis and more turmoil. But in the longer term, they claim that if they can clear the deck of the likes of Yassin, Arafat and Nassralah, a more moderate Palestinian leadership will come to the fore to replace them.
This delusional combination of arrogance and willful ignorance explains, for example, why Sharon supported the Hamas at its inception. Then too, the idea was to create an alternative Palestinian leadership more malleable to Israel’s will than the Fatah. Just like this past policy backfired, there is no reason to believe the current incarnation of that policy will be any more successful.
