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<\/a>America’s New Scam?: Hamas Elections by Another Name is Still Hamas<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n Khaled Abu Toameh<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n If reports<\/a> about an agreement between the United States and Hamas concerning the terrorist group’s participation in the upcoming Palestinian Authority elections are true, the arrangement is not only outrageous, it is a fraud.<\/span><\/p>\n Hussein al-Sheikh, vice president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and deputy chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), revealed this week that Hamas would not participate in the November 28 parliamentary elections under its own name or in its current form. According to al-Sheikh, Hamas has reached an understanding<\/a> with the US permitting figures affiliated with the terrorist organization to participate through a “new political framework.”<\/span><\/p>\n If this account is accurate, the scheme amounts to a dangerous exercise in deception.<\/span><\/p>\n Changing Hamas’s name does not change Hamas. Pretending that Hamas-affiliated election candidates are somehow different from Hamas because they are running under another banner is a scam. If candidates are affiliated with Hamas, support Hamas or subscribe to its extremist ideology, what difference does the name of their electoral list make?<\/span><\/p>\n Would indirect affiliation with Hamas somehow be acceptable? Would Hamas supporters become moderates simply because the word “Hamas” does not appear on the ballot?<\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps they could call themselves the “Palestinian Peace Movement,” or the “Palestinian Party for Democracy and Transparency”? Would that suddenly transform an Islamist terrorist organization committed to jihad<\/i> (holy war) against Israel into a collection of liberal democrats?<\/span><\/p>\n This farce has been tried before. In January 2006, Hamas contested the PA parliamentary election not under the name Hamas, but under the seemingly innocuous banner Change and Reform. It won 74 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council, compared to 45 for the ruling Fatah faction.<\/span><\/p>\n What “change” and “reform” did Hamas ultimately bring?<\/span><\/p>\n The “change” was the establishment of a heavily armed Islamist regime in the Gaza Strip after Hamas violently seized control of the territory in 2007.<\/span><\/p>\n The “reform” consisted of building tunnels, manufacturing and smuggling rockets and other weapons, recruiting terrorists and indoctrinating generations of Palestinians in jihad<\/i> and hatred of Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n The world saw the ultimate expression of Hamas’s “Change and Reform” on October 7, 2023, when Hamas and other Palestinians invaded Israel, murdered 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and kidnapped hundreds more, and committed atrocities that triggered a devastating war whose consequences have been disastrous for Israelis and Palestinians alike.<\/span><\/p>\n After nearly three years of bloodshed, are Washington and other international actors really contemplating another experiment in pretending to rebrand Hamas?<\/span><\/p>\n The 2006 election should have taught everyone a lesson.<\/span><\/p>\n At the time, the United States and its European allies did not require Hamas, as a condition for participating in the election, to recognize Israel, renounce terrorism, and accept agreements signed between Israel and the PLO.<\/span><\/p>\n These conditions should have been imposed before<\/i> Hamas was allowed to enter the political system, not after<\/i> it had won control of parliament.<\/span><\/p>\n Hamas’s participation was especially cynical because the elections themselves were rooted in the Oslo Accords, which Hamas had always rejected.<\/span><\/p>\n The 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement, “Oslo II,” explicitly provided<\/a> for “direct, free and general political elections” for the Palestinian Legislative Council and the head of its executive authority. It also established detailed arrangements governing Palestinian Authority elections.<\/span><\/p>\n Hamas, in other words, rejected Oslo while exploiting the political institutions created by Oslo to reach power.<\/span><\/p>\n Now history appears in danger of repeating itself. PA President Mahmoud Abbas has made clear that Palestinian political factions seeking participation in the political system must accept<\/a> the PLO’s political program and international obligations, United Nations resolutions, and the principle of one authority, one law, and one legitimate security force.<\/span><\/p>\n Hamas, in practice, accepts none of these conditions. Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. It has never accepted the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” It rejects the Oslo Accords. Its ideology remains centered on “resistance” and the claimed “liberation” of Palestine \u2014 which in fact has never existed<\/a> \u2014 wishfully from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.<\/span><\/p>\n Most importantly, Hamas has still not demonstrated that it is prepared to surrender its weapons and cease functioning as an armed organization.<\/span><\/p>\n So, what exactly would qualify a Hamas-affiliated candidate to participate in elections? A declaration signed on a piece of paper?<\/span><\/p>\n Hamas will promise anything if doing so helps it survive and return to political legitimacy.<\/span><\/p>\n Before October 7, 2023, Hamas persuaded many people that it was just eager to improve economic conditions in the Gaza Strip. Hamas insisted<\/a> that it was only interested<\/a> in preserving the relative calm, increasing the number of Gazans permitted to work in Israel, and securing additional aid. Hamas, presumably as part of its deception, even publicly<\/a> punished Gazans who Then came October 7, 2023. That event should have destroyed forever the fantasy that Hamas’s tactical behavior can be confused with ideological moderation. Hamas has proved itself adept at telling outsiders what they want to hear while pursuing its long-term objectives.<\/span><\/p>\n The same danger applies to elections. A Hamas candidate does not stop being a Hamas candidate because he removes the Hamas logo from his campaign posters. A terrorist organization does not become moderate because it establishes a front party, recruits self-proclaimed “ If al-Sheikh’s description of the understanding with the Americans is correct, the question Washington needs to answer is simple: Why?<\/span><\/p>\n Why, after October 7, should anyone, let alone the Trump administration, be searching for formulas to facilitate Hamas’s return to Palestinian political life?<\/span><\/p>\n Why, nearly three years after October 7, 2023, does a terrorist organization such as Hamas continue to be treated by various international and regional parties as some kind of indispensable political actor? Hamas officials continue to participate in negotiations and meetings through regional mediators, while discussions increasingly seem aimed not at removing Hamas from Palestinian political life but at finding ways to accommodate it.<\/span><\/p>\n This message tells Palestinians, Hamas and other designated groups that terrorism carries no lasting political price \u2014 an outcome the Taliban in Afghanistan are enjoying all too well.<\/span><\/p>\n The lesson all these groups — including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) savagely ruling Iran — will inevitably draw is that if you survive long enough, the world will rehabilitate you.<\/span><\/p>\n The international community should instead make one principle clear: Hamas cannot remain both an armed terrorist organization and<\/i> a legitimate political actor. There can be no loophole called “Hamas-affiliated independents.” There can be no cosmetic rebranding and no supposedly “new political framework” designed to disguise the identity of candidates who continue to embrace Hamas and its jihadist ideology.<\/span><\/p>\n Stop the deception. Stop searching for ways to sneak Hamas back into Palestinian political life through the back door. It is not good for either their election or America’s.<\/span><\/p>\n Khaled Abu Toameh<\/strong> is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em> America’s New Scam?: Hamas Elections by Another Name is Still Hamas Khaled Abu Toameh Hussein al-Sheikh, vice president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and deputy chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), revealed this week that Hamas… has reached an understanding with the US permitting figures affiliated with the terrorist organization to participate [in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[33,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133363"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133363"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133428,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133363\/revisions\/133428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Changing Hamas’s name does not change Hamas. Pretending that Hamas-affiliated election candidates are somehow different from Hamas because they are running under another banner is a scam. If candidates are affiliated with Hamas, support Hamas or subscribe to its extremist ideology, what difference does the name of their electoral list make? Pictured: The Palestinian Legislative Council building in Ramallah on January 28, 2006, three days after its last election. (Photo by Zharan Hammad\/Getty Images)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
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