Hamas has supposedly agreed to a cease-fire with the Israelis. I'll believe it when I see it, and it could all come to naught. But maybe, just maybe, it's an opening for the Palestinians who want to co-exist with the Jews, not just exterminate them.
Hamas, the Islamic extremist group, said yesterday it had decided to suspend attacks against Israel, opening the way for a delayed American-backed peace plan to swing into action. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, said in Gaza that, "having studied all the developments", the organisation had reached a decision to call "a truce, or a suspension of fighting activities".The truce is likely to be for three months and comes with conditions - particularly that Israel stops killing Palestinians, demolishing their homes and starts freeing prisoners - and still has to be finalised with other militant groups. The decision was taken despite continuing actions by the Israeli army to kill Hamas operatives, which in the past would have been enough to provoke it into a new wave of attacks. But American pressure has been so strong, and the Hamas infrastructure so weakened by Israeli strikes, that it has decided to agree to a pause.
This might be why.
Something radical has changed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The change is not the views of the Israeli top brass, who still believe in using an iron fist. It is not in the minds of the Palestinian extremists who send young men to blow themselves up inside Israel; they still believe in eternal struggle. How then to explain the fact that Hamas, the Islamic extremist movement, is preparing to sign a three-month truce, obliging it to stop attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians?Posted by Alan at June 28, 2003 09:17 AMIn return for accepting what Palestinians widely see as a "surrender document", Hamas will get almost nothing from the Israelis, not even a promise that the lives of its leadership will be secure. The change is not on the ground, but 5,900 miles away, in the mind of President George W Bush. He told the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, earlier this month that bringing peace to the Middle East was a "divine mission" for him. The Palestinians were astonished at these words - the last they expected to hear from a US president.
Mr Bush's divine mission is gathering strength, and all the Arab leaders are scrambling to avoid being trampled by the diplomatic and military juggernaut. The most scared of all are the Syrians, whose capital, Damascus, has been the home of the exiled leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
With American troops in Iraq on its eastern frontier, Syria is coming under intolerable pressure to heed American wishes and send radical Palestinian leaders away. The fact Washington has offered no explanation - let alone an apology - for a raid on June 19 in which five border guards were wounded and taken away is the clearest indication that the US is no respecter of Syrian sovereignty.
The exiled leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Khaled Mashal and Ramadan Shallah, have been moved from their Damascus offices to a Palestinian refugee camp. Their next stop would most likely be Beirut - within range of the Israeli air force and Mossad hit squads. Even the compliant Lebanese might want to move them on but where to? No Arab country dares provide a haven.
That is why, according to Palestinian officials, the exiled leadership has all but signed the ceasefire proposal. The local leadership in Gaza is resisting this decision, which they see as a surrender of fundamental principles. If God has decreed there should be no Jewish state in the Middle East, they argue, who has the right to declare a truce?
"The exiled leadership sees the regional picture, which is not at all favourable," said a diplomat. "The local leadership sees things differently."