Arab Extremists’ Logic Calls for Annihilation of Arabs in the Holy Land

by Dr. Robert D. Crane


  On January 6, 2009, the exiled political head of Hamas, Khalid Mish’al, in an article published in http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel-hamas, offered an “official” Hamas position on Palestinian Nakba Two, the first one being in 1948.  This policy statement, not published in the American media, is entitled “This Brutality Will Never Break Our Will.” 

  The first four paragraphs read as follows:

  “For 18 months my people in Gaza have been under siege, incarcerated inside the world’s biggest prison, sealed off from land, air and sea, caged and starved, denied even medication for our sick.  After the slow death policy came the bombardment.  In this most densely populated of places, nothing has been spared Israel’s warplanes, from government buildings to homes, mosques, hospitals, schools and markets.  More than 540 have been killed and thousands permanently maimed.  A third are women and children.  Whole families have been massacred, some while they slept.
  “This river of blood is being shed under lies and false pretexts.  For six months we in Hamas observed the ceasefire.  Israel broke it repeatedly from the start.  Israel was required to open crossings to Gaza, and extend the truce to the West Bank.  It proceeded to tighten its deadly siege of Gaza, repeatedly cutting electricity and water supplies.  The collective punishment did not halt, but accelerated - as did the assassinations and killings.  Thirty Gazans were killed by Israeli fire and hundreds of patients died as a direct effect of the siege during the so-called ceasefire.  Israel enjoyed a period of calm. Our people did not.

  “When this broken truce neared its end, we expressed our readiness for a new comprehensive truce in return for lifting the blockade and opening all Gaza border crossings, including Rafah.  Our calls fell on deaf ears.  Yet still we would be willing to begin a new truce on these terms following the complete withdrawal of the invading forces from Gaza.

  “No rockets have ever been fired from the West Bank.  But 50 died and hundreds more were injured there last year at Israel’s hands, while its expansionism proceeded relentlessly.  We are meant to be content with shrinking scraps of territory, a handful of cantons at Israel’s mercy, enclosed by it from all sides.  The truth is Israel seeks a one-sided ceasefire, observed by my people alone, in return for siege, starvation, bombardment, assassinations, incursions and colonial settlement.  What Israel wants is a gratuitous ceasefire.

  “The logic of those who demand that we stop our resistance is absurd.  They absolve the aggressor and occupier - armed with the deadliest weapons of death and destruction - of responsibility, while blaming the victim, prisoner and occupied.  Our modest, home-made rockets are our cry of protest to the world.  Israel and its American and European sponsors want us to be killed in silence.  But die in silence we will not.”

  What is missing here?  Nowhere does Khalid Mish’al, Head of Hamas’ Political Bureau, offer or even mention anything constructive about the future of the Holy Land.  This is perhaps because he correctly thinks that the two-state solution is a joke and incorrectly thinks that a federation of peoples is unrealistic.  The only other alternatives are either the enslavement and expulsion of all Palestinians or else the elimination of all Jews.  The Jews therefore, quite logically, have only one logical alternative, which is to enslave and then expel all Arabs, even though this would surely bring about the eventual destruction of Israel and of all the Jews along with it.

  Faced with this artificial dilemma, the three contending political parties in Israel would seem to have no alternative but to launch the Third Phase of response to Palestinian demands for self-determination, namely, urban warfare and its escalation until the Palestinians will have to either emigrate or die.  Probably half would die, mostly by choice, but the other half, about 600,000, might be driven into Egypt.  Most of the rest of the Palestinians, those in the West Bank, would probably prefer to flee to Jordan, as they did in 1948, and those who resisted could easily be eliminated over a period of a very few months.  Probably only a half-way solution will be chosen, which would merely postpone the inevitable.

  The only practical solution to the above dilemmas is for the responsible leaders of Hamas, the duly elected leadership, to dethrone the radicals, especially those who think they are defending Arab dignity by sending useless fire-crackers across the border into Israel.  The Palestinian government would then be free to enter into a permanent hudna based on immediate, unconditional recognition of the State of Israel as the basis for a decade or so of faith-based reconciliation and faith-based cooperation in removing all the injustices of the past sixty years in an Abraham Federation, as has been spelled out now for decades by supporting position papers, such as those from the Center for Economic and Social Justice.

  This solution clearly is humanly impossible, which is why both Jews and Arabs need to rely on a power beyond themselves in pursuit of peace, prosperity, and freedom through compassionate justice.  This was the profound commitment of President Ronald Reagan during our discussion when he asked me to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates in 1981.  This long-range strategic approach foundered when Israel, with the prior knowledge and support of U.S. policy makers, invaded Lebanon.  This started a series of initiatives by materialistic and myopic strategists, led personally by Henry Kissinger, who focused on mere survival through tactical compromise rather than on a higher framework of shared truth and its expression in transcendent law.

  The problem is that neither Mash’al nor the Likudniks have any political solutions, other than victory, which is no solution.  The commitment to victory without a governing paradigm of compassionate justice for all concerned is merely a step toward mutual annihilation.  Such a commitment is a good definition of extremism.

  It is precisely when there appears to be no humanly possible solution that we need to look for higher purposes than mere survival and freedom.  Throughout the history of civilizations and even of individual persons, whoever focuses only on the self-serving goals of survival or freedom will either die or become enslaved, because these are negative goals.  History is shaped by the creative pursuit of peace, prosperity, and freedom for every person and every community and of all humankind through truth and justice, which the Qur’an teaches is the purpose of being.