Hamas – No Longer a Terrorist Organization?
We assumed this had to be the next step following the UN vote providing Palestine — as a state — with “observer status” at the UN. What’s next … Al-Qaeda?
From The Blaze:
Following Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ success with his bid for statehood at the United Nations last week, the prime minister of Hamas is seeking to get his organization removed from designated terrorist lists.
An offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is primarily located in the Gaza Strip and has become markedly more aggressive since Israel pulled out of the area in 2005. A designated terror group by the United States and other international bodies, the organization’s founding documents call for the destruction of Israel.
Now, though, they are turning the tables, and are marketing themselves as the victims.
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Sunday to a European delegation that Hamas is a “national liberation movement” seeking only to defend itself against Israeli “aggression,” the Jerusalem Post reports.
“It is no exaggeration to say that the occupation is committing war crimes, given the cruelty and hardship our people faced in these eight days of war,” he added, saying Hamas eventually aims for “a Palestinian state with complete sovereignty, with Jerusalem as its capital, and the return of the refugees to the lands they owned in 1948.”
Though such an outcome would effectively mean the end of the state of Israel, Haniyeh claims he is happy to coexist with Jews, just not those in Israel.
“We have no problem with Jews worldwide, and we don’t oppose Jews because of their Jewish identity,” Channel 10 reportedly quoted him saying. “We have a problem with the occupation that controls our land.”
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The land isn’t theirs, hasn’t ever been theirs. It has belonged to one empire or another for the past 2000 years easily. If Israel wasn’t there, the land would probably have been divided by Syria, Jordan and Egypt. I doubt either of the 3 countries would have been so lenient with the Palestinians trying to form their own country.