Israel has no legitimacy, period

By Khalid Amayreh


Recent statements by Palestinian Islamic leader Professor Aziz Duweik about the possibility of amending or even abandoning some clauses in Hamas’s charter have elicited a plethora of reactions in occupied Palestine and abroad. Some hostile groups have been quick to conclude that Hamas is now willing to recognize the legitimacy of Israel. Moreover, PA propaganda organs have deliberately twisted Duweik’s remarks, claiming that Hamas is finally following the footsteps of the PLO.Well, the truth is that none of this is true since sidestepping or even abandoning the so-called “Hamas charter” should never be confused with the Islamic liberation movement’s principled stance on the Zionist entity.

To begin with, the so-called Hamas’s charter was not a “Quran” or a religiously-binding constitution that must be followed meticulously. Nor was it an immutable ideological constant that any deviation from it would consign the deviator to hellfire for eternity.

In fact, the charter was no more than a hastily-formulated mobilizing document issued in the beginning of the first intifada in 1988 for the purpose of recruiting and encouraging people to resist the Israeli occupation.

Therefore, the charter should not be viewed as especially sacred or misconstrued as an inviolable covenant. And while many people would readily accept its basic premises especially with regard to Israel, namely that Israel is essentially an illegitimate body that must be eliminated, others would perfectly legitimately voice reservations concerning the stringent wording of the charter.

Undoubtedly, Zionist propagandists and spin doctors have exploited some of these vaguely-worded clauses in the charter to the fullest to spread the canard that Hamas is anti-Semitic and that its struggle for freedom and justice against the Nazi-like Israeli state is actually a form of anti-Semitism.

Of course, all Zionist claims to this effect are rubbish because Jews had been living in peace all over the Muslim world for close to 1400 years during which there was no Israel and no Zionism and no America to protect them. This happened while Jews living in Europe were constantly persecuted until fairly recently.

In light, it is necessary to set the record straight, namely that Hamas is not anti-Semitic and will never be anti-Semitic. Indeed, how can Hamas be anti-Semitic when the Palestinian people themselves are a Semitic people and when Islam, which constitutes Hamas’s ideology, is decidedly against any form of racism.

In short, Hamas is against Israel because Israel is evil, not because Israel is Jewish. Any claim or insinuation to the contrary is a sheer lie.

Having said that, it should be clearly understood that any amendment to Hamas’s charter, or even its complete annulment, doesn’t imply in any way that Hamas would recognize the legitimacy of Israel.

Never the less, it should be sufficiently clear that for Hamas and hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims, Israel has no legitimacy, period.

Israel has always been and will always be an illegitimate child of rape, a state born in sin, an entity based on mass murder, mass theft, mass lies, and mass ethnic cleansing of the natives. So, how can such an evil state be recognized as morally legitimate?

How can any honest human being, let alone Hamas, recognize such an entity as legitimate? How can those who would recognize Israel’s legitimacy face their conscience and sense of rectitude? How can they have eye-contact with five million refugees who have been dispersed to the four winds, having been expelled from their ancestral homeland in what is now Israel? How can they face historical truth? How can they face the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who still preserve the keys to their former homes from which they were expelled at gun point?

Does wrong become right that easily? Does black become white that quickly? Does an illegitimate and infinitely barbarian entity become “legitimate” just because the “big powers” say so?

Besides, since when did all these settlers imported from far-away places become the “natives of Palestine” while the truly indigenous people, now dispersed to the four corners of the globe, become “strangers and foreigners”?

This is why, the recognition of Israel as legitimate would be an unnatural and illogical act, given the manifestly illogical manner in which Israel came into being.

Of course, the Palestinian people, including Hams, do recognize the reality of Israel. It is a prosperous state, a nuclear-armed power, which also tightly controls the policies and politics of the United States. It is a state that very often defines its very existence by committing genocide and terror as it did in Gaza last year. It is a state that never stops committing evil such as stealing Palestinian land, demolishing Palestinian homes and denying Palestinians access to food and work.

However, recognizing Israel’s physical reality is one thing, but recognizing its “legitimacy” is an entirely different thing. The reason is simple: Israel has no legitimacy and never will.

We are not saying or even implying that Jews have no right to live in occupied Palestine. As Muslims and Palestinians, our problem is not and has never been with Jews as Jews. Our problem lies in the brutal racism of the modern Jewish-supremacist entity called Israel, an entity that has more in common with the ideas and ideals of Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin than with the with the Ten Commandments.

Therefore, it is safe to say that Hamas will continue to refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist entity, even if this rejection cost Hamas, as it does, a lot of political capital, especially in the West. In the final analysis, this is a moral issue first and foremost, and a political issue a distant second.

Actually, a Hamas that is willing to recognize Israel wouldn’t remain intact for 24 hours. It would render itself a degraded, diminutive and demoralized group that can hardly distinguish itself from Fatah, an amorphous entity with no political or ideological constants.

Finally, recognizing Israel would be a stupid act on Hamas’s part since Israel refuses to recognize not only a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, but also the very existence of the Palestinian people itself.

The PLO, due to its intrinsic stupidity, recognized Israel as part of the infamous Oslo Accords more than 18 years ago even without receiving a reciprocal Israeli recognition of a prospective Palestinian state.

Well, we all know the rest of the story.

Hence, a recognition by Hamas of the Zionist entity would actually be a greater act of stupidity and naivety because those who don’t learn from other people’s mistakes are doomed to face graver consequences.

In short, Hamas should never ever recognize the legitimacy of Israel under any circumstances since doing so would render legitimacy to the horrendous genocidal crimes Israel has been committing against the Palestinian people ever since its misbegotten creation more than 60 years ago.

Indeed, what would Hamas tell all these refugees, if and when it had eye-contact with them, should it, God forbid, decide to commit national adultery by recognizing the Satanic entity known as Israel?

Surely, Hamas wouldn’t do that.