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- 27
- Dec.
- 2023
Editorial - ME Crisis: Hamas, Likud, Foes With Same Objectives
modified on 07 Oct. 2024 à 16:48 Read : 3 minute(s) A A A
Unexpectedly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a strange jolt a few days ago.
The leader of the Likud party found it necessary to publicly reassert his opposition to the Oslo Accords and spirit. The accords, the result of a bold and historic decision in 1993 by the Palestine Liberation Organization (under Yasser Arafat) and the Israeli Labor Party, were aimed at initiating a pragmatic and robust peace process in the Middle East. That political settlement was sabotaged in 1994 and 1995, by both Hamas and other Palestinian extremists, as well as the Israeli right, with Netanyahu at the forefront.
In a swift reaction to international efforts to pave the way for a comprehensive regional settlement, to follow the bloody conflict in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Prime Minister not only blasted the Oslo process but reaffirmed his rejection of the two-state solution, which regained momentum in the wake of the Gaza war which erupted on October 7. The potential solution is advocated by major Arab and international decision-makers.
Against all odds, and despite the hardships endured by the populations of the region over the past decades, the leader of the Likud is once again attempting to undermine the spirit of the peace process initiated in the 1990s (including the Madrid Conference) without offering a viable alternative solution. Quite the opposite, he has continuously multiplied attempts to scuttle peace efforts.
As if to exemplify his obstructive conduct, Netanyahu has supported the … Hamas, in a barely disguised manner, under the pretext of weakening the PLO by sustaining substantial funding for the Palestinian Islamist movement through Qatar. Ironically, the monthly funding amounting to tens of millions of dollars, channeled through the Israeli authorities, empowered Hamas, with the assistance of Iran (yet another "paradox"!), to build the extensive underground military infrastructure in Gaza that the Israeli army is currently facing. This infrastructure, which lacks any shelters for civilians, has enabled Palestinian militiamen to conduct guerrilla operations against the Hebrew State since October 7.
In parallel, the Likud has reinforced its policy of settling Israeli colonists in Palestinian territory, turning the West Bank into a potential time bomb (a new “Gaza”). Above all, it turned it into a fertile ground for … Hamas, now instrumentalized by the Iranian Islamic Republic in its quest to impose itself as a regional power, manu militari (by force), by destabilizing the region.
The Likud and Hamas are enemies driven by the same objective, that of thwarting the Oslo process and the “Arab Peace Initiative” that was adopted during the Arab Summit in Beirut in 2002, at the behest of Saudi Arabia. For more than three decades, since Oslo was sabotaged, the Lebanese people, as well as the populations of the region, have borne the brunt of this strategy of irrationality. Thirty years of deadlock, terrorist attacks, massacres, provocative demonstrations and pointless wars … All for nothing, with neither a concrete reason nor a clear horizon, except, recently (in the case of Hamas and its allies), to serve the higher interests of ... Iran.
Hamas and the Likud have effectively undermined the peace efforts of the Israeli Labor Party and Yasser Arafat's PLO, in addition to Arab kings and leaders who gathered in Beirut in 2002. In the shadow of this bitter reality and after enduring decades of fruitless struggles, how can one still blame the Lebanese, as some nostalgic supporters of the Palestinian cause do, for their refusal to undergo further hardships in defense of a cause that has become chimeric after being reduced to a mere instrument of conquest in the hands of the new Persian empire?
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