Hamas fires its first political volley: that before negotiations can occur, Israel must recognise Palestine, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank One month ahead of Israeli general elections, Israeli political parties are vying to woo an increasingly jingoistic Jewish public to their respective camps. As may have been expected, their main tool of attracting voters is hateful anti-Palestinian rhetoric. This week, a spate of vitriolic, racist and even bellicose statements against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, coloured the Israeli elections campaign. The often-base litany started immediately after Hamas's electoral victory on 25 January, when Likud Chairman Benyamin Netanyahu compared the Islamic movement's triumph with Hitler's rise to power in Germany in the mid-1930s. Netanyahu -- a master of bombastic sound bites -- didn't bother to explain how a ravaged people languishing under a sinister military occupation who have a hard time feeding their own children and a even harder time accessing their schools, hospitals and places of work, thanks to ubiquitous Israeli army roadblocks, can be compared to the nefarious Third Reich which destroyed Europe and caused the deaths of tens of millions. Netanyahu's analogy drew no negative reactions from Israeli society. Quite to the contrary, leaders of nearly all Jewish political parties, including the Labour Party headed by the purportedly "moderate" Amir Peretz, sought to out-manoeuvre Netanyahu by prominently featuring a decidedly anti-Palestinian discourse in all their proclamations. Take, for example, Tzivi Livni, the former Likud extremist, who now serves as Israel's foreign minister. Other Israeli parties, especially on the right and the extreme right, continue to argue over which approach should be adopted toward the "so- called Palestinians". The more pragmatic parties, such as the Likud, propose apartheid-like arrangements in the West Bank, where Palestinians are packed in Bantustans and enclaves until they become fed up with their misery and subsequently emigrate. The more Talmudic-minded parties, such as the National Union and National Religious Party (Mifdal), propose three alternatives for dealing with Palestinians: enslavement whereby non-Jews living under Jewish law are forced to become "water carriers and wood hewers," expulsion, or outright extermination. Interestingly, these "alternatives" encompass not only Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, but Israel's Palestinian citizens as well -- so-called Israeli-Arabs. Putting Talmudic whims aside, the Israeli government has actually stepped up its efforts to further narrow Palestinian horizons, employing a combination of psychological war, vitriolic propaganda and disinformation, as well as draconian and extremely repressive measures on the ground. Indeed, while telling the international community that Israel is not interested in starving Palestinian children, Israeli officials have indicated that they are willing and ready to blockade Palestinian population centres and induce a "diet", as suggested by Israeli government official Dov Weisglass last week. In the past, Israeli occupation soldiers, acting like armed robbers in broad daylight, stormed Palestinian banks and seized millions of dollars in cash. Indeed, there is no guarantee that the perpetually nervous Israeli political-military establishment won't do it again to realise the ultimate Israeli goal of bringing the Palestinians to their knees. As if severe economic pressure and acts like seizing Palestinian tax money were not enough, one Israeli security official actually threatened this week to assassinate Ismail Haniya, the next Palestinian prime minister, if a "single terrorist act" is carried out from this point forward. Avi Dichter, former head of the Shin Bet, Israel's chief domestic intelligence agency, said that Haniya and his colleagues had no immunity from assassination. Needless to say, this must be music to the ears of hundreds of thousands of anti-Palestinian Jewish voters who will not have a hard time choosing a candidate on 28 March. The propinquity of the Israeli elections is certainly a factor in these shrill and hyperbolic statements. Indeed, it is well known in Israel that the most effective way of gaining support among the Israeli Jewish public is by demonstrating one's harshness, bloodiness, and criminality towards the Palestinians. This explains the election by Israelis of such notorious and certified war criminals as Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, to mention just two. Nonetheless, it seems amply clear that Israel views the election of Hamas by a majority of Palestinians as a clear political challenge. Hamas has been arguing loudly -- and convincingly -- of late that it is wrong to demand that the Palestinians recognise Israel while not demanding that Israel recognise Palestine, ie a Palestinian state within the internationally recognised 1967 borders. Hamas is also asking the international community to pressure Israel to define its physical borders before considering the issue of recognition. Of course, these intrinsic and most fundamental questions are anathema to Israel which seeks to dilute the entire peace process by claiming that the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem are actually "disputed territories" subject to negotiations and bargaining between the nearly vanquished PA and a dominant Israel that has America at her beck and call. Israel is trying in earnest to stage a propaganda offensive against Hamas and the PA by building up an "international coalition" against legitimising Hamas until the latter recognises Israel and in return of nothing -- just as the PLO formally did in 1993. In doing so, Israel hopes to have sufficient time to complete its unilateral plans and designs in the West Bank; namely to annex up to 60 per cent of the occupied territory, which will reduce Palestinian population centres to isolated ghettos, cut off from each other and the rest of the world. This, indeed, is the only Israeli prescription for a viable Palestinian state living peacefully side by side with Israel. In this context, Hamas rightly believes that the upcoming period is unlikely to bear witness to any serious efforts towards a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For his part, Abbas, while on a visit to Yemen this week, vindicated Hamas's posture, saying he understood Hamas's insistence that Israel recognise a Palestinian state on 100 per cent of the occupied Palestinian territories. "I don't blame them," said Abbas, adding rather bitterly, "We recognised Israel in 1989, but look what happened after that."
