Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah are national liberation movements fighting against Israeli occupation, and the accusation of terrorism cannot apply to them, but to the occupation power that kills, destroys, and steals, that is, Israel. I have stated the above each time I wrote about the occupation and resistance, which is a duty on everyone, not just on a select few, and I state it again today and shall state it again going forward. I support Arab liberation movements in London, and I am ready to confront Israel's supporters in the courts. Meanwhile, supporters in the Arab countries only express their support verbally and they rarely face the kind of pressure we face as Arab expatriates in the West. I write today criticizing the positions of Hamas and Hezbollah, yet without having hope that either faction will accept criticism. Indeed, I discovered years ago that parties with a religious base have a direct line to God, and therefore, all those who disagree with them are accused...and then they talk about democracy. Hamas made a mistake in seceding and retreating to an emirate in Gaza, and is now making an even bigger mistake by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood against the majority of the people in Egypt and their armed forces. The Egyptians protested by the millions against the Muslim Brotherhood-led administration, and the army intervened to prevent civil war. Now, there is an interim administration that will produce a new constitution, a president, and a parliament. Hamas is ignoring the will of the Egyptian people, supporting the Brotherhood although the Brotherhood has been ousted and will not return. This support is incomprehensible. It has no foundation whatsoever, except religion, because Hosni Mubarak's regime did not demolish tunnels with Gaza, claiming that he could not find them, while the Muslim Brotherhood went on to flood some tunnels and demolish others to appease America and Israel. Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood was willing to pay any price to remain in power, even if that price was Al-Aqsa Mosque and all of Jerusalem. Hamas's current position harms Palestine and the Gaza Strip, and harms a cause that all Egyptians support, and which all Egyptians have paid a price in blood for, more than anyone else. I know from Hamas's leaders the members of the politburo abroad, and I respect the head of the politburo Khaled Meshaal a great deal. I worked with him and with President Mahmoud Abbas to reach the truce that was declared on June 29, 2003, and which lasted more than six weeks, so I claim to have had a role in sparing Palestinian and Israeli lives during the truce. Meshaal is moderate and smart, and I believe it likely that he holds different views than those of the Hamas leadership in Gaza. There is undeclared political competition between the two, and the leadership in Gaza, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, prefers to rule over the ruins in Gaza rather than seek a way out to protect people's lives and the cause. I admit I have never imagined that Hamas would make this many mistakes in such a short time, and I never imagined that Hezbollah under the leadership of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah would become embroiled in the Syrian civil war, preferring Iranian support over all Arab countries and the rest of the world – despite international sanctions in response to this support – and sacrificing its fighters who took up arms to fight Israeli aggression, not to fight in a Syria's civil war, with the result being that Europe has now designated Hezbollah's military wing as a terrorist organization. I thought that Nasrallah was too cautious to get implicated in something that he would not be able to emerge from easily, but he did. While some of his claims about extremist fundamentalists who declare Shiites apostates are true, this does not reflect the known and declared stance of Al-Azhar Al-Sharif. I also recall the declaration by Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the Mufti of Saudi Arabia and President of the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars, who warned against the "danger of takfir [declaring others as apostates] and the assault on innocent lives that this could lead to," stressing the "sanctity of Muslim blood and the blood of others who have been protected by Islamic law." In all cases, intervention in Syria is a mistake. When Syria intervened in Lebanon, a majority of the Lebanese protested against the abolition of the border, which is exactly what Hezbollah has done by sending troops to Syria. Perhaps we will see a day when a Syrian Sunni cleric will send fighters to Hermel and the Bekaa, using the precedent of Hezbollah's intervention in his country as a pretext. Hezbollah's actions have also prompted Gulf countries to initiate measures against Hezbollah leaders, which could harm the interests of Shiites who have families in the Gulf even without being engaged in partisan activity of any kind. I have no personal stake behind the above, except that I want Hamas to remain strong against Israel and not Egypt, and for Hezbollah to remain a weapon against Israel not in the streets of Beirut or the Syrian cities. The leaders of the two factions can mend things, and undoing a mistake is a virtue. [email protected]
