Dear Mr. Geras,
I noticed that on January 12, 2009, you posted the following article on your blog:
From a column by Amir Taheri:
… Hamas… has closed Gaza to all Palestinian groups that have accepted a two-state solution.
Amongst those many who urge upon us Hamas’s legitimacy as having been democratically elected, it’s surprising how little airtime they devote to this (shall we say) counter-democratic circumstance. Not that I mean to imply that no negotiations should ever be undertaken with an organization with a bad record on democratic rights and practices; for the would-be negotiating partner – in the present case, Israel – that’s a matter of political and strategic judgement. But if it’s Hamas’s democratic legitimacy which, according to many of Israel’s critics, should dictate a willingness to negotiate with that organization, one would have thought winning an election isn’t all that counts. Being open to the contingency of losing one is also of some import. (See also here.)
I vaguely remembered the name Amir Taheri from somewhere or other so I did a spot of googling. The results were rather interesting to say the least. I found an article published in The Nation entitled Bunkum From Benador which claimed that he was “a journalistic felon”:
It was in 1989 that Taheri was first exposed as a journalistic felon. The book he published the year before, Nest of Spies, examined the rule and fall of the Shah of Iran. Taheri received many respectful reviews, but in The New Republic Shaul Bakhash, a reigning doyen of Persian studies, checked Taheri’s footnotes. Suddenly a book review became an investigative exposé. Bakhash, a history professor at George Mason University and a former fellow at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, detailed case after case in which Taheri cited nonexistent sources, concocted nonexistent substance in cases where the sources existed and distorted the substance beyond recognition when it was present. Taheri “repeatedly refers us to books where the information he cites simply does not exist,” Bakhash wrote. “Often the documents cannot be found in the volumes to which he attributes them…. [He] repeatedly reads things into the documents that are simply not there.” In one case, noted Bakhash, Taheri cited an earlier article of his own–but offered content he himself never wrote in that article. Bakhash concluded that Nest of Spies was “the sort of book that gives contemporary history a bad name.” In a response published two months later, Taheri failed to rebut Bakhash’s charges.
I also found Taheri’s Wikipedia and Sourcewatch entries which confirmed further his reputation as an unprincipled hack and a serial fabulist.
A quick scan of the column you linked to revealed it to be his usual mix of half truths and outright lies. However, for the sake of brevity, I thought I would limit myself to analysing the sentence you quoted and the conclusions you drew.
Firstly, the events which lead to Hamas expelling Fatah from the Gaza Strip have been documented in the April 2008 issue of Vanity Fair by the writer David Rose, basing himself on internal US documents. In a nutshell, it seems that the United States and Israel in cahoots with the Palestinian Authority, unhappy with the results of the 2006 Palestinian election, were attempting a putsch on Hamas, and Hamas merely preempted their plan. I’m sure that you would agree that a democratically elected government has the right to defend itself against an unlawful military coup and that this right in no way erodes their legitimacy.
With regards to the two state solution, Hamas has repeatedly indicated that they accept it.
When asked by Newsweek-Washington Post correspondent Lally Weymouth on 26 February 2006 what agreements Hamas was prepared to honor, the new Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh answered, “the ones that will guarantee the establishment of a Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital with 1967 borders.” Weymouth went on, “Will you recognize Israel?” to which Haniyeh responded, “If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian people a state and give them back all their rights then we are ready to recognize them.” (5) This view encapsulates the Hamas demand for reciprocity.
In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer four days after the PLC elections, the new Hamas Foreign Minister, Mahmoud Zahar (considered the party’s hard-liner) remarked, “We can accept to establish our independent state on the area occupied [in] 1967.” Like Haniyeh and other Hamas members, Zahar insists that once such a state is established a long-term truce “lasting as long as 10, 20 or 100 years” will ensue ending the state of armed conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. (6)
Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad commented to reporters on 10 May 2006, “Yes, we accept an independent state in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War. This attitude is not new and it is declared in the government’s platform.” (7)
In an effort to clarify the Hamas position on Abbas’ call for a referendum, Hamas parliamentary speaker Aziz Duweik explained that it had nothing to do with a lack of support for the two-state settlement. “Everybody in Hamas says ‘Yes’ to the two-state solution,” he said. “The problem comes from the fact that the Israelis so far [have not said they] accept the 1967 borders between the two states.”(8)
Other leaders are just as explicit. “Hamas is clear in terms of the historical solution and an interim solution. We are ready for both: the borders of 1967, a state, elections, and agreement after 10-15 years of building trust,” commented Usama Hamdan, the Hamas Chief Representative in Lebanon. (9) Notable here is that his remarks were made in 2003 well before the Hamas victory of January 2006. Indeed, it should be pointed out that most of the on-the-record comments to this effect were made prior to these elections.
Additional Hamas spokespersons who have made explicit reference to acceptance of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 lands include Sheikh Ahmad Haj Ali, a Muslim Brotherhood leader and Hamas legislative candidate currently imprisoned in Israel (interviewed in July 2005); Muhammad Ghazal, Hamas spokesperson also currently in an Israeli jail (Sept. 2005); Hasan Yousef, West Bank political leader (August 2005); and the Hamas Electoral Manifesto Article 5:1 which calls for “adherence to the goal of defeating the [1967] occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.” (10)
In 1989, Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin (assassinated by Israel in March 2004) stated, “I do not want to destroy Israel. We want to negotiate with Israel so the Palestinian people inside and outside Palestine can live in Palestine. Then the problem will cease to exist.” (11)
The hard-line Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, assassinated by Israel in April 2004 commented in 2002 that, “[T]he Intifada is about forcing Israel’s withdrawal to the 1967 borders.” This “doesn’t mean the Arab-Israeli conflict will be over,” but rather that the armed resistance to Israel would end.” (12)
In a 2004 report published by the highly regarded International Crisis Group, “During the 1987-1993 uprising, Hamas leaders proposed various formulas for Israeli withdrawal to the June 4th 1967 borders, to be reciprocated with a decades’-long truce (hudna).” That same report notes that, “In a March 1988 meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and then with Defense Minister Rabin in June 1989, Hamas leader (now FM) Mahmud Zahar explicitly proposed an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries, to be followed by a negotiated permanent settlement.” The offer was refused. (13)
Sadly, the same cannot be said of Israel or Fatah.
In the years following the 1993 Oslo Agreement between the PLO and Israel it became clear that nothing was being done to advance the formation of a viable Palestinian state. Hamas pointed out that the Agreement was, by Israeli design, open-ended, in stages, calculatedly vague and non-commital, and with no guarantees regarding key issues like settlements, land and water, the status of Jerusalem and the return of refugees.
Moreover, even as the Oslo negotiations proceeded, and lasting for years thereafter, Israel continued to build settlements at an accelerated pace. The settlement blocs were positioned in such a way as to create “facts on the ground” which would make it impossible to designate an area that could constitute a viable Palestinian state.
The Israeli-born Haifa University history professor Ilan Pappe has accurately described the Oslo Accords as a trick to allow Israel to continue to build settlements such as to corral Palestinians in South African-style bantustans.
All this culminated, at Camp David in 2000, in Barak’s “generous offer”, a striking vindication of Pappe’s accusation: a Palestinian “state” with no territorial continuity, divided by settlement blocs, bypass roads and roadblocks, with Israeli control of the entire border. The area permitted to Palestinians would include 69 settlement blocs, housing 85% of all Israeli settlers. Palestinians would have to travel 50 miles from one town to another, with many pointless delays at checkpoints and roadblocks,in order to traverse a real distance of 5 miles.
And during the entire process, Israel continued to expand its colonization of the West Bank, doubling the number of settlers in the ten years following the signing of the Accords.
This was a slap in the face to Palestinians, who had agreed, through the PLO, to accept a mere 22 percent of the land that was theirs before 1948. Conceding 78 percent of the land was an historical Palestinian compromise.
Since the Oslo and Camp David meetings the condition of Palestinians continued to deteriorate. It became increasingly clear that the PLO and its successor, the Palestinian Authority (PA), were not merely inept at negotiation, but that the PA and its leader Yasir Arafat were steeped in corruption, with much of the Authority’s funds lavished on cronies while Arafat spent much of his time living in luxury far from Palestine. The last straw was the PA’s decision to assign its police to assist the occupation authorities in the suppression of Palestinian resistance.
Anyway, in conclusion, it seems the reality of the situation seems to be the exact opposite of what you suggest. I do hope that you will update your post accordingly.
Regards
Not Norm
