Q
Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
Hamas has been quite upfront with their goals from the get go. Surely, the events of this week should eliminate any benefit of the doubt. Even prior to winning the election, they were committing all sorts of suicide bombings and attacks against civilians. They then win the election and outright state that their goal is to use Gaza, and any concession Israel makes, as a staging ground for eventual genocide.
Are we to believe that only occurred because Israel took action to contain them?
|
Hamas has said and been a lot of things like many organizations with a history. Many here keep pointing out that they say they want to destroy Israel without mentioning they have ALSO said they would accept peace if the borders were returned to where they were in 1967, among many other things which clearly suggest that they do consider peace and co-existence as an option.
Which is true? Obviously both, because Hamas isn't a hive mind. There were and are people filled with hate in the organization as well as much more reasonable freedom fighters. As well as some people who genuinely just want to do good within the strongest organization in the area.
Hell, the hate-filled terrorists can surprisingly often be the exact same people who want to legitimately help their local community. Individual people can also go down different paths when given different opportunities.
As already mentioned in the thread, Hamas used to be a lot more in the business of building schools and hospitals and creating a livable country for Palestinians. More specifically, that was the path they had been moving towards before the blockade started. That looked like the path they were on, which is one of the reasons they were seen as a votable option. (The key factor was that they were seen as significantly less corrupt, which was at that point probably true too.) There was an expectation among Hamas that as a legitimate governmental organization they would start to be treated as equals internationally and eventually taken off terrorist lists.
A comparison point would be the ANC in South Africa, which was also categorized as a terrorist organization. Nelson Mandela was also a terrorist. Oh, and the ANC was also supported by Russia for further political complication. The ANC also had it's radicals saying all kinds of unprintable things about the white population in South Africa, yet when the apartheid ended and the ANC took over politically, they were treated like the governing party and not like terrorists.
Of course there are also differences between the history of ANC and Hamas (the most important of which is that ANC was much more of a tent organization for different groups), but the point I'm trying to make is that accepting the Hamas as a legitimate local government was absolutely an option based on historical precedent.
Do I know for sure that if Hamas had been accepted as the leading party of Palestinians, they would have de-radicalized further (instead of becoming more extreme which is what did happen)? Obviously not. The hate did run deep then as it does now. But I would claim that if you did pay attention to the policies Israel chose to pursue and their effects on Gaza, it was just obvious that those policies had an exactly 0% chance of leading to good outcomes, and that other paths did exist.