This Hamas official has said a couple of interesting things:
- He doesn’t want Sir Tony Blair (former UK prime minister) involved in the governance of Gaza, despite Trump’s plan for the region proposing this.
- Hamas doesn’t plan to disarm, unless they are giving their weapons to a future Palestinian army.
Quote about the first point:
“When it comes to Tony Blair, unfortunately, we Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims and maybe others around the world have bad memories of him… We can still remember his role in killing, causing thousands or millions of deaths to innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq… We can still remember him very well after destroying Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Quote about the second point:
Dr Naim said Hamas would not completely disarm and that weapons would only be handed over to the Palestinian state, with fighters integrated into the Palestinian National Army… “No one has the right to deny us the right to resist the occupation of armies,” he said.
Thoughts on this?
When the british and american commited war crimes during the second world war their army didn’t lose the right to self defend. When israel commit war crimes i never hear anybody who want hamas to disarm saying Israel dhould disarm. It’s only when palestinians retaliate ( not always by respecting international law ) to brutal occupation that other countries try to not allow palestinians to have an army to defend itself
I think it would make sense for Palestine to have an army. If they did have an army, and if that army tried to push the Israeli military out of the West Bank (internationally recognised as Palestine), that might make sense. It is strange that Israel has borders but they’ve gone beyond them (into the West Bank and into Syria), which is supposed to be illegal, and the West has just been okay with that.