Members of the Palestinian liberation movement Hamas have been visiting SA as guests of the ANC this week. Janet Smith interviewed Hamas leader Khalid Mish’al in Doha, Qatar.
JS: In the early 2000s, a hudna (truce or ceasefire) was proposed after extensive negotiations in Gaza, the West Bank and other countries where Hamas has a presence. However, Israel was not prepared to embark on a mutual armistice.
Had the hudna succeeded, you could have been experienced a 10-year ceasefire. But that didn’t happen.
KM: The hudna was not offered by Hamas in 2004 only, it was also offered in the early 1990s, but the Israeli occupant rejected the offer because, simply speaking, the occupation doesn’t believe in peace, doesn’t believe in even calm status in the area. They believe in the rationale of aggression – settlement expansion, bloodshed, confiscating land, demolishing houses.
This is because the occupier wants to cleanse the land of the Palestinian people. He doesn’t believe in Palestinian national rights.
This is the problem. This is what has made this struggle continue all these long years, and from our side, if the occupation continues, our struggle continues. If we don’t get the full rights of the sovereign state on our land, with the right of return, then there will be no peace in this region.
JS: The one question that people always ask is, how do you overcome what is a fundamental disagreement – the two-state issue? The South African government’s foreign policy says it would like to see two states.
Your enemies say that you want to wipe Israel off the map, but you have denied that many times. You have reiterated that it is not your wish to see Jews and Israel cast into the sea.
Although the original Hamas charter suggested Israel was to be eliminated, it is no longer on your website and, to some extent, you have agreed it came out of a particular era and may not have the same value today.
What is your stance towards Israel?
KM: It’s not Hamas only. It’s the whole Palestinian people who know their rights, who know their land. We had our fathers, our grandfathers, who lived on this land, which was then occupied.
It’s not an old historical illusion or memory. This is our land.
Nevertheless we, as Palestinians, given that we know our rights, we have agreed among ourselves to come up with a national strategy that we accept sovereignty on the lines of the June 4, 1967 agreement with Jerusalem as the capital, with the right of return.
This is what we agreed upon when we signed the Palestinian national consensus in 2006. It was a joint position, it was a common denominator project; we all agreed upon it. It was not Fatah only and the factions of the PLO, it was Hamas also and other factions. This is what we face the world with.
But on the other hand, the question, what was the stand of the occupier on that offer? They rejected it.
What was the stand of the world – the US, the UN, the international community? They didn’t help the Palestinians to achieve that goal. They didn’t have a firm stand telling Israel they should withdraw, and they didn’t respect even the initiatives of the Palestinian people.
So the problem is not on our side, it is on the Israeli side. They are rejecting all the positive stands towards achieving a settlement or resolution for this conflict.
So the problem today? We don’t have a Palestinian state and our people are not enabled for self-determination.
It’s very important to remind people about the 1967 border because the rest of it is a distraction.
JS: In terms of the ANC’s invitation to you to visit South Africa, what does this mean for your relationship with our country? You’re leaving today after a three-day visit.
KM: In terms of South Africa, Mahmoud Abbas (the Palestinian president, who is the leader of Fatah, based in Ramallah) has an established embassy here. He has an ambassador. This is what we’re used to in South Africa, this is your understanding of Palestine, through the Palestinian Authority.
So the diplomatic introduction to South Africans of Hamas has been off the back of that as we, Hamas, don’t have an official presence in South Africa, we don’t have an official office as such.
First of all we have to assert that Hamas holds in high respect the people of South Africa for their long struggle, for their achievement of freedom and ending of apartheid.
We respect South Africa as a state, as a leadership, and the ANC as a ruling party with its own history of struggle. We hold respect for all parties in the political arena in South Africa as an inspiring model for free countries.
I read about people protesting our visit to South Africa as if it’s only the right of the Zionists to go anywhere and make events.
JS: You’ve spoken about a duty, not only as a freedom fighter, but also as a refugee because you are effectively in exile, living in Qatar, unable to return to your homeland. What are those roles?
KM: As a refugee, I think a refugee loses dignity besides losing their homeland, which is a lot of suffering. People who were forced to leave – I myself was young – and to live without anything… it’s an injustice.
So we are still looking forward for our right of return to our homeland, which is guaranteed by the international law, but that didn’t happen and Israel was instead accepted as a member of the UN while we are still refugees.
I was dreaming of being a freedom fighter, but I didn’t have the opportunity because my family had to leave. So the minute the revolution broke out, the armed struggle after 1967 when all Palestine was occupied, I and others like me joined the revolution.
This is because we learnt from the history of people that to claim your rights, you have to fight for it.
Now I am in the politburo also responsible for refugees, which means I have to work on spreading the culture of the right of return. Ask any Palestinian who is outside, what’s your dream? They will say, to go back. This is something emotional.
Being a refugee differs from one place to another. A refugee in Gaza has an asylum different to one living in an Arab country, while in Europe, for example, there’s a promotion of BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) as a means to face the aggression on our people.
JS: What is your view of Islamic State?
KM: After the collapse of communism, it was as if a new enemy was needed, and this enemy is Islamic, but this (Islamic State) is so brutal that even in nightmares you don’t see it.
In the media, even though they (Islamic State) have killed a lot of people, these are just numbers.
Of course, we consider them terrorists. They are destroying our societies, destroying human beings from the inside.
JS: What is your ultimate aim? What’s your position on Israel?
KM: The end of this conflict to establish a democratic state where everybody, on the spot can decide – whether Jews, non-Jews, whatever it is. We are looking at this state to establish it as human beings.
When we say democratic, we mean everybody must have the same rights, the same duties on this piece of land. Why don’t the Israelis look at it this way?
This is not a religious conflict, it’s a conflict of rights, but still the Israelis wanted to change the face of the conflict, to say it is a religious one so as to gain the support of the international community.
We don’t care about being Christian or Muslim or Jews. This is about the rights of people. We are not targeting Jews, we are targeting occupants.
We have spoken about an independent state in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza, but, of course, Israel was against that a long time ago, so the alternative is to have a one-state solution, with the return of the refugees.
Two-thirds of Palestinians are in diaspora, but Israel does not want to discuss any kind of solution. They want us to live in bantustans like during apartheid.
We need a solution that ends this bloodshed, that ends the aggression.
* To read the first two parts of this interview, go to www.iol.co.za/the-star/we-can-t-stop-till-we-reclaim-our-land-1.1932000#.ViXSVSK0eIk.
The Star
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