You don't see this every day: a senior Palestinian official publicly challenging his people to put an end to self-destructive behavior and embrace reform...From Hamas Figure, an Unusual Self-Criticism
By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: August 28, 2006NY Times
JERUSALEM, Aug. 28 — In an unusual piece of self-criticism, a well-known Hamas official has decried the collapse of Gazan life into chaos, and said that much of the blame belonged to Palestinians themselves.
“Gaza is suffering under the yoke of anarchy and the swords of thugs,” wrote Ghazi Hamad, a former Hamas newspaper editor and spokesman for the current Hamas government, in an article published on Sunday in the Palestinian newspaper Al Ayyam.
After so much optimism when Israelis pulled out of Gaza a year ago, he wrote, “life became a nightmare and an intolerable burden.”
He urged Palestinians to look to themselves, not to Israel, for the causes. In particular, he said the chaos in the Gaza Strip was the fault of the various armed militant groups operating there, most of them affiliated with Fatah, Hamas’s rival for political power and influence.
“We’ve all been attacked by the bacteria of stupidity,” Mr. Hamad wrote. “We have lost our sense of direction.” He asked the armed groups: “Please have mercy on Gaza. Have mercy on us from your demagogy, chaos, guns, thugs, infighting. Let Gaza breathe a bit. Let it live.”
But Mr. Hamad did not assign blame to Hamas or Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, one of the group’s leading figures.
Mr. Hamad also questioned the utility of firing rockets into Israel, attacks that cause few Israeli casualties directly but that lead to many Palestinian deaths when the Israelis retaliate. He seemed to be arguing for other armed groups to follow Hamas’s own decision to halt rocket fire into Israel.
His article was first described in English in the Jerusalem Post today....
...Mr. Hamad said that his article, published in a newspaper normally associated with Fatah, was a personal comment. Despite the digs at Fatah, it was noteworthy for its criticism of the habit among Palestinians of blaming Israel and its long occupation of Palestinian lands for every ill — even after Israeli troops and settlers had left Gaza.
“I’m not interested in discussing the ugliness and brutality of the occupation, because it is not a secret,” Mr. Hamad wrote. “Instead, I prefer self-criticism and self-evaluation. We’re used to blaming our mistakes on others.”
Palestinian joy after the Israeli departure “made us forget the most important question — what is our next step?” he wrote.
“When you walk in the streets of Gaza City,” Mr. Hamad continued, “you cannot but close your eyes because of what you see there: unimaginable chaos, careless policemen, young men carrying guns and strutting with pride, and families receiving condolences for their dead in the middle of the street.”
He asked: “What is the relationship between the chaos, anarchy, lawlessness, indiscriminate murders, theft of land, family rivalries, transgression on public lands and unorganized traffic, and the occupation? We are still trapped by the mentality of conspiracy theories — one that has limited our capability to think.”
He wrote that those who saw themselves as fighting Israel were working at cross-purposes: “It is strange that, when a big effort is taken to reopen Rafah crossing to ease the suffering of the people, you see others who go to shell rockets towards the crossing. Or when someone talks about cease-fire and its importance, you find those who go and shell more rockets. Of course, I do not deny that the occupation committed massacres that cannot be justified. But I support negotiations over what can be fixed.”
Some Palestinians will agree with him and others disagree, Mr. Hamad wrote. “But running away from self-confrontation will only cause us more pain.”
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