Mother Do You Think They’ll Drop the Bomb? by Sohail Parwaz

Hamas has a 38-year fiery history of ‘broil and brawl' during the liberation movement. In the seventies Hamas began as an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood (Akhwan-ul-Muslimeen). The ‘comedy of errors' was that Israel initially buoyed its growth, considering it a counterweight to Yasser Arafat's PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), which was at the apex of militant activities. Early Hamas activities concentrated on social and community issues. In December 1987, however, Hamas officially formed as a group, days after the outbreak of the first Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. The group targeted Israeli soldiers and civilians in the war against Israel. By 1993-1994, Hamas had the ‘chutzpah' to reject the interim peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians. Finding nothing coming from Fatah's political struggle in 1994, Hamas began a suicide bombing campaign in Israel, aimed at derailing the peace plans. The new millennium rose with a bloody war between the Israelis and Hamas, and in September 2000, at the outbreak of the second uprising of ignited clashes, the carnage started, taking more than 3,500 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis' lives in the following four years. The frustrated Israelis ultimately decided to eliminate Hamas' founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and carried out the assassination through a missile strike in late March 2004. His successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, was also not spared and snuffed out in another air strike just four weeks later. Ultimately, in March 2005, Hamas announced that it would take part in the Palestinian legislative elections and on Wednesday, January 25, 2006 swept the Palestinian parliamentary elections, proved its decision to join the political process correct. It is worth mentioning here that Hamas claimed the end of the 38-year Israeli occupation of Gaza as the victory of its armed struggle, and vowed to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as well.

Frankly speaking, Hamas' victory was the ‘writing on the wall' which the West or the US couldn't read due to its own short-sightedness. In fact soon after 9/11 when America started making tall promises about bringing peace to the agitated world, ill-fated nations started pinning their hopes on such claims. Over seven years is ample time, and if during all these years the US couldn't do much for besieged nations, except for seizing sovereignty for the Christian populace of East Timor, then the Muslim nations were justified in thinking that Bush really meant what he said soon after the attack on the twin-towers, that it was the beginning of a new ‘Crusade'. The invasion of Afghanistan and incursion into Iraq were based on gauche reasons like Afghanistan was providing asylum to Osama, and Iraq was keeping weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) under wraps. But the world soon witnessed the falseness of these allegations. Denial of justice is in fact the core reason for the rise of militancy against the West, wrongly labeled as Islamic fanaticism. Europe, America and Israel will have to admit sooner or later that Hamas' hard-line attitude is because of their injustice and highhandedness.

On the amorphous morning of Wednesday, January 25, 2006 amidst suicide bombings and missile attacks on the innocent natives of Ramallah and other localities, when the most controversial organisation of the Palestinian liberation movement, Hamas (Harakat Al-Mouqawama Al-Islamiyya), had emerged on the political horizon of Palestine, forcing Fatah to concede, the acting Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni appealed to the international community not to legitimize any government led by Hamas. While on one hand Fatah rejected a role in any new cabinet, and the militant Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a faction of Fatah, vowed to "liquidate" the faction's leaders if they ever thought of changing their minds and joined the Hamas-led administration, on the other hand Israel ruled out any kind of peace parleys in what could be the first steps to segregate the militant group after its election victory. The world was blinking its eyes in unbelieving shock, but the truth was that Hamas after playing a confrontational and radical role for decades had now been endorsed to come forward to show its political competence as well.

It seems as if the ‘Players' of the world have a long outstanding score to settle with the Muslims, and it appears as if history is recapping itself. Everyone who has faced humiliation at the hands of the Muslims seems to be vindictive and revengeful, like some notorious third degree method is being used against the Muslims and, yet, they are asked not to raise their voice. The biggest of the rogues is the US - which is dishing out the ‘ribbons of peace' to the nations of the world at its will - and is at total freedom to flog and flay anyone it wishes to, but no one can do much about it because it's the time for Goliath to rule. The Muslims from Afghanistan to Iraq are having a tough time, not to mention Israel, whom the sole superpower of the world has entrusted the authority to carry out the greater holocaust of the century in Palestine.

It was roughly four year back when the world would talk of a cold-blooded Jew murderer whom the Arab Muslims would reckon as a ruthless butcher. People would call him the ‘Butcher of Sabira and Shatila camps'. This vicious looking terrorist would not even bother to move his head slightly. But as it is said, where a man's malice ends, the Almighty's reprisal takes charge. The fateful Palestinians would consider Ariel Sharon an icon of brutality, but where is he now? Does anybody know that the one-time terror is lying motionless in some Israeli hospital in an unexplainable reliant condition? Of course he is the same Sharon who would consider it a sin to spare any Muslim, may he or she be a child, adolescent or woman.

I have been reminded of all this after reading and watching the blood-soaked videos of Israeli aggression in Ghaza over the past few days. If this is not hooliganism, then what else would one call it? First, an inopportune nation - after a struggle of decades and innumerable sacrifices is given a flabby freedom, then they are invaded quite often - are left at the mercy of the ruthless aggressors who would take pleasure in killing their children and would term kidnapping Palestinian high officials as an ‘antic', but when they are responded back, then a loud hue and cry is made and these Muslims are labelled as cruel, callous and terrorists. I remember a Hizbollah militia's spokesman's words who once said that, "If our children would die, then the Israeli children would die too." During mid 2006 Israel's Lebanon invasion, I was watching some news channel that was showing scared Israelis who would take their infants and toddlers deep down into underground bunkers, where they were shown with petrified looks as if they were asking whether Hizbollah would spare them or not?

Is it not terrorism what Israel is doing in Gaza? What the wardens of world peace would say after watching the ill-fated parents collecting the remnants of the blown-up bodies of their innocent children? Now they should have a heart to tell me that all those new missiles and the lethal gas which Israel is using against the poor Palestinians is a display of Israel's goodwill for them? Down with the so-called superpower of the world and damn her peace allies. It appears as if a well-planned conspiracy has been hatched to dispose off the Muslims of the world in a ‘specific timeframe'. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the US itself is performing this task, in the Middle East, she has assigned this grimy task to Israel, and in the subcontinent her newest chum India is playing the muddy games in the region, but smartly throwing the blame on others as was done in a recent case when India blamed Pakistan and ISI for the recent Mumbai blasts.

I am of the strong opinion that Hamas was lured into the political corridors through a deliberate plan just to expose their top leadership, whom Israel could eliminate slowly but surely. I feel that running the government or political affairs is not suited to Hamas's temperament. It suits Al-Fatah only. I strongly fear that if the situation persists then Hamas would soon revert to the desert for taking the rude Israelis to task. The most painful and torturing thing for any Israeli could be that his innocent child poses all the time a ‘naive question' to his parent whether Palestinian will deliver a bomb on their house or not?