BEIRUT — Israel’s war of extermination continues to escalate, and brings with it endless catastrophes and an ever rising toll of innocent people killed, wounded and disabled. The vast destruction, the loss and grief and confusion, the failure to achieve any results, and the transformation of most areas of Gaza into a barren desert, and the desertification of minds and consciences and morals — all of it has pushed me to address you, leaders of Hamas.
This is a message of counsel, driven by specific concern for you, but above all for the people of Gaza who remain, and the land of Gaza, in the hope that it may reach those who should be paying attention.
I hesitated before writing a public message to you, for many reasons, the most important of which is that I am a citizen journalist completely independent from any movement or political party. I do not carry out any political tasks or roles outside the framework of professional journalistic work.
It also may be that you have no need for a message from me. For you have a political bureau and a Shura council, along with advisers, friends and professional mediators who no doubt care about you and about the cause of Palestine, and about the people of Gaza.
What pushed me to finally write this public letter to you is Israel’s decision on August 7 to begin a new large-scale military operation and occupy what remains of Gaza, starting from Gaza City, the political and administrative and economic and cultural capital of the narrow coastal enclave.
It is likely that this operation will begin in October, coinciding with the war entering its third year, forcing the residents of Gaza City and the displaced who have been staying there, estimated at about one million Palestinians, to move south to Khan Younis.
This new operation may last an entire year, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies need in order for their government and coalition to remain united until the next legislative elections in October 2026. There is of course no doubt that this new Israeli military operation will bring even more death and destruction, and societal collapse on all levels.
What Mashal said
Therefore I would like to remind you of what Khaled Mashal, head of the political bureau of Hamas, said in 2012 at a gathering at Cedar Hall in Gaza City — and what happened before and after the meeting. Mashal spoke during a meeting in which a number of the movement’s leaders participated, and more than 100 other national figures attended, including myself, invited by my friend Omar Shaban, director of Pal Think Foundation.
Mashal said that the head of Israel’s far-right Shas Party, Knesset member and former minister Eli Yishai, sent him an offer through former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, to hold direct negotiations between Hamas and Israel to reach a solution to the Palestinian issue.
Israel operates with the full force of United States support
Mashal told us how he had rejected the offer: “I rejected the offer not because negotiations are forbidden, for negotiations are not religiously forbidden. I rejected it because I know that Israel will not give us anything, nor rights, and here are the negotiations of (the late Palestinian president) Yasser Arafat and their results in front of us.”
So, Mashal was convinced after much experience being head of Hamas’ political bureau that Israel, along with the full force of United States support (as is happening now), will not grant the Palestinian people any rights, nor a state nor the right to self-determination — in clear violation of international law.
Nothing in return
Four previous wars have ended with thousands of deaths and the destruction of tens of thousands of homes, and infrastructure and economic and cultural and social structures — without anything in return.
And the movement has two experiences in this regard, the first the 2012 war, when Hamas entrusted the Egyptian officials with the task of negotiating with the United States and Israel to end the war after it broke out only eight days earlier.
The second was in the 2014 war, when Hamas demanded the establishment of a seaport, the rebuilding of Gaza International Airport, the lifting of the severe blockade on the Strip, a prisoner exchange that did not take place, and other conditions that were never met.
But even that war ended after 50 days, though Hamas agreed to be part of a negotiating team that included the Palestine Liberation Organization, without achieving any results to mention. We still to this day must live with the destruction of the airport and the absence of a seaport, and the lack of prisoner exchange.
And if in 2014 the movement did not have anything it could bargain with in terms of Palestinian prisoners or other rightful demands, the matter today is completely different, as it has 20 live prisoners, and about 30 bodies of Israelis, which the movement and the homeland can extract respectable prices for in exchange for releasing them.
Let us go back a little, to 2008, when a delegation of the movement’s leaders left Gaza through the Rafah border crossing, with Egyptian guarantees of no harm, heading to Cairo and Damascus to conduct indirect negotiations with Israel to reach a ceasefire and end the war it launched on December 27, 2008.
After the war ended, five or six of us journalists met with the prominent leader in the movement Dr. Mahmoud Al Zahar in Gaza on January 18, 2009.
Hands in fire
Al Zahar told us verbatim, and he was also right: “I told Mashal the war must stop, you must stop the war (as the head of the political bureau with the final say), and he whose hand is in water is not like he whose hand is in fire, and we in Gaza our hands are in fire…” Mashal and the movement agreed to stop the fire without any return or results to mention.
In conclusion, the four wars, the last of them in 2021, ended without achieving any results besides ending the war. There was no releasing prisoners, or regaining rights or acquiring new rights.
Israel is convinced that what cannot be achieved by force will be achieved by more force.
And the experience of the movement in the negotiations during the current war has not achieved much, just like the experience of the Palestine Liberation Organization. It may be worse than that, or more futile than that, despite its meager gains from the Oslo Agreement negotiations: for the negotiations have become a “process” like the peace process or the reconciliation process, and to no avail.
Israel possesses enormous firepower supported by the United States with all the weapons and ammunition it needs, convinced that what cannot be achieved by force will be achieved by more force. This conviction and dangerous logic is what explains the decision to launch a decisive military operation expected in the coming weeks.
Israel possesses American political and legal cover in all international forums, and we all know that the decisions of the International Court of Justice to stop the extermination, and the decision of the International Criminal Court accusing Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Galant of committing war crimes, will not be implemented.
Hamas also knows that the Arab and Islamic nations have not taken any decisive action for the past two years — and they will not move now even if they kill all the people of Gaza and destroy all their homes.
No submission, no surrender
The whole world has not been able to convince Israel to let in basic humanitarian aid or to stop the war. But Europe and America consider you the terrorist movement, while giving Israel the green light to exterminate you and exterminate us by declaring that it has the right to defend itself.
None of this means submission or surrender or a call to capitulation, but a call to read the reality in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and Jerusalem where we are threatened with extermination and settlement and annexation.
So, just as you did in 2012 and 2014, be part of a unified Palestinian Arab team consisting of representatives of Hamas and Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization and Egypt and Qatar, and give the negotiating team full authorization to make the appropriate fateful decisions related to prisoner exchange, stopping the war, the fate of the weapons, reconstruction, and what the day after looks like in Gaza.
Perhaps this proposal may form a ladder to step down from
Immediate reconciliation with Fatah and President Mahmoud Abbas must be achieved at any cost, for any cost of reconciliation no matter how small is a million times better than none, and any cost of a ceasefire is a million times better than what the people of Gaza have been living through for two years.
Perhaps this proposal may form a ladder to step down from for your survival and ours from an extermination getting even more deadly than the current one. If you do so, history will record you for your sparing of Palestinian blood, and if you do not do so, God forbid, and the time has passed, you may have chosen the path of your destruction and the destruction of the people of Gaza — and neither the people nor history will forgive you together.
For the human being is more precious than the land or the party, and Palestine and Gaza without their children have no value and no meaning. The Palestinian citizen — patient, steadfast, historically oppressed — is far more precious or important than Hamas and Fatah and all parties and factions. It is he, the citizen, who is the one who will keep the flame of national struggle burning as long as the occupation remains crouched over his chest and his land, and as long as the wheel of history keeps turning.