Hamas is paying and the people are paying the price for its wrong and suspicious alliances

We emphasize once again that our criticism of the Hamas movement is not because it is practicing armed resistance against the occupation. Resistance is a legitimate right for every people subject to occupation, and if the Palestinian people are all subject to occupation, if they give up the right to resistance, they are giving up their right to their homeland. We also do not criticize the Hamas movement because it is an Islamic movement. 

While we have reservations about any political movement in a society with a majority of Muslims describing itself as an Islamic movement, because this means removing everyone who does not belong to this movement from the Muslim community. However, the problem does not lie here. It is also understandable that Hamas seeks to compete with the PLO to represent the Palestinian people, because in the end it is the people who will decide who represents them.

The problem lies in the form and timing of its resistance, its authority and its practice outside the framework of a consensual national strategy. It also lies in the authority of the Hamas movement as a Muslim Brotherhood group whose decision is in the hands of this group and not an independent national decision and then its decision is transferred to the axis of resistance led by Iran. The problem also lies in the contradiction between Hamas’s rhetoric and its slogans from one hand, and its practices on the ground on the other hand, and in employing religion outside the context of Sharia law and to legitimize practices far from the essence of religion and declaring all who disagree with them to be infidels, and most importantly in its network of external alliances and its bet on external allies that have been proven in reality to be working for the interests of their countries and not for the sake of Palestine.

There is no doubt that alliances are taken into account when calculating the strength of a state. Countries maximize their strength by strengthening their alliances with friendly countries that have common interests and are politically and ideologically compatible. Even major countries seek the policy of alliances, and we have the alliance supporting Ukraine in its war with the Russians, and the alliance of Washington and the West with Israel. In its aggressive war against the Palestinian people, it is a model of true alliances.

The same applies to national liberation movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It is true that the struggle and unity of peoples in the face of colonialism is a central point in their liberation from colonialism, but the support of their allies and the standing of the peoples of the free world and the United Nations at their side hastened the victory. Vietnam would not have been victorious over the French and then the Americans if the people of Vietnam had not been present in the Vietnam Liberation Front and supported by the Soviet Union. And China, and the support of international public opinion, even the United States, is on its side. The same can be said about the Algerian Liberation Front and the rest of the liberation movements.

The problem with the Hamas movement is that it did not choose those with whom it allys itself well to achieve its goals, whether in confronting the Zionist enemy or confronting its political opponents in Palestine and the region. Indeed, some of these supposed allies approached the Hamas movement not out of belief in its resistance project, but rather to serve their strategic interests in the region, which sometimes coincide with the interests of the West and Israel, as is the case with Iran and Turkey, and some of them approached them at the request of Washington to domesticate them and direct their course in a way that strengthens the Palestinian division and distorts the compass of the national struggle, as is the case with Qatar.

Since the emergence of the Hamas movement, we have been writing demanding that it localize itself and its political discourse, meaning that it be part of the national situation and disengage from the Muslim Brotherhood and its regional allies, including our article entitled: (Will the Hamas movement follow the guidance of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan) published in July 2011 and our article entitled: (There is room for everyone in Palestinian patriotism) published in August 2013. In 2015, I also entered into extensive discussions on the subject with some Hamas leaders, especially Dr. Ghazi Hamad and Dr. Ahmed Youssef in my home in conjunction with the reconciliation dialogues in Cairo. Our dialogues reached an advanced stage, and the Hamas movement began to use and accept some national terminology and symbols. However, the foreign leadership linked to the foreign agenda, which was betting on the support of millions from the Islamic world, blocked the path to the resettlement of the Hamas movement and also failed. All national reconciliation dialogues bet on the Iranian resistance axis and on Qatar and Turkey instead of betting on the Palestinian people and national forces.

How can an Islamic resistance movement that raises slogans of non-recognition of Israel and the liberation of Palestine ally with Turkey, a member of NATO, which has expansionist ambitions in the Arab region and which has advanced diplomatic, security and trade relations with Israel that have not been affected by even the genocidal war on Gaza, even at the level of severing diplomatic relations or Just withdrawing the ambassador, while today Hamas is bargaining to disarm in exchange for its continued authority in Gaza?!!

How can a resistance movement that seeks to liberate Palestine, as it claims, evade national unity and seek an alliance with Iran under the title (unity of the arenas and the axis of resistance) when this country is led by a regime that acts with a Persian-Shiite mentality that is hostile to the Arabs and stirs up sectarian strife in the region and was the cause of the destruction of five Arab countries, Iraq and Yemen? Syria and Lebanon, in addition to the Palestinian Authority, in collusion with Washington and Israel, a regime that did not directly fire even a single bullet at the enemy, did not move a finger to defend Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque and confront herds of settlers, and remained silent during six months of the war of extermination on Gaza, and did not move until after its consulate in Damascus was targeted. Through the farce of bombing Israel with hundreds of absurd marches and missiles, a calculated and theatrical Israeli response to Isfahan, an escalation that covered up the war of annihilation in the Gaza Strip?!!

How can we believe the Hamas movement when it claims that it seeks to liberate Palestine while it is allied with Qatar, which hosts the largest American military base in the region and acts as an agent for Washington and the West to stir up strife and chaos in the region and even within the Gulf states, as happened during the chaos of the so-called Arab Spring, and the Qatari ambassador to Washington admitted In October 2023, Qatar hosted the leadership of Hamas at the request of Washington, and in the current war of annihilation it plays the role of mediator between the criminal and the victim, and today, after exposing its role, it asks Hamas to leave its lands at the request of Washington!

Hamas's suspicious alliances, its division-making, its wars and its missiles, which have claimed, albeit indirectly, the lives of tens of thousands, many times more wounded, and the destruction of Gaza, raise many questions about the purpose of its establishment and its functional role in Palestine and the region.

We hoped that things would not reach this point, whether with regard to the Hamas movement or with regard to the entire national issue, but as it happened, and because the enemy’s war on Palestine will not stop even if the Gaza war stops, the enemy will continue the war of annihilation in the West Bank. Will the Hamas movement submit to the voice of reason and strengthen its alliance? The National Council supports the Palestine Liberation Organization without sensitivity to the fact that the latter recognizes Israel. Hamas has shown a willingness to recognize Israel and has allied itself with the state of Turkey, which recognizes Israel, and with Qatar, which, although it does not officially recognize it, plays a functional role in the service of Israel and Washington no less than a role of normalized countries? .

The Hamas movement has the right to remain as a resistance movement that does not recognize the enemy, and this is its right, but it must leave official political work as an authority and government, and not repeat the experience of 17 years of trying to position itself as an authority and government under occupation while at the same time refusing to recognize the occupation and acting as an armed resistance movement raising slogans of the destruction of Israel and Palestine from the river to the sea!