Friday, March 20, 2009

How can Obama/Hillary insist on negotiating with weasels?Abbas successor insists that Fatah NEVER recognized Israel and does NOT want Hamas to do so.

Dahlan to Hamas: Never recognize Israel

Mar. 17, 2009
Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST

Former Fatah security commander Muhammad Dahlan on Tuesday called on Hamas not to recognize Israel's right to exist, pointing out that Fatah had never recognized it.

This was the first time since the beginning of the peace process 15 years ago that a senior Fatah official has said that his faction does not recognize Israel's right to exist.

Dahlan's remarks were made in an interview with the Palestinian Authority's official Palestine TV station.

Dahlan, who has kept a low profile ever since the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, resurfaced during Operation Cast Lead. Since then, he has made several public appearances, the latest being last Friday when he was seen praying next to PA President Mahmoud Abbas in a Ramallah mosque.

Fatah officials said that Dahlan's return to the center stage is an indication of his desire to play a role in any post-Abbas administration. They said that Dahlan was recently appointed as a special adviser to Abbas.

Dahlan confirmed that he was "providing advice and ideas" to Abbas, especially regarding to the reconciliation talks with Hamas that were launched in Cairo last week.

Until Operation Cast Lead, Dahlan was rarely seen in public. His aides said that after the Hamas "coup," he and scores of top Fatah operatives moved to Egypt.

Hamas said it was forced to drive the Fatah men out of the Gaza Strip because they were preparing, with the help of the US, to stage a coup against the Hamas government.

In the interview, Dahlan was asked about reports that Fatah was demanding that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist as a precondition for the establishment of a Palestinian "unity government." He called the reports "misleading" and said Hamas was "putting words in our mouths."

Dahlan added: "They say that Fatah has asked them to recognize Israel's right to exist and this is a big deception. For the one thousandth time, I want to reaffirm that we are not asking Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist. Rather, we are asking Hamas not to do so because Fatah never recognized Israel's right to exist."

He explained that it was the PLO, and not Fatah, which recognized Israel's right to exist when the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993.

Fatah is the largest faction in the PLO. The second largest faction is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

"We acknowledge that the PLO did recognize Israel's right to exist, but we are not bound by it as a resistance faction," he added.

Dahlan boasted that the PA under Yasser Arafat had killed more Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel than Hamas.

"I want to point out that the Palestinian Authority under Abu Ammar [Arafat's nom du guerre] targeted collaborators 10 times more than Hamas," he said. "We put many of them on trial and executed many others. But we did this in accordance with the law and not the Hamas way."

Dahlan revealed that Hamas had executed without trial a number of bodyguards who escorted Hamas Interior Minister Said Siam, who was killed in an IAF raid on his brother's house in Gaza City during Operation Cast Lead.

Dahlan expressed discontent over Fatah's failure to convene its long-awaited sixth general conference, ever since the last general conference meeting 20 years ago. The conference is supposed to pave the way for holding internal elections in Fatah - a move that is likely to see the rise of "young guard" Fatah members like Dahlan to key decision-making positions in the faction.

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We see again and again the peculiar use of multiple identities so as to seem to make agreements only to say that a different entity never made the agreement. We can call this the "Muslime Ratchet" where they can accept concessions but retain subsequent deniability for any concessions they made under a different name. Here we see that the PLO acknowledges having said some things but Fatah, the largest member of the PLO, can deny that it ever said them.

Of course, it plays into the desperate desire of "diplomats" to get agreements even if the agreements can be denied by one of the two parties because the agreement is never between two parties in the Muslim parlance. It is always between the "other" ( the infidel who isn't entitled to honesty in any case according to a basic principle enunciated by Mohammed himself ) and only one of multiple Muslim entities, so that others can subsequently deny any agreement.

Negotiations 101 says not to engage in dealings with anyone not able, willing, and committed to deliver on anything except your side of the agreement.

With respect to the consistently perfidious Palestinians, they traditionally seem to make concessions in English while simultaneously deny having done so in Arabic to their constituents. Readier translation and access to their media has made this more transparent but why should this make them hesitate? Much of the West WANTS to be fooled since otherwise their local Muslims will riot while the non-Muslims will not.

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