From Occupied Palestine

Israel holding Hamas commander as 'bargaining chip'
Agence France Presse, 10 September 2007

A top Hamas commander snatched by Israeli commando troops last week will be used as a bargaining chip for the release of a soldier held by Gaza militants, a senior Israeli minister said on Monday.

"The ability to acquire new assets which are concretely relevant to the release of Gilad Shalit gives us a considerable advantage," Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter told army radio, referring to the Israeli soldier who was seized in June 2006.

Hamas leader: Palestinians will 'never stop the intifada'
DION NISSENBAUM
McClatchy Newspapers, 22 August 2007

Damascus, Syria — Khaled Mashaal, Hamas' most influential political leader, told McClatchy Newspapers that his Islamist organization is unwilling to make any significant concessions to Israel or to its Palestinian rivals in Fatah to repair fractured Middle East peace talks.

Hamas' stand
MOUSA ABU MARZOOK
Los Angeles Times, 10 July 2007

DAMASCUS -- Hamas' rescue of a BBC journalist from his captors in Gaza last week was surely cause for rejoicing. But I want to be clear about one thing: We did not deliver up Alan Johnston as some obsequious boon to Western powers.

Gaza is not Algeria
AHMED YOUSEF
Ha'aretz, 9 July 2007

The Abbas leadership has poorly calculated its political strategy, choosing to align itself with the Israeli regime and its Washington patrons in a bid to retain its hold on power. Yet it has compromised its legitimacy in the eyes of a large swath of the Palestinian public, and it has fallen into Israel's Machiavellian trap of sowing discord among Palestinians to avoid dealing with the real issue: ending the occupation, fairly and justly.

Our second biggest mistake in the Middle East
ALASTAIR CROOKE
London Review of Books, vol 29 no 13 (5 July 2007)

Hamas: Unwritten Chapters by Azzam Tamimi · Hurst, 344 pp, £14.95

Where Now for Palestine: The Demise of the Two-State Solution ed. Jamil Hilal · Zed, 260 pp, £17.99

Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict by Sara Roy · Pluto, 379 pp, £16.99

Abbas advisor says Hamas fighting collaborators
ALI WAKED
Yediot Aharonot, 28 June 2007

Hani al-Hassan, senior presidential advisor says Gaza war was between Hamas and Fatah collaborators who aided Israel, US. Gunshots fired at al-Hassan's home following statements, Abbas dismisses him from his role

Hamas war chief reveals his plans for Gaza peace
MITCHELL PROTHERO
Observer, 24 June 2007

Gaza City -- At the height of the fighting 10 days ago in Gaza City, the commander of the Hamas militants laying siege to the Palestinian Authority compound received a call from his Fatah counterpart inside. 'He asked if we were going to invade and take the building,' said Abu Obieda, the top Hamas military commander for the Gaza Strip. 'He said if we entered his compound, he would kill himself.'

Engage With Hamas
AHMED YOUSEF
Washington Post, 20 June 2007, p. A19

[ed. A second Ahmed Yousef piece from the New York Times follows]

Welcome to 'Palestine'
ROBERT FISK
Independent, 16 June 2007

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

How Hamas turned on Palestine's 'traitors'
PETER BEAUMONT and MITCHELL PROTHERO in Jerusalem
AZMI al-KESHAWI in Gaza and SANDRA JORDAN
Observer, 17 June 2007

The first intimation something was different about the explosion of violence in Gaza between the forces of the government Islamist party Hamas and the Fatah fighters of President Mahmoud Abbas came with a no-show.