Hamas’s Leader Makes Clear That No Amount of Money Can Buy Peace https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/israel-zionism/2020/08/hamass-leader-makes-clear-that-no-amount-of-money-can-buy-peace/

August 11, 2020 | MEMRI
About the author:

While Theodor Herzl thought that by bringing Western technology and economic development to an impoverished corner of the Ottoman empire, a Jewish state could easily win over the Palestinian Arab population, his admirer Vladimir Jabotinsky was much more skeptical. Jabotinsky, writing nearly a century ago, understood that many Arabs would be unwilling to sacrifice what they saw as their own national pride for promises of prosperity. In a recent interview with a Qatari television program, Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas politburo, made this point brutally clear, as the translators of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) explain:

Haniyeh . . . said in a July 26, 2020 interview . . . that Israel has previously agreed to the establishment of an airport and seaport in the Gaza Strip in exchange for ceasefire, but that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and other Arab parties have blocked this from taking place under the pretext that it would constitute a separation between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. He said that under such an arrangement, Gaza would become like Singapore, [and] then claimed that a certain Arab country has offered as much as $15 billion for ports and economic projects in Gaza.

Haniyeh summed up his response to this offer, and the ensuing conversation, thus:

“We said to [this Arab country’s representatives], ‘That’s great. We want an airport and a seaport, and we want to break the siege on the Gaza Strip. This is a Palestinian demand, but what are we supposed to give in return?’ Of course, . . . they want us to disband the military wings of [Hamas and other terrorist groups], and incorporate them into the [PA] police force.’

“Naturally, we completely rejected that offer. . . . We cannot, in exchange for money or projects, give up Palestine and our weapons. We will not give up the resistance, Jerusalem, our people in the West Bank, or our right of return to the land of Palestine. So we did not go along with those plans.”

Read more on MEMRI: https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-leader-ismail-haniyeh-we-entitled-airport-seaport-projects-will-not-give-up-weapons-resistance-in-exchange