“Hamas could lose the different forms of political, financial and logistical support it receives from Qatar,” said Ghassan Khatib, a vice president of Bir Zeit University.
The rupture in relations between Qatar and a number of its Arab neighbors could hurt Hamas, a Palestinian expert said Tuesday.
“Assuming that the Arab states continue to pressure Qatar, Hamas could lose the different forms of political, financial and logistical support it receives from Qatar,” said Ghassan Khatib, a vice president of Bir Zeit University. “That would be really bad news for Hamas.”
The rupture in relations between Qatar and a number of its Arab neighbors could hurt Hamas, a Palestinian expert said Tuesday.
“Assuming that the Arab states continue to pressure Qatar, Hamas could lose the different forms of political, financial and logistical support it receives from Qatar,” said Ghassan Khatib, a vice president of Bir Zeit University. “That would be really bad news for Hamas.”
The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain officially cut ties with Qatar on Sunday, announcing a series of measures against Doha. Some of the measures include expelling Qatari diplomats and citizens and closing airspace to Qatar Airways.
The four Arab states say Qatar is responsible for funding extremist groups, including Islamic State and al-Qaida. Qatar denies any backing to the groups. The four Arab states also contend that Qatar is close to their greatest adversary, Iran.
According to Khatib, the four Arab states see Hamas as an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood, which they have designated a terrorist group.
If the pressure continues, Qatar most probably would have to make some adjustments regarding its support for Hamas,” he said.
Qatar is one of Hamas’s staunchest allies.
It has sent millions of dollars to Gaza to support Hamas’s governance efforts, including hundreds of millions for reconstruction and millions for the energy sector.
When Gazans took to the streets to protest Hamas’s handling of an electricity crisis last winter, Qatar sent $12 million to Gaza for needed fuel, effectively bailing out Hamas.
Qatar has also served as the headquarters of Hamas’s diaspora leadership, hosting a number of its most senior leaders including, former Hamas politburo chairman Khaled Mashaal and his aides.
Hamas spokesmen have not responded to the deterioration in ties between Qatar and the Arab states.
For its part, the Palestinian Authority has refrained from addressing the issue publicly except for a brief statement by Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki in Tunis on Monday.
“What happened saddens us. We hope that the wise and rational voices will be able to bring these brotherly states back together,” Maliki told a press conference alongside Tunisian Foreign Minister Khemaies Jhinaoui.
Despite Maliki’s comments calling for a resolution, Khatib said the pressure on Qatar is “indirectly playing into the hands of the Palestinian leadership” and its strategy against Hamas.
The PA has taken a number of measures to pressure Hamas to cede control of the Gaza Strip in the past several weeks. In May, PA leaders informed Israel that it only wants to pay for some 64% of electricity Israel transfers to Gaza.
Ghandi? It angers me that they are naming anything after that anti-Zionist schmuck, Ghandi, in Yesha, of all places, though that’s not what the following article is about. I agree with Dagan. If BB continues to restrict the building of homes for Jews, he should be replaced. I don’t care where this center is built, it’s the name that’s pissing me off. – SZ
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/230715
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Now, here’s what jumps out at me. Ghandi Memorial Center? Ghandi of all people? I mean I understand that they want to discredit the myths about violent settlers before the international community as though that would work.
And, I understand that it is not widely understood that Ghandi indirectly caused a million unnecessary deaths during the Partition that wouldn’t have necessarily happened if there had been an army and a police force after the British were forced to flee by psychological warfare which, in turn. served as a precedent for directly murderous wielders of this potent weapon.
But, have they ever read what Ghandi wrote about Zionism?
There are many statements from 1921 to 1948. I read some of them. Here’s a sample:
“Do the Muslims claim Palestine, or will they restore it to the Jews who are the original owners?
“The Muslims claim Palestine as an integral part of Jazirat-ul-Arab. They are bound to retain its custody, as an injunction of the Prophet. But that does not mean that the Jews and the Christians cannot freely go to Palestine, or even reside there and own property. What non-Muslims cannot do is to acquire sovereign jurisdiction. The Jews cannot receive sovereign rights in a place which has been held for centuries by Muslim powers by right of religious conquest. The Muslim soldiers did not shed their blood in the late War for the purpose of surrendering Palestine out of Muslim control. I would like my Jewish friends to impartially consider the position of the seventy million Muslims of India. As a free nation, can they tolerate what they must regard as a treacherous disposal of their sacred possession?”
April 6, 1921
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/notes-in-young-india-by-gandhi-april-1921
From The Bombay Chronicle
“What do you feel is the most acceptable solution to the Palestine problem?”
“The abandonment wholly by the Jews of terrorism and other forms of violence.”
June 2, 1948
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/gandhi-s-answer-to-question-by-united-press-of-america-june-1947
The rest is here:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/gandhi-the-jews-and-zionism
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Wow! This guy just offends with every stinking breath, doesn’t he?
“Several letters have been received by me asking me to declare my views about the Arab-Jew question in Palestine and the persecution of the Jews in Germany. It is not without hesitation that I venture to offer my views on this very difficult question.
My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my sympathy for the Jews.
But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?
Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.
The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colourable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.
But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone. And he is doing it with religious zeal. For he is propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism in the name of which any inhumanity becomes an act of humanity to be rewarded here and hereafter. The crime of an obviously mad but intrepid youth is being visited upon his whole race with unbelievable ferocity. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified.
But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is therefore outside my horizon or province.But if there can be no war against Germany, even for such a crime as is being committed against the Jews, surely there can be no alliance with Germany. How can there be alliance between a nation which claims to stand for justice and democracy and one which is the declared enemy of both? Or is England drifting towards armed dictatorship and all it means?
Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism. It is also showing how hideous, terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness.
Can the Jews resist this organised and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. No person who has faith in a living God need feel helpless or forlorn. Jehovah of the Jews is a God more personal than the God of the Christians, the Mussalmans or the Hindus, though as a matter of fact in essence, He is common to all and one without a second and beyond description. But as the Jews attribute personality to God and believe that He rules every action of theirs, they ought not to feel helpless. If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.
It is hardly necessary for me to point out that it is easier for the Jews than for the Czechs to follow my prescription. And they have in the Indian satyagraha campaign in South Africa an exact parallel. There the Indians occupied precisely the same place that the Jews occupy in Germany. The persecution had also a religious tinge. President Kruger used to say that the white Christians were the chosen of God and Indians were inferior beings created to serve the whites. A fundamental clause in the Transvaal constitution was that there should be no equality between the whites and coloured races including Asiatics. There too the Indians were consigned to ghettos described as locations. The other disabilities were almost of the same type as those of the Jews in Germany. The Indians, a mere handful, resorted to satyagraha without any backing from the world outside or the Indian Government. Indeed the British officials tried to dissuade the satyagrahis is from their contemplated step. World opinion and the Indian Government came to their aid after eight years of fighting. And that too was by way of diplomatic pressure not of a threat of war.
But the Jews of Germany can offer satyagraha under infinitely better auspices than the Indians of South Africa. The Jews are a compact, homogeneous community in Germany. They are far more gifted than the Indians of South Africa. And they have organised world opinion behind them. I am convinced that if someone with courage and vision can arise among them to lead them in non-violent action, the winter of their despair can in the twinkling of an eye be turned into the summer of hope. And what has today become a degrading man-hunt can be turned into a calm and determined stand offered by unarmed men and women possessing the strength of suffering given to them by Jehovah. It will be then a truly religious resistance offered against the godless fury of dehumanised man. The German Jews will score a lasting victory over the German gentiles in the sense that they will have converted the latter to an appreciation of human dignity. They will have rendered service to fellow-Germans and proved their title to be the real Germans as against those who are today dragging, however unknowingly, the German name into the mire.
And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it in the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart. The same God rules the Arab heart who rules the Jewish heart. They can offer satyagraha in front of the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them. They will find the world opinion in their favour in their religious aspiration. There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-shares with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them.
I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.
Let the Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth. Every country is their home including Palestine not by aggression but by loving service. A Jewish friend has sent me a book called The Jewish Contribution to Civilisation by Cecil Roth. It gives a record of what the Jews have done to enrich the world`s literature, art, music, drama, science, medicine, agriculture, etc. Given the will, the Jew can refuse to be treated as the outcaste of the West, to be despised or patronised. He can command the attention and respect of the world by being man, the chosen creation of God, instead of being man who is fast sinking to the brute and forsaken by God. They can add to their many contributions the surpassing contribution of non-violent action.
Segaon, November 20, 1938”
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lsquo-the-jews-rsquo-by-gandhi
The main question is, how long will this show of acquiescence to the Donald hold up. Is this the latest presentation of taqqiya?
If these neighbors know about Qatar’s involvement with the MB and terror organizations, why haven’t they taken action before now?