100 Tel Aviv Bombing

A suicide bomber killed nine people at a Tel Aviv felafel stand today. Sami Abu Zuhri, the official spokesman for Hamas, said the attack was “a natural result of the continued Israeli crimes” against Palestinians. “Our people are in a state of self-defence and they have every right to use all means to defend themselves.”

Hamas is looking weaker by the day. First police in Gaza storm a government building to demand missed wages, and now this.

This kind of statement plays right into Hamas’ enemies’ hands and does nothing to help the Palestinian people. People around the world will wake up tomorrow, read the headline, “Palestinian Bomber Kills 8 in Israel; Hamas Approves,” and what? Feel a wave of compassion for the Palestinian people suffering under occupation?

[tags]Israel, Palestine, Hamas[/tags]

3 Comments »

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  1. To what extent does Hamas’ weakness stem from a failure on its part as opposed to its untenable position? Like Fatah before them, they’re asked to exercise the power of a state without the apparatus of a state. Hamas has the added troubles of no aid (save those great guardians of democracy in Tehran and maybe Moscow), stolen tax revenues, and an outmoded destructive ideology that led to this stupid comment. What path can they take? Renounce the platform on which they were elected or allow the Authority to collapse and let Kadima redraw the borders to their liking?

    Comment by P-New — April 19, 2006 #

  2. All true, and I think they’ve navigated a crowded minefield deftly thus far. But they have zero margin of error right now, and their reaction to the Tel Aviv bombing was a serious, possibly fatal, misstep. It also contradicted their recent position on violence (the truce holds, they’re intereseted in negotiating a permanent truce, and if foreign powers who want them to repudiate violence entirely also they believe in a two-state solution, then the Palestinians should have the right to build an army).

    They would have done better to promise that the people who planned the bombings would be arrested. They’re the government now; they need to act like it. Perhaps that’s asking the impossible of them given that they don’t have a state or a government’s usual recourses to power and given the forces arrayed against them. But that’s the reality they face.

    Likewise, it’d be nice to see the United States establish some credibility behind its rhetoric about spreading democracy in the Middle East. Rings a bit hollow if you’re also conspiring to force democratically elected governments out of power. But while the US hasn’t seemed particularly concerned about this, Hamas just ensured they needn’t be.

    Comment by The Skeptic — April 19, 2006 #

  3. Hamas is more honest than Fatah. Fatah would SAY they denounce the attacks but then would just proceed noplace with it.

    At least hamas is truthful.

    If they want to have a government then use the police to good use and make the lives of the people there better.

    The posters glorifying the bomber are up all over Palestine…this shows they have money to do that, but none for infrastructure?

    They go in circles with no one to blame but themselves for their misery.

    Comment by callie — April 22, 2006 #

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