Excerpt:
“First and foremost, we need to sort out the matter of the hostages, to swap them with the terrorists that are here [referring to Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, not all of whom were involved in militant activities]; it’s just explosive material to hold them in prison. After that, we need to sit down and negotiate a peace agreement,” Pauker said. As he spoke, the sounds of explosions from Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza could be heard in the background.
“I have good friends from across the border [in Gaza], but I can’t meet them, and they can’t meet me. They used to come to my house. I spoke to them on Saturday. They are human beings. They have bad leaders, like us. We can throw away the leaders on both sides and make peace in a matter of minutes.”
Gaza isn’t occupied for almost 20 years. The only issue Gaza had is no freedom of air and maritime space, and no freedom of travel outside of Gaza, all those authority is oversee by Israel. What hamas can do is, with the help of Qatar and other islamic world that understand their issue, secure a diplomatic ties with Egypt and open up the rafah crossing, secure funding in the mean of loan and build facilities(electricity, water) to become more independent from Israel, have a force strong enough to prevent Israel attack, and stop lobbing rocket at Israel.
Of course, this will face strong objection from Netanyahu because he’s a removed, but at least then it’s very clear the issue lies with Israel, not Gaza. You gotta show the world you’re willing to build up, and willing to respect the Greenline that you say you want Israel to respect.
This, of course, is oversimplifying the politics between Hamas vs Fatah and Hamas vs the west, and the hatred that’s swelling up for the last few decades or so, but at least it’s a good base to stand on.
Israel tightly controls all imports and exports, has its water controlled, it’s electricity controlled, it’s fuel controlled, it’s food imports counted down the the calories, can not access things like concrete or steel or other construction materials. It’s a concentration camp. It’s a settler colonial occupation even if the colonizers don’t set foot inside the ghetto.
And How is Hamas supposed to form ties with Egypt? They’d have to outbid Israel. What do they have to offer?
Meanwhile, Israel is working to normalize relationships with all the surrounding countries so Hamas can’t have diplomatic ties with anyone! That’s one of the reasons this attack happened - normalization has been defeated.