Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, Hand in Hand

Alyssa Lappan makes the case in Front Page Magazine that there is no real difference between Hamas and the PA/PLO for all intents and purposes.

Hamas is not at war with the Palestinian Authority, despite a PR campaign to the contrary. The PA has worked actively with Hamas for years. In 1995, it wrote a pact with the Islamist terrorists in Hamas. Mahmoud Abbas’ protests are evidently for show. On March 3 of this year, Abbas urged that violence continue.

A draft of the Hamas-PA pact, appended below, ran on Sept. 20, 1995 in Egypt’s Al-Ahram government weekly. Article 12 requires the PA to cease all preventive security and let Hamas operate without PA interference. The agreement gives Hamas a role in the PA government, which Abu Mazen fulfilled by naming a Hamas partisan as education minister.

Indeed, PLO political chief Farouq Al-Qaddoumi confirmed on Jan. 3, 2003, Fatah was “never different from Hamas… Strategically, we are no different from it.”

Here is the money quote on where the US keeps going wrong.

Mr. President, you resolved after September 11th that the U.S. would defeat terrorism globally. I’m a New Yorker, and this earned you my unwavering support.

The Road Map, however, defeats this wise policy by:

Rewarding terrorists whose deceitful regime has murdered more than 1,300 civilians since 1993, maimed more than seven thousand, and sponsored 20,000 attacks on civilians over the past three years. It rewards the inventors of suicide bombing, airline hijacking, kidnapping and mass murder for political gain.

Overlooking the Palestinian National Charter’s open call for genocide—never revised. Thirty of its clauses seek Israel’s political, military, intellectual and cultural destruction by any and all means.

Defeating democracy. The PA Constitution proposes an undemocratic, racist, Islamist state—denying basic freedoms to non-Muslim minorities. This reinforces Islam’s worst characteristics, a history of subjugating non-Muslims revealed by Bat Ye’or, Ann Elizabeth Meyer, Raphael Israeli, Frederick P. Isaac , Tudor Parfitt, H.Z. Hirschberg, V.S. Naipaul and Patrick Sookdheo, among others. Israeli’s forthcoming Islamikaze should be required State Department reading.

Illustrating U.S. failure of conviction, a perceived weakness inviting Islamists to mount larger attacks on Israeli and U.S. civilians—and intensify their advanced ideological, intellectual, political, and religious assaults on foundational Western values.

Ignoring a central tenet of Islam, which permits no permanent peace between Muslims and “infidel” states (such as Israel). Under Islamic law, the only treaty possible between Muslims and “infidels” is a “truce” modeled on Muhammad’s Al-Hudabiyyah Treaty with the Meccans in 628, according to Islamic scholar Hugh Fitzgerald. This may not exceed 10 years, and may be renewed briefly, but only if Muslims could thereby gather strength to renew their assault or defeat the Infidels in question.