Hamas’s completely reasonable demand – Joop

I find it entirely understandable. As soon as a sovereign Palestinian state becomes a reality, Hamas will disband its armed wing and is prepared to enter into a long-term ceasefire with Israel. This is what a top political official of the organization says, The Rights Forum reports. As long as there is occupation and colonialism, there will logically be resistance. One thing leads to another.

As long as Israel kills people, so will Hamas, although Hamas is far from being able to retaliate in kind. Study the victim statistics for the past fifteen years. As long as Israel holds thousands of Palestinians captive without a fair trial, Hamas will also hold people hostage, something they are normally not capable of doing, but have been able to do since October 7, 2023.

No peace without justice. But sharing land on the basis of equality is not in Israel’s dictionary. For those who look straight, the demand for a sovereign state is not at all a strange demand. Mind you: that would only be a small part of the original Palestine before 1948! But my common sense is probably not correct enough in the eyes of many decent, but poorly informed Dutch people who think Israel is a nice and cozy country, and Palestinians are scary people.

Moreover, in the long term, a two-state solution does not seem fair to me at all. Palestinians then get much less space per capita than Israelis: they get the barren remaining pieces of land of Israel’s last choice. Anyone who really wants peace and justice must ultimately opt for sharing land instead of making it impossible to divide the land fairly.