Links for June 2-5 2010

There will be no more blogging today, and I am traveling tomorrow... but in the meantime here are the links.

• Hamas must reshape itself | David Hearst

  Need strong Pal leadership - Fatah no longer credible, Hamas must engage.

• IDF Releases Apparently Doctored Flotilla Audio; Press Reports As Fact

  More poorly made Israeli agitprop.

• Israel as a Strategic Liability?

  Anthony Cordesman, why the question mark?

• Hirsi Ali, Berman, and Ramadan on Islam : The New Yorker

  Review of silly books.

• LRB · Jacqueline Rose · ‘J’accuse’: Dreyfus in Our Times

  Israel can learn from the Dreyfus Affair about rendering justice to Palestinians.

• Sudan after the elections: Back to the bad old ways | The Economist

  ""the election’s chief upshot is that Mr Bashir has tightened his grip in the north and the SPLM has done the same in the south."

• Israel and Gaza: How Israel plays into Hamas's hands | The Economist

  On Gaza's blockade, possibilities for Pal reconciliation.

• Copts and marriage: You can't just marry anyone | The Economist

  On a recent ruling against the church.

• Egypt: Director goes off the government's script - latimes.com

  Censorship and filming in Egypt.

• What exactly is the blockade of Gaza? by Yousef Munayyer | The Middle East Channel

  The facts.

• Israel’s commando complex

  "Recently an intelligence official actually called the absence of Palestinian terror a 'propaganda problem.'"

• Qantara.de - A Jewish Writer from the Arab Perspective

  Kafka as seen by the Arabs.

• State Terrorism « LRB blog

  Rachid Khalidi.

• Fatah and Hamas are both taking on water; Robert Blecher; International Crisis Group | The Middle East Channel

  How true: "the official Palestinian leadership has grown increasingly marginal in its own national struggle."

• Gaza Protest in London « LRB blog

  Tariq Ali calls for BDS in London protest. Very eloquent.

• Nonviolence from the bottom up by Sami Awad | The Middle East Channel

  Great, but how about Israel being non-violent and ending the occupation?

• Amira Hass / Lexicon of most misleading terms in Israeli-Palestinian conflict

  Very good points, esp. on "non-violence."

• Egypt lets generators into Gaza, first time since war

  Because generators were so dangerous.

Comments

[Prestwick]

Regarding link #1, everyone has been telling Hamas to reform and enage for over ten years now. They've had possibly one of the longest windows of opportunity I've ever seen to take the initiative in the peace process and become the premier political force in Palestinian politics in the wake of the ultra corrupt Fatah.

The problem is that they simply can't kick the habit of having an "armed wing". They haven't matured and performed the serperation that Sinn Fein and the PIRA did in the 1970s which resulted in seperate and independent political and military bodies. This hasn't happened with Hamas and I fear that it will never happen.

I'm not just talking about recognising Israel, etc but I'm talking about fundemental reform in how Hamas runs itself. It can't just end up as yet another Hezbollah pretending to be a nation state within a nation state.

Its sad because all I'm seeing is Israeli brutality and incompetence scoring own goals for the extremists on one side while Hamas' refusal to budge on its own rather dodgy and extremists tendencies bolster the ultra right in Isreal and in America.

[Non-Arab Arab]

Yo Prestwick, let me know when Israel renounces its armed wing.