Renown Arab thinker Lafif Lakhdar wrote an article for the reformist e-magazine www.elaph.com two-and-a-half months ago in which he blasted Hamas for bringing disaster upon the Palestinians. He criticized the terrorist group and Palestinians in general for “rejectionism,” a term described as ‘refusing all suggestions of compromise.’

MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, published excerpts of the article at their site. It is a relevant article to read today because Lakhdar understood what Hamas was doing months ago, and what the likely consequences of this group’s actions would be for all Palestinians, or at least all Gazans.

Some excerpts follow here as well:

In 1937, the British Peel Commission suggested a partition of Palestine with 80% [of the territory] given to the Palestinians and 20% to the Jews. The [then] leader of Palestine, [Grand] Mufti Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, was quick to reject the proposal on religious grounds. [He argued that] Palestine was a Muslim waqf [i.e., religious endowment] for the Muslims of the world, and it was [therefore] forbidden to hand [even] an inch of it over to the Jews. Conversely, David Ben Gurion, leader of the [Palestine] Jews at the time, gave the following calculated response. The decision, [he said], is not what I hoped for, but I refuse to reject it. The Jewish religious law, just like the Muslim law… forbids to relinquish [even] an inch of the land to infidels. But Ben Gurion, having a modern mentality, considered this [law] obsolete.

The Hamas charter demands to obsessively repeat the refusals of 1937 and 1947, [justifying this] with expressions taken from [the discourse of] the medieval religious scholars: Palestine is a [religious] waqf, not an inch of which may be given away. This is magical thinking… Just say ‘no,’ and the concession will miraculously disappear, even if, on the ground, it remains a solid fact.

This rejection [of the partition proposals], which amounts to no less than a political scandal, must be recalled again and again – in order to impress upon the younger generation how dangerous it is [to cling to] the fantasy of ‘conspiracies’ against ‘the plundered land of Palestine,’ and how dangerous it is to take comfort in religious masochism (‘nothing can happen to us unless Allah wills it’) in order to justify the disasters caused by the mixing of Muslim law and political decision-making.

[The rejection of these proposals must also be evoked] in order to impress upon the younger generation the [even] greater danger [inherent in] delaying the shift from Muslim law to [pragmatic] politics. By consulting Muslim law, which is characterized by inflexible maxims, Amin Al-Husseini caused his people to lose their homeland. David Ben Gurion, on the other hand, [based his decision] on politics – [namely on] the art of the possible, [or on] what is feasible given the existing power balance at a certain time and place – and gained a homeland for his people.

Instead of demonizing the other, it is preferable to examine oneself and understand the mistakes of the past, so as to avoid repeating them almost obsessively for 70 years, as the Palestinians have done.

The author clearly sees through the approach taken by Palestinian leaders in the last 70 years, which has been a constant repetition of failures. When Israel first declared its independence the Palestinian leadership and their Arab friends revolted, declared war on the newly established Jewish nation-state which resulted in a defeat for the allied Arab forces who had to give up lands to Israel and were terribly humiliated.

Next they attacked Israel in the late 1960s and early 1970, again resulting in a major defeat and in a larger Israel. 

Summarized, whenever the Palestinian leadership refuses to negotiate and reach a compromise it is punished by Israeli expansion and increased suffering of their own people. Lakhdar understands this, one hopes that Palestinians will understand it soon as well.

Lakhdar’s article is also interesting because he represents a reasonably new but increasingly powerful voice in the Arab world: that of criticism of Hamas and of Palestinians in general, which they did not do for decades. As I explained at the start of Israel’s war on Hamas many Arab leaders and intellectuals have had it with Hamas and, by extension, with those who voted for this terrorist group in elections.

Of course many Arabs stand by the Palestinian people now, after they have been confronted with images of Palestinians suffering for days, more than a week, in a row. But one should not forget that much of the Arab ’sympathy,’ at least when it comes from Arab leaders, is hypocritical, even fake. They may not be friends of Israel, but they are certainly also no friends of Hamas and they have, it seems, lost faith in the ability and willingness of the Palestinian people to agree to a reasonable and peaceful solution for the problem.

Lakhdar’s column is a clear sign of this change in attitude. It will be interesting to see whether the current suffering due to Israel’s attack will reawaken Arab support and sympathy for the Palestinian people or whether they will continue to distance themselves from Hamas et al.