A different Hamas?

In a good analysis in Ha'aretz, Zvi Bar'el observes that Hamas' religious agenda seems to have disappeared, despite the Koranic citations quoted in the Mecca summit between Hamas and Fatah.  Here's the start of  the piece:

At the signing ceremony for the Mecca agreement last week, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh all vied so hard to outdo one another that it almost seemed as if they were competing in a Koran recitation contest.

Abbas, who spoke first, didn't know how far Meshal was about to go with Koranic citations, and so he quickly switched to discussing secular matters. Meshal, however, made a brilliant showing. The lengthy verses he quoted by heart resounded throughout the huge auditorium and, if anybody was looking around, they would have noticed at least three Saudi royals murmuring the verses along with Meshal and nodding their heads approvingly.

Meshal, apparently, cleverly chose the right verses. "You can't come into the home of the Saudi royalty without being able to quote some long verses," an Egyptian journalist once said to me. "In the West, everyone always has a joke or some witty comment ready. In Egypt, you have to come up with an eloquent phrase in praise of the host. In Saudi Arabia, it's just Koranic verses. You'd think everyone there is some kind of religious sage," he explained.

Yet the verses that served as a backdrop for the unity agreement could not obscure one particularly interesting detail: Nowhere in the entire agreement, in all the speeches, and in the entire past year since Hamas came to power, has a single religious statement been heard from it. It seems like even Article 27 of the Hamas charter has been totally forgotten.

This section says that "Despite our esteem for the Palestine Liberation Organization and what it is capable of developing into, and without belittling its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we cannot exchange the Islamic nature of Palestine in the present or future for the adoption of secular ideas -- Hence the day on which the Palestine Liberation Organization adopts Islam as its way of life we will be its soldiers and the fuel of its fire which will burn the enemy. However, until then -- the Islamic Resistance Movement will treat the Palestine Liberation Organization as a son treats his father, brother treats brother, relative treats relative."

Comments

[mike]

I'm always amazed by Martin's apparent affection for Hamas. This is a group that makes the aryan brotherhood look like a group of tree-huggers, yet these same leftists who wouldn't dream of dignifying white supemacists, are sympathetic to nutjob muslim supremacists. Martin's position is that we should sit down and sing cumbuya with a group of terrorists who make cartoons featuring arab babies being eaten by monstrous half-human jews. It boggles the mind. One has to wonder how much money Martin contributed to Al-Arians "charities."