No two-state solution

‘The owl of Minerva only takes flight at dusk,’ wrote Hegel, reflecting on history.

The West and its media keeps talking about Palestinian Authority and various peace plans, e.g., No mention of the Prisoner meetings about unity in the early 2000s, the Beijing declaration, the Cairo talks, and now Trump/Netanyahu peace plan, but they are all excluding the Palestinian resistance in Gaza and especially the resistance in the West Bank. This resistance is being carried on by refugees in their own land. It is not a civil war. Will westerners even understand Palestinian sumud.

Palestinian Ambassador to Britain: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/17Pwj7gmZK/

When people talk about Hamas, they engage in misrepresentation (nearly always) and dis-representation (a lot of the time).

The Palestinian resistance had a strong critique of the Oslo Accord signed by Fatah, which turned out to be correct. Hamas signed a ceasefire on the 15th of January 2025. The Palestinian resistance complied with the ceasefire. The Hamas political leadership signed the deal, and the military resistance complied. Hamas didn’t take civilian hostages on October the 7th. Zionists have consistently dis-represented what happened on the 7th of October 2023. Especially in regard of the Hannibal directive given by the IDF for US made Apache helicopters to kill their own people at the festivals.

We simply do not know who committed all the atrocities on October the 7th. I recommend people read ‘”Understanding Hamas and why this matters“’ by Helena Cobban. Maybe or hopefully then we can have a proper discourse. See below.

Last week in the UN, Albanese insisted on excluding Hamas from all future government in Gaza and Palestine. He said:

Australia affirms the plan’s commitment to denying Hamas any role in the future governance of Gaza, and calls on Hamas to agree to the plan, lay down its arms and release all remaining hostages. – Anthony Albanese, 30th of September 2025.

Backing Trump is stupid.

Misrepresentation or dis-representation?
Hamas is not Al Qaeda or ISIS. That is dis-representation. Hamas has both advantages and defects, like any government. Hamas began by running social programs, a bit like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Back then, they were not political. When they became political, the West insisted that Israel should be allowed to arrest them and kill them. They are still doing it. For example, the United States and Britain participated in Israel’s bombing of Doha a couple of weeks ago.

Without the inclusion of all the Palestinian resistance, the Palestinian people will never have self-determination. What about the 10,000 political prisoners in Israeli jails? When will they get a say?

People have got to stop telling Palestinians what they should do, that is, to accept the two-state solution.

Our job is to stop our government from supporting Israel and genocide through the back door by going on with the lie that is the two-state solution. Two states are not viable. The only viable option is a Free Palestine, from the river to the sea.

Ian Curr
Editor

30 September 2025

Understanding Hamas and why this matters

Rami G. Khouri: What is the most important way to understand what Hamas is and why it matters?

Dr. Paola Caridi: This is a very, very hard question, Rami. Hamas is a political movement with a sometimes very rigid structure that has used different tools, political, armed struggle, and even terrorism. We don’t have to fear words. Suicide attacks against civilians were terrorism. But, on the same level, we can’t avoid the political dimension of the movement that started some years before 1987, when there was the meeting in Gaza that paved the way to the movement. And it’s important to underline why there were years of thought regarding the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, that is Hamas.

It started in 1982 because of Beirut, because of the Israeli Operation Peace for Galilee and the PLO’s expulsion from Beirut. The idea that the PLO failed was one of the things that paved the way to an Islamist political movement born from the Muslim Brotherhood. After that, there were different chapters in the life of Hamas. There was an initial chapter that started with the First Intifada. There was a second one after the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre done by Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli settler in al-Khalil, Hebron, which was when the movement decided to use—and it was the political movement that decided to use—the armed struggle and terror tools like suicide attacks.

And then in 2005, there was the most important chapter from the political point of view and that was a suspension of the suicide attacks and the idea of participating in the Palestinian Authority elections for the parliament of the Palestinian Authority. That was a big change because, in a way, it recognized the PA through the parliamentary elections, and nobody in the international community stopped this idea. Israel, the United States, the international community, the European Union, and the Arab states, also Egypt, paved the way to the elections where Hamas had a list, and paved the way to the success of Hamas on the political level. Then there was 2007, the coup. But the most important thing is that, from the beginning until now, the structure of Hamas is extremely relevant: four constituencies, a spread-out activism, with members in the West Bank, in Gaza, abroad (in the refugee camps), and a very strong organizational structure.

Rami G. Khouri: Thank you. So, from what you’ve told us, Hamas has evolved and changed over time. I have two questions related to that. What causes Hamas to change? Is it political pragmatism? Is it desperation? Is it opportunism? How are those decisions made among these different constituencies you mentioned? And the second question related to that is, people who are interested in following Palestinian events, and Hamas in particular, how should they find credible insights or facts about Hamas? Should they read their press statements? Should they read their newspaper? Should they listen to interviews with their leaders? Where are the critical sources that you recommend to people to follow in order to be accurately up to date with Hamas’s thinking?

Dr. Paola Caridi: In a way, I will say that the movement has a lot of pragmatism, within a very rigid organizational structure, and a very rigid decisional process. If I have to suggest sources, I would suggest interviews with their leaders and press statements, written statements. If they say that they will do something, they do it. And this is also the rigidity of Hamas. Why? Because the constituencies vote for having part in the decision process. What does that mean? When they decided to stop the suicide attacks in 2005, there was a sort of poll among the constituencies. I will underline the constituencies because they are very important: the West Bank, Gaza, abroad, that is both the leadership and the activists in the refugee camps—and prisons. Prisons, especially the Israeli prisons, where the activists, Hamas activists, continue to be involved in the decisional process and continue to be politically involved. What does it mean? It means that, for example, in 2005 and 2007, the prison constituency was extremely important. First, the participation in the PA elections, and second, in the search for unity among the factions. I was very lucky to have had the permit to go inside an Israeli jail and meet some of the activists from Fatah, from the Popular Front, from the Islamic Jihad, and from Hamas. They showed me the draft of the Prisoner’s Document, and I didn’t know at that moment that that draft would be so relevant in the history of Palestinian politics. So, I mean, this is the way the movement is acting in the structure, that shows both the rigidity and the pragmatism of the movement—when it deals with the outside, with Israel, with Palestinian politics, with alliances, and with different actors in the region.

Rami G. Khouri: So, based on the Prisoner’s Document, and the way the Hamas prisoners have acted in jail, interacting with other factions of the Palestinian national movement, what does this tell us about the capacity or willingness of Hamas to actually give and take, to negotiate politically within the Palestinian leadership world, and then possibly beyond that in the Arab world, with Israel, and with the West? Should the prison experience of Hamas give us insights into its capacity to negotiate? And then the question, which I’ll follow up after that, is to negotiate for what? What do you see, what do you understand, is their ultimate aim today?

Dr. Paola Caridi: The prisoners’ experience tells us also about Hamas’s political behavior outside of the prison. It means that they are negotiating—they are capable, and they are able to negotiate. They negotiated both inside the prison, among the factions in prison, and outside. If we think about Hamas along the years of its life as a political movement, we see that it negotiated with Israel, for example. It negotiated with Israel, starting from 1988, a few months after it had been founded as a movement. There are some documents that tell us a lot about this. They were invited to Tel Aviv to speak with the Israeli leadership and they said no to many of the requests—to all the requests of the Israeli leadership. So, they started since the beginning with a negotiation and they continued along the years. Of course, they negotiated also with Arafat, but that didn’t go any further. They negotiated with Israel, for example in the [2011] exchange between Gilad Shalit and the 1,027 [Palestinian] political prisoners, not only Hamas prisoners. We also have to underline this. And they also negotiate inside the Palestinian political arena, to cross the borders of Gaza. They did a lot along the years.