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Sunday, June 06, 2010

Must-read op-ed in Arabic blasts flotilla, Hamas

A Palestinian Arab newspaper asks about the motives of the Free Gaza flotilla.

The op-ed, by Fouad Sobhi, says
The Arab and Muslim world is very angry after the fall of some of victims when the Turks tried to sail some small boats carrying aid to break the siege imposed on Gaza and access to the Gaza Strip by sea. Demonstrations went out as usual to the streets of some Arab and Islamic slogans condemning what happened and demand an international trial of Israel and its leaders and the expulsion of ambassadors in Cairo and Jordan ... At the same time called the Muslim Brotherhood called upon the Egyptian government to open the crossings between Egypt and Gaza Strip - not to send food or fuel for the necessary needs of the Palestinians, but to send fighters to Israel to punish them for their response to vessels seeking to break the embargo on Hamas.

Many of the angry protesters don't know that it had been possible to avoid the victims and wounded at sea if the organizers of these vessels accepted the offer of Egypt and Israel to give such assistance to the Egyptian authorities to convey the aid to residents of the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing. This offer was rejected completely, because the scenario that was written and planned carefully by Hamas and the Turks was to create a clash with the Israeli navy and to provoke the soldiers of the Israeli army and engage with them to the degree that they will not escape, only shoot to defend themselves and then [Hamas can] exploit the incident, a major world media event to show Israel as a monster predator perpetrating aggressions against the innocent unarmed civilians who were seeking to achieve a noble humanitarian goal is to help the Palestinians.

My question here is why did the the organizers of the vessels refuse to accept the Egyptian offer to transfer their aid through the Egyptian border?? Why did they insist on moving towards Gaza despite the dozens of warnings issued to them by the Israeli and Egyptian authorities?? Is there a relationship between what has happened in the Mediterranean Sea and conflicts and internal disputes in Turkey between Prime Minister on the one hand, the army and the opposition on the other?? Did the system in Turkey want to dismiss what is happening inside with their internal conflicts and divisions by playing the religious feelings of Muslims and Arabs and criticism of Israel with guns and try to become the Savior of the Palestinian cause??

There is no doubt that I sympathize with all my senses and my heart with the good Palestinian people in Gaza and I hope to lift their siege the day before tomorrow, and I hope with all my heart for an immediate end to their suffering and the inhumane conditions, but at the same time, we must say that I find an excuse and justification for Israel and Egypt to continue this ban in the presence of the current leaders of the extremist Hamas who impose - Hamas themselves - the maximum blockade and more cruelty and viciousness, hundreds of times worse than the Egyptian and Israeli blockade.

I think it is appropriate to condemn the world's first siege of the extremist Hamas leadership of the Palestinian people in Gaza, religiously, socially, intellectually, politically, morally and economically .. But must also be strong demand to dismiss the Hamas leadership, extreme power and the rule of the sector and bring it back to the rule of the legitimate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abu Abbas to unify the Palestinians again.