Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are One

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 19, 2003

Dear Mr. President: The Road Map dangerously subverts the U.S. War on Terror.

As a journalist specializing on Middle East history, I urge you to refocus on the goals you brilliantly outlined on June 24, 2002. We must not ask Israel to negotiate for a Palestinian State until the renewed terrorist attacks stop and the terrorist infrastructure is dismantled.

Hamas is not at war with the Palestinian Authority, despite a PR campaign to the contrary. The PA has worked actively with Hamas for years. In 1995, it wrote a pact with the Islamist terrorists in Hamas. Mahmoud Abbas’ protests are evidently for show. On March 3 of this year, Abbas urged that violence continue.

A draft of the Hamas-PA pact, appended below, ran on Sept. 20, 1995 in Egypt’s Al-Ahram government weekly. Article 12 requires the PA to cease all preventive security and let Hamas operate without PA interference. The agreement gives Hamas a role in the PA government, which Abu Mazen fulfilled by naming a Hamas partisan as education minister.

Indeed, PLO political chief Farouq Al-Qaddoumi confirmed on Jan. 3, 2003, Fatah was “never different from Hamas… Strategically, we are no different from it.â€?The Hamas-PA agreement crosses Article XV paragraph 1 of the second Oslo agreement, which requires both sides to take “all measures necessary in order to prevent acts of terrorism, crime and hostilities directed against each other, against individuals falling under the other’s authority and against their property, and shall take legal measures against offenders.â€?

In public, especially to foreign reporters and leaders, Mahmoud Abbas defends “peace.� This extends a decade of PA mass deception, originally planned in Cairo in 1974. Its leaders still consciously encourage terror, mass produce anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitements, illegally import arms and teach small children to kill. Abu Mazen’s PA TV greeted the Road Map with a call to murder Jewish civilians. (You can see the video here.)

Mr. President, you resolved after September 11th that the U.S. would defeat terrorism globally. I’m a New Yorker, and this earned you my unwavering support.

The Road Map, however, defeats this wise policy by:

• Rewarding terrorists whose deceitful regime has murdered more than 1,300 civilians since 1993, maimed more than seven thousand, and sponsored 20,000 attacks on civilians over the past three years. It rewards the inventors of suicide bombing, airline hijacking, kidnapping and mass murder for political gain.
• Overlooking the Palestinian National Charter’s open call for genocide—never revised. Thirty of its clauses seek Israel’s political, military, intellectual and cultural destruction by any and all means.
• Defeating democracy. The PA Constitution proposes an undemocratic, racist, Islamist state—denying basic freedoms to non-Muslim minorities. This reinforces Islam’s worst characteristics, a history of subjugating non-Muslims revealed by Bat Ye’or, Ann Elizabeth Meyer, Raphael Israeli, Frederick P. Isaac , Tudor Parfitt, H.Z. Hirschberg, V.S. Naipaul and Patrick Sookdheo, among others. Israeli’s forthcoming Islamikaze should be required State Department reading.
• Illustrating U.S. failure of conviction, a perceived weakness inviting Islamists to mount larger attacks on Israeli and U.S. civilians—and intensify their advanced ideological, intellectual, political, and religious assaults on foundational Western values.
• Ignoring a central tenet of Islam, which permits no permanent peace between Muslims and “infidelâ€? states (such as Israel). Under Islamic law, the only treaty possible between Muslims and “infidelsâ€? is a “truceâ€? modeled on Muhammad’s Al-Hudabiyyah Treaty with the Meccans in 628, according to Islamic scholar Hugh Fitzgerald. This may not exceed 10 years, and may be renewed briefly, but only if Muslims could thereby gather strength to renew their assault or defeat the Infidels in question.

Mr. President, the U.S. government must insist, to allies and enemies alike, that Israel reserves the national and sovereign right to defeat the terrorists, who have used all concessions to coordinate further nefarious work from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade and every other terror group west of the Jordan River.

If not substantially amended, the Road Map will cost our nation and our best Middle East ally a steep price. Please, abort the Road Map, which rewards terrorists and endangers Israel, the United States and free peoples everywhere.

Sincerely yours,
Alyssa A. Lappen

Below is the full text of the proposed agreement between Hamas and the Palestine National Authority as it was published in the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly on September 20, 1995. [1]

Paragraph (3) falsely interprets Oslo 2’s prohibitions (in Article XV paragraph 1) against all aggression, and grants Hamas license to operate in areas not under PA jurisdiction.

Paragraph (12) calls for the PA to stop taking preventive security measures.

The following is the complete text:

“IN THE NAME OF GOD THE MERCIFUL AND THE COMPASSIONATE

Having placed our trust in God; believing in the right of our Palestinian people to a life of freedom and dignity; asserting the national unity of our Palestinian people, and seeking to realize their just objectives in establishing their independent State of Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem; seeking to consolidate the foundations of democracy by Shura in our homeland on the basis of political pluralism, freedom of opinion, creed and human rights, under the rule of law and in observance of justice in view of our commitment to the vital interests of our people; in recognition of the national and historical responsibility which we all have a share in bearing; emanating from our profound faith in the principles of joint cooperation; aware of the grave dangers which threaten our people at the present stage; wishing to consolidate positive relations between all forces and agents, leaders of Fatah and members of the National Palestinian Authority have concluded, under the sponsorship of Chairman Yasser Arafat and His Eminence Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the present agreement, the result of good offices provided during the previous period and acknowledged with profound appreciation;

(1) To assert the unity and solidarity of the Palestinian people, their right to self determination and to establish an independent state with its capital in Jerusalem (Al-Quds Al-Sharif);

(2) To shun internal strife, adopt democratic means of dialogue in seeking realistic solutions which safeguard the interests of the people, realizing their objectives, and become united behind major issues of concern to the homeland, such as the issue of Jerusalem, the Palestinian detainees, the settlements, etc.;

(3) To respect the commitments of the Palestinian Liberation Organization ensuing from the agreements signed with the Israeli government which require the cessation of all military operations in, or launched from, the areas under the Palestinian National Authority, or publicizing views through peaceful means and democratic ways, without resort to defamation or offense;

(4) To emphasize the need to build the institutions of the Palestinian civil society, to separate the mandates of the respective authorities and to consolidate the rule of law;

(5) To accelerate the enactment of legislation establishing political parties in order to lay the foundations of political pluralism and to strengthen the principle of equality between all citizens;

(6) To recognize the right of brothers in Hamas to participate in the institutions of the Palestinian National Authority at all levels, on the basis of efficiency drawing on the fact that the Palestinian National Authority is the authority of the Palestinian people regardless of political and ideological leanings, or organizational affiliations;

(7) To assert the right to assemble and commemorate national or Islamic events after obtaining due permission from the concerned authorities within the Palestinian National Authority;

(8) To assert the right of citizens to own personal weapons provided the ownership or acquisition of such weapons be duly licensed by the concerned authorities within the Palestinian National Authority; however, the possession or carrying of explosives shall be banned on the grounds of the threat to the safety of citizens;

(9) To emphasize that the function of the units of local government is to provide services and as such are independent administrative units, composed of representatives directly elected, and such units should be run in accordance with local government law;

(10) To emphasize the principle of a free economy;

(11) The Palestinian National Authority is responsible for the protection of individuals who performed their duties during the years of struggle, from any faction or group, drawing from the principle that the Palestinian National Authority is responsible for securing the safety of all citizens;

(12) To create a suitable and tranquil atmosphere it was decided to take measures to enhance safety, confidence, cooperation and love between the citizens of the one nation, thus embodying national unity and consolidating it. This requires the cessation of the publication of provocative statements, inciting rhetoric which undermines national unity, and averting from defamatory and slanderous speeches, statements or posters. All organs of the mass media should be channelled to consolidate national unity. On the other hand, measures taken by the security forces for preventive purposes must be stopped, in order to build up confidence between all;

(13) To respect the sanctity of mosques and places of worship, and avert actions which violate the sanctity of such places, or their use for purposes other those for which they were intended;

(14) To establish an appropriate consultative framework to give advice and consultations to the Palestinian National Authority to realize the interests of the people and serve the national good;

(15) To establish a permanent coordinating committee consisting of the two parties “Fatah and Hamas” to consider all issues which surface or are bought before it by any party with the view to finding appropriate solutions which serve the public interest of Palestinians.

(16) This agreement shall take effect at the date of its signing. It shall be declared the means agreed upon and duly deposited with the minister of justice.”

[1] Text provided by Dr. Aaron Lerner
www.imra.org.il
Independent Media Review & Analysis
POB 982
Kfar Sava, Israel

Alyssa A. Lappen

Alyssa A. Lappen is a U.S.-based investigative journalist. She is the former Managing Editor at the Leeb Group (2012-2017); a former Senior Fellow of the American Center for Democracy (2005-2008); and a former Senior Editor of Institutional Investor (1993-1999), Working Woman (1991-1993) and Corporate Finance (1991). She served six of her 12 years at Forbes (1978-1990) as an Associate Editor. Ms. Lappen was also a staff reporter at The New Haven Register (1975-1977). During a decade as a freelance, her work appeared in Big Peace, Pajamas Media, Front Page Magazine, American Thinker, Right Side News, Family Security Matters, the Washington Times and many other Internet and print journals. Ms. Lappen also contributed to the Terror Finance Blog, among others. She supports the right of journalists worldwide to write without fear or restriction on politics, governments, international affairs, terrorism, terror financing and religious support for terrorism, among other subjects. Ms. Lappen is also an accomplished poet. Her first full-length collection, The Minstrel's Song, was published by Cross-Cultural Communications in April 2015. Her poems have been published in the 2nd 2007 edition of Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust and both 2007 issues of Wales' award-winning Seventh Quarry: Swansea Poetry Magazine. Dozens of her poems have appeared in print and online literary journals and books. She won the 2000 annual Ruah: A Journal of Spiritual Poetry chapbook award and has received a Harvard Summer Poetry Prize and several honorable mentions.