Israel/Palestine
In reply to the discussion: The Crazy Lie of "Pinkwashing" and the Liberal Case for Israel [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood...a group that, at that point, was not doing anything remotely like what Hamas got up to when it took that name 20 years later. The Brotherhood at that point(and Hamas itself in its early years)was an Islamic social service organization.
And Hamas' later views would not have gained any purchase with Palestinians if it weren't for the fact that, even during the "peace process" settlements continued to be built(even if this was allowed, there was no GOOD reason for the Israeli government to keep building them, since they were always going to be a provocation and would always do harm to the Palestinian side in the process by making it look weaker than the Israelis).
Hamas was created by Israeli intransigence(and the Israeli government spent a number of years insisting on building Hamas up as a counterweight to the PLO, and working to drive out secular and progressive Palestinian groups at the same time, as has been documented by many, many sources, including many Israeli sources. For a start, read what Uri Avnery has to say about it and has been saying for years). Hamas didn't emerge just because Palestinians got deliberately uglier for no reason.
People embrace groups like Hamas when they don't see real gains from choosing nonviolence and moderation...and in the Nineties, the gains they got from moderation were trivial at best. The Israelis NEVER treated the PLO as equals in the process(and a negotiated peace can only succeed if parity of esteem is granted). The PLO have done a lot of bad things, but they were trying to do the right thing in the Nineties and got nothing but disrespect for their efforts. Peace can't be built when you have one side insisting, as even the "dovish" Israeli governments of the day did)on always having the upper hand and on gloating, as those governments did, about how contemptuously they were treating the PLO and the PA.
The lesson is...always treat both sides in negotiations as equals and don't try to make gains from the other side while the negotiations are still going on. Negotiations aren't supposed to be about saying "we won and they lost". That's what the Israeli side in this never understood. They were more interested in claiming victory and having the upper hand than on ending the war.