As this article is written, it is still far from clear as to whether the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, scheduled for January 25, will take place. At the time, the situation is that special polling centres had opened their doors on January 21 for members of the Palestinian security forces to cast their votes in three days of early voting.
As Crescent International goes to press, it remains uncertain whether the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) that are due to take place on January 25 will actually go ahead. Israel made a clear attempt to sabotage them on December 21, when it announced that Palestinians in Jerusalem would not be permitted to vote if Hamas were allowed to take part in the polls.
In October, Crescent International (South Africa) issued a booklet called The Struggle for Al-Quds to mark Yaum al-Quds 1426AH. Here we publish an adaptation of the second part of this booklet, focusing on the evolution of the Palestinian liberation movement. The first part, focusing on the problem of Israel and the threat to al-Quds, was published in the last issue of Crescent International.
Any illusion that Mahmoud Abbas may have had about being the elected leader of the Palestinian people in their struggle for the establishment of an independent, sovereign state in at least a part of their historical homeland must surely have been shattered on June 21.
One feature of Palestinian politics for the last 15 years or so, since the first intifada, has been the increasing political importance of Hamas, the main Islamic movement in Palestine, despite the entrenched political positions of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as the main representative of the Palestinian people on the international stage, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) as the main civil authority in Palestine since 1992.
It is not without good reason that the world focused so intensely on the illness and death of Yasser Arafat, and on his multinational, multistage funeral...
One little-noted feature of Israel’s much-vaunted plan to "disengage" from Ghazzah is the role envisaged for Egypt after the withdrawal of Israeli troops, should it ever take place...
The two-week Israeli onslaught on Ghazzah that began at the end of February was evidently designed to bring Hamas to its knees, after months of an ever-tightening economic blockade and political pressure that Israel and its allies hoped would persuade the people of Ghazzah to turn against the Islamic movement that they elected to power in 2006.
Hamas leader Shaikh Ahmad Yassin said on September 24 that Hamas, Palestine’s leading Islamic movement and the most popular political group among Palestinians, would not accept any suggestion that it should disarm or declare a truce.
Hamas leader Khaled Misha’al said on November 9 that Palestine’s main Islamic movement would not give up military operations against the Israeli occupiers of Palestine.
Shaikh Ahmad Yaseen, founder of the Islamic Resistance movement (Hamas) and recognised as leader of Palestine's Islamic movement, addressed this message to the Ummah on the occasion of Eid al-Adha.
Israel went on the offensive, both militarily and in propaganda terms, on January 9 after a Hamas operation inside 1948 Palestine (Israel) in which 4 Israeli soldiers were killed and two Hamas activists martyred. Israeli soldiers responded by demolishing 73 homes in nearby Ghazzah, according to the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), making 123 families — adding up to more than 800 people — homeless.
Hamas announced on December 21 that it was suspending martyrdom operations inside “the land occupied in 1948.” The announcement, in a notice issued in Ghazzah, came after weeks of intensified Israeli military pressure on Palestinians aimed at making life unbearable for civilians, and at forcing the Palestinian Authority to crack down on Islamic groups on Israel’s behalf.
The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has been the mainstay of the al-Aqsa Intifada in Palestine. In this issue, we reprint two recent communiqués explaining their approach to the conduct of the Islamic resistance struggle to the Zionist occupation of Palestine.
Hamas: Political Thought and Practice by Khalid Hroub. Pub: Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington DC, USA, 2000, pp. 329, $16.95.
Khalid Misha’al is Head of the Political Bureau of Hamas, the main Palestinian Islamic movement. He represented Hamas at the International Conference on the Palestinian Intifada in Tehran last month as Hamas leader Shaikh Ahmad Yasin was unable to travel to Iran from Occupied Ghazzah. Here we present an excerpt of his address to the conference.
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic movement which is the most popular political group among Palestinians, and is also the leading critic and opponent of the ‘peace process’, suffered a major blow on August 30, when the Jordanian government closed down its offices in Amman.
Thanks to western propaganda, the Hizbullah are often projected as masked men bradishing submachine guns, not unlike those in the movie, Man in Black. Few people are aware of the Hizbullah’s broad range of activities including social and cultural.
I was invited as a speaker to Al-Quds Day meeting on January 31, 1997, which was part of the Ramadan activities held by Sincan municipality, a district of Ankara. Before the program, I sent the organizers a video cassette exposing the crimes of Zionism and highlighting the Palestinian cause.
By including Harkatul Ansar, a Muslim group battling the Indian occupation army in Kashmir, on the list of ‘terrorist’ organisations, the US has served noticed that it has joined the Hindus’ crusade against Kashmiri Muslims.
