Jan 27, 2006
Robert Dreyfuss: Why Hamas's Victory Is a Disaster
He was interviewed by HNN's Rick Shenkman by phone on January 26, 2006.
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omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007
Conventional wisdom will have it that , for many and varied reasons, Hamas can not be, will not be, is not accepted to be , does not to be a partner in a "peace" process to achieve a DURABLE final settlement of the Arab/Moslem-Israeli/Zionist conflict.
Only time will tell!
Alternatively was a Fatah dominated PA a partner to achieve the hoped for DURABLE PEACE?
I contend that Fatah is less qualified and much less capable of attaining that goal of a DURABLE PEACE.
AS things stood, before the recent Palestinian elections, the only prospect of "peace" was the US approved Sharon plan which boils down to:
- No dismantling of major settlements
- No Arab East Jerusalem
- No removal of the WAll or return to the 1967 armistice line which means annexation of 30-35 % of the West bank.
All that would have led to a dismembered,disconnected ,
discontinuous West Bank of several "Bantustans" which , with the Gaza strip, would have been deemed to form the Palestinian state.
Fatah , weighed down with its record of ceaseless capitulations, overt and covert agreements and alliances, its need to cover its corruption with a "historical" settlement and its thirst for personal enriching power, would have most probably accepted that.(Consider the terms of Oslo.)
But that would NOT have been a DURABLE PEACE .
BUT Fatah, the universally recognized representative of the Palestinian people, has, some ten years ago, seized to be acceptable as such by the Palestinian people and has been publicly and resoundingly rejected by the Palestinian people as his representative.
omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007
"....does not to be a partner in a "peace"...should read " does not WANT to be a partner in...etc"!
Sorry for that.
omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007
Mr Friedman
With typical historical myopia you draw a parallel between the alien Zionist state of Israel, planted in Arab/Moslem/Christian Palestine, and North and South American states; you state:
"Migrants have formed states all over the globe. Every state in North and South American is the result of migrants forming states."
However you fail to note that was only possible after all those American states DECIMATED the indigenous populations.
That Zionism and Israel wishes to replicate that is beyond any doubt.
However whether they will succeed is another totally different matter!
omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007
The Meaning of Hamas Triumph in Palestine
In an election with, for the region, a rare amount of “state” interference and an exceptional amount of free choice Hamas achieved an unparalleled political upheaval that is no less than a virtual, bloodless, coup d’etat which foretells the end of an era.
The significance of this achievement, attained in the exceptionally extreme conditions of Israeli occupation, Fatah’s one party rule and foreign, direct and indirect, interference by regional and world powers, the USA and the EU, through threats, cajolement and promises will by far transcend the borders of East Arab Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza occupied in the second phase of the Zionist conquest of Palestine (1967).
I read its significance to encompass the following elements of historic import and repercussions for the region and the world:
-Zionism has, at long last, come to face its ideological match, its doctrinaire nemesis and its fighting counter force; the Jihadist movement.
Both movements that base their political doctrine and map their respective roads on religious foundations will be the ultimate combatants in this confrontation.
The “chosen people” and the “promised land” will now confront and do battle with the “Uma” and the Holy land of the Mohammedan ascension, al Isra, and Al Aqsa mosque!
-A clear uncompromising public rejection of failed, inefficient, despotic and corrupt governance.
-A non conciliatory, uncompromising attitude towards the Judeo/Christian West; an end to the long lasting but fruitless appeal to their “sense of justice”, “ implementation of UN resolutions” and “respect of basic inalienable human rights”.
-A bottomless readiness by the masses to sacrifice , to go the long haul and pay the very heavy cost associated with it.
What the world has witnessed in the long suffering occupied Palestinian territories will soon be replicated elswhere to the great loss of all.
omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007
Mr Friedman
What is there in the Jewish state that I misunderstand?
Is not Israel the alien body planted in the heartland of the Arab/Moslem world?
Is it not the state whose short biography is outlined below?
In the year 1948 a new state, presumably the successor to a Jewish state/nation which collapsed some2500 years earlier, came into being in the center of the Middle East and at the heart of the Arab nation.
The establishment of Israel, in that particular location, the alleged land of Israel, as a homeland for the Jews from all over the world was the fulfillment of a long held plan of the Zionist movement and of the Western Powers. For a majority of Jews, and some Christians influenced by the Zionist movement, it was the realization of a long held dream; the return of the Jews to the supposed land of Israel. For the imperialist Western Powers it was the founding of an advanced and permanent Western military/economic/cultural outpost in the region.
The supposed land of Israel was variously defined, to allow for future expansionist plans, to include all of historical Palestine by one Zionist faction, to also include Trans Jordan by another and to extend from the Euphrates, in the East, to the Nile, in the West, by a third faction. It is note worthy that up to this date (the year 2005 A.D.) Israel still does not have an official delineation of its borders.
Israel was established in Palestine with total disregard to the existence of an indigenous population, the Palestinians, against their violent and relentless political, and sporadically armed, opposition. The Palestinians, who since the Islamic conquest of Palestine in the first third of the seventh century had been fully Arabized , were predominantly Moslem and Christian Arabs in the nationalist/ cultural sense .The establishment of Israel in Palestine was equally met by the unanimous opposition and rejection of the rest of the Arab and Moslem worlds.
The establishment of this alien nation/state of Israel was made possible, primarily, by the Zionist/British mandate collusion through a policy of forced radical demographic alteration of Palestine.
When Britain occupied ,then obtained from the League of Nations in 1922 the mandate to administer Palestine, the Palestinian Arabs , both Moslem and Christians, made up 80% (Eighty Percent ) of the population , the Jews , mostly of Arab and Oriental descent, 10% (Ten Percent) ;the balance of 10% being Armenians, Chercassian , Russians, Italians etc When the mandate was terminated , and due to the British policy of admitting into Palestine Jewish immigrants and colonizers of different origins but mainly of East European provenance (always against the unanimous opposition of the Palestinians Arabs) Jews formed approximately one third of the total population of Palestine .
The nature of the conflict that accompanied the British policy of admitting Jews into Palestine, between the Palestinian Arabs on one side and the British/Zionist coalition on the other , and the objectives of that policy were abundantly clear to both the West and to the Zionist movement :
” David Ben-Gurion, eminently a realist, recognized its nature. In internal discussion, he noted that 'in our political argument abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us,' but he urged, 'let us not ignore the truth among ourselves.' The truth was that 'politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside'..”. Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
This crucial radical demographic transformation of Palestine, and the assumed political rights emanating from it for the Jewish minority, was the result of a concerted Western effort implemented by Britain and financed, mainly, by American donors. Throughout it was met by ceaseless Palestinian opposition and the adamant refusal of Britain to allow the Palestinian people the ability to exercise the RIGHT OF SELF DERTERMINATIN, since as noted in the KING- CRANE report to President Wilson (1919):
"If [the] principle [of self-determination] is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine's population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine - nearly nine-tenths of the whole - are emphatically against the entire Zionist program.. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted...No British officers, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms. The officers generally thought that a force of not less than fifty thousand soldiers would be required even to initiate the program. That of itself is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist program...The initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a 'right' to Palestine based on occupation of two thousand years ago, can barely be seriously considered." Quoted in "The Israel-Arab Reader" ed. Laquer and Rubin.
In 1947 the UN General Assembly adopted a plan, always against Palestinian and Arab opposition , to “partition “ Palestine into a Jewish State and a Palestinian State allocating the former some 52% and the later some 48% of the area of Palestine.
Palestinian and Arab opposition to and rejection of the “partition “plan was based on the historically undeniable fact that the new demographic composition , and the resulting cultural /nationalist identity of a considerable Jewish minority , on which its alleged right to a state was based , was achieved against the will of the people of Palestine by a foreign power with no legal power to affect this demographic distortion ,. Or as best summed up by the British historian Professor Arnold Toynbee “… he who does not own gave he who does not deserve.”
Arab and Palestinian efforts to prevent, by armed force, the establishment of this Jewish state in Palestine failed and the 1948 conflict ended with the establishment of Israel .The armed conflict ended in 1949 with the Jewish “state” in control of some 72 % of Palestine and massive Palestinian/Arab population movements, some voluntary some forced , that resulted in what became some 7500000 displaced Palestinians refugees.
These refugees were, and still are, denied by the state of Israel the RIGHT of RETURN to their homeland and the right to exercise their birthrights in what became the state of Israel.
Soon after Israel declared its independence it enacted “The( Israeli)Law Of Return” by which any Jew , of whatever extraction or nationality and no matter how long or where he and his forefathers has been living for the last 2000 years (approx.),was entitled, by the mere fact that he was Jewish or of Jewish origin, to relocate in Palestine and become a full citizen in the state of Israel; while always denying Palestinian refugees the “Right of Return “ to their homeland to exercise their birthrights.
In 1967 a new war erupted between Israel and Jordan ,Syria and Egypt resulting in Israeli conquest and occupation of the rest of Palestine ( presently known as Gaza and the West Bank ),the Syrian Golan heights and the Egyptian Sinai peninsula ,all still under Israeli occupation except for Sinai.
So in addition to the cardinal point that the establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine led to the DISLOCATION, DISPOSSESSION and DISFRANCHUISEMENT of the Palestinian people , an integral component of the Arab nation, from and in his homeland it led to the deARABIZATION of its heartland, Palestine!
THE MEANING OF ISRAEL: As such and because of the HOW, WHERE, WHY this nation/state was planted in Palestine, Israel came to mean, to the overwhelming majority of Palestinians and Arabs, the following:
- An illegal and illegitimate alien body (state/nation), imposed by a foreign hostile power on their land, the establishment of which led to the forced dislocation, dispossession and disfranchisement of the Palestinian people and the total denial of their birthrights as the rightful owners and dwellers of the land of Palestine
. -A racist/confessional discriminatory nation/state that grants, and withholds, basic inalienable human and civil rights depending on the religious affiliation of the person(s) under consideration.
-The body that achieved the forced alteration of the cultural/nationalist identity of the land of Palestine.
-The latest , successful ,attempt by the WEST to plant an alien body in the heart of the Arab/Moslem world ; a new campaign in and a sequel to the failed Crusades in the incessant effort by the West to deArabize and deIslamize ( often called Westernize ) the Middle East , and the Holy Land in particular, by forcing Judeo /Christian culture on the region through the imposition of an alien culture by an alien people .
-An outpost of Western imperialism designed to dominate the region politically and economically and exploit its resources to the benefit of the imperialist powers and their regional representative (Israel).
-An advanced military base from which to preempt and frustrate any Arab effort to attain a sovereign political will and implement a truly independent policy.
-An ever-present expansionist power out to grab more Arab lands, depending on who is in power in Israel of the adherents of the three definitions of the land of Israel.
-A hostile physical bulwark between the Eastern (Al Mashreq ) and the Western (Al Maghreb) wings of the Arab nation and a major obstacle to the physical continuity of Arab lands.
That, in short, is ISRAEL to an overwhelming majority of Arabs and Moslems.
Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007
1. Both Jews and Arabs have legitimate claims on Palestine (as do at least three religions). This has been officially recognized by the international community for nearly 60 years.
2. Only fools and extremists deny this. If Hamas is unable to change their official goals to accomodate this reality, they have no long term future, because a majority of Palestinians does not want misery and suicide.
3. Given demographic pressure of an almost Malthusian extreme, by far the most relevant form of migration would be Arabs (especially) but also Jews to leave the region. I would personally vote to turn Jerusalem into a gigantic open air museum. The civilized world has been having to deal with the asinine tantrums of Israelis and Arabs for far too long, it is time for the rest of us (we are all Americans here, are we not ?) to make a few demands of our own and put some teeth behind them.
4. It is too early to draw conclusions about what the rise of Hamas to power will be. It certainly constitutes a new opportunity, just as the death of Arafat, and sidelining of Sharon did.
Once America gets its nincompoop frat boy president back to his Texas playpen, something might start to happen. But that is 3 years off
Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007
You are predictably mired in your prejudices, Mr. F. It is certainly true that Hamas's policy on Israel is guaranteed to cause pain and misery to everybody (Jews and Arabs) in the region. It is also perfectly obvious that THAT was NOT the reason Hamas beat out Fatah. Just as G.W. Bush did not win in 2000 because of his brilliant prior track record in foreign policy. Believe or not, there is more to living as a Palestinian than hating or not hating Israelis, just as there is more to being an American than obsessing on the Mideast and Moslems.
Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007
re your comment #75090 above
There is no need for complicated polling or longwinded googling. Simply remove the shades from your eyes, the wool from your ears, and the cement casing from your cranium. Read a newspaper or listen to the (non-commercial station) news:
The main reason for Hamas's recent electoral success had to do with internal Palestinian issues, not the Israel you obssess about almost as much as the Islamic doomsday machine.
Here is what AP said right after the election, for example:
"Hamas capitalized on widespread discontent with Fatah's corruption and ineffectiveness. Much of its campaign focused on internal Palestinian issues, while playing down the conflict with Israel."
Maybe AP is ignorant. Maybe only Bat Y'eor understands the West Bank. Or maybe not.
Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007
I have not tried to listen to the interview (and will wait for the written transcript), and so will only pose one question here now:
If being out of power and without responsibility or accountability thus far has clearly led to tremendous and world-shaking success for Hamas, is it reasonable to assume that now, being in power and having to take responsibility and accept accountability will, for some radically different set of reasons, lead to still more massive leaps in power and influence for Hamas ?
Arnold Shcherban - 2/3/2006
If there is any hope for the lasting peace between Israelian Jews an Palestinians, in particular and Jews and Arabs, in general, the both sides has to abandon the past scores (in any sense), religious and historical
aspirations and parallels.
They have to come to the negotiating
table with a completely clean slate
and in unbiased state of mind, putting
the basic desires and hopes of their own majorities upfront.
However, I doubt the powerful of the both sides will let the corresponding events to happen in the abovementioned
wishful atmosphere. Those folks (what they call "special interest groups" here, in the US) never and nowhere care about the needs and aspirations of their people, as long
the doing so would not solidify their grasp on the lives of those folks and advance their own personal, egotistic causes and goals. It is true for every nation, whether Islamic, Jewish, or Christian.
N. Friedman - 1/29/2006
Peter,
I merely note that knowledge regarding why Palestinians voted is, it would appear, not very trustworthy. After all, the polls on them winning were not just wrong, they were wrong by substantial amounts. So, I have no reason to trust what I hear now, when clearly the experts had no idea before either.
I guess I see the issue this way: Palestinian Arabs know exactly what HAMAS is and stand for. They may vote for HAMAS because FATAH is corrupt and it is hoped that HAMAS will be less corrupt - a distinct possibility I do not deny - but, all told, it sounds like the Italians voting for Mussolini to get the trains to work better.
I note: if settling the dispute were important to Palestinians, they would not vote for HAMAS. So, whatever the real reason, it is clear that settling the dispute is not part of the equation - unless, by settlement, they mean destroy Israel -.
As I said, HAMAS is a revolutionary party with rather wide aims. They are not moderates in radical clothing. They are radicals in radical clothing. And, since they have staked Israel's destruction as a matter of religious requirment - i.e. it is Allah's requirement -, they are not likely to back down the way a conservative party might.
According to Abu Teir, number 2 on the Hamas list of candidates for the election:
On external affairs, Mr. Abu Teir gave no hint that Hamas would adjust its hard-line stand of refusing to recognize, or negotiate with, Israel. He said that instead of pressuring Hamas to disarm, the West should be demanding that Israel leave the West Bank, release all Palestinian prisoners and allow the return of the 4.1 million Palestinian refugees.
Israel has said it will ignore a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, and several countries, including the United States and Canada, have suggested they will not deal with Hamas unless it deletes language in its founding charter calling for the destruction of Israel.
Mr. Abu Teir expressed dismay at how news of Hamas's victory was received in the West, saying he didn't understand why the West, after years of giving money to a Palestinian Authority run by the corrupt Fatah movement, was now considering withholding aid.
“Why is the West worried? We're not thieves. Had that money been given to us, it would have found many good uses.”
However, he said Hamas would not go begging if aid were slashed. “Our people would rather live in poverty than live in humiliation with Israeli and Western aid.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060128.wxhamas0128/EmailBNStory/International/
Not very encouraging, is it? While they may be politically naive, they are not the first party to come to power and to push what outsiders consider to be a naive program.
N. Friedman - 1/29/2006
Peter,
Since polling among Palestinians is remarkably innacurate, we do not know why Palestinians voted for HAMAS. We, however, can surmise that they were not voting for resolving the dispute as HAMAS opposes the matter on principle. And, we can surmise that Palestinians are not idiotics but were perfectly aware that they were voting for the equivalent of the European equivalent of brown shirts.
N. Friedman - 1/29/2006
Peter,
You write: "2. Only fools and extremists deny this. If Hamas is unable to change their official goals to accomodate this reality, they have no long term future, because a majority of Palestinians does not want misery and suicide."
Somehow, you must think the Palestinians are idiots. They vote for an anti-democratic, fascistic revolutionary party en masse, a party dedicated to Jihad war and a party which posits that Jews are the source of all of the world's - not just Arab - problems (and read their covenant as it says so explicitly), yet you think the Palestinians do not want misery and suicide. My view: the Palestinians know exactly what they voted for.
N. Friedman - 1/29/2006
Omar,
What you fail to note is that Israel did not, like the states in the Americas, decimate any population. So, your analogy is ridiculous.
N. Friedman - 1/28/2006
Omar,
Since the only settlement that matters to you is one which leaves no Israel, what difference does it matter what other than that is on the table?
ken wayne daves - 1/27/2006
No, let's put a fine point on it. Were there really 6 million Jews killed in concentration camps?
EXACTLY 6 million, or 6 million more or less? How much less? (We already know it cannot be more.)
Then explain why their deaths are more valuable than the scores of thousands of Arab deaths.
N. Friedman - 1/27/2006
Omar,
Israel is not a transplant. And the population was not transplanted there. There were people who did, in fact, migrate there. However, that is different from being transplanted.
To note: migration is a norm in history. Migrants have formed states all over the globe. Every state in North and South American is the result of migrants forming states.
Perhaps, on your theory, all Arabs should return to Arabia.
N. Friedman - 1/27/2006
Frederick,
Not to put too fine a point on things but, in fact, 100,000 Palestinians were not murdered and did not die at the time Israel was created. What you have written, to be blunt, is a simply untrue.
Further, there was no Hun like anything. There was a war. There were efforts to drive out the Jewish population of the region. Those efforts failed. The Israelis took the offensive and, in the end, large number of people on both sides lost their homes.
However: there were not 100,000 Arab deaths. That is a complete fabrication.
ken wayne daves - 1/27/2006
I always find that in trying to get at the core of the problems that plague the middle east, often the most obvious are ignored and those which are identified, are all too often lacking in factual nuance.
Israel is at the heart of the problem, and any argument stemming from anywhere else is false on its face. That basic understanding must be held.
From there, one has to wonder what happens when a country creates an enemy that they seek to control. In order to erect something like Hamas (or al Qaida) you have to play on peoples' natural inclinations, you have to play to their weaknesses, such as fear and ignorance.
Hamas, even when they are at their worst, serve only to aid Israel in their lies of victimhood. So one has to ask, why does it continue. "It" in this context, refers to suicide bombings, since that is the most shocking act which receives the most attention.
Since these acts always take place in Israeli areas, and it is always Israeli authorities who inspect and "police" the scenes, including censoring video releases, isn't it possible, even likely, that since the primary beneficiary of these terrible attacks is always Israel, that Israel is directly responsible for creating these attacks.
If Israel created Hamas, not just supported, but created through their direct support, if Hamas is infiltrated by Mossad, as we are told they are, and if Hamas is the Suicide Bombing Party, then you do the math.
If A=B, and B=C, then A=C.
It is time to start dealing with Israel, and only Israel. There can be little doubt but that if Israel did not exist, there would be no suicide bombers.
Surely, by now, there are legitimate Palestinian suicide bombers, in that the actual bombers and planners see themselves as doing the work of Hamas. By the same token, al Qaida exists today by the same sort of hooks and crooks.
CIA and Mossad.
Governments hidden within governments.
Maybe Ossama was right about that.
Frederick Thomas - 1/27/2006
Mr. Friedman:
Thank you for the reasoned tone of your post, however I do not think that it represents a valid response from the perspective of US or Israeli interests.
The problem is this: Israel still does not admit the murderous 1947-48 program of ethnic cleansing, more reminescent of the Huns (the real Huns) than of any civil country, in which about 100,000 Palestinians were murdered in order to terrorize and expel about 1.1 million non-Jews of all religious persuasions. Who led the murdering? Ben-Gurion, Shamir, and Begin of Irgun, all later Israeli Prime Ministers. The methods: shooting, bombing, military assault on civilians, ie terrorism by Israel, and by Irgun before Israel existed.
A brilliant Palestinian-American friend who was disposessed twice by this terror, and had several family members murdered, including a grandmother deliberately run over by an Israeli tank before her grandson's eyes, asks "How can the Israelis protest terrorism? The Palestinians learned it all from Israel." Indeed.
Also not admitted is the deliberate Israeli aggression of 1967, when it grabbed the West Bank and Gaza, and subjected the inhabitants there to severe oppression in an effort to force them to flee their homes, in the face of land theft described publicly by Israel as "settlements."
Then there is the invasion of Lebanon in 83, with the intent of killing as many refugee Palestinians as possible. A scene of Sharon indiscriminately directing 105 mm artillery fire into a civilian apartment building was shown on US TV. In Sabra and Shatila, hundreds were shot in a single day. Please do not justify this on the basis that Sharon subcontracted a part of it to the Falange.
Then there was the intefada, in which main force Israeli military assaults on rock-throwing civilians became the norm, and still continue.
Something like Hamas terrorism is to be expected out of this horrific record of civil wrongs, which were the acts of the Israeli state. Today, a hot breathed Netanyahu screams for more oppression and more land theft. Meanwhile, a more reasoned Olmert is threatened with death by assassination, a la Rabin.
It is impossible that any conclusion based upon the current policy of oppression and targeted assassinations of Hamas and other leaders can ever be successful.
At some point, Israel must come clean, and provide redress, or eventually it will be nuked out of existence by Iran or some other regional enemy.
Hamas, for its part, is purely an Israeli creation, and only Isreali atonement can tame it. We need a real, sincere day of atonement here, not more oppression, and that is something that is very unlikely. Israeli citizens seem to choose the killer over that peacemaker every time, and ethical Israeli groups such as B'Tselem and the Concerned Soldiers are always marginalized.
N. Friedman - 1/27/2006
Omar,
I take your explanation as logical and coherent even if, as I do, I believe you thoroughly misunderstand the Jewish side.
Peter,
Read what Omar says.
N. Friedman - 1/27/2006
I see that my use of non-standard characters messed up. The words are:
Jamiat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun
N. Friedman - 1/27/2006
Peter,
HAMAS is not an ordinary party. It is, by its own words, the Palestinian Arab branch of the al-ikhwān al-muslimūn (i.e. Muslim Brotherhood). The Brotherhood is a revivalist movement dedicated to restoring Muslim power and the Muslim empire. The Brotherhood has direct ties, from its fairly early days, to the Nazi party, a group which they openly admire.
Hatred of Jews - in the Nazi sense of the word - is part and parcel of the belief system of HAMAS. Read their charter. It is detailed and explanatory. It includes reference to the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It also contains a detailed conspiracy theory about how Jews are behind all of the big events since the time of the French Revolution, causing every war and calamity that has occurred. Employing such rhetoric, the reasonable assumption is that HAMAS is not only an Antisemitic party but Antisemitic in the Nazi, eliminiationist sense of the word.
HAMAS claims to seek to build an Islamic state, as part of a greater Muslim state, ruled by shari'a. In such a super state, non-Muslims can only remain if they enter into a dhimma (compact of concession). Life for non-Muslims - and also women of all faiths - would be a living hell.
Your notion of responsibility is based on notions which do not apply to HAMAS. They will no doubt be very responsible as leaders. However, they will not behave according to your notion of responsible, just as the Taliban did not behave according to your notion of responsibility.
Another reasonable assumption about HAMAS is that they should be taken at their word, just like with other revolutionary parties.