Normalisation and exploitation efforts are thwarted by Hamas

Mainstream media has created a furore out of Hamas’ decision to prevent Palestinian children bereaved in Israel’s colonial massacre from visiting Israel and the West Bank. The trip which is said to have been organised by a Fatah-affiliated group in Gaza, the Kibbutz Movement as well as the charity Candle for Peace and Brotherhood, clearly attempted to create an illusion of normalcy following the destruction of the enclave. However, for mainstream media, the threat of normalisation was eliminated from the reports, focusing instead upon the designated “terror” label attributed to Hamas by Israel and the US.

Hamas spokesperson Iyan al-Buzm clearly stated the prohibition was an explicit refusal of normalising relations with Israel – a resistance tactic which the Palestinian Authority strives to reverse through its constant collaboration with Israel and concessions that erode Palestinian self-determination.

Malik Freij, director of Candle for Peace and Brotherhood, refuted the obvious propaganda ploy concocted by Israel. Quoted in Reuters, Freij stated, “They (Gaza authorities) thought that Israel wants to exploit these children, and that’s a mistake.” As background to the statement, Freij added that the charity organisation had sent 40 truckloads of aid into Gaza during Operation Protective Edge – a compensation that is ludicrously expected to resonate far more than the ramifications of colonial violence upon Gaza.

Among other places, and besides a visit to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian orphans, some of whose fathers were involved in the resistance, were to be taken to the “southern areas targeted by militants’ rockets in the conflict,” the latter according to BBC.

Anti-colonial struggle in Palestine is already hampered by decades of concessions which resulted in resistance ceding its authority to compromised diplomacy. Israel’s colonial existence has strived to render Palestine an abstract geographical concept to be perceived solely within imposed colonial parameters. Normalisation, in contrast to resistance, grants further legitimacy and recognition to Israel that is expressed by the colonised from within an oppressor’s authority.

Normalisation has recently been a source of discussion with regard to Cuba and the US. Hailed by many as a step forward, the diplomatic venture might prove to be the first step towards deconstructing the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle embodied by Fidel Castro, which have safeguarded the revolution so far.

Granting permission to visit the colonial state would not only have engendered a semblance of the equivalence between Palestine and Israel that the international community strives endlessly to impart, but also imply further abandonment of resistance and memory – tasks to which Hamas has, historically, been loyal to, and which have been recently manifested in the movement’s defence of the enclave during Operation Protective Edge.

Gaza’s population remains traumatised, internally displaced and besieged in particular with regard to reconstruction bureaucracy, which has elicited the separation of the humanitarian from the political. Beneath the allegedly benevolent gesture, a wider spectrum of implications fester, notably the insistence, also heralded by the international community, of prioritising colonialism’s treacherous gestures under the guise of charity – this time at the expense of orphaned Palestinian children upon whom the continuation of resistance will eventually befall.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.