[Scotland on Sunday] Michael Gove - If this is a struggle between Israel and the Palestinians, then why are the streets of Ramallah so quiet? Indeed, why are the streets of Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and Tunis so muted? Hamas is not a national liberation movement, it is not a force dedicated to establishing a free and democratic Palestine. It is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist Islamist organization which wants to unite the Islamic world in submission to its own austere and totalitarian view of Islam. The reason there has been so relatively little support and agitation on Hamas' behalf among Arab leaders is their recognition that Hamas does not want to see Palestine take its place among other stable Arab nations. Hamas wants war in Palestine to be the launch pad for a jihad against those it considers apostate secular rulers in Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere. Worse than that, as far as other Arab states are concerned, Hamas, like its sister party in Lebanon, Hizbullah, is a tool of the Iranian regime, and Iran's ambitions to become the dominant regional power in the Middle East threaten their own interests and security.
2009-01-12 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive