On Saturday, television screens around the world showed a number of Iraqi fighters holding several foreign hostages, including at least one American mercenary. The armed men identified themselves as âthe regiments of the Martyr Sheikh Ahmed Yasin,â a reference to the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas who was assassinated by Israel on 22 March. The symbolic identification with Hamas, a Palestinian political expert contends, underscores the âgrowing connection between what is happening in Palestine and what is happening in Iraq.â
âThe message is very significant. It shows that at least some resistance fighters in Iraq consider Israel and America as two sides of the same coin,â said Ziyad Abu Amr, a Palestinian lawmaker and Professor of Political Science. He told PIC Sunday that Israel hoped that Iraqâs gates would be wide-opened for Israeli companies, diplomats and even Mossad agents. âNow, it seems, these hopes are evaporating and Iraqis, irrespective of their religious and political affiliation are burning the Israeli flags along with the American flags and identifying with Hamas and the Palestinian struggle.â Abu Amr called the Iraqi âIntifadaâ a âturnabout in the Iraq peopleâs collective consciousness.â He opined that the Iraqi people would never allow an American puppet Iraqi leader to rule them after what has happened in Falluja and other Iraqi cities. âI am convinced that the Iraqi people will never be cordial toward those who slaughtered their children and women at Falluja, Ramadi and Baghdad. There is already a gulf of blood between the Americans and the Iraqi people.â
| Actually, I'm convinced that if we brutally suppressed the Iraqi people, grinding them into the dirt and killing them in large numbers, they'd turn out in the streets to sing our praises and chant "America, we'll defend you with our blood!" They did it for Sammy, after all. |
Asked to explain the dramatic escalation of the Iraq resistance during the past few weeks, Abu Amr cited the âintrinsic contradiction between the occupier and the occupied.â
| Could also have something to do with that meeting in London and some Iranian money... |
âOf course there are some more direct reasons. However, the fundamental reason lies in the intrinsic contradiction between the occupied and the occupier, the rapist and the rape victim, the oppressor and the oppressed.â Amr, who had written extensively against the hapless Oslo agreement between Israel and the PLO, predicted that the planned handover of authority to an Iraqi government by the end of June would not bring about any substantive change in the Iraqi scene. âThis is a big deception. What does it mean to hand over authority or sovereignty to a government or a governing council that is acting at the American occupierâs beck and call. It is a big joke.â |