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Avi Shlaim on Hamas, UK and Resistance

I would suggest one amendement to the article: no support to the UK regime and no trust in it. The political solution Shlaim is proposing has to come from the Palestinians and all those who oppose the Western regimes involved. In other words, the change has to come from the struggle of the Palestinians and Arabs against the corrupt and complicit Palestinian Authority, the toppling of the Arab regimes and the struggle in the West for regime change.

Shlaim's 'support' of the UK to change its position on Hamas means appealing to the same political and imperialist structure for a political solution. The same regime that when tomorrow the genocide comes to an end will continue to support the Istaeli state, but now under ‘a democratic liberal Israeli government'.

Let's not forget that previous UK governments did not support the Palestinain struggle. On the contrary, they supported Israel to the hilt and perpetuating and maintaining, along with the US, Israel's its chief backer, the structures of oppression and the settler colonial state. 

Taking what is happening in Palestine and the position on Hamas isolated from a broader context – a context of regional and international rivalries, the defeat of the Arab uprisings/revolutions, 'normalisation' process with Istael, the expansion of the Gulf capital and outreach, global economic stagnation, the rise of the far-right, etc. is dealing with a part or parts and missing the whole. The imperialist opposition to Hamas is not isolated from the opposition to any voice or movement of resistance or liberation – be it a movement against occupation or against capital. 

“The war in Gaza is the latest and cruellest phase in this long-term colonial effort to displace, dispossess and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people. Hamas is a vital segment of Palestinian society and the vanguard of its resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation.”



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