Nu har vi tit været inde på, hvad der er terrorisme og hvem der kan kaldes
terrorist, her er en hollands konfliktforskers mening, fra openDemocarcy:
Talking to terrorists in Gaza
Mient Jan Faber
14 - 2 - 2005
A dialogue in Palestine makes the Dutch expert in conflict resolution, Mient
Jan Faber, think afresh about the ethical foundations of political action.
So I contacted one of my friends in Gaza to see if I could meet with Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, leaders of Hamas (both of whom were
later assassinated by Israel) and with Mohammed al-Hindi, a leader of
Islamic Jihad who has survived several assassination attempts. It was easy:
they were willing and ready to talk.
I went to a small room in a little old house. There I sat with Sheikh
Yassin, who was in his wheelchair. As visitors entered, they fell to their
knees and kissed his hand as if he were a god.
He began to tell me how bad the Israelis were. After a while I stopped him.
I said that I wanted to talk about his principles. I found that I had to
explain this. I told him that I was a Calvinist and that though I had
learned that people can do good, I also knew that they had a lot of evil
inside them. I told him I believed you had to set yourself limits and that I
called these limits "personal ethics". I asked him if this idea of "personal
ethics" was also present in Islam. He started talking about Israel again.
I said that I understood that Israel's policies could not be justified but I
asked him again: "Despite everything, despite what Sharon is doing, do you
ever think personally about the two sides, do you ever question yourself and
whether you can be responsible for sending suicide-bombers and their victims
to their deaths?"
He had no clue what I was talking about.
How could he not understand the idea of personal ethics? It was something I
thought was so clear.
I thought perhaps he was joking or lying but the people around him also
found the question strange. I realised that nobody had ever asked the
question in this way before.
"You cannot ask a boy to commit suicide for you", I said to Yassin. "Maybe
you yourself can do it, but you cannot ask a boy."
"You look around here", he replied. "Can somebody live here? It is a
cemetery. We're all dead. The only thing we can do is to celebrate it. We
are not just killing Israelis. What we are doing makes life bearable; it is
part of our death culture."
Funeral of a Gaza suicide bomber
Later, as part of the same attempt to understand the mindset of terrorism, I
find myself sitting in a room with twenty or so men, the brothers, father
and the extended family of a boy who had committed a suicide attack. The
walls are covered with photographs of the boy. His brothers tell me about
Hamas's "special groups" which train for several months to do this kind of
thing. I suspect that they must also be in Hamas.
At a certain moment I interrupt, saying how hard it is for me to understand.
I ask to talk to the boy's mother. When she enters the room her face is
shining: she looks as though she is in heaven. I tell her that I am sorry,
that it must be a real tragedy to have lost her son. I ask her how she
copes.
She tells me, "In the beginning, when he joined Hamas, I thought, 'oh, my
God, I don't want to lose you'". She then explains that her son's training
included coming home to explain Hamas's ideas, the necessity of what he was
to do, and the glorious days to come. Over time it grew easier. "I was
convinced that this was the sort of sacrifice you had to make."
One of the brothers says: "If he had died in a car accident there would have
been 100-150 people at his funeral, now there are 15,000." His father tells
me that it has been the most glorious day of his life.
Gaza is indeed different from the West Bank. It is lost. It is a million
people in the sand. To understand terrorism in Gaza you have to understand
this context, this complex of feelings rooted in a particular political
blockage. In Gaza, I do not think that the prime motivation behind terrorism
is hatred. It is indeed a way for people to celebrate what is otherwise a
"living death".
If you talk to people in the street they say Osama bin Laden is absolutely
fantastic. But their ideology is so provincial, so local - it is Gaza, Gaza,
Gaza and nothing else, because they have nothing else.
Terrorism is different everywhere. In Gaza, I believe that there is a good
chance that the culture of death will burn out. If people get the feeling
they can go to school, get a job, travel - if for them this happens, Gaza
people will come to life again. It will be possible to have some
perspective.
Can "they" understand "us"?
I had another different kind of conversation with an Islamic Jihad leader
from Gaza. This time he came to me to ask for my help. The Dutch government
had prevented charities in Holland from collecting money for his group.
Could I do something about it?
I told him I would not. I told him I knew his organisation was ready to
commit more suicide attacks and that I was absolutely against them. He was
upset. He complained about Israel and once again asked why I could not help
end, as he put it, the suffering of his people.
"During the second world war", I told him, "my father fought in the
resistance, against the German occupation. If he had crossed the border and
killed children in a suicide attack on a school, I would never have forgiven
him. That is my position." He was silent. I had a feeling he suddenly
understood there was nothing to argue about any more.
For me, encountering terrorism thrust me back to my own core values. When I
found myself talking to terrorist leaders I gained a new appreciation of my
Calvinist roots. Now, for their part, it was only when they understood I
would condemn my own father if he had been a terrorist, that they realised
my effort to understand them in no way meant that I could excuse or accept
what they did.
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