Toronto- While some pundits are calling US President Donald Trumps speech before the Arab Islamic American Summit the best of his career so far, members of Hamas and Palestinian supporters around the world listened with unabashed dismay as Trump included the group in a list of terrorist organizations that must be rooted out.
Toronto- While some pundits are calling US President Donald Trumps speech before the Arab Islamic American Summit the best of his career so far, members of Hamas and Palestinian supporters around the world listened with unabashed dismay as Trump included the group in a list of terrorist organizations that must be rooted out.
“The true toll of ISIS [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant], al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and so many others, must be counted not only in the number of dead. It must also be counted in generations of vanished dreams,” he said.
In a statement released on Sunday, spokesman for Hamas, Fawzi Barhoum said “The statement describing Hamas as a terror group is rejected and is a distortion of our image and shows a complete bias to the Zionist occupation.”
Hamas officials are calling Trump’s decision to identify Hamas as a terrorist organization a sign of the Trump administration’s “complete bias” in favour of Israel.
The statement was particularly hurtful in light of Hamas’ recent policy shift toward Israel. No longer calling for Israel’s destruction, the new Hamas stance accepted the idea of a Palestinian state in lands occupied by Israel in 1967’s Six Day War. It also clarified that its struggle has been with the government of Israel, not the Jewish people. It fell short, however, of formally recognizing Israel as a state, something the international community has long demanded of the group.
Trump’s speech, delivered during the first day of the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, is being met with calls from a Palestinian activist group calling itself the Supreme National Leadership Committee for a “Day of Rage” to be staged when Trump visits the West Bank Tuesday.
The group is staging the protest as a show of support for the ongoing hunger strike being waged by Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. Trump’s speech, however, has inspired an added call to protest what is being viewed widely among Hamas and Palestinian supporters as unfair American bias toward Israel.
In a statement released on Sunday, the group claims that Palestinians “affirm their rejection of the American position, which is biased in favour of the occupation.”
Viewing the situation through a Palestinian lens, it’s difficult not to ponder Trump’s recent public musings that a Middle East solution is probably not as difficult as previous presidents may have thought. Actually, the truth may be that it’s not as easy as Trump thinks either.
