Who are the moderates promoting reconciliation with Israel?

By Mathew Goldstein

Ismail Haniyeh, the former leader of Hamas who was assassinated by a bomb in Tehran, is claimed by some to have been a “moderate”. He was ‘pragmatic’ and ‘open to negotiation’, said the Guardian. CNBC at least had the decency to hedge, calling Haniyeh a ‘relatively moderate figure’. He was similarly depicted ‘as a moderate’, in comparison with ‘more hardline’ Hamas leaders by Reuters. 

Yet he openly and proudly celebrated the 7 October brutality, calling it a ‘victory’, agitating for a further ‘jihad of the swords’, predicting that the ‘army of Muhammad’ will be returning to wreak vengeance on Jews. 

What apparently made him a ‘moderate’ in the minds of some people is that he was open to talks with Israel. He was OK with having backdoor channels with Israeli officials. He would talk in secular language when talking to non-Muslims. Yet at the same time he was also OK with constructing underground tunnels from which Israel’s demise was plotted by fanatics. He cheered the spilling of Palestinian blood, too. ‘[The] blood of the women, children and elderly… we need this blood so that it will ignite with us the spirit of revolution’, he said, helpfully explaining that ‘donations to Gaza are not ‘Humanitarian Aid’ but ‘Financial Jihad’. His message to Muslims was that the battle is really all about ‘our Islamic Nation’. When speaking to his fellow Muslims he emphasized this ‘is not the battle of the Palestinian people, or Gaza, or the people in Gaza’.

Moderates are the people seeking peaceful reconciliation between Israel and Arab countries. Hamas (Islamic Resistance) is one of the groups in the region, together with Hezbollah (Party of God), the Houthi’s in Yemen, and Iran, that actively opposes such reconciliation and are working to try to stop it. Hamas attacked on October 7 with the goal of undermining and sabotaging the movement toward peaceful reconciliation that was advancing. Haniyeh and his movement deliberately escalated tensions in the Middle East when they green-lighted the rape, kidnap and murder of more than a thousand people in Israel on 7 October. Hamas, including Haniyeh when he was alive, are enemies of all genuine moderates.

Hamas justifies a continuous war against Israel with false claims that they are fighting in defense of Islam. Israel offers to end war and let the senior leadership, including Sinwar, leave if all hostages are freed and Gaza is disarmed. There is no need for Gaza to be armed. The use of Gaza as a staging ground for ongoing violent attacks against Israel is the root cause of this battle and all previous battles between Israel and Gaza since Hamas started ruling Gaza in 2007. November’s hostage-truce deal collapsed reportedly because Hamas proposed returning seven bodies and three living captives, who were two men and one woman, instead of the 10 living hostages it was supposed to release on the eighth day of the deal. The government of Israel claims it knew that the women among the seven purportedly dead hostages were alive and assessed that Hamas would immediately kill them if Israel accepted the changed terms.