Hold your nose, but deal with Hamas
August 5, 2005By Geoffrey Aronson, Director of Research and Publications, FMEP. Originally appeared in The Daily Star.
The end of Israel's long, bitter, and often bloody sojourn in the Gaza Strip is now in sight. If Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is true to his intentions, all Israeli civilian and military forces will be take their leave of Gaza and its 1.5 million Palestinians by year's end, perhaps as soon as October.
If Israel's withdrawal from Gaza is complete, and all indications are that it will be, the attention of Palestinians and the international community will turn to the issue of Palestinian legislative elections, with the role of the Islamic Resistance Movement - Hamas - at its center.
Hamas has been a factor on the Palestinian scene since the late 1980s. During the first Palestinian rebellion against Israeli rule that erupted in December 1987, Hamas was transformed from a docile creation of Israel, which sought to establish a pliable Islamist alternative to the secular nationalism of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), into a multi-faceted organization claiming the allegiance of increasing numbers of Palestinians. Hamas' religious extremism, its use of terror to weaken Israel, and its absolute refusal to countenance Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, made it anathema to Israel, the United States, and others who counted upon the Palestinian political and security institutions created by the Oslo agreements to marginalize if not eradicate it.
Notwithstanding these efforts, and due in no small part to Israel's continuing appetite for land for settlement expansion, and Hamas' use of tactics aimed at terrorizing Israeli civilians, the last decade has seen the organization grow in influence and power. It has reached the point where it now rivals Fatah, the secular, nationalist party at the heart of Palestinian politics and resistance to occupation for the last four decades.
Hamas' gains on the Palestinian scene, including its self-declared leading role in forcing the impending Israeli retreat from Gaza, have been measured in victories in local municipal elections in major towns throughout the West Bank and Gaza, and its support earlier this year for an unprecedented three-part agreement with most Palestinian factions. The agreement provides for Palestinians to observe a period of "calm" vis-a-vis Israel, as well as a commitment to hold elections and revise the statutes of the PLO to enable Hamas' representation.
There should be no illusions about the list of particulars that has long led to Hamas' ostracism from polite company. Hamas is not a Boy Scout troop. Its use of terror, its base anti-Semitism, its manifestations of intolerance, particularly toward women and civil society, and its continuing readiness to battle Israel as long as it does not withdraw from lands conquered in June 1967, weigh heavily in the scales.
But largely as a result of the inability of the Oslo process to end Israel's occupation, Hamas has established itself as an authentic political movement representing a large segment of Palestinians. It views the Israeli evacuation of Gaza as real progress and it is anxious to contest long-postponed parliamentary elections. It is prepared to join the Palestinian Authority Cabinet in accordance with its electoral strength. It remains committed to the "calm" and has declared its support for a long-term truce (hudna) with Israel once the occupation of all land lost in 1967 has ended.
These positions leave unanswered many questions about Hamas' intentions, but they do establish a basis for Washington and others to re-assess what has been a self-defeating, monochromatic view of the organization as nothing more than a gaggle of terrorists bent upon Israel's destruction.
The fact that protagonists have difficult demands to make of each other does not require that disagreements be resolved solely by armed force. Indeed, reliance on force may retard rather than facilitate diplomatic progress and undermine rather than strengthen the political process it claims to support. As the recent decision of the Irish Republican Army to forswear violence demonstrates, the transition from conflict to democratic engagement is measured in years if not decades, and requires a commitment to a process which challenges the staying power of all but the most stubbornly optimistic.
These axioms are arrows in the quiver of diplomatic troubleshooters the world over, but in the Palestinian realm they are conspicuous by their absence insofar as prevailing views of Hamas are concerned.
Hamas has concerns about the Western, and particularly American intentions. The organization wonders, is there an American commitment to respect the results of elections in which Islamists make a respectable showing, or will the Algeria scenario be replayed? Is there support for Palestinians to rule in a sovereign manner in Gaza and a commitment to act in support of Palestinian claims in the West Bank and Jerusalem?
The Sharon government is opening the way to the exercise of Palestinian sovereignty in Gaza, posing not only challenges but opportunities for Palestinian governance. But Israel today is not at all interested in establishing the necessary conditions under which the Palestinians can build upon this opportunity to rule effectively in the West Bank, let alone East Jerusalem.
Demonizing Hamas offers the path of least resistance, and not only for Israel. But Washington must know, as the Palestinians do, that any effort to reduce competition among broadly based Palestinian parties to a military contest will only postpone the political reckoning taking place in Palestine and fatally undermine the relative "calm" to which all parties remain committed.