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VIEWPOINT
"Exploring The Powerful Issues & Emotions of The Middle East"
Reaching out to 51,228 Viewpoint readers around the globe
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Editor's Note:
Folks, we may be headed for war very soon. Cheney will be
in the Middle East soon. He is not a carrier for peace.
Pray to avert a war!
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Video Clip Of The Week
News Flashback: Lies of 2003
In a devastating montage of statements and counter state-
ments, a web of deceit unfolds. What emerges in this video
clip is the way in which we were manipulated as a nation
to go to war. Of course, 'they' needed a compliant media.
View: News Flashback: Lies of 2003
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By Ali Abunimah
Palestine Center Fellow
Since Hamas won the legislative elections in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories in January 2006, the United States
has attempted to isolate the Islamist resistance movement
in Gaza while propping up the leadership of Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his defeated Fatah
faction in Ramallah in the hope of reversing the election
result and restoring Fatah to power. This fit the U.S.
strategy of fostering so-called "moderate" regimes in the
region, allied with the United States and dependent on it
to a greater or less extent, and confronting indigenous
forces such as Hamas in Palestine and Hizballah in Lebanon,
which the United States portrays as being mere extensions
of regional rival Iran.
This strategy has backfired. In Palestine, Hamas withstood
an extraordinary military, economic and political campaign
waged against it by Israel with the encouragement of the
United States. After its breach of the border wall with
Egypt, allowing hundreds of thousands of desperate
Palestinians to break the blockade on Gaza, Hamas is
arguably more popular than ever. U.S.-sponsored peace
negotiations between Israel and Abbas' U.S.-recognized
Palestinian Authority have gone nowhere. There is a growing
realization that the approach to Hamas must change. This
brief assesses movement towards engagement with the group
among various key actors.
Background
The election to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC)
was held on 25 January 2006, with support from President
Bush, as part of his announced agenda of promoting
democracy in the Middle East. On a turnout of 75 percent,
the Hamas-backed Change and Reform list won 74 of the 132
seats while the U.S.-backed Fatah won just 45. The election
was judged to be free and fair by international observers,
and Hamas won a larger overall share of the vote than
Fatah. The PLC election was conducted according to a mixed
system with each voter receiving two ballots, one to select
a national party list with seats to be allocated by a
system of proportional representation widely used around
the world and one to select individual candidates in a
local district. Hamas won a majority of the 66 seats
allocated by proportional representation and an even larger
share of the local district seats. Hamas's disproportionate-
ly large share of the seats in local districts was
attributable to divisions in Fatah, which led rival Fatah
candidates to run against each other in many areas,
splitting their potential support.
Within weeks of the election, Israel and the Quartet (the
ad hoc group representing the United States, the European
Union, Russia and the U.N. Secretary-General) had agreed
to the complete isolation of Hamas unless it met certain
conditions: renouncing armed struggle, recognizing Israel's
main political demand that it has a "right to exist" as a
Jewish state and agreeing to abide by all previously signed
agreements. No reciprocal conditions were imposed on Israel—
which did not have to recognize Palestinian political
demands a priori—was free to continue military attacks on
Palestinians, expand settlements in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories and could violate signed agreements with
impunity.
With hindsight, it appears that the conditions were tailor-
ed to be unacceptable to Hamas. The United States, in
collaboration with Israel and elements of the Fatah leader-
ship, put in place a plan to squeeze Hamas and the civilian
population in Gaza militarily, economically and diplomat-
ically in the hope that the population would turn against
Hamas and back to Fatah. The United States sponsored what
amounted to an attempted coup against Hamas by contra-style
militias, resulting in Hamas's complete takeover of the
interior of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.
This setback prompted the United States to support even
greater pressure on Hamas while attempting to do an end-
run around the group by boosting economic and military
support for Fatah in the West Bank. With the November 2007
Annapolis meeting, the Bush administration relaunched peace
talks between the Israeli government and Abbas. These
talks, however, have made no reported progress; both
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas are seen as
weak leaders lacking the authority or mandate to negotiate
or compromise on key issues. This political process has
been overshadowed and further undermined by the humanitarian
crisis in Gaza, resulting from the Israeli siege and the
escalating armed conflict that has claimed hundreds of
Palestinian and several Israeli lives.
Is Hamas Ready for Engagement?
One of the common claims of Israeli and other opponents
of any engagement with Hamas is that the movement is an
irrational "jihadist" organization with no identifiable
or satiable political goals. It is presented exclusively
as a "spoiler" for whom violence is its raison d'etre. In
fact, Hamas is a complex, dynamic and diverse movement
whose leadership has set its sights on a nationalist
political strategy that cannot succeed without engagement
with the group's adversaries, including Israel.
The claim that no agreements can be reached with Hamas is
belied by the fact that the group has observed indirectly
negotiated hudnas in the past and has conducted indirect
negotiations with Israel over the release of prisoners
for several months.
While media reports in the United States repeat the mantra
that Hamas is committed to the "destruction of Israel,"
citing its 1988 charter as evidence, the Change and Reform
platform did not make any such call and focused on good
governance and fighting the corruption widely viewed as
endemic under Fatah rule. On the political front, Hamas
had suspended its campaign of armed resistance against
Israel for a year prior to the elections, observing a
hudna indirectly negotiated with Israel via Egypt and
other intermediaries. Both before and after the election,
Hamas leaders broadcast their interest in extending this
truce on a reciprocal basis with Israel for ten to twenty
years after which it could be renewed.
Hamas leaders appear to have undertaken a fundamental shift
in their strategy. After years of boycotting the political
institutions set up under the 1993 Oslo Accords, they
entered the political arena—as many critics had called on
them to do. They appeared to have recognized the limits
of what armed struggle could achieve without political
engagement. Ahmed Yousef, a senior advisor to Hamas Prime
Minister Ismail Haniyeh (who was dismissed by Abbas in June
2007), explained the logic behind the extended hudna which
calls for an end to violence without declaring an end to
the conflict: "[w]hereas war dehumanizes the enemy and
makes it easier to kill, a hudna affords the opportunity
to humanize one's opponents and understand their position
with the goal of resolving the intertribal or international
dispute."
Yousef proposed as a potential model the truce between the
Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the British government that
laid the ground for an end to their conflict. He noted that
the IRA "agreed to halt its military struggle to free
Northern Ireland from British rule without recognizing
British sovereignty." Irish Republicans, he observed,
"continue to aspire to a united Ireland free of British
rule, but rely upon peaceful methods." A crucial point
from Hamas's perspective was that "[h]ad the IRA been
forced to renounce its vision of reuniting Ireland before
negotiations could occur, peace would never have prevailed."
Is it possible to find statements from Hamas figures,
including some of high rank, that contradict this
conciliatory tone and strategy and put forward more
militant positions? Of course it is, which is exactly
why Hamas cannot be pushed to move away from long-
established positions too quickly. Like the IRA and all
other organizations in a similar position, it must move
incrementally as its own concerns and the needs of its
constituencies are addressed. To do otherwise would be
to risk splits and provoke rebellion from the rank and
file. The British and U.S. governments understood this
in the IRA case but have made no such allowances for
Hamas.
Hamas's escalation of its armed response to Israel's
siege, extrajudicial killings of its members and attacks
on the Gaza Strip does not contradict the desire to reach
an extended hudna. Rather, it appears to be a calculated
gamble that such action can force Israel to agree to
pursue a long-term truce with new "rules of engagement"
and at the same time veto any political process, such
as Annapolis, that attempts to bypass Hamas. The group
also wants a deal to re-open Gaza border crossings in
which it will have some role.
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The Palestinian Authority
It is likely that the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud
Abbas would engage in a rapprochement with Hamas absent
the significant U.S. pressure on it to maintain a boycott
of the group. Abbas, after all, infuriated the Bush
administration by agreeing to form the short-lived national
unity government in February 2007 as part of the Saudi-
sponsored Mecca agreement. Rank and file Fatah members tend
to favor reconciliation, as do some key figures within the
movement. Nevertheless, some powerful Abbas advisors have
an entrenched interest in the status quo; their patronage,
financing, privileges and recognition by the United States,
Israel and the E.U. stems from their willingness to confront
and work against Hamas. They may be the last to consent to
any accommodation as they would stand to lose most from it.
Is Israel Ready for Engagement?
The debate within the Israeli political-military establish-
ment is between those on the one hand who believe that
reoccupying the interior of the Gaza Strip and possibly
assassinating senior Hamas civilian leaders can "solve"
Israel's problem, and those on the other who have recognized
that some form of accommodation is inevitable and is the
only means to stop the escalation of violence. The position
of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, while nominally
closer to the former camp, may be driven by political
expediency rather than ideology. Olmert, like Abbas, is a
politically vulnerable leader heading a fractious coalition;
his position depends to a large extent on U.S. political
support. This support in turn depends on Olmert going along
with U.S.-set goals: a continuous negotiation process with
Abbas, even if it achieves nothing, and the isolation of
Hamas as part of the broader U.S. regional strategy of
confronting "extremists" and supporting U.S.-anointed
"moderates."
Yet within Israel, there appears to be a shift in public
and elite opinion towards supporting cease-fire negotiations
with Hamas. Two thirds of Israelis, including half of Likud
voters and large majorities of Kadima and Labor voters, now
support direct negotiations with Hamas to achieve a truce
and release prisoners. There is a growing sense that
"[p]ower has limitations. The Israel Defense Forces cannot
solve everything."
Perhaps the most hawkish advocate of engaging Hamas has
been Efraim Halevy, the former head of Israel's Mossad
intelligence service. Halevy rejects the oft-made claim
that Hamas cooperates with or is ideologically similar
to Al-Qaeda or that the group is subservient to Iran.
Hamas is "more credible and effective as a political
force" than Fatah, which Halevy estimates is "more than
ever discredited as weak, enormously corrupt and politi-
cally inept." Halevy notes that Hamas "pulled off three
'feats' in recent years in conditions of great adversity.
They won the general elections to the Palestinian Legis-
lative Council in 2006; they preempted a Fatah design to
wrest control of Gaza from them in 2007; and they broke
out of a virtual siege that Israel imposed upon them in
anuary 2008." In doing so, he argues, "They affected a
strategic surprise upon all other players in the region
and upon the United States, and in each case, no effective
counter strategy mounted by the U.S. and Israel proved
effective." Halevy has been critical of the political
condition imposed on Hamas that it recognize Israel. The
demand for "a priori renunciation of ideology before
contact has been made," Halevy points out, "has never been
made before either to an Arab state or to the Palestinian
Liberation Organization/Fatah."
Despite this apparent shift in Israeli opinion, there
remains significant opposition to any engagement with
Hamas, not least from opposition parties seeking to cast
the government as "weak" in the face of "terrorism."
While Israel may tacitly agree to short-term deals with
Hamas, a fundamental change in the Israeli approach seems
remote without significant external pressure.
The U.S. Role
Up to this point, United States policy has been to foster
and deepen internal Palestinian divisions, collude with
Israeli policies that have caused significant harm to the
Palestinian population and employ rhetoric that presents
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as part of a regional or
even global confrontation with Iran and "militant Islam,"
as opposed to a local conflict that can be resolved through
mutually satisfactory political arrangements and guarantees.
Yet, the shift in view apparent in Israel is also evident
among U.S. foreign policy elites, where some prominent
Middle East policymakers have long been critical of the
policy of shunning Hamas. One barometer of changing senti-
ment is that both The New York Times and The Washington
Post recently published editorials criticizing the current
approach and calling for a negotiated truce with Hamas. It
is too much to expect that the Bush administration will
abandon its entrenched positions and publicly reverse
course, however. The best that can be hoped is that the
United States will not stand in the way of third parties
mediating between Israel and Hamas. A positive sign is
that the United States appears to have blessed recent
efforts by Egypt to broker a truce ending the upsurge in
violence in Gaza and southern Israel.
An additional factor is the U.S. presidential election
campaign. Rather than promote sober discussion of policy,
this tends to push candidates towards more hawkish
positions. Already, one of the major Democratic contenders
has publicly endorsed the Bush administration policy of
refusing to talk to Hamas, even while stating that he
might engage with other groups currently shunned by the
United States. Nevertheless, what is said in an election
may not serve as an accurate guide to what a new
administration might do.
Above all, the United States must abandon the policy of
picking sides in internal Palestinian politics and allow
Palestinian factions to reach an internal accommodation,
as the vast majority of the Palestinians desire.
Europe Uneasy
Once seen as an independent and more even-handed actor with
respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the European
Union has in recent years hitched its wagon to the United
States policy of unconditional support for Israel. This
tendency has been more pronounced since 2003 after which
date European policy has been driven by an imperative to
heal the internal and transatlantic rifts caused by the
Iraq war and the absorption by some European elites of
the rhetoric of a "clash of civilizations" with Islam.
Nevertheless, while publicly committed to the Quartet
conditions, some European governments have maintained
low-key channels with Hamas, and there is growing unease
with the isolation strategy.
Notably, the European Parliament passed a resolution
declaring that "the policy of isolation of the Gaza Strip
has failed at both the political and humanitarian level"
and calling on the Abbas Palestinian Authority to work with
"all parties concerned in the Gaza Strip"—code for Hamas—
for a reopening of the Gaza crossings. Calls for direct
engagement with Hamas have also been growing from European
civil society. A joint report issued by eight leading human
rights and humanitarian agencies, including Amnesty Inter-
national, Oxfam, Save the Children U.K. and Christian Aid,
called for talks with Hamas, concluding that "the inter-
national policy of isolating Hamas has not reaped any
benefits. On the contrary, it has led to increasing polar-
ization across the Occupied Palestinian Territories and
resulted in a political stalemate with Israel." Israel's
ambassador to the E.U. has reportedly warned his government
of "an overall European policy change toward Israel and
the Palestinian Authority, which could even lead to a
recognition of Hamas," and Marc Otte, the E.U. Middle East
envoy has declared, "We must consider a change of policy
in everything regarding Gaza."
These changes, while welcome, are again unlikely to result
in a complete reversal in European policy. However, they
are likely to lead to more contacts with Hamas outside the
public eye and perhaps European efforts to persuade the
United States and Israel to moderate their own hard-line
approaches. If this happens, it may help diminish violence,
foster internal Palestinian unity and lay the groundwork
for a genuine peace process that has popular consent and
therefore a chance to succeed.
Ali Abunimah is a fellow at the Palestine Center in
Washington, DC. He is an expert on Palestine, the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict and is the author of One
Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian
Impasse. Abunimah also co-founded The Electronic Intifada,
an online publication about Palestine and the Palestine-
Israeli conflict, Electronic Iraq and Electronic Lebanon.
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