Kudos to Haaretz’s Avi Issacharoff who yesterday conducted a phone interview with Hamas legislator and Gaza Strip spokesman Salah Bardawil about the thadi’eh.
Issacharoff asked what Hamas would do to any Gazans who might violate the tahdi’eh by firing rockets at Israel.
Bardawil replied:
- “I’m not going to say that we’ll start deploying forces at the border and turn into the Palestinian Authority, which works to safeguard Israel?s security interest. But we made a decision that anyone who fires rockets at Israel will be doing so without our approval. We’ll let the organization with which he is affiliated deal with him. If it?s someone who doesn’t belong to any organization, measures will be taken against him. Anyone who violates the factions? decision on the cease-fire is harming the Palestinian interest and we will deal with him accordingly.”
Evidently, anyone in Israel who wants to see the tahdi’eh maintained should have an interest in ensuring that the responsible party in Gaza, i.e. Hamas, has the capability to monitor and police the Strip’s border zones, which given its tiny size means really the whole Strip, effectively.
The rest of the article is interesting, too. Issacharoff not only engages Bardawil in a fascinating conversation on broader prospects for Israel-Hamas diplomacy, but also has a short report of a conversation with an unnamed former Fateh official in Gaza who expressed what Issacharoff described as “consternation” that the ceasefire has further strengthened Hamas politically.
Issacharoff writes this about his conversation with Bardawil:
- Unlike some of his Hamas colleagues, Bardawil does not act horrified when hearing the words “peace” and “Israel” put together. “The Arab world has already outstretched its hand for peace with the Israelis in the past,” he says. “The ideas of Ahmed Yassin [Hamas’ founder and former leader], who supported a cease-fire for some 15-20 years, focused on peace, not war. Hamas people who insist that there will never be peace with Israel do so because they are skeptical about the intentions of Israel’s leadership. Everyone on your side is saying that the hudna [truce] is an opportunity for Hamas to narrow the military gap, but it’s actually a historic opportunity for Israel and for all the sides involved to live in peace, and to build a future for the next generations.”
… “Today, the relations between Israel and Hamas are those of enemies,” Bardawil explains. “But during past negotiations between Hamas and Fatah we agreed on ‘the national reconciliation agreement,’ which declares that the Palestinian state will be established within the 1967 borders. Israel mustn’t pass up such an agreement with Hamas − otherwise an ideology more extreme than Hamas will be the result. Israel has to understand that nowadays, Hamas is a factor that balances the radical and out-of-control voices in both the Arab and the Muslim world.”
However, it’s hard to ignore the more hawkish voices in Hamas, which see the cease-fire as little more than a timeout, allowing the organization to build up its military forces in anticipation of the future − when they envision wiping Israel off the map. But according to Bardawil, the Hamas members who speak in such terms are merely voicing religious ideas. “It’s impossible to change religious beliefs,” he says. “But the conflict between us and Israel is political and not religious.”
So why don’t you recognize Israel?
“We won’t repeat Fatah’s mistakes and get into the whole adventure of recognizing Israel. To this day, the borders of this state remain uncertain. It’s too early to talk about negotiations with Israel. The cease-fire is a kind of de facto recognition of this entity, just as Israel recognizes the existence of Hamas. We cannot deny the reality of its existence.”
Who’s the winner and who’s the loser when it comes to the cease-fire?
“The agreement meets the interests of both sides. No one won, but the truce benefits both Israel and Hamas. It’s only natural for each side to try to portray the move as a victory for itself and to boast of its achievements. In the end, everyone gains. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have agreed to the cease-fire.”
I should note that what Bardawil said tracks very well with what I heard on these issues when I interviewed Khaled Meshaal in Damascus in January.
The Hamas people have gone through some extremely challenging times in recent years, including with the succession of very high-level assassinations that Israel carried out against its top leaders in 2003-2004. But the have shown a notable ability to rebuild and even increase their organizational integrity in the aftermath of those decapitation attacks. This is an organization that will be around a long time to come. Moreover, its ability to maintain and increase organizational discipline under extremely taxing circumstances stands in stark contrast to the situation inside Fateh, which continues to be marked by considerable organizational and political disorder. Fateh’s leaders and officials have reason to be concerned about the future of their movement.
(For more background, go read some of my reporting on the Palestinian situation since 2002, as archived at Boston Review and accessible through this portal.)