Author: Helena

Graham Usher, who’s an experienced and intelligent observer of Palestinian politics, has a fascinating new piece about Hamas up on the MERIP website. It’s called The New Hamas: Between Resistance and Participation.
Usher writes of,

the strategic turn undertaken by Hamas in the last year. Once the fiercest opponent of the 1993-1994 Oslo agreements — or of any final peace deal that would recognize Israel — Hamas now publicly accepts that it, too, would negotiate with the Jewish state. Once dismissive of PA elections as the illegitimate child of Oslo, Hamas now plans to participate in legislative contests slated for the coming winter. Paradoxically, these convergences in strategic outlook between Hamas and the PA are the reason why the July battles in Gaza could be harbingers of struggles to come.

Hamas, he wrote, owed the rise in popularity that it saw in the past few years,

not only to the armed resistance its fighters put up against Israel, the collapse of PA police forces and divisions in Fatah sown by Israel’s West Bank and Gaza invasions, and the visceral appeal of its “reprisal” suicide attacks inside Israel. As important was the extensive array of charitable and welfare services that stood in stark contrast to the inefficiency and collapse of the PA ministries. The result, by late 2002, was less a party in opposition to the PA and Fatah than an independent national force bent on establishing “a political, social and military alternative to the existing Palestinian order,” in the words of former PA Culture Minister Ziad Abu Amr.
The issue was what to do with such power. Would Hamas seek the creation of a “new PLO” or a rapprochement with the existing one? Party leaders chose accommodation. There were three reasons compelling them to do so.
The first reason was the new regional order born of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that came in their wake. As one European diplomat with extensive contact with the Palestinian Islamists acknowledged: “Hamas, like Syria, feels the cold wind coming from Baghdad and the new licenses granted to the ‘war on terror.'”
…
The second reason was the unprecedented assault Israel unleashed on the movement following the truce. In seven months, Israel killed Hamas’ main military commander in Gaza, Ibrahim Maqadmeh, Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Rantisi, his successor in Gaza. Israel also tried to assassinate Muhammad Dayf, head of Hamas’ military arm, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and Mahmoud Zahhar, now Hamas’ most senior political leader in the Strip. The Israelis sent clear signals to Hamas officials in Damascus like Khalid Mishaal and Musa Abu Marzuq that they too were fair game. In the final stage, sound intelligence, helicopter gunships and death squads proved thorough at wiping out what remained of Hamas’ West Bank military cadre.
The assault was steeled by political and financial sanction…
The third reason was Ariel Sharon’s decision in February 2004 that, in the absence of a Palestinian “peace partner,” Israel would withdraw unilaterally from settlements in Gaza and the northern tip of the West Bank. Publicly, Hamas claims the “flight” as a victory for its strategy of armed resistance. Privately, many in the movement understood that disengagement offered an exit from a “war” that had not only brought overpowering Israeli retaliation but was also wrecking Hamas’ own aspiration to legitimacy and leadership. Disengagement supplied the long-awaited moment when Hamas could cash in the kudos it had earned from resistance and welfare and convert them into political and institutional capital.

Usher wrote that it was Sheikh Ahmed Yassin himself who presented the new platform in the weeks before his assassination in March, 2004:

It consisted of three positions that, taken together, constituted a strategic turn in the movement’s theory and practice. The first plank was the understanding that Hamas would hold its fire for the duration of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and four northern West Bank settlements, on the condition that the withdrawal is complete (including from the crossing on the Egyptian border). Hamas reaffirmed this pledge in discussions with Abbas in August 2005 on the eve of the withdrawal, and has honored it to date.
The second plank was that, until the withdrawal commenced (or at least until the decision to withdraw was seen to be genuinely irreversible), Hamas would escalate armed resistance in Gaza while curtailing suicide attacks in Israel. This essentially is what occurred in period preceding the Cairo Declaration and subsequently whenever Hamas deemed Israel to be in gross violation of the truce or the PA in breach of understandings reached in Cairo. Usually in concert with other Palestinian militia, Hamas launched high-profile attacks on army outposts and settlements in Gaza and/or rained mortars on Israeli border towns.
The purpose of these escalations was political. They reinforced the regional and Palestinian perception that Israel is leaving Gaza under duress rather than by choice. They demonstrated that Hamas remains a formidable military foe that no domestic or foreign power can quell. They also strengthened Hamas’ hand in its “dialogue” with the PA.
One result of this strategy has been Abbas’ tacit admission that the matter of Hamas’ disarmament will not be broached until after the PA parliamentary elections, now set for January 21, 2006. Another is the acknowledgement by the PA’s new and influential foreign minister, Nasser al-Kidwa, that “dismantling the armed groups is not on the table as long as the occupation exists.”
The third, and most significant, part of Yassin’s new platform stated that Hamas would strive to reach a power-sharing agreement with the PA in any post-withdrawal Palestinian government. In Cairo, this idea boiled down to three prescriptions: a “formula for decision making” pending the parliamentary elections, both in relation to maintaining calm during the withdrawal and in the administration of areas evacuated by Israel in the aftermath; the establishment of a national cross-factional committee mandated to reactivate and redefine PLO institutions to enable Hamas’ “proportional” participation within them; and a commitment by Hamas to participate in all PA elections and on the basis of its representation there to become an integral part of the Palestinian political system, including the PLO’s National Council and executive committee.

Usher writes quite a bit about the successes Hamas registered in the municipal elections held in late 2004 and early 2005. And how Fateh and the Egyptians at that point stepped in and planned for the postponement of the legislative elections from their original July 2005 date until (now) late January 2006.
He also wrote about the Hamas-Fateh fighting that flared in July. He wrote that on that occasion,

For the first time in a long time, it was [PA head Mahmoud] Abbas and Fatah — and not the Islamists — who had tapped into the popular will. A week after the clashes flared, Fatah and Hamas were reconciled on the basis of understandings no different, no better and no less ambiguous than those agreed upon in Cairo [in March].
Will these understandings hold? Most Palestinian analysts believe Hamas will be true to its word on maintaining calm for “the rest of 2005.” Three events could rupture the calm, however, either during the withdrawal or in the aftermath. One is a rigorous return by Israel to its assassination policy. “Hamas will not start a confrontation,” comments Abu Zuhri. “But, in the face of massive Israeli aggression, neither will we wait for a ‘collective’ PA response any more than would Fatah.”
Another would be a “provocative” Jewish attack on Palestinians to stymie the disengagement, especially on or near Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount compound. The third possible source of disruption would be a PA decision to renege again on the electoral process drawn up in Cairo and now reestablished in Gaza. One of the motives behind Hamas’ martial displays in Gaza is to convey that such a move would be unacceptable.
But what does Hamas want from the electoral process? It does not seek leadership, at least not yet. It seeks hegemony. Hamas quietly accepts that the current balance of power in Palestinian society is accurately reflected in polls showing Fatah with around 40 percent of all parliamentary seats and Hamas with around 30 percent, with the balance being held by independents and other factions. Translated into the outcome of elections, these numbers would not make Hamas the dominant force in Palestinian politics. They could, however, make it the hegemonic force in a majority bloc or a “blocking majority” against Fatah.
But to what end? Sheikh Ahmad Hajj Ali is a member of Hamas’ Shura Council, the supreme decision-making body in the organization. He sketches a future in which a new Hamas, domestic in thrust, consensual in aim, international in reach, emerges gradually from the old one: “Our aim is governance and one can only govern through the institutions of government. If we are the minority in Parliament, we will monitor the ministers on the basis of their performance, not on the basis of their political affiliation. If we are a majority, we will not monopolize power like Fatah. We will share power in a national coalition, a government that represents all the Palestinian people.”
The sheikh continues: “But in all cases our priority now is to address the internal Palestinian situation rather than the confrontation with Israel. We would negotiate with Israel since that is the power that usurped our rights. If negotiations fail, we will call on the world to intervene. If this fails, we will go back to resistance. But if Israel were to agree with our internationally recognized rights — including the refugees’ right of return — the Shura Council would seriously consider recognizing Israel in the interests of world peace.”
That recognition would be new. It is also inevitable, at least if Hamas wants to be the dominant vehicle for Palestinian nationalism and rid itself of the stigma of rejectionism in the eyes of the world. Slowly, painstakingly, but inexorably, Hamas is moving away from its traditional notion that Palestine is an Islamic waqf “from the river to the sea” and even the idea of a long-term armistice (hudna) that would accept the “1967 territories” as a Palestinian proto-state until the forces of Islam are strong enough to recover Palestine “as a whole.” Rather, Hamas is signaling that it accepts Israel as a political reality today and is intimating that it would accept a final agreement with Israel “according to the parameters of the [1991] Madrid conference and UN resolutions,” says Palestinian analyst Khaled Hroub, an authority on the Islamist party.
Such an agreement with Israel, of course, is what Abbas says he seeks. Herein lies the reason why Hamas-PA relations are so tense and why the situation in Gaza is potentially explosive. The struggle between the PA and Hamas is no longer about the disengagement’s significance: it is “the day of victory and the beginning of a new era that was achieved with the blood of our martyrs,” say both Muhammad Dahlan and Mahmoud Zahhar. The struggle is about who will claim the political and electoral franchise from disengagement and who will win the right to lead the Palestinians in the next phase. Will it be Abbas and Dahlan and their strategies of diplomacy and governance? Or will it be Hamas and its legacy of resistance?

I am sure that many people will say that if Hamas’s conditions for participating in negotiations with Israel include Israel’s full recognition of the Palestinian “right of return”, then there is nothing there for the Israelis to talk about. But that was also the position of Fateh and the secular nationalists until quite recently– and it is still the position of much of the Fateh grssroots. So it seems there really may not be that much difference between the actual policies pursued by the two big Palestinian organizations at this point.
Two days ago I noted here that Hamas’s exile-based politburo chief Khaled Mishal said last week that the movement would soon be announcing its readiness to participate in the PA government itself. So there really do not seem to be huge differences on policy between it and Fateh. I think the main differences that we’ll continue to see between them now– and especially if there is NOT in fact any kind of big explosion between Palestinians and Israelis over the months ahead– will be over their levels of organization, discipline, and service delivery, in Gaza but also in the West Bank.
From Usher’s piece it seems clear that Hamas’s level of internal discipline is still not as high as that of, for example, Hizbullah in Lebanon. But still, up to now it’s shown itself to be a lot more disciplined than Fateh.
But wouldn’t it truly be great if we could start to see a robust civilian politics start to be pursued– through totally nonviolent means– inside Palestine? Let’s just hope the Israelis, the Americans, and Egyptians give the Palestinians the space to do this.

There is an informative interview on Al-Jazeera’s website with Muhammad Samhouri, the general coordinator of the PA’s “Technical Committee For Following Disengagement”. Samhouri, who’s a US-trained economist, supervises a team of 40 experts who are handling the technical details of the Gaza disengagement from the Palestinian side.
The interviewer is Leila Haddad.
Some excerpts:

To what extent is there coordination with the Israelis?
It is minimal. We still didn

Now that thankfully most of the “drama” of Israel’s evacuation from Gaza of settlers (and of hundreds of extremist outside agitators) is winding down, it’s time to pay some serious attention to Palestinian politics. In particular, what are the hopes for finding a workable form of national unity inside Gaza once the IDF/IOF troops have finally left?
To a large degree, the answer for that lies with the Sharon government. Will it actually allow a robust Palestinian national administration to establish and exercise authority in the Strip after the disengagement? (See my last week’s column in the CSM for some thoughts on that.)
In addition to whatever longterm restrictions the Israelis may seek to retain on the Gazans’ ability to interact freely with the global economy, and to control their own borders and residency rights, in the short term there is also a real possibility that some in the Israeli security establishment may seek to puncture any Palestinian elation over the IDF/IOF withdrawal by launching one last massive, “didactic” strike against Gaza as they leave…
Let’s hope not.
(We can also expect that any such strike would only further consolidate Palestinian and Arab feeling around Hamas, which has always been far more doubting of the Sharon government’s bona fides than has Abu Mazen.)
But assuming the “best” re a relatively violence-free IDF/IOF withdrawal from here on, what can we expect regarding Palestinian politics?
Abu Mazen, as we know, has announced that the delayed elections to the Palestinian legislature will be held next January 21. Hamas has already said it will run in them. Abu Mazen– as I’ve written about on JWN a number of times in the past, and also here in Boston Review— has been much more realistic than Yasser Arafat ever was about the need to find a politically inclusive modus vivendi with Hamas, if the Palestinians are ever to have coherent national-level decisionmaking.
Also, as I noted in that BosRev piece, and in subsequent posts on JWN, inside Gaza, Hamas is certainly far better organized and more disciplined than the Palestinian secular nationalists. Many of the secular nationalists are known more these days for their profligacy, corruption, and intense internal jealousies than for any concrete service to their people.
(Abu Mazen is by and large– though perhaps not wholly– exempted from those kinds of criticisms.)
Hamas politburo president Khaled Mishal gave an important press conference in Beirut on Wednesday. It received sadly little attention in a US MSM that was absolutely drenched in the hyped-up “angst” of the settler-evacuations at the time. Luckily Israel’s HaAretz carried a fairly decent AP report of it:

Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is an important achievement, but it will not lead to Hamas’ disarmament, the organization’s political leader, Khaled Meshal, said yesterday.
Meshal told reporters in a briefing that his group was still committed to a six-month-old truce with Israel, but added: “Our joy should not let us forget the march for liberation and the restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people.
“The withdrawal is a precedent and an important achievement because it is the first real withdrawal from Palestinian lands, but we are still at the beginning of the road, and we will not lay down arms,” Meshal continued.
The Hamas leader claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon “wants to send a misleading message to the world, that he is a man of peace and must be rewarded for it,” charging that Sharon did not plan to remove Jewish settlers from all of Gaza.
“We will consider any part of the Strip that Israel keeps as a `Gazan Shaba Farms,” he said, referring to a disputed area on the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel.

The piece also noted that, “Meshal urged Arab countries not to hasten to normalize relations with Israel because of the withdrawal.”
Mishal has the distinction of having survived a very nasty and very personalized chemical-weapon attack that the Mossad launched against him in Amman, Jordan, in 1998.
Also quoted in that AP piece was Hamas’s spokesman in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahar. The piece noted that Zahar had told the London-based Saudi daily Al-sharq Al-Awsat that, “Hamas planned to move its fight to the West Bank after Israel completed its pullout from Gaza.”
Meanwhile, I have found this interesting interview that Mishal gave (by phone) to al-Hayat’s talented bureau chief in Damascus, Ibrahim Homeidi, on Tuesday. In addition to reporting many of the comments cited above, Homeidi also reported the following (quick translation by HC here):

Asked about Hamas’s competition with the Palestinian National Authority after the [Israeli] withdrawal, Mishal replied: “There is no-one who competes with the Authority for authority. We don’t seek [to exercise] authority in confrontation with the Authority, and no-one is above the law. But it is natural that no faction should be separated from Palestinian decisionmaking. We are comrades [shuraka’, = literally ‘co-participants’] in blood and comrades in decisionmaking. And decisionmaking is a national responsibility so large that no faction can be separated from it.” And Mishal stressed the necessity of, “reaching agreement on the conduct of the struggle against the enemy. The battle is still there even in the Strip because many things [regarding it] have not been defined yet.”
The Hamas political bureau head continued by saying that the movement [Hamas] “will shortly announce its agreement to participate in the [PNA] government” and that its concern about the elections is broader than “the concern about the delay”. He said, responding to a question, that the Movement “is committed to the decision for a ceasefire [ lit. a “calming”, tahdi’a] throughout the year 2005 but this ceasefire was [agreed to] on the basis of defined and reciprocal conditions including the ending of [Israeli acts of] aggression and the release of the prisoners.” He added: “If the enemy were to continue in its acts of aggression and its refusal to release the prisoners, then we would reconsider the calming. But from our side until this point we are committed to the calming.”
And has Hamas studied the [idea of] its leadership cadres being allowed to return to Gaza? Mishal replied: “Return is a legitimate right for every Palestinian. But the decision of the return of the leaderships and its timing is tied to the circumstances and developments of the coming stage, and events, and the leadership’s decision.”

To me, the most interesting thing there is Mishal’s announcement that Hamas will shortly be entering the PNA’s executive body. Recall that back in 1993-94, at the time when the Oslo Accords created this body called the “PA”, which would have some functions both to administer the areas of the WB&G from which Israel withdrew and would also be the body that negotiated the Palestinians’ broader, “final-status” claims against the Israelis, Hamas still adamantly opposed the whole process.
That was why, during the territories-wide elections of 1996 that voted Arafat in as PA “president” and also voted for a Palestinian Legislative Council, Hamas as an organbization completely abstained from participation because of the depth of its opposition to the Oslo process.
Here we are, nine years down the line, and Hamas is not only, as we know, planning to compete vigorously in the scheduled PLC elections– but now, Mishal is signaling its readiness to enter–though notably not to take over– the P(N)A’s government.
I think Hamas’s inclusion in the Palestinian political system is a very, very constructive step. As is its participation in the ceasefire so far. Of course, for Hamas– as for the Palestinian secular nationists– there are many tough issues remaining regarding whether and how to seek to retain some form of “armed struggle” option at a time when the struggle for an independent national state is still extremely far from being over. (My own strong view, for what it is worth, is– with respect to the Palestinians as well as to the south Lebanese– that strong, community-wide grassroots organization, strong internal discipline, and very smart leadership can, in today’s world, be more reliably expected than any attempts at “armed struggle” to win the Arab peoples struggling against Israeli occupation a sustainable and independent national future.)
But anyway, this is clearly a political story whose unfolding over the months and years ahead promises to be really interesting. Maybe I should start planning my next trip to Gaza?