[Marxism] Hamas: A Silent Partner for Peace?

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

Faced with internal political  pressures and the
hard fact of Israel's strength, Hamas  has moderated
its political positions significantly. The  moment
may be ripe for pushing Hamas further toward  the
center.

Gershom Gorenberg | April 10, 2008 |  web  only
prospect.org

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=hamas_a_silent_partner_for_peace

What  would happen if Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal gave an
interview and nearly no  one in the West listened? Well then,
it would be possible for the Israeli  government and the Bush
administration to continue with dead-end policies for  dealing
with the Islamic movement that rules Gaza, without anyone
asking  questions about failed strategic assumptions.

Meshaal is the  Damascus-based head of Hamas' political
bureau, its main leadership body.  While his precise
relationship with the head of the Hamas government in  Gaza,
Ismail Haniyeh, is unclear, Meshaal is normally described as
Hamas'  leader. Last week he gave an interview to Al-Ayyam, a
pro-Fatah Palestinian  daily. In it, he stressed that he's
still committed to the Palestinian unity  agreements of 2006,
the basis for last year's short-lived Hamas-Fatah  power-
sharing deal in the Palestinian Authority. He reiterated that
he  would accept a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967
boundaries -- that is,  alongside Israel, not in place of it
-- though without any commitment to  recognize Israel
formally.

Put differently, Meshaal was saying that  his organization is
willing to accept the reality of Israel, even if it is  not
happy about doing so. He's ready for Hamas to rejoin a  unity
government with Fatah -- reuniting Gaza and the West Bank --
and to  be a silent partner while Palestinian President Mahmud
Abbas of Fatah  negotiates peace. He has not become a dove,
but he is sidling his way toward  being a pragmatic hawk. At
the least, Meshaal's stance is reason for his  adversaries to
weigh a renewal of Palestinian unity as an alternative  to
siege of Gaza.

The Meshaal interview got brief coverage in the  Israeli daily
Ha'aretz, and was picked up by an Italian news agency.  In
English language press it was barely covered. That's a shame.
Asked by  Al-Ayyam reporter Abdelrayuf Arnaout if Hamas sought
to eradicate Israel,  Meshaal answered: "We are committed to
the political platform on which we  agreed with the other
Palestinian forces and in convergence with Arab  position" â
meaning the Arab League proposal for full peace with  Israel,
based on the pre-1967 lines. "All the international  parties,"
Meshaal said, should treat this as the Hamas position, and
not  "search in the minds of peoples" for their feelings.
(More excerpts,  translated for me by Palestinian journalist
Ata Qaymari, can be found  here.

The interview reflects a political and psychological
balancing  act, says Israeli analyst Menachem Klein of Bar-
Ilan University. Meshaal  hasn't abjured Hamas' fundamental
beliefs, as expressed in the organization's  1988 charter: All
of Palestine, including pre-1967 Israel, is an Islamic  waqf,
sacred trust, to be liberated solely by jihad. But in the
course of  entering Palestinian electoral politics, Hamas has
taken pragmatic positions  that contradict the charter --
including acceptance of a de facto two-state  outcome. "It's
very hard to totally abandon fundamental beliefs.  [Meshaal's]
solution is to â keep the beliefs, but in the private  domain,
and to act publicly in a different way," Klein says. By the
time  of the 2006 national conciliation agreement, notes
Amman-based analyst Mouin  Rabbani, Hamas had accepted Abbas'
right to negotiate with Israeli on behalf  of the
Palestinians, as part of a deal in which Hamas would be
integrated  into the PLO.

Let me stress: I am not idealizing Hamas. The organization  is
quite literally bloody-minded. It remains committed to  "armed
struggle." With rockets, as with suicide bombings, it has  no
compunctions about murdering civilians. In Gaza, the enclave
it has  ruled since last June, mass media and mosque sermons
promote hatred of Jews,  as The New York Times' Steven
Erlanger recently reported. And yet, political  movements are
not geological formations. Facing internal  political
pressures and the hard fact of Israel's strength, Hamas  has
changed significantly. It has moved, as Klein has written,
"from  fundamentalism to radicalism." How much further it can
move is an open  question, but judging it by its charter alone
is a mistake.

So is  treating Hamas as part of global jihad, an error of
current American policy.  Reuven Paz, head of the Project for
the Research of Islamist Movements  (PRISM), says that al-
Qaeda harbors "the deepest hatred" for Hamas, which it  sees
as representing "nationalist jihad" instead of "Islamic
jihad."  Hamas, says Paz, resents American support for Israel
but is not anti-American  as such. For President Bush, Paz
suggests, Islamic groups are "all the same  axis of evil."
That's a misreading of Middle East dynamics â much like  John
McCain's persistent confusion of Al-Qaeda and  Shi'ite
extremists.

Clearly, the policies of Israel, the United States  and Fatah
toward Hamas over the last several years have failed  to
marginalize the group. In 2005, Israel pulled out of Gaza
unilaterally,  avoiding any negotiations with Abbas on a
final-status agreement. Among  Palestinians, that served as
proof that Hamas' armed struggle had driven  Israel out. In
the run-up to the January 2006 elections, says Rabbani,  Abbas
initially favored Hamas participation. Klein argues that the
goal of  Abbas, Bush, and Israel "was to kick Hamas out of
politics," through  electoral defeat. By the time Abbas
realized the danger of Hamas victory and  got cold feet, says
Rabbani, the Bush administration "was not prepared to be  seen
as changing course on democratic elections." Buoyed by
Fatah's  corruption and internal divisions, Hamas won.

As detailed in a report by  the International Institute for
Strategic Studies in London last year, and  more recently in a
Vanity Fair investigative article, the United States did  not
just join in boycotting the Hamas government and the unity
government  that followed. It armed the PA's Presidential
Guard, which was independent of  the Hamas government, and
pushed Arab countries to help train it. By June  2007, Hamas
expected a Fatah coup with American backing -- and  preempted
by seizing control of Gaza.

Abbas' response -- putting  together a Hamas-free government
in the West Bank -- made him a partner  acceptable to Israel
and the United States, opening the way to the  Annapolis
process. But unless there is backroom progress that has  been
successfully hidden, the talks appear to be going nowhere.
Even if  they produced a surprise deal, Hamas and Gaza would
be left out. With no  visible diplomatic progress, with
Israeli settlement construction continuing,  Abbas and Fatah
continue to lose popularity. The latest poll by  Palestinian
pollster Khalil Shikaki shows a dramatic tilt in support
among  Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank toward Hamas.

Meanwhile, Hamas  rules Gaza and is growing stronger
militarily The Israeli siege has not hurt  popular support for
the Hamas regime in Gaza. The greatest irony is that  Israel
is conducting indirect negotiations with Hamas, via Egypt, on
a  prisoner exchange and on a ceasefire. Any deal would again
affirm Hamas'  strength and appear to undermine Abbas. Rather
than eliminating Hamas, the  U.S.-Israel-Fatah alliance finds
itself stalemated at every  turn.

Under those circumstances, it's worth considering the one
option  rejected so far: U.S. and Israeli support for
restoring a Palestinian unity  government. Rabbani suggests
that Hamas would find reason to reject any peace  deal with
Israel that Abbas reached without it -- but would be  more
flexible if it were sharing power. One way to push Hamas to
moderate  its positions might be to co-opt it into the
political process. Meshaal's  interview could mean that he's
offering to be co-opted. It's worth finding  out



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