What to Make of Hamas, Part II
Posted July 31, 2009
Hamas and Current American Policy
Michael Thomas
CNI Board Member
Part I summarized what was learned about Hamas in meetings throughout the Levant in May of this year. In this Part II, we will consider information about Hamas from sources we did not talk to, and analyze current American policies and their evident effects.
Hamas: The Rest of the Story
Hamas (an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement in Arabic) began in 1987 as an offshoot of a Muslim Brotherhood chapter in Gaza. The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist organization founded in Egypt decades earlier. Hamas did not participate in the largely non-violent first Intifada in 1987, but was formed to represent the Brotherhood in the resistance movement and to press the argument that “Islam is the solution and the alternative.”[1] Because Israeli leaders understood Islam to be a largely peaceful religion, and Muslim Brotherhood had turned away from violence in the early 1950s,[2] Israeli officials including Shimon Peres thought it useful to encourage the nascent Hamas in preference to the secular and violent Fatah. However, while Fatah led the Palestine Liberation Organization to recognize Israel in 1988, and thence into negotiations with Israel at Madrid, Washington, and Oslo, 1988 was also the year that Hamas under Sheikh Ahmed Yassin promulgated its Charter. That rambling and blood-curdling document, which has never been authoritatively repudiated, calls on Muslims in the name of their religion to destroy Israel and to kill Jews, names organizations including Rotary International and Lions’ Clubs as Zionist enemies, and relies on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as well as the Quran.[3]
The current leaders of Hamas, or at least Khalid Meshal and others who seek contact with the West, explicitly urge listeners to focus on what they are saying and doing now, and not on the language of a document that is now over twenty years old. They assert that they are not engaged in a religious struggle with Jews, but a national liberation movement against a competing nationalist movement, Zionism, and that they have never used violence except on the lands and against the adversaries involved in that resistance.[4] However, they have repeatedly targeted Israeli civilians by means of suicide bombers, rockets and mortars. They have been disciplined in maintaining ceasefires, including one of six months’ duration that expired shortly before the Israeli incursion into Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, but they refuse to renounce violence while under a military occupation that results in dead Palestinians.
Hamas, in common with Fatah, also uses deadly force against Palestinians.[5] The US and Israel supported Fatah’s efforts to undermine Hamas authority in the unity government formed after the 2006 elections. Hamas violently ousted Fatah from the governing of Gaza in July 2007; there were chilling atrocities on both sides. More recently, operations by PA security forces in the West Bank have unearthed caches of Hamas arms, including fully operational suicide vests, under a mosque and elsewhere.[6]
The Palestinian elections of 2006 were held under the Oslo agreements between Israel and the PLO. Hamas earlier both rejected Oslo and claimed that the accords had ended by 2000 because of Israeli violations and the second intifada. Participation was also totally inconsistent with the bloody-minded jihad demanded in the Hamas Charter. The US pushed for the elections, knowing that Hamas would participate, and the elections were found “genuinely democratic” by international observers. The US promptly led international efforts to condition continued aid to the PA on the three Quartet demands. Within weeks, the US and EU cut off aid and Israel began withholding about $50 million per month in customs revenues due the PA under Oslo; together, this was about two-thirds of PA revenues. Fatah was encouraged to cease cooperation with Hamas; by the end of 2006, armed clashes in Gaza and the West Bank killed over one hundred Palestinians. Against American wishes, Saudi efforts led to a national unity government in February 2007, committed by its platform to “respect” prior agreements of the PLO but not to renounce violence or recognize Israel. It, like the 2006 Prisoners’ Document, committed Hamas to authorize PLO negotiations with Israel and to submit any agreement to the PNC or directly to the Palestinian people in a referendum. It should be noted that prior agreements of the PLO, including the exchange of letters between Rabin and Arafat in September 1993 to conclude the Oslo process, explicitly renounce violence and recognize Israel’s “right to exist in peace and security,” allowing an inference that the 2007 NUG platform committed Hamas to those positions as well.
But of course the NUG was strangled in its crib. The July 2007 takeover of Gaza by Hamas followed weeks of stories about assistance that Fatah security forces in Gaza led by Mohammed Dahlan were receiving from the US and Israel, and plans to oust Hamas from all security functions of the NUG in Gaza. Thereafter, the blockade was applied and tightened. In September 2007, the Israeli security cabinet declared Gaza a “hostile entity,” and imposed truly draconian measures to punish the entire population. In June 2008, after indirect talks, Israel and Hamas each entered unilateral ceasefires, to last six months. When that period expired in December, Hamas refused to extend it, asserting that Israel had reneged on a promise to relax the siege. What followed, Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, devastated Gaza, killing over 1,400,[7] maiming thousands, making tens of thousands homeless, and destroying not just structures identified with Hamas militia, but infrastructure, medical facilities, civilian businesses including fruit juice and biscuit factories, and the American International School.
And still, Hamas wants to participate in a political process, wants to engage in dialogue with the US, wants its seemingly moderate statements to be tested in a process of reciprocal moves. Some of its statements are certainly subject to divergent interpretations. When they say they will be bound by a PLO-negotiated peace agreement subject to referendum, does that mean a vote of Palestinians in the occupied territories, or all Palestinians? It makes a huge difference. When they say they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines, do they mean as a permanent settlement, or do they mean as an interim arrangement until they gain the strength necessary to take back “the rest of Palestine”? When they talk about a hudna of ten years, what does that mean, and could it be extended indefinitely?
Until we are prepared to test Hamas in detailed negotiations and confidence-building steps, we have only two measures of the possible answers: their record of keeping agreements once made, and their belief system. Some of Hamas’s statements and actions seem flatly contrary to their Charter, but experts who have studied the Islamic teachings of their leaders discern a different and more limited set of red lines that Hamas is unlikely to cross, at least without a substantial re-thinking of their Islamic faith.[8]
Hamas is an Islamic organization, and as such will not transgress shari’a, which it understands to forbid recognition of Israel as the occupier of land that is inherently Palestinian and Islamic. However, it has formulated mechanisms that allow it to deal with the reality of Israel. These include the concept of tahadiya (a short calming period not involving resolution of the conflict, as was done in 2008) and the Prophet’s hudna (a truce for a specific period, which can be a period of years). Hamas has said on numerous occasions that it would enter a hudna of up to ten years, but on condition that basic Palestinian rights as set forth in the Arab Peace Initiative (API) are first agreed to. Hamas has also formulated its own concept of “Palestinian legitimacy” as part of the larger liberation movement, under which it would consider itself bound to a final peace treaty such as that described in the API as long as the treaty is first ratified by the Palestinian people in a referendum. Hamas would not directly participate in negotiations with Israel, but would be willing to participate in a coalition government under which Fatah, or the head of the PLO, would negotiate the treaty.[9] Thus, it is unlikely that Hamas will in the foreseeable future recognize Israel in a conventional sense, but it has been carefully adjusting its political program over the years, giving repeated signals that it is prepared to begin a process that would involve co-existence with Israel.
The obvious question is whether the concept of hudna and the Hamas use of the term “phased liberation” mean that Hamas would retain the ultimate goal of destroying Israel. Scholars such as Scham and Abu-Irshaid conclude that Hamas is undergoing a slow ideological shift, and that interim agreements could well become permanent. Fatah went through a similar shift in the 1970s and 1980s, when internal documents promised that compromises with Israel would be tactical only. Fatah ultimately led the PLO to accept the two-state solution as its ultimate goal; however, Fatah is not an Islamist movement. There is a second analogy, that of the Cold War, when the US and the USSR reached a wide range of agreements while each promised to destroy the other, or at least to displace the other’s ideology.
Hamas faces two dilemmas, the one that grows out of its Islamic roots and another faced by any liberation movement. Any such movement ultimately has to choose between recognition and legitimacy.[10] If its leaders delay or abandon armed confrontation with the occupying power in order to negotiate partial resolution or relief from oppressive occupation measures, they will invite challenge from those who see violent resistance as the only effective or ideologically acceptable means. Recognition by the occupiers as a negotiating partner threatens the legitimacy of the leadership, and risks splintering the movement. This is particularly true when the movement has itself come into existence as an alternative to a leadership that has chosen to renounce violence and negotiate, and has delivered results widely seen as disastrous by the occupied population. Hamas is led by men who understand that there is never likely to be a time when Palestinians can militarily defeat Israel. But Hamas cannot publicly abandon force and recognize Israel, while Israel is using massive coercion and lethal force against the people it represents, and remain at the head of an Islamist resistance effort against an ongoing occupation.
American Policy and Its Effects
Hamas has been declared a terrorist organization by the State Department under statutes that restrict travel related to such an organization, make it a crime to provide material support to it, and freeze its accounts in U.S. financial institutions. Parallel constraints, particularly as to provision of material support and freezing accounts, have been obtained from allies. In addition, Hamas is specifically targeted by the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006, P.L. 109-446 (Dec 21, 2006), which imposes a series of constraints on aid to the PA unless the president certifies that no agency of the PA is controlled by Hamas or Hamas has met the Quartet conditions. The act also constrains diplomatic contact with Hamas. However, it does not ban such contact entirely. It provides that no authorized funds may be used “to negotiate with members or official representatives of Hamas” and other named groups. That would allow negotiations with governments in which Hamas participates, and contacts short of negotiations with Hamas representatives. There is also an express exception for “emergency or humanitarian situations,” language which certainly covers the effects of the blockade and destruction of Gaza. Thus, if the Obama administration wanted to negotiate with Hamas over access to and relief of Gaza, there would be no bar. If it wanted to exchange information with Hamas concerning any subject, or negotiate with an NUG that included Hamas, there would be no bar. So long as Hamas was still on the State Department list, there would be constraints on financial transactions and travel, but the president could determine to remove Hamas from the list. All of these issues are of course politically very sensitive, and would require close coordination with Congress and some public education if policy was to be changed.[11]
Whatever the effect of these laws, US policy toward Hamas has not changed with the change of administrations. As we were told in Damascus, American diplomats currently consider that, since the issue is set by statute rather than mere policy, it is a total ban on contact with Hamas that cannot be evaded. The US continues to insist that the Abbas-Fayyad government is legitimate. Aid to Ramallah is continued, PA forces are trained to root out and suppress Hamas, and the blockade of Gaza is supported. None of these policies have altered the reality of a Hamas party-state in Gaza, and they have deepened the schism in Palestinian leadership.
As noted above, the US took strong action to undercut Hamas’s authority after the 2006 election and the NUG after February 2007. American diplomats claim to be working to insure that the terms of Israel’s blockade do not create or exacerbate a humanitarian crisis, but as seen by the Egyptians, the Palestinians and Israeli human rights organizations, the US has worked hand in hand with Israel to tighten the vise. General Dayton has made no secret of the fact that his mission in training West Bank PA security forces is in part to relieve the IDF from some of the burden of suppressing dissent against Israeli policy and conducting operations against Hamas in the West Bank, and to free IDF forces to conduct operations like Cast Lead in Gaza. The US House, well into the devastation of Cast Lead, passed a resolution by a margin of 395-5 applauding Israel for its stand against terrorists.
The results of these policies are appalling from the perspectives of human rights and international law. Our two days in Gaza were heart-rending.[12] Further, the policies against Hamas have greatly complicated and retarded progress in the West Bank as well. The Abbas-Fayyad government has lost legitimacy in the eyes of Palestinians, especially after it expressed only the mildest concern about the fate of Gazans facing blockade and bombing, and PA forces suppressed demonstrations against Israeli policy. It certainly seemed to Palestinians that Abbas was letting Israel deal with his political adversaries at the expense of the people he was nominally leading. According to recent polls, Palestinians are turning against both Hamas and Fatah for quarreling over the trappings of power in the unification talks, while the chances that there will ever be a Palestinian state go a-glimmering. However, while internecine antagonism may be enough to scuttle those talks, American policy also provides substantial barriers. Meanwhile, settlement expansion, expropriation of Palestinian homes, Jewish-only West Bank infrastructure projects and closure measures proceed apace. The PA receives the contributed funds that allow it to pay its loyalists while the flows to Gaza are cut off, but it cannot improve the lives of other Palestinians or move Israel toward peace.
In Part III, we consider alternatives to these policies.
Click for parts one and three.
[1] Hamas’s First Communiqué, December 14, 1987.
[2] Experts in Islamist movements at the Al-Ahram Center (the state-supported Egyptian policy institute) told me in 2007 that the Brotherhood had effectively renounced violence in about 1953.
[3] Article 7 quotes a hadith (teaching of the Prophet) to the effect that the Day of Judgment would not come until Muslims fight or kill the Jews: “The stones and trees will say, ‘O Moslems, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” There is a dispute among scholars as to whether this marks the conflict as one of religion or of nationalism.
[4] Hezbollah in its formative years, the early 1980s, did target Americans, seen as having taken the side of the Israelis and Phalangists in the invasion of Lebanon. Elements of Fatah and other constituent organizations of the PLO also killed Americans and other non-Israelis in the 1970s and 1980s. Hamas has never done so.
[5] We should keep in mind, as Meshal reminds us, that the IRA killed fellow Irishmen and Sunni dissidents killed fellow Iraqis, at times when US officials undertook dialogues with their leaders.
[6] In his June 25, 2009 speech, Meshal referred to the security cooperation in the West Bank between the PA and Israel under the supervision of General Dayton as the biggest obstacle to reconciliation in the Cairo talks. Hamas and human rights groups have said that the Dayton-led effort has been accompanied by a systematic crack-down on politicians, professors, charities and journalists suspected of links to Hamas. Arrests in the West Bank have been matched by arrests of Fatah supporters in Gaza.
[7] According to international NGOs; Israeli estimates are under 1,100.
[8] This part of the discussion relies substantially on a USIP report by Paul Scham and Osama Abu-Irshaid, Hamas: Ideological Rigidity and Political Flexibility, June 2009.
[9] This concept, which allows believers to rely upon unbelievers to do things forbidden to the believer, should be familiar to Jews. Under Halacha, Jews can rely on a shabbes goy, an individual who assists Jews by performing acts forbidden the Jew by Halacha.
[10] Tamim Barghouti, paper at Annual Symposium of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, April 2-3, 2009.
[11] When he signed P.L. 109-446, President Bush issued a signing statement asserting that the constraints on diplomatic contacts, inter alia, impinged on his constitutional authority to conduct foreign policy and had to be viewed as “advisory” rather than “mandatory.” While Bush is widely seen as having over-used signing statements, in this case he was probably correct. That does not mean that ignoring the statute would be without cost.
[12] Reports of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, GISHA, Special Rapporteur Richard Falk and others document massive violations of the law of war and of human rights law that have created conditions of desperation and despair for 1.5 million Gazans. Justice Goldstone’s report, due in September, will undoubtedly fill in further detail.
Tags: Hamas, Israel, Middle East, Middle East Peace, negotiations, Palestine
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