What to Make of Hamas, Part III
Posted July 31, 2009
Principled Policy as a Last Resort
Michael Thomas
CNI Board Member
American policy toward Hamas has been self defeating. From and after the elections of 2006, in the name of the war on terror, the US has dishonored its commitment to democratic institutions; has vigorously supported massive violations of international humanitarian and human rights law against trapped Gazans; has propped up a corrupt and unconstitutional Fatah-led rump government; has hypocritically treated Hamas unlike other national liberation movements; and has thereby made the desired two-state solution much more difficult to achieve. There are no easy or certain alternative policies. However, starting from the certainty that current policies are disastrous, the time has come to mix and match the least bad of the alternatives.
The Options
There are essentially four options for dealing with Hamas.[1] Two options involve opening dialogue with Hamas, and could be pursued separately or in sequence: organizing new Palestinian elections; and negotiating a new NUG. Current US policy involves two options which avoid engagement with Hamas: attempting to destroy or totally suppress Hamas; and pursuing final status negotiations with Abbas as the head of the PLO, followed by some means of ratification by Palestinians. The only policy shared by the current governments of the US and Israel is suppression of Hamas; Prime Minister Netanyahu reluctantly referred to a Palestinian state in his June address at Bar-Ilan University, but continues to reject final status talks as not feasible under current conditions.
Suppressing Hamas. The policy of shunning and suppressing Hamas has been counterproductive. Polls of Palestinians show fluctuations in support for Hamas, and they might lose ground in elections if they were held. However, Palestinians blame Israel and the US for the devastation of Gaza, and blame both Hamas and Fatah, as well as Israel and the US, for failure to achieve interim goals of uniting the leadership and easing living conditions. Hamas remains in firm control of Gaza, and many, including independent Palestinian leaders like Mustapha Barghouthi, think that it is gaining support in the West Bank. The split in Palestinian leadership under these conditions may serve the Israeli right wing, but it blocks progress toward American goals of a stable peace and the elimination of the conflict as a factor complicating American policy elsewhere in the region. Finally, the policy has identified the US with Israel’s infliction of death and destruction in Gaza.
Negotiating with Abbas. Assuming that Israel could somehow be persuaded to resume negotiations with Abbas, under present conditions such talks seem entirely pointless. Abbas could not reach agreement with an Olmert government that accepted a two-state solution as an urgent necessity for the future viability of Israel. Abbas’s credibility with Palestinians has plummeted, making any agreement backed by him but not by Hamas a probable dead letter. Meshal has committed to being bound by an agreement negotiated by Abbas if a referendum ratifies it, but has not defined that referendum process, nor promised not to campaign against the agreement. There are already “shelf agreements,” such as that negotiated at Geneva, and another one would only serve to heighten the sense of futility that prior efforts have engendered.
New Palestinian Elections. As noted, one of the major roadblocks to any stable solution is the lack of legitimacy of the Abbas-Fayyad government. It can speak for the West Bank bureaucracy and the PA security services being unified and trained by General Dayton’s team, and for factions of Fatah and remnants of the PLO.[2] It cannot speak for the PA in Gaza, Palestinians in the diaspora,[3] or for Hamas, the largest party in the last election. Fayyad’s cabinet is unconstitutional under the terms of the Basic Law that the West forced Arafat to accept, because in the absence of approval by the PLC of a new cabinet, the previous (that is, the Hamas-led) cabinet is to serve as a caretaker government. The Quartet now ignores the Basic Law, and so would presumably support Abbas in asserting power even after January 25, 2010, the last date that he could even arguably serve as president, rather than allow a non-compliant Hamas to participate in new presidential elections.
Palestinians care that the PA cabinet is supported by Israel and the US but not by the parliament they elected, and most found the Ramallah government’s stance during Cast Lead inadequately supportive of Gazans. The choice between legitimacy and recognition splits Fatah, with some favoring national unity and criticizing the leadership for being closer to the oppressors than to their fellow Palestinians. The leadership has tended to respond by focusing on short term factional fighting and posturing rather than rebuilding the party.[4] Prime Minister Fayyad is a technocrat who has no personal constituency. He offered his resignation earlier this year as a gesture in the context of the Cairo unity talks, but when they failed Abbas reappointed him and tightened Fatah control of a new cabinet.
The advantage of new elections, then, would be to give Palestinians a new leadership with a popular mandate. Elections would test the popularity of the respective approaches of the parties, and if a rejuvenated Fatah and/or smaller parties and independents formed a new government, that would smooth the way for re-engagement of the West and conceivably force Hamas to moderate its positions in order to regain momentum in this new environment. We would learn whether Meshal really would support any election results, and whether predictions that Hamas would be satisfied with a handful of ministries and new acceptance would pan out.
Of course, Hamas could again win, or lose ground but win enough for a blocking position as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon. Alternatively, if the judgments of several we spoke to are correct and the two major parties do not capture a majority even between them, there could be a real scramble to organize a coalition or national unity government, and the result could be the kind of chaos the Israel enjoys. However, even putting aside the possibility of awkward results, there are manifold obstacles to elections as a way forward. The problems start with organizing the elections.
The methods used by Israel, the US and Fatah to eliminate Hamas have been bloody, unconstitutional, and largely unavailing, and have resulted in conditions that make holding any elections harder. Hamas can block or corrupt elections in Gaza; Fatah can block or corrupt elections in the West Bank; Israel can block or corrupt elections everywhere, and based on experience in 1996, 2005 and 2006 would do that especially in East Jerusalem. To envision elections, you have to envision Fatah and Israel allowing Hamas to set up campaign organizations and operate with relative freedom in areas under PA control, and Hamas allowing Fatah and smaller parties to do those things in Gaza. That means that all parties have to see the elections as advantageous to them. The recent unification talks demonstrate the tendency of the parties each to hold tenaciously to the advantages they currently have: each said they favored elections; each seemed relieved to find grounds for blaming the other for the failure of the talks.
It is easy to understand why a right-wing government of Israel would oppose Palestinian elections: the current schism supports the hoary argument that there is “no negotiating partner,” allowing it to continue tightening its hold on Jerusalem and the West Bank without the pressure of negotiations. The US could oppose elections because Hamas did not expressly accept the Quartet conditions, or because of a judgment that it could not overcome the combined force of Israel and its domestic supporters to insist on elections. But why would the major Palestinian parties block elections? They would do so if they feared losing more than they could win. Fatah receives massive foreign aid, but only if Hamas is excluded from a controlling role in government, and its security forces are being strengthened and trained by the US, while its political adversary is under siege by the region’s dominant powers. It can feed its large dependent constituency, and hope to rebuild its political credibility. Its own soundings may confirm what we were told, that it would lose ground in the West Bank in a new election, whether to Hamas or to other candidates. Hamas may sense that in a new election, it would lose those voters who had supported it only as a protest against the corrupt Fatah, whereas it now has complete control of Gaza, the territory of its birth, and still claims the banner as leader of the real resistance.
What this analysis shows is that, whatever the theoretical advantages of elections in producing credible Palestinian leadership and improved governance, they are not a means of resolving the current impasse, because parties with veto powers lack sufficient incentive to risk the loss of their current advantages. Elections may come as one result of resolving the problems caused by the existence of Hamas, but they do not constitute the means of resolving them.
A National Unity Government. Like elections, formation of a national unity government requires the consent if not the active support of the four principal actors: Hamas, Fatah, Israel and the US. As with elections, each of the four may currently believe it has more to fear from an NUG than to gain from it. Positions of Fatah, Hamas and Israel have hardened since the last NUG was formed, as murderous violence between Hamas and Fatah have been followed by the formation of the most right-wing Israeli government in history. The aging leadership of Fatah still believes they are the cadre chosen by history to lead the national movement, and know that Hamas has little respect for them and seeks to displace them. Israel and the US will not soon accept the involvement of Hamas in security programs, or perhaps in any substantial functions in the West Bank.
If the US decides that an NUG is the least bad option to start with, it and its international partners will have to provide incentives to the parties to overcome their suspicions and mutual hostility. One place to start is with the three Quartet conditions. In the previous NUG, Hamas agreed to “respect” prior agreements entered by the PLO with Israel, but that created real tension within the Hamas leadership until the NUG fell. As John Ging of UNRWA and others pointed out to us, Israel has not honored the prior agreements; any promise to comply with them should be mutual and part of a process of reciprocal and carefully enforced steps. That was the model in Ireland.
The major threshold problem is that no one currently deals with Hamas, except Egypt, with the US and Israel shunning them as terrorists and Fatah seeking their demise as mortal enemies. Hamas must be given an opportunity to earn its way out of this armed quarantine.
My suggestion would be to start with the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access negotiated by Secretary Rice. This is the logical starting point for two reasons: First, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act has an express exception to the prohibition against negotiating with Hamas for “emergency and humanitarian situations,” which would certainly include the siege. Second, the conditions under which Gazans live after nearly three years of blockade and an overwhelming 22-day military assault constitute a moral cancer for everyone responsible, including the US. Israel, the US, and Fatah, and to some extent Egypt, have all justified continuing the siege and preventing the rebuilding of Gazan homes and businesses because they did not want to empower Hamas or allow them to claim credit for “defeating” the blockade. It is long past time to acknowledge that this immoral and illegal punishment of 1.5 million people has failed, and put massive public pressure on the parties to find ways to couple reasonable movement and access with reliable security. There will be roles for all of the parties, and credit enough to go around. Any party that fails to cooperate has to know that it will carry the blame for continued suffering by the population for which each – including Israel – has responsibility, and will pay prices in loss of future US financial and political support.
Undertaking this minimal but important first step would require a ceasefire, which Hamas should be willing to implement based on recent statements by Meshal. If the AMA can be successfully reconstituted, it should make possible further steps – a longer term ceasefire, increasing engagement of Hamas with the PA, perhaps membership of Hamas in the PLO as anticipated in the Prisoners’ Document that all have signed. As quickly as these things can be made to happen, so quickly can the parties move on to forming an NUG. An NUG would involve ministries held by Hamas members, which would permit interaction of those ministers with counterparts in regional governments and further demonstration of their willingness to abide the norms of cabinet government as a partner. Once there had been some demonstration of the functionality of such a coalition government, new elections would be needed in order to allow participation by all parties and give a popular imprimatur to Palestinian leadership. Then, final status negotiations would be a more reasonable prospect.
Conclusion: Opting for Principle and the Art of the Possible.
The better informed one is about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the easier it is to make lists of seemingly insurmountable obstacles to even tolerable results. Pundits often choose that route, either because they have been through too many wars and have lost all hope, or because informed pessimism is more likely to be borne out by events and make them look prescient. But the ideas at the core of such cynicism – that America can never, or must never, confront Israel and its supporters on matters related to Israel’s security; that somehow Mideast extremist nationalists are unlike those elsewhere, and must be shunned and rubbed out as terrorists – have led not to security or stability, but to their opposites, for Israel as well as for America. Somehow we have lost the will to stick to the principles we continually proclaim, and to the methods of engagement and persuasion that we have used elsewhere. It has been disastrously expensive for us, our allies, the Palestinians, and the cause of regional peace.
Therefore, the above ideas are put forth, not in the expectation that they will be easy to implement, but in the conviction that we have nothing to lose and everything to gain if we become a principled, steady, dependable friend to all who seek peace, and the enemy only of those who spurn every invitation to join us.
[1] Three of these options (excluding negotiations with Abbas alone) are analyzed by Nathan Brown in “The Green Elephant in the Room: Dealing with the Hamas Party-State in Gaza,” Carnegie Endowment Web Commentary, June 2009.
[2] The PLO has been moribund; there has been no action on the commitment by all parties, in the Prisoners’ Document and elsewhere, to incorporate Hamas into the PLO. The PA has not been able to function except by executive edict since 2007: The majority of the Hamas members of the Palestinian Legislative Council were arrested by Israel; the speaker was recently released in bad health.
[3] One of the sources of popular support for Hamas, and a source of major concern for Israel and the US, is that Hamas continues to insist on the right of return as expressed in UNGA Resolution 194. Fatah has essentially foregone representation of diaspora Palestinians, concentrating entirely on those in the Occupied Territories. While it is highly unlikely that any final negotiated settlement would permit more than a handful of Palestinians to return to the State of Israel as opposed to a new Palestinian state, and doubtful (if uncertain) that many would want to, the issue is a very emotive one, and one of the several points on which Palestinians become incensed at the world’s insistence on pragmatic, power-based calculations of what is possible, rather than framing the issues to be decided in terms of law and justice.
[4] Fatah is holding its first party conference in twenty-one years this month, which could conceivably lead to an enlargement of and generational shift in its governing bodies.
Tags: diplomacy, Hamas, Israel, Middle East, Middle East Peace, negotiations, Palestine, US Foreign Policy
The idea of negotiating peace in the middle east is ludicrous.What is there to negotiate that has not already been settled by the in’tl.court(s)? Israel does not want peace it wants land. Nothing will be accomplished in our lifetime as long as the disgraceful and dishonest brokering of the U.S. and our corrupt congress,bought and paid for by the Israelis,are vetted. If justice is to be done the U.N.should mandate the solution. They created it.anyone with half a brain knows what needs to be done