The Rise of Hamas and its role in Palestine Politics? part 2
by Azzam Tamimi
JAIR Annual Conference
Tokyo
13-15 October 2006
The Human Bomb
Hudnah was Sheikh Ahmad Yassin’s solution to the crisis created by Hamas’ human bomb campaign. In April 1994 Sheikh Ahmad Yassin was visited inside his prison cell by Israeli army and intelligence officers in the hope of obtaining from him a statement that might dissuade Hamas’ military wing from carrying out more ‘suicide’ or ‘martyrdom’ operations.
A series of devastating human bomb attacks were launched by Hamas in April 1994 in retaliation for the massacre perpetrated on 25 February 1994 by an American-born Jewish settler. Baruch Goldstein, who is believed to have secured the assistance of Israeli troops to sneak into Al-Haram al-Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, opened fire and threw hand grenades at worshippers as they kneeled half way through the early morning Fajr (dawn) prayers killing twenty nine of them and wounding scores others.
The series of revenge acts started on 6 April 1994 when Ra’id Abdullah Zakarnah, a Hamas Brigades member, drove a booby-trapped vehicle with an Israeli registration number plate into Afula bus station and detonated it at around noon. Nine Israelis were killed and more than 150 were injured. A statement issued by Hamas military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, soon afterwards claimed responsibility for the bombing and warned the Israelis to evacuate the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. With clear reference to what Goldstein had committed inside the mosque, Hamas vowed to make Israelis pay for what pain and harassment Jewish settlers inflict on the Palestinians under occupation.20
The second attack was carried out on 31 April 1994 by Ammar Amarnah, another member of Al Qassam Brigades. The target this time was an Israeli Egad bus working on line 8 at Al-Khadirah (Hadera) to the northwest of Tulkarm. Amarneh blew himself up on the bus killing five Israelis and wounding more than thirty. More operations were carried out that same year; many more were carried out over the years that followed, mostly in response to attacks on Palestinian civilians by Israeli troops or Jewish settlers.
Sheikh Ahmad Yassin told his Israeli prison guests that if they wished to see an end to these attacks they should make a deal that can be limited or comprehensive. In its limited format the hudnah would at least spare civilians on both sides; in its more comprehensive format it would entail an end to hostilities of all types between the two sides. There is no evidence to suggest that the Israelis have ever taken the offer of hudnah seriously.
Many Palestinians were initially shocked by the human bomb tactic. Some argued against it from a purely pragmatic point of view; in their assessment the human bomb tactic could only harm the Palestinian cause. The operations were also opposed on the ground that they were, by their very nature, indiscriminate and resulted in killing innocent civilians, something the critics believed could not be justified or legitimized under any circumstance. The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority opposed the operations primarily on the grounds of its commitments to the peace process and the potential damage they could cause to its role in peace-making.
Resorted to out of utter desperation, the ‘martyrdom operation’ was not without controversy when it was first launched. Hamas spokesmen maintained that such a tactic was the only means available to the Palestinians in order to deter the likes of Goldstein from ever attacking the defenseless Palestinian population under occupation. In time, an increasing number of Palestinians accepted that the human bomb was necessary to offset the balance that had been totally in favor of the Israelis who managed to acquire highly advanced military technology from the United States of America and Europe.
On the whole, Palestinians have generally appreciated and admired the heroism and altruism of the men and women who volunteered their bodies and souls to go on sacrificial missions on behalf of the cause. The more the Palestinians felt vulnerable the more they supported martyrdom operations and even demanded more of the same. It did not take much to convince those who had qualms that nothing else seemed to work as a means of self-defense or deterrence. Nevertheless, Palestinian public support for martyrdom operations has varied. Polls conducted at different times gave rise to different results but rarely has support for these operations dropped below fifty per cent. A poll conducted in the Gaza Strip by the Norwegian pollster Fafo in the first week of September 2005 indicated that a majority of 61% of those quizzed agreed with the statement that “suicide bombings against Israeli civilians are necessary to get Israel to make political concessions.” Fafo conducted a face-to face survey with 875 respondents to monitor Palestinian views on the Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Gaza strip.21 The Jerusalem Post reported on 16 October 2003 that a poll had shown that seventy-five percent of Palestinians supported the suicide bombing of the Maxim restaurant in Haifa on 4 October 2003. The opinion poll was conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in Ramallah.22 An earlier poll conducted by the PNA’s State Information Service (SIS) between 11 and 13 June 2002 in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip revealed that 81 per cent of the sample polled objected to the PNA’s designation of martyrdom operations as terrorist acts. Fifty two per cent of them said the PNA resorted to labeling these operations as terrorist because of ‘international pressure’. The total number of those polled was 1137 aged 18 years and above, 456 of them from the Gaza Strip and 681 from the West Bank. Incidentally, the poll also revealed that 86 per cent of the sample “supported military attacks against Israeli occupation troops and Jewish settlers inside the Palestinian territories.” Sixty nine per cent believed that the objective of carrying out martyrdom operations inside Israeli towns was to force an end of the occupation while 13.4 per cent believed the objective was to undermine the peace process and 11.3 per cent said the operations aimed to weaken the Palestinian Authority and embarrass it before the international community.23
Until employed in Palestine, the human bomb was seen as alien to the Sunni community within Islam. It had been more commonly associated with Shi’ism; the Iranians are believed to be the first Muslims to employ it. They did so quite successfully in the war with Iraq throughout the 1980s. Hundreds of Iranian young men were sent on martyrdom missions along the borders between the two countries to deter the well-equipped and armed to the teeth Iraqi troops, thanks to Western and Arab support. The tactic served the Iranians well because their Iraqi counterparts, many of whom had not been convinced of the legitimacy of the war their government waged on their neighbor, were not prepared to make similar sacrifices.
The tactic then moved to Lebanon in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion in 1982. The first martyrdom operation within Lebanon took place on 11 November 1982 when Ahmad Qasir, identified as a member of the Islamic Resistance, drove his Mercedes car into the headquarters of the Israeli military governor in Tyre and detonated its 200 kg of explosives killing 74 Israelis. From then on the human bomb became a routine weapon employed by the Lebanese resistance against Israeli occupation troops. The most memorable of all suicide bombings in Lebanon were the two simultaneous attacks carried out on 23 October 1983 against the US Battalion Landing Team headquarters and the French paratroopers’ base situated just four miles (6km) apart in Beirut. The two suicide bombers, both of whom died in the attack, were named as Abu Mazen, 26, and Abu Sij’an, 24. A previously unknown group called the Free Islamic Revolutionary Movement (FIRM) claimed responsibility for the two attacked that killed 241 American and 58 French soldiers. FIRM was believed to have been made up of Lebanese Shi’a Muslims associated with the Amal militia. Hezbollah had not emerged yet but FIRM might have been its precursor. Lebanon also produced the first female suicide bombing in the Arab world; her name was Sana’ Mhaidli. Her car bombing of an Israeli military convoy on 9 April 1985 was claimed by the secular Syrian Nationalist Party.
The Lebanese Hezbollah, founded with Iranian backing as a Muslim Shi’te response to the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon, inherited the resistance and the tactic of the human bomb, which it continued to employ until Israel withdraw unilaterally from South Lebanon in May 2000 when the cost of occupation could no longer be borne.
Elsewhere in the world, the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, who struggle for an independent Tamil state, began carrying out suicide bombings in 1987. It is estimated that they have since perpetrated over 200 such attacks. The Tamil suicide bomb attacks were employed primarily to assassinate politicians opposed to their cause. In 1991, they assassinated former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and in 1993 they assassinated President Premadassa of Sri Lanka in 1993. In 1999, the Tigers attempted to assassinate Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga using a female suicide bomber. While the Tamils tend to prefer female bombers Islamic groups in Lebanon and Palestine did not deem it appropriate to do so until the eruption of the second Intifada. Hamas was reluctant to recruit female bombers but removed the ban under pressure from female members some of whom threatened to go it alone or in association with other factions. The first female bomber in Palestine was 26 year old Wafa Idris who detonated in Yaffa Stree in Jerusalem on 28 January 2001. She was followed by ten other female ‘martyr bombers’ the last of whom was Zaynab Ali who detonated on 22 September 2004. The campaign was launched by Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and was soon joined by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
It is very likely that Hamas was persuaded to employ the human bomb when it became clear that the tactic was delivering results in Lebanon. It could not have been a coincidence that the first martyrdom operation was carried out in Palestine nearly a year following the return of Hamas and Islamic Jihad deportees from South Lebanon where for a year they had ample time to listen and learn. But this brought pressure to bear on Hamas political leaders who, while defending the tactic, were keen not to be associated directly with planning the operations or authorizing them; they attributed them to the movement’s military wing Izziddin Al-Qassam Brigades (IQB). Hamas spokesmen were at pains to explain the relationship between the political and the military wings of the movement, which also had relief, media and educational institutions that needed to be saved from Israeli reprisals or from punitive measures by the international community.
An attempt was made to compare the political and the military within Hamas with the IRA-Shin Fin dichotomy. The political leadership of Hamas was said to draw the general policy of the movement whereas the military wing, known as the Brigades of Izziddin Al-Qassam, was an independent body that functioned in total freedom away from any coordination with the political leadership but in accordance with the general policy that would be drawn by the political leadership.24 The Israelis were never convinced nor were the Americans or the Europeans. By 2003 Hamas and many of the organizations identified as having been associated with it directly or indirectly were proscribed and put on the terrorism list. A number of Hamas political leaders were targeted for assassination by the Israeli army or by the Mossad. Some escaped but many took direct hits.
Human Bombs: Tactic or Desperate Act
There has been much debate over whether resorting to the ‘human bomb’ is prompted by dire economic conditions or is simply part of a strategy aimed at achieving certain political objectives. It would be wrong to suggest that it has to be an ‘either/or’ case. Many visitors to the occupied territories have privately or publicly expressed an understanding as to why the Palestinians resort to these operations. While it is true that the majority of ‘martyrs’ do not come from poor desperate backgrounds, and that many of them are well-educated and well-positioned inside the community, the general condition of despair and frustration contributes to the motivation. However, from the organizational point of view these operations are not simply reactions, though they are occasionally presented as such, to the dire economic crisis caused by occupation. More so, they are seen as the only means of pressuring the Israelis, both state and society, to recognize the rights of the Palestinians and to agree to a cease-fire deal that would at least spare the civilians.
Hamas is explicit in its objectives. In the abovementioned document entitled -This is what we Struggle for,- the movement declares that martyrdom operations -are in principle directed against military targets.- It explains that -targeting civilians is considered an aberration from Hamas’ fundamental position of hitting only military targets; they represent an exception necessitated by the Israeli insistence on targeting Palestinian civilians and by Israel’s refusal to agree to an understanding prohibiting the killing of civilians on both sides; an understanding comparable to the one reached between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.- This is a reference to the agreement concluded between Hezbollah and Israel in the aftermath of the Qana massacre in the mid-90s. Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who repeatedly offered the Israelis a truce, is quoted in this same document as saying: -Hamas does not endorse the killing of civilians, but that is sometimes the only option it has if it is to respond to the murdering of Palestinian civilians and the cold-blooded assassination of Palestinian activists.- He himself was assassinated by Israel in March 2004.
Tahdi’ah
Hamas only resorted to the human bomb in the hope of forcing the Israelis to agree to spare the civilians on both sides and still better to negotiate a long-term ceasefire agreement. Following his release from detention and return to Gaza in October 1997, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin offered to suspend Hamas martyrdom operations if the Israelis were ready to -stop their attacks on [Palestinian] civilians, end land confiscation and house demolitions, and release the prisoners and detainees.- This is not quite the same as the long term truce which he said his movement was ready to engage in provided that Israel withdrew from the West Bank and Gaza and dismantled its Jewish settlements.25
The offer of truce was reiterated in October 1999 by Hamas armed wing, the Izzidin al-Qassam Brigades, who said it was ready to stop attacks on Israeli civilians -provided Israel stops its settlement activities and land confiscation and provided Israeli troops and Jewish settlers stop attacking Palestinian civilians.-26
There were at least three occasions on which a ‘temporary hudnah,’ usually referred to as tahdi’ah (calming), was unilaterally declared by Hamas and other Palestinian factions. The most recent tahdi’ah was agreed upon during the Cairo talks of March 2005; it was supposed to last until the end of 2005 but went well beyond that.
The first tahdi’ah, however, was in 2002; it was brokered by EU emissary Alistair Crooke. The tahdi’ah was shattered several weeks later when the Israelis assassinated Hamas leader Salah Shihadah on 22 July 2002.
On 29 June 2003 Hamas and Islamic Jihad declared a unilateral truce. The decision to observe this tahdi’ah was announced by Hamas leader Abd Al-Aziz Al-Ranitisi who explained that it was a gesture to give a chance to newly appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas to sort things out with the Israelis. The tahdi’ah came to an end seven weeks later after Israel assassinated Hamas leader Isma’il Abu Shanab on 21 August 2003. Israel alleged that the assassination was in retaliation for the bombing of a Jerusalem bus that left twenty-one Israelis dead and more than a hundred wounded.
In fact, the Israelis never recognized or appreciated the unilateral truce declared by the Islamic factions in Palestine. They pursued their strategy of eliminating whoever they considered a potential threat to their security. Throughout the month of July 2003 several Palestinians were assassinated in Nabulus and Hebron. The attack in Jerusalem on 19 August 2003 was carried out by Ra’id Misk, a native of Hebron, who retaliated for the assassination of some of his friends in the town by Israeli army special units in the aftermath of the declaration of the truce. It transpired later that Hamas members in Hebron were ordered to observe the truce despite the Israeli provocations. However, they could not remain indifferent while their colleagues were being hunted down one after the other. The Israeli campaign of targeted assassinations in the Hebron area started before Hamas declared its unilateral truce and included the murder of a local Hamas leader, Sheikh Abdullah Al-Qawasimi, on 22 June 2003.
Israel’s refusal to reciprocate led many Palestinians to lose confidence in the usefulness of declaring a unilateral truce. The sense of frustration was augmented when the European Union decided in August 2003 to proscribe Hamas and place it on the terrorism list. Encouraged by the EU decision, Israel made its first attempt to assassinate Sheikh Ahmad Yassin on 6 September 2003. An Israeli fighter jet dropped a 500lb bomb on a residential building in Gaza City where Sheikh Yassin was visiting in the company of a number of Hamas figures including Isma’il Haniyah who in 2006 became Prime Minister. Fifteen Palestinians were wounded and Sheikh Yassin escaped with scratches.
The Israelis also attempted to assassinate Dr. Mahmud Al-Zahar. The air strike on his family home leveled it to the ground. Dr Al-Zahar escaped with injuries but lost his elder son in the attack that left his wife permanently paralyzed and his daughter seriously wounded. At a rally held in November that year, Sheikh Yassin announced that the movement found it futile to observe a cease-fire unilaterally: He said: -We declared a truce in the past, but it failed because Israel did not want peace or security for the Palestinian people.- Addressing the same rally, Hamas leader Al-Zahar urged the Palestinians to resume armed resistance.27
What comes after hudnah?
Hamas is silent about what happens when a long-term hudnah signed with the Israelis expires. While its leaders have left open the length of the hudnah term, considering this to be a subject for negotiation with the Israelis once they accepted the principle, they generally suggest that the future should be left for future generations.
It is usually assumed that a long term hudnah will likely last for a quarter of a century or more. That is seen as too long a time for someone to predict what may happen afterwards. There will always be the possibility that the hudnah will come to an end prematurely because of a breach. If that happens it is highly unlikely that the breach will come from the Hamas side for the simply reason that it is religiously binding upon the Islamic side to honor the agreement to the end unless violated by the other side. Should the hudnah last till the prescribed date, one scenario is that those in charge then will simply negotiation a renewal.
Another scenario that is prevalent within the thinking of some intellectual Hamas quarters is that so much will change in the world that Israel as a Zionist entity may not want, or may not have the ability, to continue to be in existence. As a matter of principle Muslims, Christians and Jews can live together in the region as they lived together for many centuries before. What Islamists usually have in mind is an Islamic state, a Caliphate, which is envisaged to encompass much of the Middle East in an undoing of the fragmentation the region was forced to undergo due to 19th century colonialism and then in accordance with the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. The entities created in the process became separate ‘territorial states’ in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman order in the second decade of the 20th century. While Israel as an exclusive state for the Jews in Palestine is something an Islamic movement such as Hamas can never recognize as legitimate, the Jews can easily be accommodated as legitimate citizens of a multi-faith, multi-racial state governed by Islam. The post-Israel scenario, which has become a subject for debate within the movement, is one that envisages a Palestine, or a united Middle East, with a Jewish population but no political Zionism. This is a vision inspired by the South African reconciliation model that brought Apartheid to an end but kept all communities living together. Zionism is usually equated to Apartheid and its removal is seen as the way forward if Muslims, Christians and Jews were ever to coexist in peace in the region. It would be impossible for such a scenario to translate into a reality without a long-term hudnah that for the life time of an entire generation provides communities and peoples in the region with the opportunity to restore some normalcy into their lives.
Those who are skeptical about the hudnah may argue that it means nothing but a prelude to finishing Israel altogether. But without hudnah too the Palestinians will still dream of the day on which Palestine, their country, is free and their right of return to their homes is restored. Without a hudnah there is no guarantee that they will cease to pursue that end using whatever means that are at their disposal. The advantage of the hudnah is that it brings to an end the bloodshed and the suffering because of the commitment to do so for a given period of time. In the meantime, let each side dream of what they wish the future to look like while keeping the door open for all sorts of options. Under normal circumstances, the best option is the least costly option.
From Resistance to Governance
Following the eruption of the Intifada, and for many months and years, the Israelis spared no effort to crack down heavily on Hamas arresting wave after wave of its leaders and activists, deporting several hundreds of them to Lebanon and assassinating hundreds others including some of the most senior leaders such as its founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and several of his colleagues. As early as 1989, the merciless Israeli campaign against the movement prompted its leadership to transfer all executive powers to the Palestinian Ikhwan outside Palestine; the move was intended primarily to protect the organization from total collapse under the impact of the Israeli hammer. In response to the brutality of Israeli occupation troops, an increasing number of Hamas members decided to go underground and organize themselves in small cells in order to plan and carry out reprisal attacks against the Israelis. It was in these circumstances that the Hamas military wing, Martyr Izziddin Al-Qassam Brigades, came into existence. The combat tactics used by the Brigades were to a large extent proportionate to the Israeli measures. The more the Palestinians suffered the more willing were the Brigades to employ new methods that were primarily intended to deter the Israelis. As mentioned earlier, in April 1994 the Brigades introduced the ‘human bomb’ tactic in response to the massacre perpetrated on 25 February 1994 by American-born Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein inside Al-Haram al-Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron killing twenty nine Muslim worshipers and wounding scores others.
Hamas willingness to challenge the occupation and, in doing so, make considerable sacrifices won the movement the hearts and minds of an increasing number of Palestinians who had been disillusioned with the peace process and angered by the rampant corruption within the PLO and its main faction, the Fatah movement, which signed the Oslo Accords with the Israelis in 1993 and set up the Palestinian National Authority in 1994. The rise of Hamas coincided with a popular conviction among the Palestinians that the entire peace process had been intended right from day one to stifle Palestinian resistance against the Israelis and bring the Intifada to an end. It was natural, therefore, that Hamas would be seen as the victim and the main target of this new alliance between the PLO and Israel conceived at Oslo not for the purpose of regaining Palestinian rights and creating peace but of aborting the resistance project and prolonging the subjugation of the Palestinians to Zionist oppression.
Hamas’s popularity inside Palestine and around it continued to grow despite the ever intensifying pressure on it and in spite of the campaigns launched against it by Israel, the Palestinian Authority Jordan and the United States of America and its allies in Europe. The electoral success of January 2006 was the decisive verdict testifying to the popularity of Hamas, which had until then been winning municipal, trade unions and students elections but never before took part in parliamentary ones. The earlier legislative elections of 1996 were boycotted by the movement which did not at the time believe the elections were likely to be fair and free. In 1996, the Fatah organization was in full control and could with the backing of the Israelis manipulate the election to produce a Legislative Council (PLC) that fitted the criteria agreed on between the two sides in the Oslo Accords.
The decision to participate in the elections this time was not without lengthy discussions among the various ‘chapters’ of Hamas. Hamas members in the Gaza Strip were most enthusiastic about participating. They felt confident that they could win a comfortable majority especially that Israel had already withdrawn unilaterally from Gaza and Fatah had been in a mess following the death of its father-figure Yassir Arafat in late 2004. In contrast, Hamas members in the West bank were least supportive of the idea. Mixed feelings were expressed by Hamas members inside the prisons whereas Hamas members abroad were cautiously supportive of participation. The outcome of all these deliberations was submitted to the highest authority in Hamas, the Al-Istishari (consultative) Council, which took the decision that Hamas should seize the opportunity of the election and participate in full.
Several factors contributed to boosting Hamas confidence that the political breeze was blowing in a favorable direction: the utter failure of the peace process; the disappearance of Yassir Arafat from the political scene; Israel’s decision to disengage unilaterally and end its occupation of the Gaza Strip; the general belief among Palestinians that it was the resistance by Hamas and other factions that forced the Israelis out of Gaza; and the disarray within the Fatah movement and the disillusionment of the public with the PNA because of corruption and because of the failure of the peace process.
Observers came out with an array of explanations as to how or why the movement managed such an electoral success. The most widely adopted explanation was the assumption that voters chose Hamas to punish Fatah, who had been in charge since the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994.
Hamas massive win has been attributed to a number of factors. Some of those who said they voted for Hamas gave one or more reasons for having decided to vote for the movement. The first reason pertains to Hamas loyalty to the Palestinian dream. Most Palestinians, including those who did at one stage express readiness to settle for less, would love to see Palestine, the whole of it, completely free. They dream of the day when millions of Palestinian refugees will return home to the towns and villages from which they or their parents were driven out when Israel was created in 1948. Hamas, which believes that the State of Israel is an illegitimate political entity that will one day disappear just as the 11th century Crusader Kingdoms in Palestine and Syria disappeared, keeps the dream alive. The 1988 Fatah-dominated PLO decision to recognize Israel’s right to exist in exchange for being recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people was the turning point for many Palestinians. It was from then on that Hamas, which had been in existence for no more than a year, started being perceived by an increasing number of Palestinians as the alternative to the derailed Fatah.
The second reason pertains to the record of the Muslim Brotherhood and then Hamas as a service provider. Many Palestinians could hardly manage without the social, educational and medical services provided by the United Nations and an army of NGOs the most efficient of which had been the ones set up and run by Hamas. As Israel collectively punished the Palestinians and destroyed the infrastructure of their society and authority it provided Hamas, so unwittingly, with the greatest of opportunities. The rampant corruption that spread across the rank and file of Hamas main rival, Fatah, and throughout the Palestinian Authority, was being compared by many Palestinians with the clean hands Hamas officials had. The Palestinians could not help but admire the decency, honesty and transparency with which Hamas conducted its affairs and provided its services to the public. Despite channeling millions of dollars worth aid to those in need every year, top Hamas officials continued to live as they had always done; their living standards were average and many of them resided inside the refugee camps as part of the people and close to their minds and hearts. Sheikh Yassin, who lived all his life in a refugee camp at a standard of living hardly distinguishable from that of his neighbors in the same camp provided a stark contrast to the leaders of Fatah many of whom had made fortunes and built empires out of peace making with the Israelis.
The third reason is Hamas Islamic ideology, which – unlike the secular nationalism of Fatah – is fully compatible with the powerful inclination toward Islam within Palestinian society. Since the early seventies, Palestine has seen a massive Islamic revival that was in part a reaction to the failure of secular Arab nationalism, blamed by Palestinians for the loss of the rest of Palestine to the Israelis in 1967. Additionally, and as an increasingly religious community, Palestinians identified more with the moral code espoused by Hamas that with the more libertine agenda of the leaders of Fatah. Many previously diehard Fatah members, who in more recent years had become more religious, found themselves closer to Hamas than to the organization they had been affiliated to.
The forth reason is to do with the failure of the peace process between Israel and the PLO right from Oslo to the Road Map. Rather than deliver the Palestinians from their misery the open-ended process seemed only to augment their suffering. Hamas had predicted all a long that Israel would not deliver, that it was using peace-making in order to expropriate more land, and that only jihad would force the occupation to come to an end. Israel proved Hamas right when it turned against its own partners in the peace process destroying the PNA institutions and imposing a siege around its leader, Yassir Arafat, whom many Palestinians believe was eventually poisoned. The unilateral withdrawal from Gaza only served to further vindicate Hamas which claimed that it was its struggle that forced Sharon to withdraw settlers and troops unconditionally.
As a gesture, Hamas leaders, who were hoping that the new Israeli leadership would choose to reciprocate and perhaps negotiate a long-term cease-fire arrangement, decided to extend the unilateral truce the movement had been observing. Additionally, having proven to the Palestinian people its unwavering loyalty to the cause of resisting Israeli occupation, Hamas hoped to be given the chance to provide a model of good governance.
However, the Hamas electoral success was immediately met with U.S. and EU unwillingness to deal with the new authority unless it agreed to three conditions. It had to recognize Israel’s right to exist, it had to renounce violence and disarm and it had to honor all the agreements signed earlier between the PLO and Israel. But there was no way Hamas would agree to any of these conditions. Doing so would destroy its credibility and negate the very essence of its claim to provide a better alternative to the bankrupt Fatah. Hamas leaders responded by asserting that if the Americans indeed wished to see peace prevail in the region they should put pressure on Israel so as to end its occupation and not on the Palestinians who are the victims and not the oppressors. It would seem that the Americans felt embarrassed by Hamas’s success because they were the ones who insisted on conducting the elections as a means of effecting political reform in the territories. It puzzled people that the Americans should have known better; Fatah, their favorite, was in a rather bad shape and it simply stood no chance of winning.
With no signs of yielding on the part of Hamas, the United States, Israel and the European Union forged an alliance to force Hamas to change or exit the political game altogether. A series of processes were put in place and a number of tactics were employed one after the other to ensure one of the two outcomes. World nations were told not to give Hamas a chance; not to deal with it or grant it recognition. The war on Hamas soon turned into a collective punishment of the entire Palestinian people inside the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The Palestinians have long been divided: Fatah supporters see no exit apart from a compromise on the part of Hamas in the form of compliance with the demands of the ‘international community’ while Hamas supporters insist that such a compromise is out of the question. The atmosphere is reminiscent of the days the preceded the eruption of Intifada I and Intifada II; many expect Intifada III to erupt at any time.