“Slowly, painstakingly, but inexorably, Hamas is moving away from its traditional notion that Palestine is an Islamic waqf [land-in-trust] ‘from the river to the sea…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 U.N. resolutions,’ says Palestinian analyst Khaled Hroub, an authority on the Islamist party.”
- Graham Usher, veteran Palestine correspondent for The Economist (Middle East Report Online, 21/8/05)
“[There are] signs of pragmatism [from Hamas]…far more than Fatah, Hamas has proved a disciplined adherent to the cease-fire, and Israeli military officers readily credit this for the sharp decline in violence. In recent statements, Hamas leaders have not ruled out changing their movement’s charter, negotiating with Israel or accepting a long-term truce on the basis of an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines…today, their electoral platform is in these respects closer to Fatah’s outlook than to Hamas’ founding principles.”
- Robert Malley, former Middle East policy director of the National Security Council under Clinton, reporting for the International Crisis Group (18/1/06)
“Hamas is clear in terms of [both] the historical solution and an interim solution,…We are ready for both: the borders of 1967, a state, elections and [a peace] agreement after ten to fifteen years of building trust.”
- Usama Hamdan, chief Hamas representative in Lebanon (2003)
“The charter is not the Koran…Historically, we believe all Palestine belongs to Palestinians, but we’re talking now about reality, about political solutions…The realities are different…[If Israel reached a stage where it felt able to talk to Hamas] I don’t think there will be a problem of negotiating with the Israelis.”
- Mohammed Ghazal, a Hamas candidate representing Nablus, speaking to Reuters. A week later, he was ‘arrested’ by Israeli soldiers. (21/9/05)
“We can accept to establish our independent state on the area before ’67, and we can give [Israel] a long-term hudna…More than that, under certain conditions…And after that, let time heal…Give us one or two, 10, 15 years time in order to see what is the real intention of Israel after that.”
- Hamas hardliner Mahmoud Zahar, later appointed Foreign Minister (29/1/06)
“If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian people a state and give them back all their rights then we are ready to recognize them.”
- Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh (26/2/06)
“Everybody in Hamas says ‘yes’ to the two-state solution,…The problem comes from the fact that the Israelis so far [have not said they] accept the 1967 borders between the two states.”
- Hamas parliamentary speaker Aziz Duweik (May 2006)
All the above quotes, except where otherwise stated, come from an excellent article by Seth Ackerman for media-watchdog FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting), entitled ‘Nixed Signals‘, in which he analyses and demonstrates how the mainstream media in the United States have consistently misrepresented Hamas’ position on peace with Israel.
Now, of course, I could just as easily find a few statements by Hamas members that say the opposite, that argue against any acceptance of Israel even inside the pre-1967 borders (in fact more easily, since statements of this nature are actually reported). This is to be expected – the Hamas movement is not homogenous by any means, and incorporates both hardliners and ‘moderates’ whose views are similar to those of Fatah. Hamas’ position on peace with Israel is ambiguous, for sure, but it is simply wrong to write them off as “sworn to Israel’s destruction”. It’s wrong for two reasons – firstly, as discussed above, Hamas’ position is ambiguous on the issue, and in fact most specialists on Hamas agree that there is a growing consensus within the Hamas movement advocating a two-state solution based on international law. Secondly, it is wrong because it depicts Hamas as some fanatical group, immune to change or reform, on a divine mission to liberate the whole of historical Palestine or to kill all the Jews. This just isn’t true – in his article, Ackerman cites a report by Israel’s leading specialists on Hamas, Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, which cautions that, despite its fanatical image, Hamas “is not a prisoner of its own dogmas. It does not shut itself behind absolute truths, nor does it subordinate its activities and decisions to the officially held religious doctrine.” On the contrary: Hamas possesses an “ability to justify controversial political conduct in religious terms” and a “willingness to exist with internal contradictions.” Mishal and Sela conclude that, “[w]e cannot rule out the possibility of a significant shift in Hamas’ relations with Israel to the point that what seems ideologically heretical in the present might become inevitable in the future.”
I’ve made a similar point before – in this conflict, as in others, religion and ideology are used when they’re convenient, and discarded or “re-interpreted” or ignored when they aren’t. The fact that the Hamas Charter still calls for the destruction of the state of Israel is meaningless – when it was drafted in 1988 it was politically convenient for Hamas to spout an Islamist ideology of uncompromising militancy. Today, when Hamas is no longer politically marginalised and, in fact, heads the Palestinian government, it isn’t. (Incidentally, while we often hear talk of how terrible the Hamas Charter is, no one ever seems to talk about the charter of the Likud party, which “flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.”) The reason for the ambiguity in Hamas’ position on the issue is because a) there remain some hardliners in the movement and b) Hamas demands reciprocity. In other words, it isn’t willing to make concessions in the absence of an Israeli willingness to do the same. As I say, most respected observers of the conflict agree that if serious talks were held, based on an Israeli withdrawal to the Green Line and the creation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, Hamas would agree to a two-state settlement.
Israel’s position is, on the other hand, not ambiguous at all. As Professor Norman Finkelstein has pointed out, not a single Israeli leader nor a single mainstream Israeli political party has ever advocated a two-state settlement based on international law. This includes the current Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who declared, whilst still Deputy PM to Ariel Sharon, that Israel “should forever keep the city of Jerusalem undivided”. He also stated that he doesn’t support the Geneva Accord because it “implies a complete withdrawal to the 1967 lines” and it “implies the redivision of Jerusalem”, both of which are “totally unacceptable”. What, after all, was Kadima’s “realignment” policy if not one of unilateral annexation of Palestinian land?
Whereas Hamas has made explicit overtures (not just verbal – Hamas self-imposed and largely kept to a ceasefire for over a year) suggesting that if Israel deigned to talk to them, they would be willing to negotiate based on the internationally accepted two-state solution, Israel has been consistent and crystal clear in its flat-out rejection of such a settlement. It is pretty clear to anyone who looks at the conflict honestly that it is the Palestinians who are in need of a partner for peace, not the other way around.
After Hamas was elected last January, Israel didn’t capitalise on Hamas’ many offers of negotiations for a two-state settlement. Instead it, together with its international backers, embarked on a policy of collective punishment against the Palestinian people, which, through severe economic strangulation and brutal military force, was designed to force the collapse of the Hamas government from within. Why was Israel so opposed to a Hamas government? Because, as Council on Foreign Relations Middle East specialist Henry Siegman writes,
“Hamas is not opposed to negotiations with Israel, provided…that negotiations, when they are resumed, will take the pre-1967 border as their starting point.”
Or as Danny Rubenstein, writing for Ha’aretz, predicted nearly a year before the January elections, a Hamas government would “change [the rules] in the Israeli/Palestinian negotiating process. The Palestinian positions will stiffen enormously.” The type of “peace process” desired by Israel was explained by a former Labor party cabinet minister last June:
“Sure, Olmert will have talks with Abu Mazen [i.e., Abbas]. But those talks won’t lead anywhere because we have no interest in their successful consummation. We can then turn to our friends in the U.S. and Europe and say, “You see, we tried, unsuccessfully; we now have no choice but to go to realignment.”
A Palestinian government openly calling for negotiations with Israel while insisting that those negotiations be based on the internationally agreed settlement to the conflict is, to use Olmert’s phrase, “totally unacceptable” to Israeli planners. If Hamas continued to call for a settlement with Israel based on international law, Israel would come under increased pressure to engage in negotiations with them. These negotiations would not be like those in 1993 or those in 2000, because this time Israel would face a partner that would actually stand up for Palestinian interests and demand that Palestinian rights be respected. For an Israel so deeply committed to expansion, the risk of such a situation developing was intolerable. That left only one solution: the Hamas government had to go.
All of this was done quite openly. A New York Times article published on February 14 2006, entitled ‘U.S. and Israelis Are Said to Talk of Hamas Ouster‘, began with the following paragraph:
“The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats.”
“The intention”, it continued, “is to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and international connections to the point where, some months from now, its president, Mahmoud Abbas, is compelled to call a new election. The hope is that Palestinians will be so unhappy with life under Hamas that they will return to office a reformed and chastened Fatah movement.” That, incidentally, is textbook collective punishment, a crime under international law. It is also an eerily precise prediction of what did end up happening last year. U.S./Israeli strategy was, it seems, a huge success. Its only failing so far is that the Hamas government remains in office, but there’s time for that yet.
An article in Ha’aretz last October was similarly candid about the motives behind U.S./Israeli policy towards Hamas:
“Israeli sources say that the United States is interested in the fall of the Hamas government currently in power in the Palestinian Authority…
“During the Quartet meeting in London, the Americans expressed their satisfaction with the results of the boycott of Hamas’ government, which has undermined its standing among the Palestinians…
“However, the U.S. administration is also certain that the sanctions against Hamas will inevitably result in a violent confrontation between Hamas and Fatah, and in such a scenario, they would prefer to strengthen the “good guys” headed by Abbas.”
So, to summarise so far: the election of Hamas presented a threat to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land because Hamas was increasingly calling for negotiations with Israel based on the international consensus of a two-state settlement. To combat this, Israel and the U.S. launched a PR campaign to demonise Hamas as a fundamentalist terror group sworn to destroy Israel and embarked on a policy of collective punishment to try and turn Palestinians against their government. The sanctions led, predictably, to a civil conflict in Gaza, and the U.S. and Israel went about arming and training the side they wanted to win. In other words, they were backing, and are continuing to do so, a coup in Gaza.
Last week, Hamas and Fatah agreed in Mecca to form a new government of national unity in an attempt to end the international sanctions that have resulted in “unprecedented levels of unemployment” in an area that was already “experiencing the worst economic depression in modern history” and where approximately 70% of the population live in poverty. The new government will “respect” previous agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority, but will not recognise Israel or renounce violence (the two major “Quartet principles”). As a result, it is likely that the “Quartet” (U.S., UN, EU and Russia) will continue to withhold aid from the Palestinians. It is important to realise that Hamas made a huge concession by agreeing to respect previous agreements. As Henry Siegman writes,
“The insistence of Olmert and President Bush that Hamas must fully meet the conditions imposed for the lifting of the draconian boycott on the Palestinian Authority guarantees that even if Palestinians succeed in forming this unity government, nothing will change. For why would Hamas agree to accept all previous agreements if Israel is allowed to violate them? The road map clearly prohibits the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and Israel’s continued construction in east Jerusalem is intended to foreclose a Palestinian presence there, again in violation of the road map. Insofar as both Israeli violations are intended to create irreversible facts on the ground, they constitute far more egregious impediments to a peace process than Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel’s legitimacy, which can be reversed at any point simply by uttering a few words.”
However, all signs indicate that unless the new government recognises Israel and renounces violence, there will be no lifting of sanctions and the Palestinian people will continue to suffer horrendously. In a statement on February 10, the Quartet “reaffirmed its statement of February 2 regarding its support for a Palestinian government committed to nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Roadmap.” The United States withheld comment, but reiterated its belief “that the government should be clearly and credibly committed to the principles reiterated by the Quartet”. The UK also refrained from commenting, although just prior to the Mecca Agreement Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett stated,
“We have said consistently from the beginning that we believe that any government should be based on the Quartet principles…If nothing new changes from the position there’s been hitherto, I’m afraid the position will stay the same.”
Ehud Olmert’s response was that “Israel neither accepts nor rejects the [Mecca] agreement”, while reaffirming that the “international community, led by the Quartet, has clearly determined” that the Palestinian government must abide by the aforementioned Quartet principles, and “insist[ed] that the Palestinians fully comply with them all.”
It is important to bear in mind that each new day brings more suffering for the Palestinians, who have been starved and bombed into submission for close to a year. When Margaret Beckett says that Britain needs more time to “study these proposals carefully”, she is demonstrating a shocking lack of concern for Palestinian welfare. If democracy and international law mean anything, there was never any justification for imposing sanctions on the Palestinians (and certainly not for bombing them, as Israel did for most of last year, killing 683 Palestinians in the process). There is even less justification now, after the threat of Palestinian democracy has safely been averted and the elected Hamas government has surrendered, making huge concessions to unreasonable Quartet demands. The sanctions must end immediately. The only way our leaders have been able to justify this collective torture of an already desperate people is by demonising Hamas as a fanatical, extremist group obsessed with destroying Israel and unwilling to make any compromises. As detailed above, this is a complete fabrication.
In a recent Newsweek article, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was quoted as saying,
“You can’t negotiate when you tell the other side, ‘Give us what a negotiation would produce before the negotiations start’.”
He’s right, of course. Powell was referring to Iran, another victim of U.S. demonisation and misrepresentation, and of the sanctions that followed, but the same principle applies here. Even if it were legitimate to demand from Hamas that it renounce violence and recognise Israel’s “right to exist” even as Israel continues to use massive violence against the Palestinians and continues to block the existence of a Palestinian state – and it isn’t – it is completely illegitimate to formulate these demands as pre-conditions to negotiations.
Henry Siegman writes that “it is a terrible mistake for U.S. policy, and certainly Israel [sic] policy, to seek to overthrow Hamas” because Hamas, unlike Fatah, is truly in a position to bring peace. What he fails to understand is that it is U.S. and Israeli policy to overthrow Hamas precisely because Hamas is capable of bringing peace.
Concluding a recent lecture in Amsterdam, Prof. Ilan Pappe stated,
“You have to boycott them, you have to sanction them until they will come to their senses, just like you did to South Africa. Nothing else will work.”
Because he is an honest observer of the conflict, Prof. Pappe is talking here about Israel, not the Palestinians. Pappe thinks, and I agree with him, that the only way to stop Israel is from the outside. It will not happen from within. That means that those of us living in states that have an ability to influence Israel’s behaviour, most notably the U.S., have a responsibility to see through these lies about Hamas and to demand that our governments stop blackmailing the Palestinian people into toppling their democratically elected leadership. More generally, we must demand from our leaders that they force Israel to accept a just settlement, enforcing sanctions against it until it does. The Palestinian people, including most members of Hamas, are desperate for a peace. They are, quite literally, dying for it. Those of us who care about human rights and democracy and freedom must realise that it is not the case that our governments are trying and failing to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Rather, our governments are trying and succeeding in preventing such a peace from occurring. We must realise that on this issue there is absolutely zero difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in the U.S., or between Labour and the Conservatives in UK. Radical change is needed to prevent more needless Palestinian and Israeli deaths in the service of the occupation and, if we want to avoid yet more complicity in murder, it is needed fast. In the meantime, forcing our leaders to resume humanitarian aid to a people who, thanks to our policies over the last few decades, depend on it for survival would be an excellent start.
Filed under: European Union, Israeli / Palestinian, News and politics, UK, US | 12 Comments
Tags: Hamas, International & Foreign Policy, International Law, United Nations
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Incidentally, for a good response to the demand that Hamas must accept Israel’s “right to exist”, see the Christian Science Monitor:
(via Jews sans frontieres)
Just for future reference (for me, mainly): a Shlomo Ben-Ami article published today on Comment is Free.
What standing does Hamas have to represent the Palestinians in an agreement extracted under duress and the threat of extreme violence anyway? None as far as I can see.
It is a moral axiom that when you force someone to do something or say something or agree to something by eg. threatening to kill them or others, their actions or promises are not voluntary, not considered actions by that person but actions by the original violent actor. Clearly a promise extracted under threat of genocide is no promise at all of any standing.
It’s true that the big exception to this moral axiom has long been the expected behaviour of succesive national governments whereby agreements brought about under ceasefire provisions (threats of extreme violence) are considered valid. This has been functional only because the alternative to treating such agreements as valid was to effectively eliminate the possibility of ceasefires under duress at all which would lead to even worse circumstances.
But Hamas is not a national government.
It’s a pseudo-government of a people under occupation. There’s no basis for saying that what Hamas says must be considered legitimate by any hypothetical real government which gets created for Palestinians in more or less the same geographical location at some future date. In fact to the extent that Hamas is forced to back down the Palestinian people will simply see them as illegitimate representatives. Hamas itself should not feel under any obligation to honour any agreement made under duress and that means any agreement made with Israel whatsoever at the moment of course.
Yup, all that you say is correct. Except…
This may be true, but for now Hamas is the legitimate elected representative of the Palestinian people. For now, what they say (or rather, what the new “unity” government says) goes with regards to the Palestinian people. Governments get their legitimacy from the mandate granted to them by the voters, regardless of whether they are a “nation” or not. No?
(Obviously, as you say, this doesn’t go for agreements made with Israel at the point of a gun, but for other decisions – internal Palestinian decisions – it surely does).
Who care what happens to a bunch of Palestinian terrorists and their families? Really now…and good riddance.
Another great article supplied as light-reading during my supper. Well anywho, even though you wrote all this, I still beat you 5-1 on Pro Evo, with one day in hand. Sol Campball or whatever sure is a hero. Oh yeah, i got paid £100, inexchange for a winning day. Nice doing business witcha’. Tony Blair got bummed by some terrorists.
“Heroic” Anony: I presume you’re just being hilarious.
Narvir: Thanks, although there was no need for the tasteless last sentence. And for the record, officially, that “5-1″ doesn’t count because my leg hurt that day and I was tired and the ref was crap.
There are different standards for representation. We agree that the Hamas pseudo-government doesn’t reach the standard whereby it can sign treaties for Palestinians which future generations could be held to. At a minimum they would need to have an independent army and borders I think.
But I disagree with the idea that they were fairly elected. It is clear to me that the democratic process in the occupied territory is fatally flawed. I certainly wouldn’t have given the slightest credence to a claim that the US/Israeli-backed side had fairly won the election had it gone differently. Would you? It was a completely fraudulent election.
Now it is true that despite the best efforts of US and Israel to right the election Hamas “won” it. That obviously indicates a lot of popular support for Hamas. We knew that anyway. But just because the bad guys failed to pull of the election doesn’t make it a fair election. In fact Hamas’ victory shows that they have much more support than merely what would be required to win a normal unrigged election. Therefore you might ask what is the harm in recognising their victory as an official election result? Simply that it sets a bad precedent for recognising rigged election results.
It’s true that elections cannot be considered 100% legitimate when conducted under a military occupation and in the knowledge that the elected government will be expected to rule under that continued military occupation (hence, the elections in Iraq were illegitimate). However, it is generally agreed that the election process was fair – i.e. no vote tampering or anything like that.
Hamas does have a popular mandate. The Palestinian people need some sort of leadership if they want to achieve anything, and the most democratic way to get that leadership is to vote on it (even though such a vote wouldn’t be totally legitimate, for the reason stated). The elections weren’t “rigged” in the sense that there was intimidation by Fatah against potential Hamas supporters or in the sense of any election fraud. It was more generally illegitimate because, as I say, it was conducted under an occupation. However, we should still accept the legitimacy of the mandate of the election winners, since the Palestinians do need a leadership even though they are under occupation and elections are the most democratic way to choose that leadership.
I’m not sure why you’d bother to say the elections were not rigged in the limited way you defined it. All you did was talk about the means of rigging an election. Clearly any so-called election under a military occupation is rigged, and also we know that US dollars and Israeli intimidation were used.
You are making a silly distinction. Let’s say that the entire elction was absolutely fair and above board all up to the last second where the result was announced officially and at that point the result would be announced whatever way Israel wanted. Would such an election be considered more fair to you? After all there’d be no vote tampering or intimidation. No donations coming from the US and no military intimidation by Israel. It would be rigged still but at least none of that other bad stuff would have happened.
I’m not denying that Hamas is popular but to say they won an “election” is to give legitimacy to an illegitimate process which will certainly come back to bite you when the next time there’s an “election” the bad guys win and come to you and say — “see? this time our side was democratically elected!”
The distinction is important, because the Palestinians need a leadership that will represent their interests even though they are under military occupation (indeed, they need one especially because they are living under military occupation).
The best way of choosing a leadership that is representative of the population’s interests is through democratic elections. Now, as you point out, there can be no truly democratic elections under military occupation. But what’s the alternative? To have no elections at all? That would be very harmful for Palestinian welfare – as I say, they desperately need a representative leadership, particularly since they are suffering a brutal occupation.
In other words, the Palestinians cannot afford to wait until the occupation is over before holding elections. Therefore, the most they can do is ensure the elections are as democratic as possible, which they did last January. Therefore, although it is true that the elected government is technically illegitimate, in reality we and the Palestinians must accept their mandate because there is no other reasonable option. The Palestinians need a leadership.