Whither Hamas
Well, I’ve spot far too much time dwelling in the hinterlands of FISA and AUMF lately (though I’ve enjoyed the invigorating debate). Time to come up for air and consider the implications of the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections.
Israel has flat-out said they will not negotiate with a Palestinian government even partially composed of Hamas, and Mahmoud Abbas is already firing warning shots across the bow of the militant group’s leadership:
The Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement after the cabinet meeting that read, “Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government, even if only part of it is an armed terrorist organization calling for Israel’s destruction, and in any case will continue to strenuously fight terrorism everywhere.”
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas responded to the election results with a veiled warning to Hamas. “The Palestinian Authority is a signatory to several international agreements, and any government established in the future will be required to implement them,” he said. “This is the only way to end the occupation and to gain the support of the international community.”
Bush said as much today in his press conference, though worded a bit differently.
Hamas has already made it clear that violence will be the order of the day under its regime:
“The Palestinian people voted for resistance, and Hamas will turn this victory to the service of the Palestinian people and the protection of the resistance.”
Hamas leader [Ismail] Haniyeh said he did not expect Abbas to resign in the wake of Hamas’s victory.
“Our relations with Abbas are based on mutual respect despite the differences between us,” he said. “We’re not in a confrontation with him.”
Hamas’s overall leader, Khaled Mashaal, called Abbas from Syria and told him his movement was ready for a political partnership.
As news of the results started to trickle in, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar was quick to reiterate his movement’s conditioned commitment to the unofficial truce with Israel.
“If Israel is going to continue commitment to what is called quietness, then we will continue,” he said. “But if not, then I think we will have no option but to protect our people and our land.”
Asked if a Hamas-run cabinet would negotiate with Israel, Zahar said even prior to his movement’s victory there had been no movement toward peace and, therefore, there was no point in holding a dialogue at this time.
“We have no peace process,” he said. “We are not going to mislead our people to tell them we are waiting, meeting, for a peace process that is nothing.”
Let us not mince words; Hamas as constituted is a deeply anti-Semitic organization that has been quite vocal about its desire for the destruction of Israel. I have heard some rumblings today to the effect of this being a good thing, because leading will moderate Hamas. I would not place any money on that wager.
On the other hand, Emanuele Ottolenghi argues at National Review that the election is a good thing because Hamas will no longer be able to hide from the consequences of its belligerence. Perhaps so…but there will be dead Israelis and Palestinians before we get to that point.
I know Fatah was the symbol of a corrupt legacy left over from the literally and morally bankrupt rule of Arafat. I know Hamas does other things besides kill, including charity work. And I know that asking for democracy in the Middle East means being prepared for results that aren’t to the liking of the West.
None of that means we have to be satisfied with Hamas. We owe no special grace or favors to an organization so steeped in hatred and violence. The onus is on Hamas, rather than the West or Israel. Prove you belong in power by renouncing, clearly and unequivocably, your provocations of the past…or prepare for active opposition.
Josh Marshall is right:
…[I]t is hard for me to see how this doesn’t increase the sense and likelihood of the sort of unilateralism that Sharon pushed for the last two years but then seemed on the point of abandoning.
The path ahead for Israel seems clear…keep as much land as you can conceivably hold onto, abandon the rest, and keep putting up that wall…
If there’s been no “movement toward peace” (assuming he means on Israel’s part since Hamas hasn’t made any movement toward peace in the past), how does Hamas explain the fact that they have a geographical location in which they can hold free elections? The Territory Fairy?
The violence will continue.
This isn’t some dispute between two mistaken countries. This isn’t something that Jimmy Carter can solve by “sitting down” and talking.
Hamas are muslims. Muslims adhere to the iron-strict edicts in the Quran. All non-muslim lands are Dar al Harb (the Lands of War). Every muslim has an obligation to wage jihad in the Lands of War. Failure to do so forever removes them from paradise.
With 1.3billion muslims in the world, if there was any truth to this fantasy in the West that there is such a thing as “moderate” Islam, then there would be hundreds of millions of really pissed off muslims that their religion had been “hijacked” by murderers.
Simple reality – there are two kinds of muslims. RADICAL
There a word limit? .. hmm
Simple reality – there are two kinds of muslims. RADICAL muslims and “MODERATE” muslims (for lack of a better term). Radical muslims murder little children. “Moderate” muslims look the other way.
Over at MEMRI.ORG, in their Reformation of Islam section, not a single muslim is calling for a modernizing change to Islam. Not one.. There are four who are pushing for some local changes in certain countries that have nothing to do with murdering infidels.
In the end, muslims must wage jihad. In the end, the West are kaffir. In the end, we have three Quran-based choices:
1 – Convert immediately to Islam. This was Osama’s Islamically proper first demand.
2 – If not convert, then pay the jizyah tax as a humiliated slave to Islam.
3 – If no conversion and refusal to be a slave, then die by beheading.
Trying to pretend that Islam is peace and moderation and we can all sing KUMBAFU**INYA hasn’t worked, isn’t working, and won’t work nomatter how hard we try to “respect” Islam.
The West needs to wake up.
Mussolini, I don’t even know what to say to that particular stream of invective. Do you negotiate with your mother with that mouth?
Having picked up a few Arabic terms hardly makes you an Islamic scholar and having read up on Wahabbi ideas hardly makes you a counterterrorism expert. What you have done is offer up the converse to the argument that there are two types of Christians: the Pat Robertsons that advocate the assasination of rightfully-elected political leaders and the moderate Christians who just let him be on tv.
The Wahabbi ideal is based on reinstating a sort of 8th-century feudalism that very few Muslims want. Attempts to view every member of the religion as members of some sort of extremist group aren’t just ignorant, they’re politically dangerous. It’s like going back to the 60′s and saying “Hey, Stokely Carmichael wants to burn down white suburbs and make white America suffer, therefore all black people believe that whites should be under their heels.” By that sort of reasoning, it would be impossible to ever notice a “good” Muslim leadership because you’d simply be refusing to admit that they exist.
While the victory of Hamas is disconcerting, it seems to me that it would be the height of folly to immediately shut down any relationship with them, no matter what. Hamas had already secured many local positions of power in last year’s elections and we were still dealing with the PA. Meanwhile, in Bethlehem, the Hamas-run government allowed freedom for Christians, whose stores could be open and even sell alcohol during Ramadan. In Afghanistan, where we have supposedly lit the torch of democracy and opened up women’s rights, the legal punishment for an adulturous woman is, once again, stoning, and integrated (male-female) schools are illegal once again. It blows my mind that so many people treat this as such a grave failure when Hamas did a better job of maintaining the ceasefire over the last year than Fatah (whom we were so sad to lose) and when the governments we have put in place in other countries are so much more draconian. It is not to excuse the actions of Hamas, but I would also point out that when Sinn Fein was allowed into Parliament, everyone assumed that the peace process in Ireland was ruined forever, but that was hardly the case.
Owen, I don’t say we categorically refuse to deal with Hamas – only that we do so if they continue the status quo of supporting terror and calling for the destruction of Israel. If they prove by word and deed to be ‘reformed’ and ready to lead, by all means, that would be fantastic – but the odds are very, very small. Still, I suppose we must grab hold of whatever hope we can…
I tried to email you an interesting report on this whole thing (I can post it here if people are interested), it was put together by the International Crisis Group, and it’s pretty exhaustive on the issue. They definitely address the possibility that Hamas might be willing to change their charter, and provide multiple quotes from Hamas officials who are at least willing to “extend indefinitely” the current truce and to deal with Israel.
I think that, as per the recommendations of that report, Hamas should definitely continue disallowing suicide bombings, etc, but it also seems arrogant to say to one country “Okay, we will deal with you as a country, but only if you have no weapons whatsoever while we have a highly advanced army with nuclear capabilities,” and that is what Israel is in danger of doing. Even Iraq gets to have a military. Even when we overthrew Japan and Germany they got to have their own defense forces.
Owen, if you want to post a link, great…I can’t access my personal email at this time…
Cool. Here’s the website, with the executive summary and a link to the whole document:
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3886&l=1
Mark-
The first step to dealing with any problem is to acknowledge the full scope of the problem. The whole “peace process” has been hampered from the start by willful self-delusions, but the largest is that you can end a war by negotiating with someone other than the enemy who’s fighting against you.
Israel has spent the last decade negotiating with Fatah while Hamas blew up innocent Israelis. It may well be that there’s no point trying to talk with Hamas — but that was equally true last year. The difference is, it just became a lot harder to pretend that negotiating with Fatah would end the war with Hamas.
This is a hard step, but a necessary one.
abu-owen,
The Wahabbi ideal is based on reinstating a sort of 8th-century feudalism that very few Muslims want.
what muslims, or anyone else, wants, and what will be forced on them are two entirely different things. read as afghanistan….people digging up tv sets buried in back yards after the yanks came to town. i do indeed hope you can grow a satisfactory beard. if not, you may have to opt for the michael jackson dress code.
as for mussolini, he/she is expressing an opinion that as yet i can see very, very little that i can disagree with him/her.
and in an effort to see if it’s possible to get mussolini to blow an artery i offet this little item found in an AP article.
Former President Carter said the United States, by law, would have to cut off direct funding to the Palestinian Authority as soon as Hamas takes control, but it should look for other ways to give money to the Palestinians, such as through the United Nations.
three items:
#1 does anyone know that the amount of money the USA “GAVE” to the PA last year was $150millionUSD (not a typo)?
#2 as for jimmah cawtah’s comment……why should we look anywhere to GIVE these people money?……..cue the video of “these” people dancing in the streets while THE TOWERS were collapsing.
#3 the UNITED NATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
not no, but HE## NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I agree. I think that Abbas was right in pushing for elections, and these results (disconcerting as they may be) suggest that he was right. If the people really wanted Hamas so much, then not allowing Hamas to participate in elections wasn’t going to fix that. That’s how we ended up replacing the Shah with the Ayatollah.
Oh, I get it it! That’s clever. By calling me abu-Owen, you were able to suggest, with a clever play on ethnic titles, that I’m an evil Muslim sympathizer, and that I want radical Islamic rule. Even better, you got a chance to compare me to Michael Jackson, notoroious pedophilia suspect. Touche, my friend, touche. Very clever.
On the other hand, as I point out above, maybe it’s not a good move to celebrate our democratic triumph in Afghanistan when it simply enabled other extremists to come to power and legitimize the social views of the Taliban in a government that we recognize. Or are you supporting the idea that in a free society the penalty for stealing is the cutting off of hands, and that women suspected of cheating on their husbands should be stoned? But hey, so long as they’re watching tv, right?
I don’t pretend to be a Middle East scholar, but one thing I have noticed is that there is an inverse correlation between how the citizens of a dictatorship view the United States and how its leaders do. This would make sense. If you government is corrupt and brutal, you will consider all of said regimes allies to be accomplices to your slavery, while all of that regime’s enemies could be your potential allies.
This is why democratization always held a stronger chance for success in Afganistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Iran and Lybia than it does in the West Bank, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Both groups of nations have been subject to a steady stream of anti-american propaganda since birth, but in the case of the former group it comes from a detested government, while in the latter it comes from the mosque, often by leaders who are considered criminal by the hated regime.
This is why the Muslim Brotherhood was so successful in the recent Egyptian elections and why Hamas won the Palestinian election outright. In both countries, the US is blamed for the poverty and desparation (Michael Totten, in a recent report from Egypt, noted that anti-Mubarak protests are put down by Egyptian soldiers using rubber bullets that denote “made in the U.S.A.” on them) and the theocratic fascism that Hamas and Islamic Brotherhood stand for is seen as an antidote to the “secular” organizations they oppose.
This is an admitted flaw with the democratisation strategy Bush (and I) have espoused — it works best with our intractable enemies. With those governments we have done business with — and the US has been a major donor of the Palestinian “government” for some time — efforts to open up the process can easily make the situation worse in the short run. However, the longer one waits to open up the system, the worse things will get. As unhealthy as the political climate currently is in Egypt, there are activists there who advocate a secular democracy, at great risk to their own well being. If we do not give our support to those activists, they will be discredited and/or dissapear from the Egyptian political scene and the only choice the Egyptian people will have is a choice between Mubarak’s corruption the Islamic Brotherhood. And, as we have seen in the West Bank, the answer won’t be pretty.
Owen, insinuating incest is another way of calling me names in place of actually debating facts.
Here’s a softball for you. You know MEMRI? Hell, use Google, I don’t care. If the majority of the 1.3 billion muslims in the world are “good” (your word), then there must be huge protests, hundreds of millions of marching muslims, and 100s of pages of news references on the Islamic outcry.
Show me even 1 march – and don’t bother with the Jordanian march of 200,000. That was protesting muslims killing muslims, not the murder of infidels.
Come on, smart guy. Put up or shut up, instead of calling names. Any moron can call someone else a name. Until you prove otherwise, you’re no better.