The
ocean of ink spilled after the remarkable success
of Hamas in January’s
Palestinian Legislative Council elections has drowned
a few salient facts.
The election that Hamas won was
the most democratic election in the Arab world
in decades, and one of very few that has effected
an actual change of government. But the vote for
the Islamist party was not a vote for every clause
in its charter, since polls consistently show Palestinians
desirous of a negotiated peace with Israel. For
other reasons, as well, much Western reaction to
the Hamas victory has been overwrought.
First,
the elections’ outcome cannot be described
as a setback for the “peace process,” since
there has been no such thing since January 2001.
Instead of negotiating, Israel has undertaken a
series of unilateral measures that aim to manage
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not to resolve
it. After the Gaza “disengagement,” settlements
in the West Bank have continued to grow, as has
the wall cutting through the West Bank and East
Jerusalem. The broad center of Israeli opinion
supports these measures not because they will bring
peace with the Palestinians, but because they are
steadily “separating” Israel from the
Palestinians.
The
program of unilateral separation was on track
before Hamas won at the polls. On January 24,
at the important annual Herzliya conference,
acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised to “create
a clear boundary as soon as possible, one which
will reflect the demographic reality on the ground.
Israel will maintain control over the security
zones, the Jewish settlement blocs and those places
which have supreme national importance to the Jewish
people, first and foremost a united Jerusalem under
Israeli sovereignty.” Israel may exploit
the Hamas victory to accelerate implementation
of this plan and to market it abroad, but the strategic
picture is fundamentally unchanged.
Second,
the Palestinian Authority (PA), whether run by
secular nationalists or Islamists, is not a sovereign
state. It is a quasi-state under international
tutelage and Israeli military occupation. Its
weakness was again exposed when Israel imposed “sanctions” upon
the swearing-in of Hamas deputies in the new legislature.
Under the terms of the 1994 Oslo agreement and
the subsequent Paris Protocol, Israel collects
duties on imports into the Palestinian territories
on the PA’s behalf—because Israel insists
on controlling the PA’s borders. Withholding
payment of these revenues, as Israel began doing
on February 19, is a violation of Israel’s
treaty obligations. The fact that Israel does this
heedlessly, along with the renewed spate of assassinations
in the West Bank and Gaza, underscores once more
where the balance of power lies. If, as Likud Party
leader Binyamin Netanyahu complained, “Olmert
does not see that Israel is under a strategic threat
from Hamas,” then Olmert is correct.
Finally,
it is silly to blame the Bush administration’s “democracy
promotion” doctrine for the rise of Hamas,
beyond noting that Washington showed no enthusiasm
for the inclination of some in the PA and Fatah
to delay the elections. Whatever responsibility
the Bush administration bears for the Hamas victory
lies in its unstinting support for Israel’s
unilateral exercises of political and military
power. Not only has the US failed to impel Israel
to resume talks with the PA over the terms of a
two-state solution, but it has also endorsed several
Israeli initiatives that are rendering such a resolution
improbable. In April 2004, President George W.
Bush told the now incapacitated Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon that he would back Israeli annexation
of West Bank settlement blocs and that the right
of return for Palestinian refugees is a moot question.
Three months later, the administration denounced
the International Court of Justice ruling against
the wall, and for five years, it has repeatedly
invoked the “right to self-defense” to
excuse Israel’s extrajudicial executions.
Initial
indications are that Hamas wants to form a broad-based
government rather than a narrowly partisan one,
though the recalcitrance of other political forces
may foil this aim. In any event, Palestinians
will ultimately judge the Hamas-led government
by its success or failure in furthering the goal
of ending Israeli occupation and in lessening
the occupation’s burdens in the meantime.
This fact Hamas clearly understands.
