Hamas is a green tide rising
Jan. 22, 2006. 07:56 AM
MITCH POTTER
IRAMALLAH, West Bank- If the plan was simply to wet its toes in the churning waters of Palestinian democracy, Hamas must brace for a shock. Ready or not, the militant Islamic group now finds itself plunging head first into the deep end.
Quite possibly, it will form the government.
According to a succession of startling public opinion polls, the race for Wednesday's first truly competitive election the Palestinians have ever known is now a coin toss, with a surging Hamas in a statistical dead heat with the fragmented and corruption-riddled Fatah party founded by the late Yasser Arafat.
The most sobering numbers came Friday, in a survey of 1001 voters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre, showing support for Fatah sliding to 32.3 per cent, with Hamas at 30.2 per cent. The balance of the electorate was either undecided or siding in small numbers with nine other fledgling Palestinian parties.
Any way it breaks down, Palestinians are about to open their 132-seat legislature for the first time to the hard fist of political Islam.
"It is an incredible turn of events," says Nader Izzat Said, a political analyst at Ramallah's Birzeit University.
"Running for the first time, Hamas did not even ponder such an outcome. They wanted to do well, but not this well.
"Their idea was to sit in opposition, where Hamas can play the role of God-given saints that do no wrong. But the momentum is now carrying them beyond, and it is driven by impossibly high expectations. They will have to ask themselves how they can possibly deliver."
Initial Israeli reaction to the turning of the Palestinian political tide to Hamas green has been ambivalent at best. Many Israeli commentators scoff at the notion that the sharpest tip of the Palestinian uprising — the very group responsible for delivering the deadliest suicide attacks of the past five years — is now about to unstrap its bomb belts and don the business suits of political discourse.
Indeed, the arrival of politics, Hamas-style, only confirms what a great many Israelis already knew — that the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, under the fragile leadership of moderate President Mahmoud Abbas, is altogether too weak to be trusted as a partner for negotiation.
But many Palestinians argue the opposite, saying the long-awaited journey of Hamas to politics marks a dramatic shift away from the interminable cycles of violence that has brought neither side anything but growing body counts.
"As we watch the campaign unfold, Hamas has chosen vagueness as the best policy," notes Said. "They don't want to be seen as making great changes, so they are sending mixed messages about what happens the day after, in terms of their stand on Israel.
"But objectively, the Hamas change is huge. For the first time, they are willing to ponder working in a pluralistic council, of co-operating with secular and even leftist parties.
"It is easy to see that they have no choice now but to negotiate with Israel. The talk of destroying Israel is gone now because that is not reality. The talk of creating an Islamist state is gone because the people aren't ready for it. Now, they are ready to deal with it as they find it, and that means pragmatic, responsible, moderate leadership."
Shimon Peres, the elder statesman of Israeli politics, has delicately broached the possibility of talking to an eventual Hamas-led government. Now a leading candidate with Kadima, the new centrist party founded by ailing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Peres said that, after Israel goes to the polls on March 28, the issue will be the disarmament of Palestinian militias rather than the name across the table.
"We will not sit with anybody who comes to negotiations with a gun or a bomb," Peres told Israel Radio.
"We are not fighting against a name. We are fighting against a situation. If the situation changes, then what difference does a name make?"
Hamas officials acknowledge that a substantial part of their support amounts to victory-by-default, in that the overwhelming impulse of Palestinian voters is to smite Fatah, an organization widely seen as corrupt almost beyond reclamation.
After a generation of self-enrichment under the authoritarian rule of Arafat, the movement that landed in the West Bank and Gaza on the high hopes of the Oslo peace process in the 1990s is about to taste payback. Fatah's crumbling fortunes, and its evident inability to stem the often-violent clashes among its own factions, have hastened the trend.
"There a feeling of vengeance toward Fatah that is almost a mob mentality," says Birzeit University's Said.
"Even long-time Fatah supports are so disgusted, their attitude seems to be, `My head is hurting, so I'm going to shoot myself in the head.'"
For a first-time run at politics, Hamas has demonstrated astonishing savvy in harvesting disaffected Palestinian voters. It has painted the West Bank and Gaza green with banners and posters vowing war on corruption and chaos.
The official Hamas ticket, running under the name Change and Reform, reminds voters they need only look at the organization's network of indisputably well-managed charities, which for the past five years have provided more on-the-ground relief than the Palestinian Authority itself, to know whether it can deliver.
"We intend to set an example, not just for Palestinians but for the entire Arab world," Fadel Saleh, 53, a Hamas candidate in the governorate of Ramallah, told the Star. "We will serve society properly. No more nepotism, no more favours. If we are there, we can ensure the ship will go straight forward."
For international consumption, Hamas has engaged an outside media consultant, Ramallah-based Nashat Aqtash, who has been busy massaging foreign journalists with a message that says, in essence: Hamas, Not As Scary As You Think We Are.
"The world has the wrong image of Hamas," says Aqtash, acknowledging that many Westerners equate the group's name with indiscriminate attacks against Israeli civilians. Aqtash takes pains to stress a mantra most Hamas candidates have embraced on the campaign trail: We don't hate the Jewish religion; we hate the occupation.
"The facts are the facts," he says. "If a thousand Israelis died in the last five years, open your eyes and see that four times that many Palestinians died, and a thousand of them children."
Palestinian analysts say Hamas has also exploited people's antipathy over the highly centralized nature of the Palestinian Authority, which has exacerbated Fatah's isolation from the electorate.
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`Power mellows,
so I actually prefer Hamas takes over, because then at least Israel will be dealing with the true Palestinians'
Uri Dromi
Israel Democracy Institute
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With most institutions of the state-in-waiting located in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the PA and its Fatah bureaucrats are separated from most everyday Palestinians, an annoyance that sometimes makes routine bureaucratic chores a multi-day ordeal. Fatah, in Palestinian eyes, bears the brunt of the blame. Hamas, by contrast, is nothing if not a grassroots entity, with a support network extending throughout the territories.
Uri Dromi, director of International Outreach at the Israel Democracy Institute and a former adviser to the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, stands out among Israel analysts as one who welcomes the politicization of Hamas.
"Power mellows, so I actually prefer Hamas takes over, because then at least Israel will be dealing with the true Palestinians," Dromi told the Star.
"On one hand, Palestinians under Hamas are going to have to choose — to decide what it is they really want. If Hamas ultimately stands by its old charter of eliminating Israel, they will declare themselves to the world as being unworthy of negotiations. And that would be better at least than the present situation, which is where we have a Palestinian partner (Fatah, under Abbas) who has good intentions but is really incapable of delivering."
The day after elections, Israel's paramount demand will remain disarmament before discussions. Hamas, conversely, has yet to show its hand on whether it is willing to disarm its militant wing. If the movement intends to push forward on both tracks, political and military, in a manner similar to the Lebanon-based Hezbollah movement, it will risk becoming isolated.
"There will be a new kind of leverage now, a bigger carrot-and-stick dynamic," suggests Dromi. "If Hamas tries both approaches, to lead politically and to continue with terror, I wonder if donations and support will still be there for the Palestinians. I'm sure they are asking themselves this question."
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went on the record last week with Washington's concerns about the politicization of Hamas. But she stood by Palestinian President Abbas' decision to welcome the organization into politics.
"I don't think (Abbas's) program is really consistent with that of Hamas, but I think he is trying to be someone who allows these elections to take place in a free and fair way and I think that is totally appropriate," Rice told reporters.
But America's blunt bottom line, said Rice, is that Hamas must compromise.
"In order to negotiate with a party, you have to believe in its right to exist. In order to have freedom of movement and access and peaceful development ... you have to believe that violence is not acceptable."
Several Hamas leaders have spoken on the campaign trail of weaning Palestinians off Western aid, saying the movement intends to redouble efforts to attract support and investment from the Muslim world, particularly the Arab Gulf states awash in oil revenues.
Birzeit University's Said suggests all options for Hamas lead to moderation.
"If Hamas wants to change its mandate with the Arab regimes to attract investment for Palestinians, this still requires that they change their relationship with the world," he says.
"The clearance will still have to come from the United States. That's why there is no going back. You will see Hamas become more and more moderate in their rhetoric, because that is the only option."
On at least some levels, the Palestinian political angst mirrors that of Canada: Here and there, a majority's contempt for its ruling elite is tempered by a creeping suspicion that the alternative comes with a social agenda only a minority could love.
In the case of Hamas, many Palestinians wonder how religious conservatism is likely to filter into the business of government, schools and social services.
"Education and the social ministries are the likely destinations for Hamas politicians in any government. There is no question that secular Palestinians are concerned," says Said.
"But I also think some people are coming around to the fact that Hamas will find there are limits to power. They need the people with them, and they know that deep down, they can count on less than one-third of Palestinians as true supporters."
The final moderating factor for Hamas could be the smaller Palestinian political parties, which could carry a combined heft representing 15 per cent of the vote.
All these parties are centre or left-of-centre movements, some represented by relatively high-profile seculars such as Palestinian human rights activist Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Christian Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi and internationally respected former finance minister Salaam Fayad.
"We have 11 lists running for office and 10 of them are secular," says Said. "They don't have great strength individually, but put them together and these parties could be the tiebreaker, the cushion, between Hamas and Fatah."
Observers will be paying close attention to how Israel's reluctant acceptance to allow voting in Arab East Jerusalem plays out on the ground.
And they'll keep an eye on Gaza, where it is feared that armed Fatah gangs could disrupt voting.
Whatever the outcome, no one doubts the political landscape is about to be redrawn: win, lose or draw, the arrival of Hamas places Palestinian politics at the very forefront of the Arab democratic experiment.
With hundreds of international election monitors, including a Canadian contingent of 40, now taking up positions throughout the territories, many hope Wednesday's vote will set a new standard in transparency.
"This is going to be the truest democracy the Arab world has seen," boasts Hamas candidate Fadel Saleh.
Birzeit's Said is more restrained: "If we can just get through this process in one piece, I think we're going to have the real thing — a real parliament, a real democracy, not just in name but in practice.
"We just pray something good will come of it." |
