[daarut-tauhiid] ‘Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement’ By BEVERLEY MILTON-EDWARDS and STEPHEN FARRELL

'Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement' By BEVERLEY MILTON-EDWARDS and
STEPHEN FARRELL Published: June 4, 2010

*
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/world/middleeast/04hamas-book-excerpt.html?tntemail1=y&emc=tnt&pagewanted=all
*

*Stephen Farrell, a foreign correspondent for The New York Times who manages
the At War blog <http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/>, and Professor Beverley
Milton-Edwards, of Queen's University, Belfast, trace Hamas's early roots in
the Muslim Brotherhood, its creation during the opening clashes of the first
Palestinian Intifada in the late 1980s and its inexorable rise to emerge as
a serious rival to the Palestine Liberation Organization led by its more
secular nationalist opponent, Fatah.*

<http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/>

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Related

- At War Blog: Hamas, Israel and Gaza: No Way
Out?<http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/hamas-israel-and-gaza-no-way-out/?ref=middleeast>(June
4, 2010)

Gaza, shortly after dawn on 26 January 2006, and a chill wind has scattered
the last echoes of morning prayers down a deserted Izz ad-Din al-Qassam
Street. For once, everything is quiet. In the winter skies above Gaza,
Israeli spotter planes are buzzing overhead alongside huge white
surveillance balloons. Both are transmitting real-time data down to
fortified border posts where olive-uniformed Israeli soldiers monitor the
Jewish state's Palestinian neighbors.

But this morning they have little to report to their commanders in Tel Aviv,
only 40 miles north up the Mediterranean shoreline.

No one is being killed. No one is being wounded. There are no armed men
rushing their dying colleagues to hospital. There are no rallies,
demonstrations or angry funerals, which are a feature of life in the
sealed-off coastal strip that is home to one and a half million stateless
Palestinians. Everything is normal — which is abnormal, for Gaza.

The reason is that Palestinians are in shock. And for once it has nothing to
do with Israel. The day before, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and 50 miles
away in the West Bank and East Jerusalem held parliamentary elections, only
for the second time ever. This morning they awoke to a new political power
in the land, the radical, politically inexperienced, populist — and
extremely violent — Islamist faction Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya,
better known to the world as Hamas.

This was not supposed to happen. Hamas was running in its first-ever
national elections after two decades as a pariah. In the five years leading
up to the elections its armed militants had killed more than 400 people —
including Israeli soldiers, settlers and civilians, foreign tourists and
immigrant workers — and carried out more than fifty suicide bombings.

In response, Hamas and other Palestinian militant factions argue that they
have a legitimate right of resistance against an occupying military force.
Israel, they maintain, has a far more powerful military arsenal, with which
it defends its own state, enforces its occupation of nearly 4 million
stateless Palestinians, and keeps millions of others stateless by refusing
to recognize their right of return.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Amid the unnatural silence on the Gaza streets after Hamas's victory, the
immediate question was: what now?

The Israeli reaction was immediate, and overwhelmingly negative. Israel's
acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, delivered his government's response:
"Hamas has been declared to be a terrorist organization by most of the
international community . . . Israel will demand that the entire
international community compel the Palestinian Authority and its Chairman to
implement the commitment to eliminate Hamas as a terrorist organization that
calls for Israel's destruction."

Binyamin Netanyahu — a right- winger then serving as opposition leader
between two spells as prime minister a decade apart — was more succinct:
"Today Hamastan has been formed, a proxy of Iran in the image of the
Taliban."

Most outsiders could not understand how Palestinians would embrace a group
so wedded to violence, having voted in Fatah's President Mahmoud Abbas — a
man openly critical of the path of the gun — just twelve months before. One
of the most succinct analyses came from Michael Tarazi, a former legal
adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, who had watched the
descent from Intifada in 2000 to full-out war in 2002-3.

"Anyone who says this is going to destroy the peace process has not been
paying attention to the fact that there isn't a peace process to destroy.
This is part of the problem that Fatah faced. They had nothing to show for
their many years of negotiation with Israel. They had nothing to show for
their recognition of Israel. For all of the handshakes and all of the
meetings, the situation of Palestinians actually got worse during the
so-called peace process."

— — — — — — — — — — — — — —

The momentum for Hamas's victory had been set in motion by Hamas's electoral
plan. Its slogan, 'Change and Reform', was adapted from its successful
earlier municipal campaigns and refined by a sophisticated campaign team.
Even Hamas's opponents conceded that 'Change and Reform' was inspired,
capturing the pent-up desire among Palestinians for a new broom.

Hamas's customary insistence on proclaiming its commitment to the armed
struggle was sidelined behind management consultancy talk of priorities,
competence, transparency and delivery of services.

"We have our electoral programme on politics, agriculture, health,
education, and so on," said Sheikh Mohammed Abu Teir, Hamas's Jerusalem
figurehead, who has spent more than twenty-five years in Israeli jails. Just
after being released from a night in the cells for defying an Israeli ban on
campaigning in Jerusalem, the henna-bearded no. 2 on Hamas's electoral list
took advantage of a brief gap between incarcerations to deliver the
on-message Hamas electoral line: "Even with modest means we have succeeded
in gaining the trust of the people. We will fight the corrupt and serve the
Palestinian people."

Hamas held back its closing message until the final days of the campaign —
huge banners across the main streets of Palestinian cities which proclaimed:
"Israel and America say no to Hamas. What do you say?"

— — — — — — — — — — — — — —

It is not an original selling point. The Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
enjoyed huge support across the Arab world — not least among Palestinians —
because of his successful campaign to sell himself as the one Arab leader
prepared to stand up to Israel and America. More recently, Iran's
controversial — and controversially re-elected — President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad carved out a similar niche, delighting in the opprobrium of the
Western world because this sold well among his poor, Islamic revolutionary
base.

In the Middle East it is a pitch which comes as naturally to opposition
parties as Western politicians promising to stand up for 'us' — i.e. John
Bull, Main Street, ordinary working people, the misunderstood middle
classes, motherhood, apple pie, the silent majority, or the flag — against
the (invariably venal, corrupt and self-interested) 'them' — inside
Westminster, Brussels, the Washington Beltway, or wherever. It is not an
original tactic, but a tried, trusted and highly effective one.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — —

After Hamas's victory the international community set out to isolate Hamas
even further, until it renounced violence, recognized Israel and consented
to abide by agreements signed by previous Palestinian leaders.

Money quickly emerged as the first tool of international pressure on Hamas,
but one that had to be used carefully. While no world leader wanted to fund
Hamas's arms-acquisition program, neither did they want the inevitable
humanitarian, domestic and regional security consequences of pushing
Palestinians into penury.

But Robert Malley, the Middle East and North Africa Program Director of the
International Crisis Group, cautioned the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations that obvious attempts to make Hamas fail could backfire.
Acknowledging the "temptation" to ensure Hamas's "quick and painful
failure", he said:

"I think it's a very appealing logic. I also think it may be short-sighted
and ultimately self-defeating. If the U.S. and Israel and others are
perceived as trying to engineer Hamas's downfall and quick disruption of the
government, the Palestinian people are not going to take from that the
lesson that Hamas failed them, but that others failed them. And in that
sense, Hamas's failure may not necessarily be America's success. It depends
very much how it fails."

He also spelled out the distinction between Hamas, which was prepared to
participate in elections, and more extreme jihadist organizations, which
were not.

"However we may dislike it," he told the policymakers, the broader regional
picture across the Muslim world was now between "political Islamists, who,
however radical their views may be, are evolving toward greater acceptance
of democracy, of elections, of the nation-state as a framework within which
to wage their struggle, and the jihadi Islamists, Al Qaeda being the best
example".

Al Qaeda's rejectionist stance towards Hamas was certainly apparent from
statements condemning 'brothers in Palestine', issued through Osama bin
Laden's deputy, the Egyptian-born surgeon Ayman al-Zawahiri:

"Those trying to liberate the land of Islam through elections based on
secular constitutions or on decisions to surrender Palestine to the Jews
will not liberate a grain of sand of Palestine," said Zawahiri.

Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas's Political Bureau in Damascus,
immediately rejected Al Qaeda's criticism, insisting that Hamas was
"determined to wed power and resistance".

Meanwhile in Gaza, Hamas was likewise being criticized by its largest
domestic Islamist rival. "We as Islamic Jihad don't believe that the step
Hamas has taken to democracy and elections will take us to the end of the
struggle," said Abu Ahmad, the leader of one Palestinian Islamic Jihad cell
in Gaza City. "What distinguishes us from Hamas is that we are a
revolutionary Islamic movement, and they are attempting Islamic political
thinking...For Hamas, jihad is an interim phase. Our whole strategy is
jihad."

— — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Although such criticisms were irritating to Hamas — not least because they
found an echo among hardliners within its own movement who were not
reconciled to the way of the ballot — Hamas used the interventions as
evidence to reinforce its own argument — that, unless the West dealt with
Hamas, it would soon find itself facing more implacable foes.

"Compare", said one senior Hamas leader, 'the rhetoric with the firebrands
of Al Qaeda and what our leadership offers and then ask again 'where does
the real threat lie?' "

Israel is backed by a powerful ally, the United States. Hamas has become
increasingly dependent on Iran. This does not augur well for the regional
balance of power as the Obama administration seeks to alter its policy in
the Middle East.

Hamas is still perceived as part of the problem, not just to
Israeli-Palestinian peace but also because of its influence on ascendant
Islamist movements in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, where its parent
body, the Muslim Brotherhood, remains a powerful opponent to incumbent Arab
leaders of undemocratic regimes.

For the Obama administration and other Western countries there is a
quandary. In private, diplomats and politicans recognize that dialogue
with Hamas is ultimately necessary, but in public they continue to recite
the mantra that Hamas must make all the concessions.

Hamas's message is that it is now a fact on the ground in the Middle East,
and must be acknowledged as such. 'They failed to get rid of Hamas in Gaza,'
said Dr. Nasser Eddin al-Shaer, a Hamas leader in Nablus after Israel's
2008-2009 winter offensive in Gaza, in which more than 1,300 Palestinians
were killed.

"This is a message for the politicans. There is no solution if it doesn't
include Hamas."

All of this leaves President Mahmoud Abbas, the government of Israel, the
United States, the Quartet of international mediators and other regional
actors with a dilemma. This centers on whether peace between Israel and the
Palestinians can be achieved while Hamas enjoys a democratic mandate, and
rules Gaza.

In short, is peace possible if Hamas is not part of the equation?

This excerpt is adapted from the book 'Hamas: The Islamic Resistance
Movement', which was published in April 2010 by Polity.

--
Sesungguhnya, hanya dengan mengingat Allah, hati akan tenang.
now surely by Allah's remembrance are the hearts set at rest.
N'est-ce point par l'évocation d'Allah que se tranquillisent les coeurs.
im Gedenken Allahs ist's, daß Herzen Trost finden können.
>> al-Ra'd [13]: 28

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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