The Victory of Hamas and the Miseries of Bush's Policies
My article about the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections is out at Salon.com.
Excerpt:
' Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, a branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, has come to power in Palestine. In his press conference on Thursday, Bush portrayed the Palestinian elections in the same way he depicts Republican Party victories over Democrats in the United States: "The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find healthcare." He sounds like a spokesman for Hamas, underlining the irony that Bush and his party have given Americans the least honest government in a generation, have drastically cut services, and have actively opposed extension of healthcare to the uninsured in the United States.
But the president's attempt to dismiss the old ruling Fatah Party as corrupt and inefficient, however true, is also a way of taking the spotlight off his own responsibility for the stagnation in Palestine. Bush allowed then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to sideline the ruling Fatah Party of Yasser Arafat, to fire missiles at its police stations, and to reduce its leader to a besieged nonentity. Sharon arrogantly ordered the murder of civilian Hamas leaders in Gaza, making them martyrs. Meanwhile, Israeli settlements continued to grow, the fatally flawed Oslo agreements delivered nothing to the Palestinians, and Bush and Sharon ignored new peace plans -- whether the so-called Geneva accord put forward by Palestinian and Israeli moderates or the Saudi peace plan -- that could have resolved the underlying issues. The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which should have been a big step forward for peace, was marred by the refusal of the Israelis to cooperate with the Palestinians in ensuring that it did not produce a power vacuum and further insecurity. '
The rest is here at Salon.com
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/27/2006 06:35:00 AM
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12 Comments:
I find it tragic and discouraging that in the name of "freedom" and "democracy" our efforts and policies in the Middle East have largely led to the opposite - the weakening of secular movements, a loss of rights for women, and an overall movement toward theocracy (even if imposed by "democratic election"). What spin would Bush put on the 1991 election outcome in Algeria?
I am reminded of two Palestinians with whom I have discussed the "peace process" (or lack thereof). The first conversation occurred at a University educational program, shortly after the onset of the second Intifada, where a very intelligent and articulate Palestinian was taking the position that negotiation with Israel could not work. I argued to him that whatever else happened, the Palestinian people could not afford to backslide to the 1970's and early 80's when the word "Palestinian" was largely conflated in popular culture with the word "terrorist". He argued that negotiation with Israel had achieved nothing for the Palestinian people, and that Israel only made concessions in response to episodes of violence. (I believe Moshe Arens made a similar observation around the same time, albeit hardly as an endorsement of the violence.)
I argued that even if that were true, it was still more important to shift world opinion, as without international sympathy the Palestinian cause would go nowhere. I don't want to say that the argument fell on deaf ears - he listened and responded to my arguments. But 35 years into an occupation, he had no patience for world opinion to reach a tipping point perhaps ten, twenty, fifty or more years in the future. He took the position that violence was necessary, because nothing else works. He was endorsing armed struggle as opposed to terrorism, but I'm not sure where he drew the line.
Then came 9/11 and the rise of the suicide bomber, a resurgence of anti-Arab and anti-Islamic sentiments in the United States, and a green light from the White House for an astonishing military campaign against Palestinian civilians (in the name of stamping out "terror"). The Bush White House actively joined Ariel Sharon's campaign against Arafat - a P.R. campaign to transform him from an "essential partner for peace" to an "obstacle to peace".
Hasn't that been Israel's mantra since? One excuse after another why it can't negotiate with the Palestinian leadership? With Arafat gone, any successor has been depicted as too weak to lead his people, too weak to stop the terror, or both. These excuses - that negotiations cannot occur, and that concessions cannot be made - were rather transparent excuses for continued unilateralism and militarism by Israel. Opening negotiations, after all, might actually give a Palestinian leader the ability to convince his people that there was hope for a negotiated outcome. Making even slight concessions might lead the people to lend their support to a renewed peace process. How horrible that would have been for Sharon.
Moving forward a couple of years, I had a number of discussions of the occupation with another Palestinian, one who might be branded an eternal optimist. He was no less frustrated by the history of the occupation than the man described above, but he saw hope for diplomacy, negotiation, and an international peace movement. He somehow managed to keep finding cause for hope for a nonviolent outcome. He held no animus toward Israel or Jews, and favored a negotiated two state solution, but was even able to find hope in Sharon's unilateralism. He's the Palestinian that certain people like to pretend does not exist. And the type who Bush's version of "freedom" has marginalized.
Reading some of the right-wing response to the election outcome in Israel is discouraging. People who should know better advocating for a range of unprovoked violent actions - new collective punishments, new bombings, the demolition of what is left of the democratic infrastructure in the occupied territories - because they don't like the result of the election. The level of bare, uncontained racism is appalling. (But then, even in the best of modern times, the open hatred of Arabs has been widely accepted in this country.) And of course this is presented as yet another excuse why Israel "cannot negotiate" for peace.
Looking, for example, at the comments of Professor Bernstein over at the Volokh Conspiracy, there are no surprises. At least by the measure of his writings, he's as filled with hate of Palestinian people as the most fervent member of Hamas is of the Jews. In their comments thread, any number of VC readers endorse and expand upon Bernstein's notions of collective guilt and call for unprovoked violence - the election results, it is argued, show that the Palestinians "have no interest in peaceful resolution of their disputes with Israel" and "effectively removes the Palestinian people from the list of innocents" - the same arguments and the same notions of collective guilt that one might expect to find in a Hamas discussion of the election of Sharon.
Professor Bernstein impresses me with his ability to simultaneously hold two completely incompatible views in his head. He claims to understand why Palestinians would vote for Hamas. He argues that the election results are not entirely a bad thing because a peace negotiated with Hamas could actually stick. But he "can't see any reason why Israel wouldn't be perfectly within its rights to destroy all PA government buildings, given that they are now the assets of a terrorist group that demands Israel's destruction." Philosophically speaking, he's pretty much the counterpart of the first Palestinian I described. (And he accuses others of "jumping the shark?")
A good article, as usual. However, I would say it is time for well-intentioned observers to stop calling for a two-state solution to Israel and Palestine. As a goal, this seems just as fanciful as the classic Palestinian rejection of Israel's right to exist.
Time for the long-term view, surely: an officially secular state, with democratic machinery, embodying some kind of federalism for the two major communities. In other words, a version of exactly what we all accept as the ideal for every other state in the UN.
It won't happen overnight, but who can honestly see any real alternative worth pursuing? Even if it takes the next 50 years, that's eight years less than the time that has now elapsed since 1948.
In nearly every media story in the West on Hamas strong victory it is stated the "peace process trouble", "peace process in tatters", etc.
What peace process? There is no peace process. Israel was not even communicating with the PLA or Abbas.
The power of elections is not in the great democracies they can create. The power of elections is hope. Hope that a bad situation can be turned around and made better by change without having to resort to a war to create this change.
The Palestinians were getting no change in their current bad situation. I think this election will give them the hope they need that things will get better. They will have confidence that Hamas is on their side in negotiations and may actually be what is needed to have a real "peace process". Not a theoretical "peace process" that is only talked about but one that actually makes progress.
Bush allowed then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to sideline the ruling Fatah Party of Yasser Arafat, to fire missiles at its police stations, and to reduce its leader to a besieged nonentity.
Slate does not care about Macbeth story. From this prospective, discussion of who allowed whom and what is meaningless.
Z.Brzezinski has a theory that US is supposed to put pressure on Israel to achieve ME peace. The problem is, this theory makes no sense in Macbeth model.
In your analysis of how we got to this point with Hamas now controlling the Palestinian government, you should not portray Israel's and George Bush's treatment of Arafat and Fatah as the underlying reason for the failure of Oslo and the lack of progress towards peace. Israel was sending missiles into PLA police stations and confining Arafat to his compound as a reaction to the culture of suicide bombing and martyrdom encouraged by the Palestinian Authority (Fatah). You can argue that Israel's continued illegal settlement building provoked the murder of Israeli civilians, but to ignore Arafat/PLO/Fatah's support of terrorism when talking about how we got to this point is misleading.
It's interesting that you don't mention the fact that Sharon and Likud didn't want Hamas taking part in the election. Nor did the Fatah Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei. But Bush listened to Abbas and allowed them to participate.
I agree with you that Bush and Sharon were largely responsible for Fatah's loss, because they didn't give Abbas anything to show the Palestinian people. However, no doubt Bush-bashers would have mocked Bush had he excluded Hamas from the elections. Damned if he does, damned if he does't.
"Remember, we're not interrupting a major, successful, promising peace process. There haven't been any peace talks for the last 3 1/2 years. For almost three years, the elected leader of the Palestinian people (Arafat) was imprisoned in two or three rooms in Ramallah and was not permitted to leave his office," said Carter."And then once Mahmoud Abbas was elected a year ago, we thought this would open a fairly immediate opportunity for peace talks. But there haven't been any peace talks. There hasn't been any real effort to strengthen Abbas's international stature, or his economic ability to manage his government's needs or meet his people's needs. There hasn't been any willingness on the part of outside forces to equip his security people with the ability to control violence."He's been put into a holding pattern. So we're not interrupting a peace process by this election. And it may be that what I consider to be a stalemate could possibly be invigorated. I won't say reinvigorated because there's no vigour there now."
Former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, one of Carter's colleagues in the mission to Jerusalem, yesterday framed the situation thus: "The motives for a two-state solution can be said to be even strong in a situation where, after all, what we have asked for — the establishment of democracy in these territories — has occurred."The fact that we got democracy functioning should not really be used as an argument for withdrawing our engagement."Carter professes no insight into whether Hamas is capable of the challenge of leadership. But he's old enough to have seen many in this region make the transition from terror to power with aplomb."Despite the concerns expressed about the character of Hamas, we have to hope for the best. My prayer is the Hamas leaders, now serving in positions of unprecedented authority, will lead the Palestinian people on a peaceful, non-violent path toward a two-state solution."
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1138315820115
What's the problem? Iraelis elected and reelected a man (Sharon) who has made it clear that he does not believe that a Palistinian state has a right to exist in any sense that the word "state" is understood. So in a quid pro quo the Palistinians have elected a party that does not believe that Irael has a right to exist.
Of course Israel has been more up front. It showed the sincerity of its beliefs by annexing any portion of the potential Palistinian state's territory that it wanted - backed up by its own enormous militia. Unfortunately for the Palistinians, their puny militia cannot back up annexation of Israeli territory and is limited to "terrorism".
What's the problem? We can't deal with Hamas because they do not accept Iraels's right to exist but in Iraq we support the Kurds who don't believe Iraq has a right to exist. We applaud the recent elections which empowered the Shiites who would like to form their own oil rich autonomous state - not really concerned about the future of the Iraq. And last but not least we are fighting the Sunnis, the only faction that sincerely believes that Iraq has a right to exist.
In the world of Bush everything is ok as long as he says so. Why worry?
Juan,
It seems that Israelis have a more accurate view of Hamas than the one presented in Washington
Hamas platform mentions armed struggle, but not Israel's destruction
I also found this rather interesting summary of what Hamas stands for and why.
Hamas stands its ground as West demands change
I totally agree with you that the rise of Hamas is mostly rooted in failure of the aggressive policies of the Bush/Sharon. Both in "Peace Process" and more recently in EU3 negotiation with Iran on its nuclear issues, the message seems to be that west is not going to work with them. Thus weakening moderates and strengthening the radicals.
It seems that every one really wants it to go there.
What is rather amazing are the people that were advocating the hard line policies are now asking
“what do we do now”.
Professor Cole, this is rather a "miserly" decrying of the Bush policies in the Middle East, because Hamas won the elections. This is not the denouement of democracy but its beginning. For people who were cognizant of the long term corruption and the total carelessness toward the Palestinian people by Arafat's party, it was not at all surprising that Palestinians would vote for Hamas, which for many years had fostered health and social service organizations for the people.
Hamas in government however, has to keep its constituents happy, as the majority of them aspire peace with Israel. Moreover, Hamas cannot efford to lose the sympathy of the international community by persisting to be belligerent against Israel and continue its terrorist attacks. Nor can it efford to lose the financial backing of the US and the EU, which is vital to its existence. And it is rather a forlorn hope, if Hamas really believes this, that the loss of this financial support from the West, will be made up by the financial support of Arab countries. Once the conduits of this support are dry, the Palestinians will revolt against Hamas.
The latter therefore in government, under mounting international pressure, may consider a diplomatic demarche to its problems with Israel as the best solution. Thus, the chess game of democracy in the Middle East has still many openings, and is not checkmated by the victory of Hamas.
Nearly all sources suggest the Palestinian Authority is out of cash. Without new aid injections, a new Hamas government can barely function. This could force the leadership to "modulate" some of its actions, if not its core credos, well within the truce period. If not, I cannot see the donors underwriting them.
J.C. writes in Salon:
"But no one has ever put Hamas to the test. Neither Bush nor Israel have ever made good-faith efforts to resolve the underlying issues, preferring to issue moralistic denunciations that ignore the reality on the ground."
But Hamas itself insists the the underlying issues are:
"Why are we going to recognize Israel?" said the leader, Mahmoud Zahar. "Is Israel going to recognize the right of return of Palestinian refugees? Is Israel going to recognize Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital?"
It would seem there is zero chance that any elected Israeli leader could concede to these demands. Exactly what would be the compromise? J.C. does not say.
One can think WaPo author came to these conclusions just by himself.
1. WaPo. Glenn Kessler. U.S. Policy Seen as Big Loser in Palestinian Vote
2. Juan Cole. How do you like your democracy now, Mr. Bush?
3. YNet. Yossi Ben-Ari. Hamas wins; America loses
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