The indiscriminate retaliation of Israel to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack has resulted in the death of 50,000 Palestinian civilians, and Israeli attacks have not abated. The number of civilian deaths will increase further. These events have made it difficult to assess Palestinian politics. There is an ambivalent and ambiguous silence over Hamas among the liberals in the world who have been outraged by Israel’s ruthless massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
The hard question no one dared ask: did it make any strategic sense on the part of Hamas to have carried out the October 7 attack when it knew that Israel would attack and that it had no military strength to protect the Palestinians in Gaza?
Violence hasn’t paid off for Palestinian groups
Those who have argued that Hamas had no alternative but to attack Israel as frequently as it could because of Israel’s continued unwillingness to go through with the Oslo Accords may make sense, but only at a superficial level. For years preceding October 7, Israelis had blocked any move to take forward the negotiations to implement the peace accords. Hamas’ approach that the only way to get anything out of Israel is through violence because Israel understands no one other language than that of force would make sense if Hamas were to apply greater force than that of Israel.
The Fatah lacked it in the 1970s, and Hamas lacks it now. What is missing is strategy of a weaker people outflanking a powerful state. Yes, Israel is not powerful in its own right. It derives its sustenance from unfailing American military aid. What Fatah and Hamas needed to think was to win more friends in the United States as elsewhere. Violence is not paying off.
No one wants Hamas. Is it just wishful thinking?
It can be argued with much justification that it is Israel’s policy of wrecking the peace accords that has given rise to Hamas. In January 2006, Hamas won the parliamentary election with 76 seats to Fatah’s 43. The basic rift between the two dominant groups emerged with Fatah adhering to its recognition of Israel and the two-state solution, and Hamas refusing to commit to it. By 2007, fighting broke out between the two, with Hamas in control of Gaza and Fatah continuing to hold power in West Bank. There have been mediated reconciliation between the two many times in the last 18 years, from the Mecca agreement of 2007 to Beijing agreement of 2024, and there were many more between the two.
In the ongoing Gaza war, Israel is determined that there should be no place for Hamas in a return-to-peace scenario. The US is silent about it. The European Union (EU) too sees no place for Hamas, and it prefers Gaza should come under the Palestinian Authority (PA), which in effect is the ruling Fatah. Surprisingly, the Arab League members too seem to agree that Hamas should be excluded in a post-truce Gaza. Egypt and Qatar are proposing a non-factional governing committee for Gaza, which would exclude both Hamas and Fatah.
Let’s get real about Hamas
Of course, no one has considered the issue whether Hamas is willing to exit. Hamas is negotiating with Israel in Doha and in Cairo. Even the Trump Administration has negotiated with Hamas to release American hostages. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered that if Hamas were to lay down arms, it would be allowed to leave. The implication is that Israel would kill all members of Hamas if it did not. The fact is that Israel has failed to destroy Hamas in the last 20 years. Israeli military prowess appears to be of no avail in the matter. Israel has killed all the top leaders of Hamas since October 2023, but it has not helped in eliminating Hamas.
Even if Hamas opts for a strategic exit, which it may not, it will not fade away because Fatah has proved to be helpless in the face of Israeli intimidation and obstruction to the emergence of an independent Palestine. Hamas remains an ingrained factor in the Palestinian question. Palestinians would not agree to the Islamic ideology of Hamas, but they are turning to Hamas because of feeble Fatah. Hamas may not score over Israel, but it remains a dominant player within Palestine. The stubborn survival of Hamas, like that of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, is due to the fact there is no alternative to them. Call it the political barrenness in these countries.
Hamas wants to be the tough bargainer. It does not want to be seen as a weak supplicant of concessions from Israel which Fatah seemed to have done in the Oslo Accords. Many Palestinians and many in the Arab world were not only disillusioned by legendary Fatah leader Yasser Arafat, but they were even disgusted with his weak-kneed approach to Israel, and also in setting things in order inside the Palestinian territories. It is in this context that Hamas became a strong stakeholder in Palestinian politics.
The best way for international mediators to deal with Hamas is to think of transforming Hamas and its leaders in the way of Syria’s neo-Al Qaeda leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose real name is Abu Mohammed al-Joulani. He disbanded the jihadi group, and merged its members with the Syrian army. And he became an acceptable leader overnight. Is there someone as politically imaginative and flexible like Ahmed al-Sharaa in the brass of Hamas?
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