Hamas Following in the PLO's Footsteps

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

At the outset, I note that Hamas is a Palestinian resistance movement that emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood movement; it is a doctrinal movement with articles of faith it cannot go beyond, though it maneuvers within them, or around them, in ways that do not contradict these articles. These articles of faith differ in essence from the articles of worldly convictions, because they are not, fundamentally, the possession of any one person, nor the creation of any individual or group, and because they are considered sacred revelation sent down in truth. This is what calls us to be cautious about generalizing whenever Hamas’s political steps resemble steps the PLO has taken before.

Hamas is now at the height of political activity at the level of the Arab-Islamic region, and interest in this activity extends beyond the region to encompass Europe and the United States. The media is filled with news about the siege on Gaza and Hamas’s reactions to it, and reports the search for a calm between Hamas and Israel. Hamas is now at the forefront of the news programs, not only regarding acts of resistance but also regarding matters of diplomacy. Just as we used to hear about diplomats coming and going, meeting, making statements, shaking hands, smiling, and issuing joint statements or holding press conferences, we now hear the very same thing about Hamas.

Pressure Gives Birth to Diplomacy

The strong party who sees his own interest in the prevailing status quo always defends stability and calm, and if he senses a challenge, he does not hesitate to take repressive measures; and if these fail, he shifts his focus onto what is called civilized dealing and rationality. In the end, the strong party prefers dialogue, especially the kind conducted behind closed doors, so that people do not hear his arrogance, his harsh conditions, his crude language, and his threats. The strong party has circles of action, graduated according to the degree of the challenge he faces. His first circle is preserving stability; the second is casting doubt on the other side and damaging its reputation to keep popular support away from it; the third rests on mild repressive measures, such as dismissal from employment or short-term imprisonment, or the disruption of interests; then comes the fourth, which relies on harsh measures such as killing, the demolition of homes, prolonged detention, and severe torture. And if all these circles fail, rationality and civility — dipped in blood and in people’s pain and grief — become the priority. The goal, in the end, is to strip the adversary of his strength so that the balance remains as it was.

Many countries and many regimes have gone through the experience of these cycles or circles, and we Arabs are not far removed from them. America, for example, worked to establish stability in the Arab-Islamic region over long years through a number of measures, including support for regimes loyal to it. It also tried quiet pressure on a number of states, such as Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Iran, and raised the intensity of this pressure against states that did not respond, and waged wars against those who continued to defy it. America used pressure to harvest political results through diplomacy. It succeeded with Libya, for instance, and with other non-Arab states, such as Pakistan in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Israel too has used pressure in order to harvest political results. For example, in its war against the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1982, it concentrated its air strikes on West Beirut in order to persuade the PLO to leave Lebanon; it pushed its army west of the Suez Canal in 1973 to convince Egypt of the need to sit at the negotiating table, and it bombed the villages of southern Lebanon and killed Lebanese civilians in order to bring about popular pressure that would defeat Hezbollah. The examples are many.

Israel, together with the United States and Arab regimes, uses pressure against Hamas with the aim of arriving at desired political results. Israel, together with those among the Arab and Frankish lands who support it, tried

to smother Hamas and inflict defeat upon it by various means, so as to clear the obstacles from what is known as the peace process. Hamas remained steadfast, and managed to achieve a major breakthrough when it blew open the border with Egypt and people poured into Sinai. Here is where the role of diplomacy came in — diplomacy that can achieve something that military force and a tightened siege could not.

Whoever follows the activities of Hamas’s leaders in this period sees a kind of diplomatic fever specific to reaching a calm with Israel through Egypt. Indirect negotiations through the Egyptian mediator are in full swing, and Israel sees nothing in this that calls for it to seal off the Rafah crossing and bar Hamas leaders from traveling. Egypt, for its part, opens the crossing for the leaders to pass through, but does not open it for the passage of a loaf of bread. The reason is that it was the loaf of bread that pushed Hamas’s leaders to request passage in order to hold talks. The loaf of bread and things like it are the pressure, and the journey through the crossing is the response.

Diplomacy Softens Souls

Diplomacy is an effective method for softening psychological states and changing them, particularly when it takes place between adversaries and belligerents, and it plays an important taming role. The first sessions usually appear tense, but tempers begin to calm as the meetings are repeated. And there is a philosophy in diplomacy that says the strong party should open the way for “troublemakers and agitators” to take seats at the tables of dialogue, because doing so may help ward off their harm. This is precisely what a number of parties are aiming at by drawing Hamas into rounds of dialogue, unannounced meetings, and talks described as constructive.

…-to the Palestinian scene and cannot be ignored, and that those concerned with peacemaking in the region must recognize its role and involve it in diplomatic activities. These are enticing words, appearing realistic on the one hand, and appearing like an enticement into a trap on the other. It is true that Hamas is strong, has a vast popular base, and that it is difficult to achieve a political accomplishment without it, but this recognition itself carries within it an invitation for Hamas to enter the political arena, whose requirements differ radically from the requirements of resistance.

Resistance, for Hamas, is not the goal but the means toward liberation and the restoration of Palestinian rights, and this is true for all the Palestinian resistance factions. And since armed resistance is rejected by a number of parties on the grounds that it is terrorism, diplomacy offers something that can be used to persuade Hamas that the goal can be achieved without resistance. Meeting after meeting may “soothe feelings” somewhat, and reinforce what is called rationality and civility in resolving conflicts. And gathering after gathering softens the sharpness of language, and provides the psychological atmosphere for using new, less provocative terms, which may ultimately lead to a lessening of the focus on resistance.

Hamas and the PLO’s Footsteps

It appears that the Hamas movement, in its political and diplomatic maneuvering, does not differ radically from the early stirrings of the Fatah movement in the early 1970s. It also appears to be responding to pressure not through initiatives that would confound the other side, but in the very way that side expects. Here I set out the following points as evidence of the similarity in political steps between the PLO and Hamas:

First: the Palestine Liberation Organization put forward an initiative in 1970 that it called the secular democratic state, as a solution to the Palestinian cause, and its initiatives followed one after another from there. Hamas put forward initiatives before it contested the elections, foremost among them the truce initiative with Israel, and it is now focused on the truce initiative.

Second: the Palestine Liberation Organization said in 1974 that it accepted the establishment of a Palestinian state on any part of Palestine that was liberated, and Hamas has repeatedly declared that it accepts the establishment of a Palestinian state on the territories occupied in ‘67 without conditions.

Third: the Palestine Liberation Organization said in its amended, or virtually annulled, charter that it considers the Arabs part of the process of struggle against Israel, but in practical reality it accepted them as intermediaries between itself and Israel. Hamas does not differ, in the text of its charter, regarding the mobilization of Arabs and Muslims, but it too accepts them as intermediaries between itself and Israel.

Fourth: the Organization was concerned to prove to the world that it was not a terrorist organization and that its goal was to secure justice, and now Hamas is doing the very same thing, absorbed in clearing itself of the charge of terrorism.

Fifth: the PLO initially stood against both direct and indirect negotiations with Israel, but it accepted indirect negotiations after a while, and in the end accepted direct negotiations. Hamas is now engaged in indirect negotiations with Israel through a number of parties, chief among them the Egyptian government.

Sixth: Hamas says that its political steps are merely tactics that do not express a strategic course of action, and this is precisely what the PLO habitually used to say.

Being Dragged into the Concerns of Others

There is a major problem on the Palestinian scene, represented by the various Palestinian factions being dragged into the political concerns of others. The Palestinian arena, for example, has been dragged into anxiety over the issue of terrorism, and has become absorbed in denying the charge against itself, leaving to the real terrorists — who displace the people and humiliate the nation — the conceptual field through which brainwashing takes place. And the arena has been dragged into direct and indirect negotiations through Arab regimes, without there being any counter-Palestinian policies that draw the Arab regimes toward the side of Palestinian rights, and so on.

And the various Palestinian factions have been dragged into the field of political initiatives and quiet diplomacy, even though the displaced people are not calling for initiatives, nor for political proposals designed to impress onlookers, nor are they calling for backstage diplomacy either. Oppressed peoples usually wait for solutions from the strong, or work to force the strong to offer solutions, and it is always in their interest for diplomatic work to remain before the media, so that rights are not lost behind closed doors. The Palestinian factions are departing from the very foundations of action that the displaced and oppressed ought to be guided by.

The Palestinian people possess a great, momentous, and thoroughly persuasive cause: the cause of the refugees, and it is essential that the Palestinians place this cause at the very top of their political activity, and not budge from it by so much as a hair’s breadth. Efforts ought to be intensified toward making the peoples of the earth aware of this cause, raising it in every international forum and conference, and keeping it the foremost issue in every Arab and Islamic conference. And the Palestinian people also possess the cause of land occupied by force, and the daily suffering the people endure wherever they are found.

A wise political leadership is one that forces others to react, while one that merely waits for others in order to comment on their words and their deeds neither advances nor achieves success. It is therefore no surprise that the condition of the Palestinian people continues to go from bad to worse, despite the immense sacrifices it offers.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “حماس وخطى منظمة التحرير” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.