Palestine in the Dialectic of the Hamas-Fatah Conflict

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

July 31, 2007

Palestinian and Arab interpretations of what the conflict between Fatah and Hamas means for the Palestinian cause multiply, ranging between those who support a decisive military settlement and those who reject it absolutely. Many put forward analyses that distance themselves from both sides to varying degrees. On the Palestinian street, inside Palestine and outside it, there is broad rejection of the internal fighting, along with condemnation of all the parties participating in it or supporting it. Some take their positions from their partisan affiliations and their own visions for resolving the Palestinian cause, while a few try to examine the fighting scientifically, to put their fingers on the wound.

The media has plunged into the furnace of this battle of reactions, and perhaps sometimes contributes to inflaming the passions of the combatants by hosting people who represent factional zealotry and who launch scathing attacks on their opponents. It appears that the media’s focus on the event itself works against the search for truth, so that scholarly material gets lost in favor of propagandistic or merely circumstantial material.

This article is an attempt to examine the dialectical framework of the Fatah-Hamas conflict, and to explore the extent to which it contributes to shrinking the Palestinian cause or to pushing it forward, both at the political level and at the level of armed resistance.

The Inevitability of the Fighting

I have written a great deal about this subject before, and I have pointed out that the internal Palestinian fighting was expected — indeed inevitable — for several reasons, among them: 1) The Oslo Accord laid the foundation for Palestinian internecine strife because it required the Palestinian Authority to pursue “terrorism,” and Palestinian security agencies were formed whose function was to preserve Israeli security under national slogans. Internal Palestinian fighting is built into the agreement with Israel, and it could not have been avoided except by cancelling the agreement. 2) The Palestinian factions behave like Arab tribes, injecting themselves with an escalating zealotry that turns others on the scene into an enemy that must be eliminated. Factional upbringing is odious and rancorous, and it plants hatred and enmity in people’s souls. It was never to be expected that the factions would sit together in a dialogue governed by good intentions; dialogue was never anything more than a media objective for each faction, alongside premeditated intentions to eliminate the other. 3) The conduct of the security agencies and the successive Palestinian governments planted a great deal of rancor in people’s souls, owing to persecution, discrimination in employment, and the spread of corruption. It was clear that the Palestinian Authority possessed no philosophy for unifying society, but rather followed methods bound to tear it apart.

Shrinking the Palestinian Cause

The Palestinian cause is a very large cause, far larger than the Palestinian people, and it constitutes a strategic concern for millions of Arabs and Muslims. The Oslo Accord is a small burrow, scarcely wide enough for a lizard. The Palestinian cause is far bigger than the Oslo Accord, and every attempt to embellish and decorate the agreement will not help stretch it to become bigger than its actual size. Objectively, there was no escaping the tearing up of the agreement and disposing of it, and returning the Palestinian cause to its normal size, commensurate with the convictions of those insisting on non-acceptance of Israel and on the recovery of the full Palestinian rights.

Those who signed the Oslo Accord did not take into account the weight of the Palestinian cause; they pursued a negotiating process without regard for the balance between the idea of negotiation and the importance of the cause being negotiated over, thereby violating the logical, historical dimension needed to appreciate people’s feelings, convictions and aspirations. They initially tried to cover up this great flaw by making people believe that the Oslo Accord would establish a Palestinian state with Jerusalem the Noble as its capital, remove the settlements, bring back the refugees, and bring the Palestinian people money from every direction until the land occupied in ‘67 became a new Singapore. This cover-up did not survive as the Oslo Accord’s true nature emerged over the years, and with it the immediate impression of the event did not survive before historical objectivity. Money was drawn in to feed people with salaries coming from Western states, but this is nothing more than a sedative that cannot withstand the psychological mobilization, at both the Arab and Islamic levels, in favor of the Palestinian cause.

The Falling Ceiling of Palestinian Demands

Anyone tracking the activities of the Palestinian leadership sees that the ceiling of Palestinian demands has continued to fall over the years, that Palestinian taboos have not been upheld, and that Palestinian constants have turned out to be variables. The Liberation Organization began by insisting on the liberation of Palestine and the right of self-determination, and ended up with a Palestinian Authority that maintains security coordination with Israel and engages in extensive normalization activities with Israelis. The right of self-determination was replaced with a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and the right of return was assaulted by the Geneva Accord, which the Palestinian Authority blessed by attending its signing ceremony. The gradual erosion of taboos by the Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority produced a gradual escalation of resentment against the Organization, the Palestinian leadership, and the Palestinian security institutions.

Moral Decline

Transgressing taboos and gradually abandoning goals requires, in any society, a moral decline, because the new standards leap over the prevailing moral level in favor of a new moral level. A pious man, for instance, cannot enter the world of vice unless he decides to abandon his convictions, and a patriot cannot accept invaders unless he abandons his national belonging. In the same way, the Oslo Accord and the relations with Israel that flowed from it could not have been implemented by national or Islamic purists; there had to be recourse to people whose moral standards clash with the standards that prevailed, and that broad segments of society still hold to. This led to the spread of corruption in every corner of Palestinian life, and to a security breakdown that led to assaults on people and property in broad daylight, without the slightest deterrent.

Ground Prepared for the Fighting

The land occupied in ‘67 became ready and primed for internal fighting, and had Hamas not been at the forefront of the opposition, someone else would have been. Every action has a reaction; every reality has something that opposes it and works to change it; and every proposition carries its own negation within it. The Palestinian people suffered for roughly a hundred years and offered martyrs and great sacrifices in order to recover their rights, and it was never possible for the entire people to trample all their aspirations, hopes and wishes in order to accept turning Palestine into a mere item on a negotiating table and a monthly salary. This writer has held an opinion across time that strategic decisions concerning the Palestinian cause require national consensus, and that any organized group, however small, is capable of obstructing strategic policies it does not like. The Fatah leadership monopolized decision-making on its own, as though its motto were: “I do as I please, and let them say what they please.”

The first signs of internal Palestinian fighting appeared in the martyrdom operations that Hamas was carrying out against Jewish population centers. Part of these operations fed directly into the idea of resistance with no internal political tail, while another part was intended to obstruct the negotiating process and reshuffle the cards on the Palestinian scene. The Hamas movement succeeded in reining in the negotiating process, and managed to buy itself time to prepare and get ready, on two fronts: sparring with the Palestinian Authority and resisting the occupation. It appears that Fatah never fully understood the message of these operations and insisted on going it alone.

Perhaps this antagonism did not express itself with the awareness I am putting forward in this article, but it developed gradually, through the situational disputes that kept surfacing around the clock. In the end, these disagreements reflected themselves in the form of limited friction and clashes, and a continuous mobilization of partisans and supporters. The Palestinian scene was not stingy with daily, situational developments that contributed cumulatively to inflaming feelings and escalating the pace of internal quarrels. The elements of rancor and hatred grew, and the first signs of blood feuds appeared, expressing themselves through the arming of thugs and delinquents, and the arming of many families in Gaza and the West Bank.

Gunfire in the Palestinian street became a daily phenomenon, and hardly a day passed without dead or wounded, whether in the conflict between gangs of thieves and thugs or between the Fatah and Hamas factions. Bloodshed cast its weight over the Palestinian street until it became commonplace to hear, on the Palestinian street, people wishing for the return of direct occupation. Even so, the Palestinian decision-maker remained absent from himself, content with promises of establishing justice and deterring those running amok on security matters.

Hamas Takes Control

It was never to be expected that the Palestinian security agencies would hold out against Hamas, because the former gives loyalty (wala’) while the latter is distinguished by belonging (intima’). History has never shown the holders of loyalty defeating the holders of belonging. Loyalty is bought and sold; belonging is not on the market — it is rooted, and springs from individual and collective convictions.

By taking control of the Gaza Strip, Hamas created a new reality imposed not only on the Palestinian scene but on the region as well. It is likely that it will consolidate this reality, in one way or another, in the West Bank too, so as to be more influential in shaping the future of the Palestinian cause. Of course, the military tactic adopted in Gaza is not suitable for the West Bank, for several reasons, foremost among them the presence of direct Zionist occupation there.

Turmoil at the Negotiating Table

Israel’s reaction to what happened in Gaza gives a strong indication of the extent to which those calling for negotiations with Israel reject what happened in Gaza. Threats against Hamas and against the Gaza Strip poured from the mouths of Israeli officials, and some Arab regimes initially supported them in this. The regimes later backed away from their position, but Israel insisted on imposing a severe siege on the Strip — though only to the point that does not produce famine — with the goal of using people’s suffering to pressure Hamas and to return conditions in the Strip to what they were before June 14, 2007.

America did not hesitate to support the Israeli position, and worked to support Fatah under Abbas’s leadership, and ordered the resumption of the flow of funds to the Palestinian emergency government to pay salaries and facilitate its work.

The Future of the Palestinian Cause

There are readings of the cause’s future, which I summarize as follows: whoever sees Israel and America as enemies of the Palestinian people concludes that what Hamas did serves the interest of the Palestinian cause; and the opposite is true as well. Whoever sees salaries and daily bread as the supreme value ends up saying that Hamas is destroying his personal interests, regardless of the cause’s future.

The second reading has to do with the negotiating table. Whoever believes the Palestinian people can obtain their rights through negotiations concludes that Hamas committed a sin, while whoever saw the negotiating table as a national and religious transgression congratulates Hamas for what it did.

In the reading of religiosity, most of those who reject religion as a political driver load Hamas with every kind of sin, while, on the contrary, those who see religion as politics and a way of life do the opposite.

In the historical reading, and according to the objective data on the nature of the conflict and the scale of the Palestinian cause, I believe that what Hamas did contributes to correcting the Palestinian condition and to restoring the cause to its proper place and its true standing. There is suffering, there is blood that has been shed, and there are families that have lost loved ones, but history expresses its regret without ever stopping its motion. The Palestinian people lost part of their radiant image before Arabs and Muslims, but images remain circumstantial and quickly collapse before the events that follow them. The Palestinian scene has become badly warped, and it now has an opportunity to right itself; if Hamas fails to restore the balance, history will not wrap it in mercy. The Palestinian leadership has paved the way for the forces of history and the logic of the ongoing conflict to do their work, and the scale of the Palestinian cause cannot be squeezed into a small sack that cannot even hold a handful of soil.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “فلسطين في جدلية الصراع الحمساوي-الفتحاوي” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.