January 25, 2006
THE PLO GOT THEM A STATE BUT ISN'T COMPETENT TO RUN IT:
Hamas and the Fatah radicals will transform Palestinian politics (Alastair Crooke, February 2006, Prospect)
It is increasingly plain that Fatah will not do well at the polls. One Israeli journalist estimates that Hamas may win 60-70 seats in the new parliament, out of a total 132. Were this to occur, Hamas would certainly be invited to accept posts as ministers in a new government.The old guard has reacted to this prospect by seeking any pretext to postpone the elections. The worsening security situation in Gaza has, in part, been deliberately engineered by the Fatah leadership and its security arms as a pretext to postpone or cancel elections.
Assuming the elections do go ahead and that the younger Fatah and Hamas do dominate the parliament, they will seek what they regard as an inclusive Palestinian politics—in contrast to that of Oslo. Hamas will aim to rally as many of the factions as possible to agree on Palestinian national objectives. They will lay out the means to achieve those objectives and designate a popular leadership able to bring them about.
More recently, Hamas spokesmen have emphasised the possibility of a complete cessation of violence, to be agreed and reciprocated by Israel, that would last a full generation and that, unlike past truces, would deal with all the outstanding issues that might be resolved in a long-term period of calm. The negotiation that they envision would proceed from the basis of withdrawal from the lands occupied in 1967 and a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. We are likely to see concrete proposals emerge after the elections. The proposal for a ceasefire does not however imply that Hamas will accept disarmament at the outset of the process. They believe that every people has the right to self-defence; but demilitarisation in step with political progress, as seen in Northern Ireland, is possible.
Hamas is a political movement that detached itself from the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s. Like other such movements, it is interested in shaping political solutions to political problems. It is committed to elections, political participation, constitutional guarantees of civil rights and, above all, of reform: reform of government and of state institutions, and an end to corruption. Younger members of Fatah share these aspirations. Where Hamas has been so successful is in the provision of welfare and community services which are viewed by all sections of society as a model of effective and incorrupt provision of such assistance.
The chief benefit of forced statehood has always been that it will force these organizations to focus on governing, not terrorism.
MORE:
Hamas Poised to Become Insiders: With Strong Showing Predicted in Palestinian Vote, Group to Face New Challenges (Scott Wilson, 1/25/06, Washington Post)
Already Hamas leaders are facing questions about how they will manage future peace negotiations with Israel, win the freedom of thousands of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, and ease the occupation in the West Bank given their vow not to recognize Israel or talk to its leaders.At the same time, many Hamas followers who favored the group's past attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians over the Palestinian Authority's cooperation with Israel are wondering why the movement is going mainstream while the occupation endures in the West Bank.
Each week in the courtyard of the Red Cross here, a group of women gather to demand the release of the estimated 7,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails. Most of the women are poor, desperate residents of the Jabalya refugee camp. They are veiled, clutching framed photos of their sons. They are the natural constituency of Hamas. Yet none said they intend to support Hamas now. "If they wanted to help, they would be here protesting with us," said Ghaliah Barood, 70, who leads the weekly demonstration. "But you can see that none of them are."
Although Hamas officials vow not to meet with Israeli officials, Zahar said he favors mediation through Egypt, Jordan or the European Union to win the prisoners' release, perhaps the most emotional issue in Palestinian politics. Barood, whose son Ibrahim has been in an Israeli jail for two decades, said only kidnapping Israeli soldiers would win the prisoners' release. "We've never seen anyone pay attention to us, and now they only come for our vote," said Aziza Abu Dabah, 55, whose son has been in jail for 11 years.
Though designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Europe and Israel, Hamas has positioned itself among Palestinians as the clean counterweight to the corrupt, ineffective rule of Fatah, the movement that governs the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has a military wing that has carried out deadly attacks on Israelis, but its popularity stems largely from the grass-roots charity work and political organizing that is the hallmark of Islamic movements throughout the Arab world. [...]
[Nashat Aqtash, a professor of media studies at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank who is designing the Hamas advertising strategy,] added with a laugh, "I'm just afraid they'll win more than 50 percent of the vote, and then they'll be in real trouble."
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 25, 2006 8:03 AM
Hamas will aim to rally as many of the factions as possible to agree on Palestinian national objectives.
And these are?....
(Oh, never mind.)
Admittedly, it's fun to dream (at least from long distance).
Posted by: Barry Meislin at January 25, 2006 9:39 AMA nation.
Posted by: oj at January 25, 2006 9:44 AMEr, no. Or at best only half the story.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at January 25, 2006 9:49 AMThe only part that matters.
Posted by: oj at January 25, 2006 9:56 AMsadly, any state that has palistinians as its members will be a terrorist state. i guess isreal is playing a medium range game here, maneuvering the palis into a position from which it is safe (politically) to anhilate them.
Posted by: toe at January 25, 2006 10:14 AMIt only seems to matter to those who refuse to understand that nationhood, a state, a country, call it what you want, is not, is absolutely not, the priority of any Palestinian leadership or those who elect it.
Unless this leadership, painfully, concludes that, having tried every other alternative, declaring statehood is the only option left by which Israel can be erased.
However, seeing that the Palestinians are a most resourceful people, such a conclusion is unlikely.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at January 25, 2006 10:22 AMIt doesn't matter what the leaderships priority is. The priority of their people is statehood and improvement in their own quality of life.
Posted by: oj at January 25, 2006 10:24 AMOne of the Hamas candidates, who incidently is noted for the number of her sons who were suicide terrorists, stated in a streetside TV interview her objective is the eradication of Israel. The interviewer stated she enjoyed wide support.
I hope your hopes are realistic OJ.
Posted by: Genecis at January 25, 2006 10:58 AMGene:
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Palestinians are uniquely a people who would rather die in a futile cause than enjoy decent lives. It is Israel that will have to kill them. Killing people you control is a Holocaust. Annihilating a rival nation is just good clean fun.
Posted by: oj at January 25, 2006 11:11 AMIt does seem a bit odd to juxtapose the idea of self-preservation with a people for whom suicide bombing is a virtue approaching holiness.
Moreover, one seems to forget that the Palestinians, in addition to being a very resourceful people, are also exceedingly principled.
To believe that they would actually sanction the division of the land between the Jordan and the Sea with a Jewish state, no matter what they may say (or seem to be saying), is a profound insult to all that is right, all that is good. It is unjust. It is unnatural. And this is so even if the West might happen not to agree with or even understand such a sentiment.
To be sure, while the West may not be able to fathom it, may---paraphrasing the esteemed Thomas Friedman---be all the better for not being able to fathom it, it is, alas, as oj has basically intimated: that if the Palestinians prove unable to destroy Israel, then the next best thing is to force Israel to destroy them.
Finally, at long last, sweet, sweet vengeance. In fact, sweet, sweet victory.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at January 25, 2006 11:36 AMHow many Palestinians have committed suicide?
Posted by: oj at January 25, 2006 11:44 AMMr. Judd;
While your primary point stands (far better to deal with dead enders as a state than an occupied populace), your analysis of the Palestinians misses the key point that while we see the goal of anihilating Israel as futile, they do not. Moreover, every time in the past that the Palestinians have had to chose between helping themselves vs. damaging Israel, they've chosen the latter. On what basis do you think they'll chose differently now?
How many Palestinians have committed suicide?Many. Did you miss the reference to "suicide bombers"? As Meislin points out, if that is venerated in the culture at an individual level, why not at a tribal one as well?
P.S. I will also dispute the "unique". Does not one see the same sort of mentality in both the Sunni of Iraq and the Modern American Left? It's not about achieving putative goals but about acting out a fantasy.
AOG:
Yes, so how many Palestinians have been willing to die to get rid of Israel? A few hundred? And from those you extract that they have a death wish rather than a normal desire for a decent life in a state of their own?
There don't seem to be many suicidal Sunni or Lefties either.
Not from that alone, but from that and many other reactions and choices of the Palestinians (such as, for instance, cheering the impact of what many thought were chemical weapons at upwind locations in Israel during the first Gulf War).
Could you provide one counter example, where the Palestinians were faced with a choice of helping themselves or hurting Israel where they chose to improve their situation?
P.S. What about Europeans, then? And we'll see about the Sunni. There are hopeful signs but those are only signs.
If the average Palestinian had a normal desire for a decent life, in a state of their own, then they would have long ago gotten rid of Fatah and the PLO, and obtained that state.
As with everything else, watch what they do, not what they say.
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at January 25, 2006 3:31 PM
AOG:
Hurting Israel has won them a state--it was a rational choice.
Posted by: oj at January 25, 2006 5:38 PMArafat got them a state.
Posted by: oj at January 25, 2006 5:42 PMNot at all.
Arafat denied them a state.
It was due to the Palestinian-labeled-Arabs' breeding like rabbits that got them a state, but that's such a tangential result of diffused decision-making that it cannot be said to have been a "strategy".
Essentially, the Palestinian-labeled-Arabs got lucky.
Suppose that Israeli and Arab fertility rates were similar, and that Arafat were still alive.
Would there now be a proto-Palestinian state ?
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at January 25, 2006 8:08 PM
Arafat created a Palestinian identity (in opposition to Israel, for sure). People who think of themselves as a state get one.
Posted by: oj at January 25, 2006 8:17 PMI think your last point goes a bit too far - Arafat's "rule" specifically kept the Palestinians from thinking of themselves as a state. The whole point was to think of themselves as victims, as nomads who couldn't even wander, as perpetual losers next to the Jew.
Their identity had nothing to do with being Arab (and so the other Arabs look down on them), and no one ever tried to give them the same capability to help themselves that the Kurds have had for many years. Instead, they became puppets for a bizarre theater, mainly to influence opinion in Europe and the UN (to keep the graft flowing), and also to be proxy poster children for the Arab world.
Sure, giving them a state will force them to choose - but what many fear is that they will be incapable of choosing any different path. And a general war doesn't really solve the problem, now does it?
But if they do lose all their payola from the West, then perhaps the shock will brace them to change. Or it will start the war you keep talking about. However, where will the next series of "camps" be set up?
Posted by: jim hamlen at January 25, 2006 11:28 PMThey have a state?
(Unless, of course, words mean exactly what I want them to!)
Posted by: Barry Meislin at January 26, 2006 2:29 AMThyey just had elections to run it, no?
Posted by: oj at January 26, 2006 7:17 AMIf they thought of themselves as Arabs they wouldn't need a state, nor get one.
Posted by: oj at January 26, 2006 7:50 AM"Run it" being the operative phrase.
We'll see what the operative principles are before not too long.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at January 26, 2006 8:03 AMMr. Judd;
And why is getting a state a win? What's the benefit of that? I also agree that Arafat did not get the Palestinians a state but did all in his power to avoid one (walking away from Camp David and starting the Intifadah are two examples that spring to mind). Besides, if getting a state was the goal, why didn't they do it in the 1948-1967 period?
The contrast with the Kurds is very instructive in showing how a people interested in bettering their own lives act.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at January 26, 2006 9:44 AMAOG:
I don't think it is. But we fought a sillier war to get one.
Posted by: oj at January 26, 2006 9:49 AMSo, the fact that the Palestinians have spent decades in misery, death and destruction in order to achieve something of no real value is supposed to convince me that they are interested in bettering themselves? I'd say that you just proved my point.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at January 26, 2006 11:40 AMAOG:
People perceive a state of their own therefotre they're willing to do stupid things and suffer to get one, as we did. Once they get it they quiet down.
Posted by: oj at January 26, 2006 11:55 AMYou mean like post-colonial Africa?
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at January 26, 2006 12:23 PMor pakistan
Posted by: toe at January 26, 2006 12:38 PM