With the violent ascension to unfettered power of an Islamist terror organization, Hamas, in the Mediterranean sea port of Gaza, the Middle East faces a new and destabilizing factor. Hamas, however, is a complex organism that, to be confronted, must be properly understood.
Hamas is a functionally tripartite, organizationally unified organization consisting of a terrorist/militant arm, a political arm, and a humanitarian arm. Beyond the fluid borders of the organization, it is linked to and allied with other Islamist terrorist groups; its operational headquarters is in Gaza, while the central command and control functions are exercised from the Syrian capital of Damascus.
The challenge inherent in the Hamas takeover of Gaza is this: it implants a safe haven for destabilizing violence at the periphery of NATO's operational area, on the borders of Israel and Egypt, within easy reach of major shipping routes, and not too far away from the conflagration that is Iraq.
The Middle East just got a whole lot hotter.
Any discussion of Hamas needs to start with the observation that, as an organization, it is dedicated to the violent destruction of Israel; that said, to understand the organization's appeal to its constituency, a description of it simply as terrorist does not capture its full scope of operations.
Functionally, Hamas does three things:
- It conducts terrorist operations against Israeli civilians and, less often due to the cost of such operations in terms of casualties, the Israeli military. These operations are carried out by an internal grouping known as the Al Qassam Brigades and coordinated with nominally independent outside groups.
- It provides social services such as clinics, cultural institutions, schools, mosques, as well as various forms of welfare assistance, to impoverished Palestinian civilians.
- Its political component is represented in the Palestinian Legislative Council, having won a bare plurality in the elections of January 2006.
Beyond the fluid organizational borders of Hamas are other, more exclusively terrorist organizations, chief of which is the loosely structured Islamic Jihad. Historically, Hamas - translated as the Islamic Resistance Movement - emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood. The key fact to understanding Hamas' various activities, however, is this: all of them are centrally controlled, and there are no clear functional distinctions in personnel terms. For example, Ismail Haniyeh, the deposed Hamas Prime Minister, is rumored to be third in the hierarchy of Hamas' militant wing. According to Hamas' late leader, Sheik Yassin,
"We can not separate the wing from the body. If we do so, the body will not be able to fly. HAMAS is one body."
External and internal terrorism
Wikipedia:
Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, and the United States, and is banned in Jordan. Australia and the United Kingdom both list the militant wing of Hamas, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, as a terrorist organization. According to the US State Department, the group is funded by Iran, Palestinian expatriates, and private benefactors in Saudi Arabia and other Arab states. In a 2002 report, Human Rights Watch stated that Hamas' leaders "should be held accountable for the war crimes and crimes against humanity" that have been committed by its members.
Amnesty International also condemned Hamas for crimes against humanity.
Following its accession to power in January 2006, Hamas continued its terrorist activity. The organization's charter continues to call for the destruction of Israel. It also manages a sophisticated online presence, as well as a network of social service agencies intimately tied to its terrorist activities.
In terms of terrorist activity, the Boston Globe reports on a failed plan to carry out a major truck bombing in Tel Aviv; some evidence suggests that Hamas continued to smuggle high-grade explosives into the West Bank; certainly, during the 2006 truce in Gaza, the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad, which joined Hamas in a loose organizational framework, the Damascus-based Alliance of Palestinian Forces (APF), has continued to carry out terror attacks. On June 9, 2005, Human Rights Watch demanded that Hamas immediately cease its ongoing attacks on civilians, while a year later, Hamas was directly implicated in a rocket attack on the Israeli border city of Sderot. Hamas also claimed responsibility for the gangland-style shooting of an electrician inside Israel proper, among other things.
Hamas' terrorist activities are not, however, limited to Israeli targets. Both Hamas and Fatah as well as the organs of the nascent Palestinian state routinely arrest, torture and murder Palestinian gays and lesbians, forcing many to escape to Israel and support themselves by prostitution; official misogyny, per Human Rights Watch includes "practices such as rape victims being forced to marry assailants and light sentences for men who kill female relatives suspected of adultery"; Palestinian Christians remain concerned about Hamas' goal of imposing Islamic law and creating a quasi-Jim-Crow environment of legal segregation based on religion.
In the past week, during its takeover of Gaza, Hamas summarily executed dozens of Fatah members, violently dispersed a peace march by Gaza residents, and threatened to spread violence further into the West Bank. Unsurprisingly, there is also a stream of refugees fleeing from Gaza into Egypt and Israel.
Social welfare
According to Wikipedia, Hamas provides the largest, densest network of social services in the Palestinian territories after those provided by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief Works Agency. Outside experts assume - there don't seem to be any firm numbers - that 90% of Hamas' annual $70 million budget goes to funding humanitarian work.
In 1973, the Islamic center 'Mujamma' was established in Gaza and started to offer clinics, blood banks, day care, medical treatment, meals and youth clubs. The center plays an important role for providing social care to the people, particularly those living in refugee camps. It also extended financial aid and scholarships to young people who wanted to study in Saudi Arabia and the West. In particular, Hamas funded health services where people could receive free or inexpensive medical treatment. Hamas greatly contributed to the health sector, and facilitated hospital and physician services in the Palestinian territory. On the other hand, Hamas’s use of hospitals is sometimes criticized, in that they use them for promoting suicide bombings and other forms of violence against Israel. Hamas also funded education as well as the health service, and built Islamic charities, libraries, mosques, education centers for women. They also built nurseries, kindergartens and supervised religious schools that provide free meals to children. When children attend their schools and mosques, parents are required to sign oaths of allegiance. Refugees, as well as those left without homes, are able to claim financial and technical assistance from Hamas.
In any case, Hamas has significantly increased literacy in areas where it is active. Hamas also funds a number of other charitable activities, primarily in the Gaza Strip. These include religious institutions, medical facilities, and social needs of the area's residents. The work of Hamas in these fields supplements that provided by the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA). The charitable trust Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was accused in December 2001 of funding Hamas. Hamas is also well regarded by Palestinians for its efficiency and perceived lack of corruption compared to Fatah.
In 2004, a Hamas-linked charity, the above-mentioned Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, was shut down due to the fact that it had funneled charitable donations into terrorist activities; this case is the reason why, despite Hamas' significant charitable activities, the organization operates under a boycott by donor governments. In practice, the borders between these activities and terrorism are permeable:
HLF supported Hamas activities through direct fund transfers to its offices in the West Bank and Gaza that are affiliated with Hamas and transfers of funds to Islamic charity committees ("zakat committees") and other charitable organizations that are part of Hamas or controlled by Hamas members. HLF funds were used by Hamas to support schools that served Hamas ends by encouraging children to become suicide bombers and to recruit suicide bombers by offering support to their families.
Political activity
Hamas is, as noted, an Islamist organization; its charter, adopted in 1988 and unrevised since, calls for the destruction of Israel and the absorption of its territory into an Islamic state of Palestine. While the organization offered a cease-fire to Israel after its election victory - the term is 'hudna' - public statements by high-ranking Hamas members give cause to doubt the sincerity of the offer.
Sheikh Dr. Ahmad Bahar (acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council): "This is Islam, that was ahead of its time with regards to human rights in the treatment of prisoners, but our people was afflicted by the cancerous lump, that is the Jews, in the heart of the Arab nation... Be certain that America is on its way to disappear, America is wallowing [in blood] today in Iraq and Afghanistan, America is defeated and Israel is defeated, and was defeated in Lebanon and Palestine... Make us victorious over the infidel people... Allah, take hold of the Jews and their allies, Allah, take hold of the Americans and their allies... Allah, count them and kill them to the last one and don’t leave even one."
PA TV, April 20, 2007, via Palestinian Media Watch
Based on the popularity the organization won among Palestinians due to its sophisticated social service networks and its hardline stance against the Israeli occupation, and utilizing the networks provided by its social activities, Hamas managed to win a bare plurality of the vote in the 2006 legislative and municipal elections in the Palestinian territories.
Some claim that Hamas is a national liberation movement comparable to the African National Congress or the Congress Party of India. That case, however, ignores one central fact: the ANC gave up violent resistance. Hamas defines itself by violence and has continued violence in tandem with political actions. To Hamas, murder remains an acceptable way of making a political point. For this reason, a large number of Hamas parliamentarians are currently in Israeli jails.
Crucially, Islam in general does not recognize, as do post-Enlightenment Western societies, a distinction or divide between the realm of secular politics on the one hand and religious institutions, or for that matter society as a whole, on the other. This gives rise to terminological difficulties in describing an organization such as Hamas; bottom-feeders such as Michelle Malkin use the term 'Islamofascist', which, aside from being a contemptible slur against an entire religion, does not capture the essence of the phenomenon. That observation aside, however, Hamas' political activities and the actions of its elected members need to be seen as being of a piece with its other actions, violent terrorism and the provision of schools and clinics both; this not least because Hamas itself does not make distinctions among these activities, instead grouping them under a label of Islamic activities. This description, it needs to be pointed out, is controversial among Islamic scholars and public intellectuals who do not condone violence or see it as intrinsically tied to the Islamic principle of charity.
Hamas' participation in the political process and its ability to secure a mandate - a plurality - from voters complicates any possible response by outside actors. However, recent polls give some credence to the assumption that actual Palestinian voters reject Hamas' policy of confrontation.
Findings show that the overwhelming majority of respondents (85%) supports the ceasefire agreement currently observed in the Gaza Strip while only 14% oppose it. Similarly, 85% support and 14% oppose extending the agreement to cover the West Bank as well. The widespread support for the ceasefire might reflect a decrease in the positive evaluation of the role of violence in achieving national rights. Findings show that the public is split into two equal halves on this matter with 49% believing that armed confrontations have so far helped achieve national rights in ways that negotiations could not. This percentage stood at 54% six months ago and at 68% one year ago.
Considering that public opinion tends to be stable in its support of a peace solution, it's possible to hypothesize that Hamas' violent overthrow of the Palestinian unity government in Gaza is lacking political backing from the electorate. However, absent actual data, that needs to remain a hypothesis.
Policy responses
Hamas' seizure of Gaza has created some particularly ironic alliances, chief among which is an area of agreement between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the West. The UK government has denounced what it calls Hamas' coup; the Egyptian government, not friendly to Islamists any day of the week, has done the same; the Arab League is backing the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, while also calling for talks between Hamas and Fatah; while Israel, knowing quicksand when it sees it, wants an international force to take out Hamas.
The New York Times, in an editorial, says:
For Washington and Jerusalem to exert constructive influence in this dangerous situation, they urgently need to adopt a new and wiser approach to Palestinian politics. That means doing more to help Mr. Abbas in the only currency that really counts, easing the lives of ordinary Palestinians.
That should include a total freeze on settlement building and expansion, a prompt easing of the onerous, humiliating and economically strangulating blockades on Palestinian movements within the West Bank, and the swift release to Mr. Abbas’s office of all tax revenues rightfully belonging to the Palestinians but still in Israeli hands.
It should also include an offer of regular, substantive talks with Mr. Abbas on issues related to a final peace settlement, like borders and provisions assuring the economic viability of an eventual Palestinian state. Obviously, there can be no final peace agreement until Hamas either changes its policies or is chased from power. But excluding Palestinian statehood from the negotiating agenda can only help Hamas.
One thing seems clear enough: Hamas' decision to seize power in Gaza raises the stakes in an already volatile region of the world. Hamas actions carry the singular distinction of being unacceptable to all of the parties involved in the conflict. Egypt and Saudi Arabia both regard Islamic fundamentalism as the most potent challenge to their governmental order (whatever one may think of the governments of those two despotates); Israel is in an active state of war with Hamas; the United States, embroiled as it is in Iraq, doesn't want another Mideastern hot spot; and Europe is likely appalled at the idea of a Mediterranean Mogadishu.
There is a potential political benefit to this disaster: if the common interest of the political actors extends to securing a working relationship towards the goal of all the involved parties, namely a secure and thriving Palestinian state not governed by Hamas, we may finally see some progress. What is also clear is this: Hamas has become what it is due to a single factor, and that is competence in delivering social services. If the organization is to be permanently disempowered, which it needs to be, the Palestinian Authority, Israel and/or various NGOs need to address the humanitarian issues facing the Palestinian people. Hamas did not arise out of a desire for brutal violence among Palestinian civilians; it became what it is today because of the failure of the Fatah government to improve the lives of its people, and because of Israeli short-sightedness in exercising its occupation. Hamas, in short, is blowback made real. This blowback demands not just a security-oriented response, but critically a political and humanitarian response.
The real question is not whether Hamas will be ousted; they will be, because the idea of an Islamist city-state on their border is intolerable to both of its neighbors, Israel and Egypt, as well as further afield. It is, rather, having looked into the abyss of such an entity existing, whether there will be actual and sustained movement in the direction of an independent Palestine and the fulfillment of the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people by the affected parties, chiefly Israel and her neighbors. At a minimum, Hamas has shown that the Palestinians can't be left in limbo very much longer; they have other options, options which we have cause to dislike. The success of Israel, the Arab governments and the West in meeting the challenge posed by Hamas will be determined by their ability to fill the vacuum that Hamas stepped into.