1.0   Explaining the Political-Geographic Split: Hamas in Gaza, Fatah in the West Bank

          1.1   Islamism in Gaza

          Political Islamism reached Palestine in the late 1920s, when Egypt’s Young Muslim Men’s Association (YMMA) branched off into the Mandate (the national and religious hero Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam led the Haifa branch).  In 1945, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) established a Jerusalem office, and although 37 more branches opened by 1947, the 1948-1949 war decimated the Palestinian MB.[1]

          The MB regrouped after the conflict, but over the next half century it would entrench itself more strongly in Gaza than in the West Bank.  Three main factors underlay this development.  First, from 1948 to 1967, Egypt controlled Gaza, while Jordan held the West Bank.  Jordan officially annexed the West Bank and co-opted the MB into parliamentary politics.  The MB evolved into a “loyal opposition” to the Hashemite monarchy, leading extremists to splinter from the MB’s moderate mainstream in 1952.  Nasser’s Egypt, on the other hand, kept Gaza under military administration and harshly repressed the MB both there and in Egypt after 1954, driving the movement underground and toward a “clandestine, militant form” of political activity.[2]

          Second, Gaza’s overcrowded refugee camps – hosting the highest levels of population density on earth – spawned a potent mix of socioeconomic despair and “communal activism informed by radicalized religiosity.”[3]  The West Bank, though hardly a wealthy region, enjoyed considerably greater prosperity.[4]

          Third, these geographical and socioeconomic differences were magnified under the more open and permissive Israeli occupation after 1967.  MB luminary Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, for example, worked out of Gaza’s Shati’ refugee camp, and drew on the lessons that the MB had learned under Nasser’s rule, in order to assemble an Islamist infrastructure that would not provoke Israeli intervention.  He therefore restricted MB activity to nonviolent da’wa, or “religious preaching and education,” undergirded by a network of MB cells across Gaza.  In 1973, he oversaw the establishment of the Islamic Center (al-Mujamma al-Islami), which soon became the hub of MB religious, social, educational, medical, and charitable operations in Gaza.[5]

          Al-Mujamma, then, undertook to Islamize Palestinian society by mixing efforts at Islamist edification with the charitable and social services that brought the MB popularity in Gaza.[6]  Israel, whose primary Palestinian enemy was the secular PLO, let the nonmilitant al-Mujamma flourish[7] by permitting the proliferation of Gazan mosques, out of which its branches operated.[8]  But Yasin’s al-Mujamma did not shirk from using violence to force its Islamist mores on Palestinian Gazan society or to confront leftist PLO factions on the streets of Gaza.[9]

          Conversely, the West Bank’s MB constituted a substantially more moderate group.  Because of the socioeconomic dynamics discussed above, the West Bank possessed a more bourgeoisie MB membership with lingering ties to Jordan.  More concerned with strictly religious activities, it could not keep pace with Gaza’s MB in institutionalizing Islamist penetration and mobilization of the Palestinian masses.  In fact, the primary cause of MB militarization in the West Bank may have been the enrollment of Gazan students at West Bank universities.[10]

          This emerging civil society evolved alongside a covert MB organization,[11] a duality mirrored – decades later – by Hamas’ incomplete division into civilian and military wings.[12]  Yet the MB’s Islamist social agenda was of secondary importance to “a population that [sought] liberation from foreign occupation,” and many Palestinians turned instead to the secular but militantly anti-Israel PLO.[13]

          1.2   Hamas and the PLO

          The 1968 PLO National Charter indeed aspired to fully dismantle Israel by “armed struggle.”  A decade later, the frustrated PLO had largely moderated its maximalist territorial demands in preference of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.  But the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 cost the PLO its base of operations near the Jewish state, greatly reducing its military and political maneuverability.  The rout bred ideological despair and organizational decay, and opened a political vacuum that Islamists hastened to fill.[14]

          While the secular PLO seemed to have settled for the West Bank and Gaza, Islamist groups like Hamas have rededicated Palestinian nationalism to the violent conquest of all of Palestine.[15]  Emboldened by Iran’s recent Islamic Revolution,[16] they gained political weight and popularity by framing the PLO’s traditional territorial goals and militant tactics in Islamist language.[17]  Islamic Jihad in the early 1980s was the first MB spinoff to prioritize the “armed struggle” against Israel before the Islamization of Palestinian society, but the MB mainstream lagged behind this radical minority until the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada in 1987.[18]

          The day after the intifada began, leaders of the Gazan MB and al-Mujamma started meeting to coordinate strategy and issue leaflets.  In early 1988 they named the infant organization “the Islamic Resistance Movement,” whose Arabic acronym is “Hamas,” or “zeal.”  The Islamist leaders were hesitant to break with the Gazan MB’s nonviolent tradition, but – spurred by its competition with the PLO and by radical MB youth – they agreed to establish Hamas as a nominally independent group.  But soon Hamas’ militancy had marshaled enough popular support to pose as a credible competitor to Fatah (the PLO’s leading party), and its 1988 charter proclaimed itself to be an MB wing.[19]

2.0   Hamas’ Ideological Inimitability

          Hamas’ charter, as hinted at earlier, appropriated Fatah’s maximalist territorial ambitions and its violent tactics of securing them, but Hamas justified Palestinian nationalism on Islamic grounds – asserting Palestine “to be whole and indivisible and defined as an Islamic waqf (endowment) ‘consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day’ (article 11).”[20]  To its traditional aim of Islamizing Palestinian society, then, Hamas added its violent jihad against the existence of a Jewish state on Palestinian land – both signified different facets of the same religious nationalist impetus.

          But because Hamas derived the latter objective from an overarching religious doctrine while Fatah viewed its aims in purely political terms, Hamas elevated the armed struggle against Israel to the level of “the most sacred duty of every individual Muslim (fard ‘ayn),” as detailed in its charter’s twelfth and fifteenth articles.[21]  Therefore Hamas exhibited little compunction in infringing on the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) monopoly on the legitimate use of force, whether its aim was to battle PA security forces, to coerce Palestinians to obey its Islamist dictates, or to conduct terrorism (essentially a privatized form of warfare) against Israelis.

          Still, Hamas largely resolved the tension between the movement’s dogmatic ideology and its pragmatic approach to political and institutional survival”[22] by “interpreting any political agreement involving the West Bank and Gaza Strip as merely a pause on the historic road of jihad” and therefore retaining “its ideological credibility.”[23]  This pragmatism would also manifest itself in the deadly waves of suicide bombings with which Hamas gained global notoriety, peaking in the mid-1990s and the early 2000s,[*] and – although it lies outside this paper’s scope – in increasing Shi’i Iranian sponsorship of Sunni Hamas.[24]

3.0   Hamas in the Broader Islamist Landscape

          3.1   Qaeda-Hamas Relations

          Hamas has maintained its distance from al-Qaeda, both rhetorically and operationally,[25] for two main reasons which remain valid today.  First, Hamas does not want to share with al-Qaeda either its de facto sovereignty over Gaza or its strategic and operational pull among Palestinian terror groups.[26]

          Second, although both Islamist movements aspire to replace pre-1967 Israel with an Islamist state, al-Qaeda’s global ambitions and Hamas’ nationalist aims do not mesh well on an operational level.  Unable to topple apostate Arab autocracies such as the Egyptian and Saudi regimes, al-Qaeda took up the “far jihad” against their Western allies.  Hamas, on the other hand, channels all its resources into the “near jihad” against Israel.  Therefore Hamas’ Mahmoud al-Zahar, who recognizes that U.S. President Bush “has the key to achieve peace in the region,” has vowed that “[Hamas is] not considering America as [its] enemy.”[27]  And last year, in response to a New Yorker reporter’s question, a Hamas Qassam rocket team “ridiculed the idea” that al-Qaeda should help prosecute the Palestinian cause.  Their leader – who “seemed motivated by genuine doctrinal disagreement” – answered: “Al Qaeda kills civilians….We only target Jews.”[28]  Al-Qaeda’s al-Zarqawi and al-Zawahiri, meanwhile, have accused Hamas of mollifying Washington by participating in the PA elections.[29]

          Yet several dynamics work in favor of an al-Qaeda-Hamas alliance.  Israel’s disengagement from Gaza opened a political vacuum that may attract al-Qaeda veterans exiting Afghanistan and Iraq.  After all, the Palestinian cause occupies a prominent place in Qaeda ideology – and if Israeli offensives decimate Hamas’ leadership, the movement may restock its upper echelons with Qaeda members.[30]  Thus while American and Israel retain considerable leverage against these trends, they may be able to exercise that clout only at unknown expense to U.S. policy aims in Iraq and Israeli security concerns.

          3.2   Hizbullah-Hamas Relations

          Hizbullah is both the enemy of Hamas’ enemy (Israel) and the friend of its friend (Iran), but the two Islamist movements are divided by something more than sectarian difference and less than ideological disagreement.  The aforementioned Qassam team leader pledged support for Hizbullah, but noted that “[t]hey get all the rockets they will ever need from Iran….Do you think we get help from someone outside?  Of course not.”  Hamas legislator Mushir al-Masri echoed this view of Hizbullah, which “seemed to be shaped by resentment of its success”[31]:

One group has been living under constant Israeli occupation, the other has had six years without any kind of interference from the Jews. So you have to consider the difficulties the resistance in Palestine has had before you sit there and pass judgment. The occupation is terrible on us.[32]

The 2006 July-August war between Israel and Hizbullah also drew international attention away from the Israeli crackdown on Hamas in Gaza.[33] 

          These two dynamics largely account for Hamas’ relative passivity while Israel-Hizbullah strife held the world’s attention.  Hamas had no incentive to squander its weapons and manpower on an offensive that, by comparison to Hizbullah’s sustained rocket campaign, might seem pitiful to Israelis and even fail to make a dent in global opinion.

          A third factor shaped Hamas views of the war: Hizbullah’s fortitude strengthened Palestinian hardliners against moderates, as Israel’s perceived loss led fewer Palestinians to advocate compromise with an enfeebled Zionist enemy.[34]  Palestinian radicals were too weak even to help Hizbullah effect this change, but if Israel and America permit Hamas to arm and ensconce itself in Gaza, then all three dynamics point toward Hamas intervention in future wars.

4.0   Immediate Policy Considerations

          Hamas’ triumph in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections created a policy dilemma for the U.S., which supports the Israeli-Palestinian peace process that Hamas has sought so violently to halt.  America therefore had backed the incumbent Fatah, but it also had enshrined democratization as a key Middle East policy goal.  While it could not reverse the results of a free election, however, the U.S. chose to organize an international economic and political isolation of the Hamas-led PA.  The blockade derived legitimacy through the demands of the Quartet (composed of the U.S., EU, UN, and Russia) that Hamas recognize Israel, accept past treaties with the Jewish state, and renounce violence.  This period witnessed the proliferation of arguments that the U.S. should directly engage with Hamas, but the Bush Administration withstood these appeals.

          Once Hamas militarily seized Gaza and Fatah asserted authority over the West Bank, though, the U.S. renewed its ties to a Fatah-led PA that rules over the largest and most populous Palestinian territory.  America no longer faced the policy dichotomy of either isolating or engaging Hamas; now it could try to broker a Fatah-Israel deal instead.  The ensuing Annapolis Conference in late November 2007 thus sidelined Hamas.  And theoretically, the U.S. could circumvent the need to deal with that group altogether – if America simultaneously (a) compels the PA to eradicate the widespread corruption that likely cost Fatah the 2006 elections[35] and (b) prompts fresh Palestinian elections, and if (c) a defeated Hamas agrees to surrender power.  However, none of these are probable contingencies, and ultimately, the U.S. likely will have to confront Hamas’ control of Gaza directly.  These considerations lend renewed weight to the contention that America should engage in dialogue with Hamas authorities.  That argument usually proceeds as follows:

          The historical record shows that extremist movements are forced to soft-pedal their radical ideologies upon assuming the concrete responsibilities of day-to-day governance – or that the democratic process itself exerts a moderating influence on competing parties.  And lo! Hamas indeed has abided by a now-defunct cease-fire (tahdiya) and has offered Israel a twenty-year truce (hudna), on condition that it fully redeploy to its pre-1967 borders.  Therefore America can broker a deal with Hamas, and given that Hamas enjoys a democratic mandate, America must engage with it to bolster U.S. credibility on the topic of democracy.

          4.1   Hamas’ Domestic Considerations

          Unfortunately, this argument is deeply flawed.  Hamas’ seemingly moderate overtures since 2006 merely reflect a contradictory set of policy imperatives.  On the one hand, and as discussed above, Hamas’ overarching objective is to replace Israel with an Islamist state.  On the other hand, after forming a PA government in 2006, and again after seizing Gaza in 2007, Hamas needed to disengage from Israel in order to acquire the political maneuvering space it needed to fight corruption and lawlessness and to enact the new economic, social, and health policies that it had promised its electorate.[36]  Hamas therefore had to suppress terrorism that would invite major Israeli retaliations, and it had to loosely coordinate with Israel in order to import electricity and water, to receive customs revenues, or even to control access to its territories.[37]

          So although Hamas has not altered its dominant strategy of annihilating the Jewish state, it periodically has adopted the tactic of fostering an interim period of tahdiya, or even seeking a longer-lasting hudna, during which it could consolidate its rule over the Palestinian populace and ready itself for the next phase of warfare against Israel, this time under Iran’s aegis.  As mentioned earlier, the very concept of a hudna derives from the Islamic tradition of forging temporary truces that are meant to last only until Muslims grow strong enough to dictate the terms of peace to their foes.[38]

          But because Hamas’ offers of tahdiyat and hudnat do not denote its recognition of the Jewish state or its entrance into the Oslo peace process – and because Hamas has proposed similar armistices for years[39] – the major premise of the argument for engaging Hamas is its assumption that a democratic transition of power breeds moderation.  While various illiberal parties worldwide have experienced this transformation, others (most notably the Nazis and fascists in Germany and Italy, respectively) have not.  The trick, then, is to determine which background conditions maximize the chances that Hamas will moderate and to measure this ideal against the real Palestinian political landscape.

          4.2   Conclusions: Three Final Causes for Pessimism

          Here, comparisons with other cases of Mideast democratization – or of the moderation of Islamist movements – yield three key institutional criteria that Palestinian politics must satisfy before it can hope to co-opt Hamas into the peace process.  First, only an open and vibrant democratic system will motivate Hamas “to compete for new constituencies or marginal voters rather than cater to its extremist base.”[40]  Yet Hamas’ domestic agenda of Islamization and its clashes with Fatah[41] hardly have contributed to a democratic culture.

          Second, the Palestinians must move toward the Turkish and Jordanian models of a strong secular army and moderate state, respectively, which exert constant pressure on Islamist parties to temper their more radical stances.  Conversely, Hizbullah’s ascendance within a fragmented Lebanese policy reveals the risks of “a balance of power [that is not] tilted against the Islamists.”[42]  But PA President Abbas is in no position to dominate a nascent Palestinian policy in which Hamas retains an independent military capability.[43]  Of course, America could undertake to substantially strengthen the Palestinian presidency, but it would risk reviving an Arafat-style autocracy that could undercut seriously the prospect of democratization[44] and encourage Hamas to bandwagon against it.

          Third, Hamas will moderate – if ever – “only through sustained experience over several years and several electoral cycles,” as evidenced by the lengthy maturation process undergone by Turkey’s Islamist parties and Egypt’s MB.[45]  But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has generated especially powerful short-term incentives for Hamas to derail the peace process and therefore to stall its own long-term moderation and disarmament.[46]  The long-term solution to all three of these dilemmas is clear – the backing or creation of a distinctly liberal Palestinian government and political coalition that can contain and reform Hamas.  Yet such a political project would entail efforts as intensive and intricate as in the post-World War II denazification of Germany or defeat of Italian communism,[47] and it is doubtful that America still possesses sufficient expertise, patience, or expendable funds to succeed in ventures of this scope.