Can Hamas still walk tall in Gaza's streets?
Israel's ferocious bombardment of Gaza was intended to teach its radical
Islamist government a permanent lesson. But after three weeks of fighting,
Hamas has not been battered into submission. And, amid the rubble, the
organisation's prestige among many of the Palestinians remains intact. Peter
Beaumont and Hazem Balousha in Gaza City report
* Peter Beaumont and Hazem Balousha
* The Observer, Sunday 18 January 2009
* larger | smaller
* Article history
There is little left to see of the house that once belonged to Ayad Siam in
Gaza's Sheikh Radwan district. There is a hole, 20ft deep and twice as broad,
and a few slabs of concrete and a snarl of tangled pipes. The bodies have gone.
They were the bodies of Ayad and his brother, Said Siam, Hamas's 50-year-old
minister of the interior, who was targeted in a joint operation last week by
the Israeli air force and Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence agency.
Across Gaza, Hamas personnel have been targeted and its strongholds bombed in
an attempt to destroy the organisation's infrastructure. But what, beyond death
and destruction, has Israel achieved by its onslaught? And what, as Israel
moves towards a unilateral ceasefire ahead of the inauguration of Barack Obama
as US President on Tuesday, is left of Hamas?
In the case of Said Siam and his Interior Ministry - once one of Hamas's major
centres of power - the assessment is simple to make. The four-storey Interior
Ministry complex was flattened by a missile strike early in the campaign.
Police stations and other facilities have also been destroyed. Scores, perhaps
several hundred, of his men have died. And while buildings can be rebuilt, the
death of Siam is something different.
The most senior Hamas figure to be killed by Israel since the assassination of
Abdel Aziz Rantisi, Hamas's political leader, in 2004, Siam was a pillar of the
organisation, a hardliner close to exiled leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus. He
was credited with commanding its security apparatus, including Hamas's elite
executive force.
It was Siam who was reputedly one of the most forceful movers against the rival
Fatah faction in the so-called "internal fighting" between the organisations
that followed Hamas's election victory in Gaza in 2006. Hamas won that battle,
ousting its secular opponents from Gaza and launching the chain of events that
led to Israel's assault on its power-base. Now the Hamas hardman is gone. But
the organisation's prestige appears to have survived intact, and even emerged
enhanced.
Wael Abd Latef, 38, a bookshop owner from the Tal el-Hawa district of Gaza
City, was convinced that the long days of bombardment have had little effect on
Hamas. He abandoned his house five days ago with the arrival of Israeli tanks,
and on Friday returned to check his property. "It's a war against the
civilians. It's not against Hamas," he said. "They think that it's against
Hamas, but it's not. The situation is a disaster for Palestinian people, not
Hamas. Israel started the war against Palestinians. They imposed sanctions on
Palestinians. Hamas demands the world just leave the siege and break the
blockade on Palestinians by opening the curtains. Hamas spent a long time
helping the Palestinian people here and worked for its interests.
"Hamas has the authority and the legitimacy to rule Gaza. I don't think the war
affected Hamas that much. They destroyed everything, but Hamas is still there.
Hamas will show its power when the war is over." He was scathing about the
Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, head of Fatah, whose term in office is
ending.
Across Gaza and the West Bank, the rumblings of discontent have grown as Abbas
stood on the sidelines while Israeli artillery has pounded Gaza. "Abbas has no
authority to lead the Palestinian people. When he was elected, we were
expecting him to be the leader for all Palestinian people, but he became just a
leader for Fatah and its people. I don't think he will be back here."
Not everyone on the strip is as supportive of Hamas. Ahmed Tafwiq, 27, a civil
servant from Shujaih, said: "I am totally against the so-called resistance,
because it proved a total failure. We used to hear these slogans of how strong
our resistance is. I believed the slogans. But when the war started, nothing
happened. I live in an area close to the border with Israel. I used to see
hundreds of Hamas and other factions' gunmen waiting for Israeli troops who
might storm Gaza. But, since the first day of the war, none of them appeared.
And Hamas still talks about a resistance that did nothing to protect our
people."
But there is little doubt that Israel's onslaught on the government of Gaza has
generated sympathy for Hamas, even on the West Bank, where Fatah dominates.
Qadourah Fares, a former member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and head
of the Palestinian Prisoner's Association, was convinced that, far from
weakening the organisation, Israel's war has strengthened its grassroots
support.
"The war in Gaza will certainly strengthen Hamas in Palestinian society. Israel
may be able to weaken Hamas militarily, but they cannot eliminate it at the
popular level. And once the military activities halt in Gaza, Hamas will
declare victory and this will certainly strengthen it in the West Bank. Fatah,
on the other hand, will lose more ground, because this is the first time in its
history that it is neither leading nor participating in the conflict against
Israel. The Palestinian people are fighting the occupation, while Fatah is
playing the role of the spectator."
Hamas, which means "zeal" in Arabic, now stands at a crossroads. The
organisation has become familiar to the world as a movement dedicated to the
destruction of Israel: a terrorist group, uninterested in peace, and brutal in
the way it has exerted its control on Gaza. But the simplicity of this
description is misleading.
Its foundation in 1987 - as Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, one of its founders, explained
to his Israeli interrogators, who had tortured the paraplegic cleric's son
within his earshot to persuade him to talk - was directed both towards
cementing Gaza's socially conservative traditions and engaging in armed
struggle against Israel. Instrumental in launching the first intifada, the
greatest problem with its depiction - as Rosemary Hollis, a Middle East expert
at City University claimed - is the insistence on framing it exclusively in
political and military terms.
"You have to understand it as a movement that has grown out of the social
fabric, just as Hezbollah emerged from Lebanon," she said last week, after
returning from a visit to the region.
Its covenant - drawn up by Yassin and fellow founders in the al-Shatti refugee
camp in Gaza City - declared that all the lands of what was British Mandate
Palestine, which preceded Israel's creation, were an Islamic waqf, an endowment
given by God to Muslims for all time.
Assassinated by the Israelis in 2004, Yassin was a pragmatist. Even as the Oslo
peace process - which Hamas opposed - was dying and Hamas was sending suicide
bombers to Israel, Yassin was also outlining a more nuanced vision. While a
final settlement with Israel could never be achieved, what was possible, said
Yassin and later leaders, was a lengthy hudna - a generation-long cessation of
hostilities with Israel, if Israel was prepared to end the occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza and withdraw to the pre-1967 borders. The logic was simple.
Yassin was convinced that one day Israel would fail or be defeated. But he
believed, too, that that was the work for future generations.
Yassin's successor and co-founder of Hamas was Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who was
prone to delivering bloodthirsty speeches and took a far more hardline view.
But there were others who took an even more pragmatic position than Yassin. In
the aftermath of municipal elections in 2005, which gave Hamas effective
control of several West Bank cities, its leaders were obliged to co-operate
with Israel over key issues.
The differences within Hamas are not new. Struggles between factions have long
existed, leading to defections and violence. There have been battles between
the leadership in Gaza and colleagues on the West Bank; between the leadership
in Palestine and those surrounding leader Khaled Meshaal in exile in Damascus;
between hardliners such as Siam and figures regarded as more moderate, whose
influence had been believed to be waning.
When the violence ceases, Hamas is likely to be forced to enter a period of
self-examination. "The outcome already is that Hamas has realised that it can't
do anything on its own," says Zaki Chehab, a journalist with Al Hayat and
author of Inside Hamas. "Hamas is a guerilla force. It has not lost a large
number of people in terms of its overall membership. In the long term, this
will force Hamas to think more internally." Chehab also believed that the
assault on Gaza coincided with a collapse of support even among moderate
Palestinians for a peace process.
Echoing Chehab, Nicholas Pelham of the International Crisis Group in Jerusalem
believed that, while Hamas may survive the present events, it is likely to be
"chastened". "I think they have been surprised by the scale of Israel's attack.
But at the end of this Hamas is still going to be there. It will have to
reassess its relationship with Fatah. The conflict with Abbas and the
Palestinian Authority has been debilitating. They only weaken themselves. They
need to re-examine reconciliation. And if that happens, it is only going to
make it harder for the Israelis."
It is this that might render pyrrhic any victory that Israel claims. Hamas
seems likely to survive with a capacity to fire rockets - even if it chooses
not to. And the experience of Israel's own anti-smuggling operations on Gaza's
Rafah border was that, with even troops on the ground, it could not destroy all
the tunnels. But most important of all is Hamas's position in Palestinian
society and its influence. If it comes through the past three weeks with more
support, and more unified with its rivals, then it seems hard to see what real
benefits Israel will have gained, save to have conducted a savage demonstration
of power.
One possible form of a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah may be a renewed
agreement in line with the text of the Mecca agreement in 2007, which brought
an end to the internal fighting. Hamas signed a deal that said it would
"respect" - if not commit itself to - international agreements signed by the
Fatah-led Palestine Liberation Organisation, including, some understood, the
PLO's recognition of the state of Israel.
The terms are as likely to be dictated by Fatah's declining fortunes as by any
new authority that Hamas derives from the horror of Gaza. "The future of Fatah
is being tested as never before," said Zakariya Mohammad, a Fatah activist from
the West Bank city of Hebron.
"It can decide whether it wants to persist or disappear. It's a matter of to be
or not to be. If it engages [with Hamas], it has the opportunity to survive; if
it stays passive as regards Gaza, it will certainly vanish.
"There are some leaders who were waiting for Hamas to be broken, believing that
this will restore the glory of Fatah. I do not understand how they expect to be
popular betting on the enemy to win. They are mistaken when they think that
Hamas will be swept away.
"The majority of Fatah want to join the current battle, while the leadership
remains committed to calm. Fatah can seize the golden opportunity now in order
to restore its national credibility by engaging. If not, Fatah and the PLO will
be pronounced dead within a very short period of time."
The two territories of Palestine
Population (2008)
West Bank 2,400,000+ with Palestinian Arab (Muslim) 75%, Palestinian Arab
(Christian) 8%, Jewish 17%)
Gaza Strip 1,500,000+ with Palestinian Arab (Muslim) 99.4%
Politics
West Bank Ramallah in the central West Bank is the main power base of Fatah.
Gaza Birthplace of Hamas, which has been in power since 2006.
Major cities
West Bank Hebron - 166, 000.
Gaza Gaza City - 410, 000.
t
About this article
Close
Peter Beaumont and Hazem Balousha report on how Hamas has survived despite
Israel's bombardment of Gaza
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk at 00.01 GMT on Sunday 18
January 2009. It appeared in the Observer on Sunday 18 January 2009 on p48 of
the World news section. It was last updated at 00.06 GMT on Sunday 18 January
2009.
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Jusfiq Hadjar gelar Sutan Maradjo Lelo
Allah yang disembah orang Islam tipikal dan yang digambarkan oleh al-Mushaf itu
dungu, buas, kejam, keji, ganas, zalim lagi biadab hanyalah Allah fiktif.
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