The victory of Hamas in the recent parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories has split the international community. The European Union and the United States regard Hamas as a terrorist organization, and have threatened to withdraw aid from the Palestinian Authority. Many in the Arab world, on the other hand, have accused the West of double standards. Hamas, they say, was democratically elected, and should be afforded all the respect and recognition of a legitimate government. In our first debate of the week, we are asking: how to deal with Hamas?
A unique opportunity
Shlomo Ben-Ami
The problem doesn’t really lie in the nature of the interlocutor. After all, the PLO was also a terrorist organization bent on the destruction of the State of Israel when Rabin engaged in negotiations with them.
The problem lies in the conditions for a historic compromise. In the eyes of most Israelis, the conditions for a negotiated settlement have remained unchanged since the days when Arafat – with the full support of current President Mahmoud Abbas – turned down President Clinton’s bold peace plan. If even the PLO could not be persuaded to agree to a compromise, what can one expect from Hamas?
The reason Ariel Sharon became the embodiment of Israel’s national consensus was precisely because he shunned negotiations. The secret of his popularity lay in the fact that he replaced the discredited equation of ‘land for peace’ with a unilateralist concept of ‘land for security’. He abandoned his predecessors’ lofty dreams about a ‘New Middle East’ and ‘the end of conflict’.
It is precisely here – in the departure of the Israeli political mainstream from the discourse of ‘peace’ and ‘end of conflict’ – that a surprising coincidence exists between Israel and the new rulers of Gaza and Ramallah. Neither believes that negotiations can lead to a settlement, and both favour an additional Israeli unilateral disengagement from Palestinian lands. Indeed, this would allow Hamas to claim victory for the ‘armed struggle’ without having to make any commitment on their side.
Any sober analysis of the available options is bound to lead to the conclusion that the time has come to design a new approach. President Bush needs to realize that the real immediate choice in the Arab world is not between dictatorship and democracy, but between the secular dictatorships prevailing in most of the Arab countries and Islamic democracies.
This by no means implies that the terrorist practices of the new Palestinian rulers and their Covenant calling for the destruction of Israel should be allowed to prevail. In these respects, the conditions need to be very strict if a Hamas government is to be allowed any international legitimacy.
In practice, though, Hamas faces a terrible dilemma: while threatened with international ostracism, it urgently needs to improve the dire living conditions of the Palestinian population. It is precisely because of this dilemma that Hamas could be compelled to endorse a third way between an (unrealistic) final settlement and violent disengagement. What the PLO refused to contemplate – an interim settlement with Israel – is something Hamas would be more ready to assume.
This should pave the way for Hamas to tacitly accept a third party role in converting Israel's unilateral strategy into an internationally supervised disengagement from large areas of the West Bank. Doing so would allow them to reconcile their ideological rejection of Israel with a major step towards the ‘end of occupation’. It would also gain them a vital breathing space in which to address their domestic agenda.
Shlomo Ben-Ami is a former Israeli foreign minister and the author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy (Oxford University Press, 2006).
  Constructive Engagement
Yezid Sayigh
The prospect of Hamas holding power in the Palestinian Authority is hugely problematic given its refusal to follow the PLO and the previous ruling party Fateh in recognizing Israel’s right to exist and to disown the use of force, particularly suicide bombings, and given its social agenda, especially on gender issues and the implementation of Sharia law.
Yet, Hamas won its parliamentary majority fair and square. In fact, it did so on the basis of an electoral law that had been designed by former President Arafat’s party Fateh in order to ensure its own victory. The West therefore risks being hoisted by its own petard: it refuses to talk to ‘terrorist’ organizations, but preaches respect for democratic process and outcomes, and moreover needs to help maintain a functioning Palestinian Authority in order to revive the peace process with Israel.
The US Administration appears to have opted for a coercive approach towards Hamas. It has actively discouraged Fateh from joining a national unity government in the hope of isolating Hamas and imposing sweeping financial sanctions on it, disregarding the lesson that sanctions impose needless suffering on captive populations and, if anything, strengthen incumbent regimes.
Fateh has already shifted major executive and legislative powers and financial assets to President Mahmoud Abbas, and refused to surrender control of the over-sized security forces. The US posture is probably encouraging Fateh to destabilize the Hamas government: its militiamen are assaulting local and central government facilities in Gaza on a daily basis, and threaten renewed armed attacks against Israel.
What unites the US Administration and Fateh is the belief that a strategy of destabilizing and bankrupting a Hamas government will stoke public dissatisfaction and bring it down, leading to new elections that Fateh hopes to win. This is delusional: Hamas won because it offered an end to bad government and lawlessness, and recent opinion polls suggest that Fateh will suffer an even worse drubbing if it sabotages the democratic process and the national interest.
The US, EU, and others in the international community should avoid becoming a partisan actor in internal Palestinian politics. Diverting assistance away from the duly-elected government to the President’s office and Fateh will split the Palestinian Authority (PA) and undermine constitutional government. It will weaken financial transparency and public accountability, and polarize Palestinian politics and society, possibly with violent results.
A preferable alternative is for international representatives to meet – as needed – with duly-elected PA officials regardless of their party affiliation, while refusing to deal directly with Hamas until it meets the conditions for formal dialogue. Aid flows should continue to the PA so long as they are subject to full transparency and accountability. Only then can Hamas be held directly responsible by its own public for its policies, including the choice of meeting international conditions or not.
Otherwise the US and the EU will be seen not only to tolerate, but to actively bring about, a repeat of the Algerian scenario of 1992, when an Islamist government was refused power and a gruesome civil war ensued. In this case, the damage to the West’s claim to support genuine democracy will be far more profound than the ‘pain’ of having to deal with an unpalatable Hamas government for an uncomfortable interlude until it either meets international conditions or demonstrates conclusively that it merits a boycott.
Yezid Sayigh is Professor in Middle Eastern Studies at King’s College London. He is a former negotiator of the PLO-Israel accord of May 1994, and author of Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 (Oxford University Press, 1997 and 1999).
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