Daniel Levy has a piece here in which he analyses the latest events in Gaza. Though he makes a couple of decent points along the way, he falls into the trap of failing to treat Hamas with the respect and seriousness it deserves.
Levy says,
Never forget the basics - the core issue is still an unresolved conflict about ending an occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state - everything has to start from here to be serious (this is true also for Hamas who continue to heavily hint that they will accept the 1967 borders).
There have indeed been hints from Hamas that they would accept the 1967 borders but only as a stepping stone to its long term objective. This objective is the destruction of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic republic. For every hint of an interim willingness to accept the 1967 borders there have been a hundred loud affirmations that the destruction of Israel is the goal of Hamas and they are not going to stop till they achieve it. Why give the plainly stated less credit than the subtly hinted? Are they incapable of stating what their policy is? Why should Israel be interested in such an agreement?
U.S., Israeli and international policy towards Hamas has greatly exacerbated the situation. Hamas participated in and won democratic elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council in January 2006. Rather than test the Hamas capacity to govern responsibly and nurture Hamas further into the political arena and away from armed struggle, the U.S.-led international response was to hermetically seal-off Hamas, besiege Gaza, work to undemocratically overthrow the Hamas government and thereby allow Hamas to credibly claim that a hypocritical standard was being applied to the American democracy agenda.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the international response to Hamas’s 2006 Legislative Council was mistaken. How does that take away from Hamas’s responsibility to govern in a responsible manner? It would, for sure, make it more difficult, but it’s not clear to me how insurmountable any of these difficulties would have been had there been any sort of determination on the part of Hamas to do so. Also, how does the behavior the international community towards Hamas explain its violent seizure of power in the Strip in June 2007 and its subsequent persecution of opponents? Why assume that it was forced into governing as it has governed and why not give it credit for knowing what its goals are and acting in the manner it sees as most likely to achieve them?
Hamas were seen through the GWOT prism not as a liberation struggle, when the Saudi’s delivered a Palestinian National Unity Government in March 2007 the U.S. worked to unravel it, Palestinian reconciliation is still vetoed which encourages the least credible trends within Fatah, and unbelievably Egypt is given an exclusive mediation role with Hamas.
Are we really supposed to believe that the only thing preventing Hamas and Fatah from kissing and making up is US policy? Might not internal Palestinian factors be of at least equal importance?
Underlying all of Levy’s article there appears to be the belief that Hamas is quite simply a national liberation organization - no different in essence from hundreds of others that have appeared since the end of the Second World War - and that to the extent that it appears to want the destruction of another people, as much if not more than it wants the liberation of its own, well then, that is simply the result of misguided policy on the part of Israel, the US, the UE and, quite possibly, Caricom too. As soon as all these external actors start treating Hamas as if it were, say, a Palestinian version of the ANC then all will be well.
This is indeed a comforting view.
Eamonn, good post, though I would be more of Levy’s piece. With professional pundits working for newspapers, it’s often hard to know how much they really know about the subject they are writing on, but with Daniel Levy, it’s fair to assume that he knows a great deal better than his writing indicates.
Take this statement of his:
“contributors to the ever-proliferating Arabic language news media and blogosphere hold the U.S., and not just Israel, responsible for what happened today (and that is a position taken, for good reasons, by sensible folk, not hard-liners). – so what about those “natives” like the Palestinians??? Don’t really count, do they, and of course their deep divisions and bitter rivalries have nothing to do with anything, right?
Then Levy claims falsely that after Israel’s disengagement, “Gaza was closed off to the world” – well, this is what Saeb Erekat said in November 2005, after the agreement on the Rafah crossing was negotiated: “This is the first time in history we will run an international passage by ourselves, and it’s the first time Israel does not have a veto over our ability to do so.” True enough, but as it turned out, Hamas had a veto; and that the Rafah crossing has remained closed is due to the fact that Hamas insists on re-negotiating the agreement in a way that will cement its hold on Gaza – hardly something that should be endorsed by somebody like Levy who laments that “Palestinian reconciliation is still vetoed” – again, he knows very well that it is first and foremost Hams that exercises this veto.
“Never forget the basics - the core issue is still an unresolved conflict about ending an occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state - everything has to start from here to be serious (this is true also for Hamas who continue to heavily hint that they will accept the 1967 borders).”
I would think that for Israel, there’s another core issue: The recognition by its enemies that it has a right to exist, as a Jewish state, in peace, and with reasonable guarantees of security. Daniel Levy seems to think that this will just emerge naturally as a result of a Palestinian state being brought into being, whereas most of the main players have been at pains to tell us that it won’t. Therefore, it needs to be brought to the fore every time Palestinian needs and wishes are in review.
Levy’s is the all too typical, surface-level foray; his opening graf alone would take a few pages to deconstruct and re-situate within more realistic bounds. There are two fundamentals that are omitted from the Levy’s discussion, at least so in a frank, openly acknowledged manner:
1) The need for Hamas and the PA to recognize Israel’s right to exist and Jews’ right to live (sic!). Additionally, this needs to include those states - e.g., Iran and Syria, but others as well - who are using entities such as Hamas and Hezbollah as proxies for anti-Israel and anti-Jewish initiatives.
2) Whether or not Hamas, the PA and West Bank and Gaza based clans possess the will to become a nation/state in the first place, in terms of positive motivations and goals (i.e. self-identity, self-governance, internal coherence and cohesion in general, respect for bordering nation/states).
It can be responsibly argued that #2 would follow hand in glove if #1 were to be - genuinely and reliably - achieved, though even that can be argued otherwise. Minimally and serving as a tell-tale indicator, it might be noted how seldom #1 is acknowledged and discussed in an open, unembarrassed, unelided and probative manner.
And all that is basic, before anything dispositive can be conceived, much less effected in the real world.
The Guardian are starting to close down the comments sections on their CiF pieces relating to the situation in Gaza. This one - by Electronic Intifada head Ali Abunimah still allows comments - and the mouth-frothing continues - just look at “PJ Molloy’s” comments, which state that Israel has no right to defend itself because it’s supposedly an intrinsically criminal state whose very existence is a crime (and therefore, the Gazans/Hamas have every right to lob rockets because this is “resistance” to this crime, their being the “dispossessed” and all).
This is the clincher: if one understands Israel’s existence as being an “original sin”, then it does not matter what military action she takes: it will always be “disproportionate”, “illegal”, “evil”, you name it, and the CiF-ers will always be there to chime in.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/israel-gaza-attack-palestinian-reaction?showallcomments=true
Hamas is not a national liberation movement. It is an organization with a Nazi-like hatred for ALL Jews everywhere. It’s hatred of Jews go beyond what is happening in Gaza.
Evan is right. Every debate about Israel’s actions, becomes a debate on its right to exist.