The Hamas Victory: Nightmare or the End of Terrorism?

Photo by Yawar

By Tarek Fatah & Jehad Aliweiwi

The Chicken Littles of the West are portraying the "sweeping" victory of Hamas as a doomsday scenario. Insinuations are being made that Muslims are fundamentally incapable of adapting to democracy and creating a civil society. On the surface, this theory seems plausible. After all, in both Iraq and Palestine, elections conducted under foreign occupation have resulted in the victory of Islamic fundamentalists who wish to impose Shariah.

However, an equally valid argument can be made that the rise of Islamic fundamentalists is a direct result of foreign occupation and the deliberate and systematic stifling by the occupying power of liberal, progressive and secular forces within these societies.

Robert Dreyfuss has written extensively about the role of the US in promoting and propelling Islamic extremists in the Muslim world to counter the influence of more progressive and liberal political forces. His book, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam reveals the links between the CIA and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Commenting on Israel’s reaction to the victory of Hamas, Dreyfuss wrote in TomPaine.Com that it was Israel itself who facilitated the creation of Hamas.

Dreyfuss writes: “Israel has only itself to blame for the emergence of Hamas. After 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank, the Israeli authorities encouraged the growth of Islamism as a counter to Palestinian nationalism and the PLO. In 1967, Israel freed Ahmed Yassin, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who founded Hamas in 1978-88, and they encouraged the Islamic right and the Brotherhood to take control of mosques and student groups. In 1977-78, the Israeli government of Menachem Begin’s Likud officially licensed Yassin’s Islamic movement and gave it official Israeli blessing. Throughout the 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood fought pitched battles against the PLO."

Now, after creating the conditions for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the US and Israel are making things worse by denying the right of Hamas to represent the Palestinian people.

This scenario is not new. We have travelled this road before and seen the consequences of this folly.

In December 1991, the militant Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) surprised everyone by winning the first stage of national legislative elections. The victory stunned the West and before the FIS could win the crucial second round of elections, the Algerian army stepped in, and with the tacit approval of the US and Europe, cancelled the elections. Several years of savage civil war followed in which not only tens of thousands died, but also a fresh generation of Islamic militants was born.

In attempting to curb Islamic militancy in Algeria, the actions of the United States and Europe achieved the exact opposite.

THE MYTH OF A SWEEPING VICTORY

In addition, this Hamas victory can hardly be referred to as ‘sweeping,’ as most of the media and the pundits have forced us to believe.

Even a cursory glance at the official election results shows that most Palestinians voted against Hamas. The table below reflects the actual vote count in Party preference ballot.

The Palestinian electoral system allows for a dual vote—one for the party and the other for the local candidate. 66 legislators are elected based on the Party lists, while the other 66 seats are determined by the first-past-the-post system

It is in the second ballot, where many independents contested that Hamas managed to win a disproportionate high number of seats; 45 for Hamas vs. 17 for Fatah. The final tally giving Hamas a 74 seat majority in the 132 seat parliament.

Having said that, the Hamas victory, forces us all to confront the reality of democracy. Do we respect the will of a people or do we add to their cynicism about democracy as a system tolerated only if it serves the interests of the US and its allies.

We hope the West has learnt from its Algerian folly. It is time western governments took a deep breath and resisted the temptation to act hastily and sow the seeds of another crisis by rejecting the will of the Palestinian people.

The victory of Hamas and the ascendancy of its social conservative Islamist agenda has been a huge disappointment to many Palestinians and Muslims worldwide. Many of us believe in a secular, independent and sovereign Palsetine where religion would not be the basis of citizenship.

Many prominent Palestinian share this concern. Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, who was re-elected on a liberal secular platform, has said the Hamas victory is a dramatic turning point and that she is concerned they will impose their fundamentalist social agenda and lead the Palestinians into international isolation.

We believe that the victory of Hamas has more to do with a sense of failure and mismanagement associated with Fatah, then a belief in the Hamas political agenda and the logical outcome of over 30 years of living under Israeli occupation.

Fatah betrayed the trust of the people of occupied Palsetine. Fatah officials amassed fortunes with an inflated sense of entitlement, while their countrymen toiled in poverty and in hopelessness. The Palestinian Left too became totally irrelevant to the masses. The dwindling electoral fortunes of the PFLP are a testament to the Left’s bankruptcy—a feature common across the Muslim world.

SUPPORTING HAMAS RIGHT TO RULE IS NOT SUPPORT FOR ITS IDEOLOGY

Defending the right of Hamas to represent the Palestinian people, should not be confused as an endorsement of its fundamentalist social conservative agenda and its use of suicide bombers to kill Israeli civilians. Hamas’ social conservatism has more in common with the Christian Right in the US than the pluralism that has governed Palestinian society for centuries.

It is important that this distinction be made. Too many Islamists in North America while defending the right of Hamas to form government are shy of criticizing its medieval politics and outdated view of the world.

A senior leader of Hamas, Sheik Mohammed Abu Teir, has been quoted by Toronto’s Globe and Mail as saying, “introducing sharia would be the first act of the new Hamas-controlled Palestinian Legislative Council.”

In the interview, the Hamas leader provided a rare insight into the Islamic militant organisation’s view of the world. He told the Globe that Hamas would revamp the Palestinian education system by separating girls' and boys' classes. “We will take such measures because we look at examples in the West, like Sweden. They have the highest level of co-education and the highest level of suicides,” he said.

Isn’t it ironic that Hamas, an organisation that endorses and celebrates suicide bombers, would have the nerve to judge Sweden negatively because of that country’s supposed high suicide rate?

This is not the Palestine Edward Said dreamed of. This is not the country Yasser Arafat fought for. This is not the place Ekbal Ahmed would have preferred to die in. This is not the vision of Mahmoud Darwesh or Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Yet, in their wisdom, the Palestinian people have given Hamas a mandate, and this needs to be respected.

However, all is not lost. Sifting through the election results, one can see a glimmer of hope in the ‘third option’ available to Palestinians in the occupied territories and the diaspora. Both Mustafa Barghouti and Hanan Ashrawi represent the forces of reason, social activism and civic society. These are the people who offer hope for the future while Fatah and Hamas play political football with the Palestinian people; Fatah treating the people like a feudal lord and Hamas invoking a medieval past.

But no matter how deeply one differs with Palestinian Islamists and their poltics, the fact of the matter is that Hamas now has the mandate to represent the people of the occupied Palestinian territories.

To reject this mandate will send a disturbing message, not just to the people of Palestine, but to the rest of the Arab world as well, where ordinary citizens have been struggling for the introduction of democracy, long before George Bush saw its merits, and where the US has propped up dictatorships and monarchies for decades. If Israel and the West do not accept the results of the Palestinian election, it will only validate the claim by Islamic fundamentalists that parliamentary democracy is acceptable to the West only if serves the interests of the US, not the Arab people.

If Israel makes the election of Hamas an excuse not to engage with the Palestinians, cynics will not be wrong to ask: Where was this engagement when Fatah was in power? After all Israel had 10 years to thrash out a deal with Fatah, but refused to do so and spared no chance to undermine the PA and dismiss Fatah.

Many of us have no love lost for Hamas, but we urge the new government in Canada and the rest of the so-called Western world, to not reject out rightly a working relationship with the new Hamas led government in Ramallah.

During the election campaign, when asked whether his government would deal with democratically elected Hamas officials, Canada’s new Prime Minister Stephen. Harper called the question "hypothetical," but added: "We will have to see an evolution for that to be an acceptable situation."

We believe that by respecting the democratic wishes of the Palestinian people, Canada can facilitate the “evolution” of Hamas from an armed group to a mainstream political party.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, writing in Tikkun, spoke for many Israelis and Palestinians when he said, “Without being able to provide any reason to believe that it could deliver an improvement in the conditions of life of the Palestinian people, the Fatah party seems to have been decisively rebuked by the Palestinian people. But this was not a vote for endless war with Israel, but repudiation of the non-performing government of Fatah.”

Many friends of Palestine are confident that if allowed to govern, and faced with the realpolitik of the region, Hamas will recognise the State of Israel and engage in peace talks. Other armed groups have made this transition, members of the Irgun terrorist gang have risen to become Israeli Prime Ministers, why not give Hamas a chance?

Tarek Fatah is host of the weekly TV show The Muslim Chronicle on CTS-TV while Jehad Aliweiwi is host of the CKLN radio show, Kan Ya Makan. Both sit on the board of the Muslim Canadian Congress.