Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin

Hamas

by Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell

(2010 Polity Press)

Book Review – Part II

Milton-Edwards’ and Farrell’s 2010 book Hamas makes it strikingly clear that money and public opinion polls have influenced Palestine Liberation Army (PLO) and Hamas policies far more than lofty political goals. The primary reason the PLO abandoned their pledge, in 1993, to liberate Palestine through armed struggle was that they were nearly bankrupt with the loss of their Gulf donors. Their decision to negotiate a peace with Israel made them enormously unpopular with one million Gazan refugees. Still intent on returning to the lands they had lost in Israel, they had no interest whatsoever in creating a Palestinian state.

The response from Hamas was to issue a fatwa (death sentence issued by Islamic religious leaders) against the Fatah-led PLO. Determined to derail the negotiations, they also launched a massive campaign of violence, incorporating or the first time a new tactic known as “martyrdom” (i.e. suicide) bombings. Each martyrdom bombing resulted in a payment of approximately $25,000 to the suicide bomber’s family, financed mainly by Saddam Hussein and Saudi Arabia.

The Creation of the Palestinian Authority

The 1993 negotiated settlement, known as the Oslo Accords, granted the West Bank and Gaza limited autonomy under Israeli military control. It also created the Palestinian Authority (PA), a shrewd move the US and Israel employed to split and crush the Palestinian resistance. By making the Palestinian leadership the civil authority, they shifted much popular anger away from Israel and towards the PLO.

Arafat and the PLO leadership returned from exile to run the Palestinian Authority (PA). Owing to a continuing embargo by Gulf donors, Arafat had to lay off hundreds of public sector workers and slash social services to prevent a total meltdown of the Palestinian economy. Israel, meanwhile, made Arafat responsible for controlling Hamas militants. His solution was to put thousands of them in prison and torture them. There were numerous reports of prisoners being beaten, forced to shave their beards and sodomized with coke bottles. Moreover PA security services routinely blackmailed families, with offers to release prisoners in return for bribes of $10,000 or more. All this occurred as Israel was continuing to destroy Palestinian homes and olive trees to build more Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

The Second Intifada

In 2000, Palestinian anger at their extreme poverty and repression boiled over in armed insurrection, the second Intifada. In 2002, the Saudis put forward a peace proposal which would have normalized Israel’s relations with the Arab world in return for their withdrawal from the occupied territories. As before Hamas, which still demanded the right of return (to their homelands in Israel) for all exiled Palestinians, tried to derail peace negotiations with a wave of sniper attacks and car and suicide bombings. These were directed against the PLO security services, Jewish settlers in Palestine and civilians inside Israel. Instead of retaliating against Hamas, Israel punished Arafat by sending tanks into the West Bank to bombard his headquarters, commencing a military siege that kept him prisoner until he died in 2004.

Hamas Enters Electoral Politics

Hamas boycotted the January 2005 presidential elections, giving the Fatah candidate Mahmoud Abbas an easy victory. In May 2005, the Hamas leadership made a controversial decision to pursue direct political power by standing candidates in Gaza and West Bank local body elections. They did so in parallel with militant attacks on Israel. Following Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal of Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza in August 2005, this included Qassam rocket attacks on Israeli border towns.

Hamas never expected to win the parliamentary elections in January 2006, a success Milton-Edwards and Farrell attribute to widespread disgust, both in the West Bank and Gaza, with Fatah/PLO corruption and inefficiency. Refusing to recognize the Hamas victory, Mahmood Abbas installed his own non-elected parliament in the West Bank. He also refused to relinquish Fatah-controlled security posts to the new Hamas government. Israel, meanwhile, froze funds needed to pay PA officials in Gaza. When Europe and the US also froze Palestinian developmental assistance, Hamas had no choice but to turn to Iran for training, weapons and financial aid.

The Failed CIA Coup

After a brief experiment with a “unity” government, in which Fatah and Hamas ruled jointly, the CIA and Abbas launched an 18 month military coup, determined to dislodge Hamas from power in Gaza. In June 2006, Hamas came out the victor, employing 16,000 fighters to force 70,000 CIA-backed members of Abbas’ Preventive Security Organization to flee Gaza.

Hamas Drops in the Opinion Polls

By June 2008, their popularity waning owning to brutal sanctions and shortages of food, medicine and other necessities, Hamas was in the exact same situation as Fatah in 1993. In desperation they agreed to a temporary ceasefire (ending suicide bombings and Qassam rocket attacks), on condition Israel end their embargo. Hamas honored the ceasefire for six months, despite Israel’s failure to end their economic blockade. In December 2008, Hamas broke the ceasefire by firing rockets into Israel. The book ends with a description of Operation Castlead, which Israel launched against Gaza in retaliation. Castlead destroyed or damaged nearly every Palestinian security installation, killed 1,300 Palestinians (including 900 civilians) and destroyed hundreds of homes and business institutions.

The good news was that Hamas experienced an instantaneous uptick in the polls.

Beverly Milton-Edwards is Professor in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. Steven Farrell, who has dual British-Irish citizenship, is Middle East Correspondent for The New York Times.

Hamas

by Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell

(2010 Polity Press)

Book Review – Part I

This review is divided into two parts. Part I describes Israel’s role in promoting and supporting the rise of Hamas. Part II describes the gradual decline of the Fatah-led PLO, which led to their 2006 election defeat.

Hamas is about the militant Palestinian group which was democratically elected to run the Palestinian Authority in 2006. The main value of the book is the rich context it provides regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which is totally absent from the mainstream media. Hamas clearly documents the role Israel played in promoting the rise of Muslim fundamentalism in Palestine. The book also emphasizes the essential role foreign financial assistance plays in perpetuating this war – with the US heavily backing Israel and other Islamic states backing the Palestinians.

According to Milton-Edwards and Farrell, Israel’s motives in backing the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine were identical to those of the US in Afghanistan and Anwar Sadat in Egypt. In all cases, the goal of supporting the Islamic fundamentalism was to counter the secular Arab leftists and nationalists who controlled most Middle Eastern states prior to 1967. The US and its allies had enormous concerns that that the leaders in power would form a single Arab economic or political block that would thwart US corporate and strategic interests.

Milton-Edwards and Farrell trace the origins of Hamas to the decision by the Muslim Brotherhood to open offices in Palestine in the 1940s, when it was still under the British Mandate. As a condition of their World War I defeat, the old Ottoman (Turkish) empire was divided up among European powers. In 1947 Britain surrendered control of Palestine, and the UN partitioned it into Jewish and Palestinian Arab states. Outraged that Jews, who represented on 32% of the population were awarded 56% of Palestine, in 1949 Syria, Egypt and Jordan joined with Palestinian jihadists, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, in declaring war on Israel. In the resulting settlement, Palestinian Arabs lost even more territory, forcing 726,000 refugees to flee to neighboring states. Gaza, to the west of Israel, came under Egyptian control. Jordan, to Israel’s east, assumed control of the West Bank. The king of Jordan, an autocratic totalitarian ruler, immediately closed the West Bank offices of the Muslim Brotherhood and placed their members under close police surveillance.

In the 1967 six day war, Egypt, Jordan and Syria attacked Israel and were once again defeated. The West Bank and Gaza came under Israeli military occupation, while Israel banned the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and forced Yasar Arafat and other PLO leaders to flee into exile.

Israel Turns a Blind Eye to Mijamma Violence

Prior to 1973, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood saw its primary role as performing charitable works and speaking out against the liberal Westernized culture Palestinian youth brought back when they went to university in Egypt. In 1973 they formed a new organization Al-Mijamma ‘al-Islami (The Islamic Center), under the leadership of a charismatic wheelchair bound cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Mijamma’s ultimate goal was to reclaim Palestinian land and homes Israel had seized in 1947 and 1967. However they felt the first step in building a militant resistance organization was to re-establish Palestine as an Islamic society. Thus despite considerable anti-Israeli rhetoric, their main focus was on islamization, which they approached by teaching, preaching and setting up community institutions to provide food and other social services to impoverished Palestinian families.

Initially their political attacks (demonstrations, street ambushes, attacks on homes and offices) were limited to so-called Israeli “collaborators” and individuals linked with the PLO and other secular and leftist groups and institutions, including teaching and medical associations. However once they assumed control of the Islamic University of Gaza in 1973, they began harassing and expelling female students who refused to wear Islamic dress, as well as beating up men who spoke out against these activities.

Israel, which governed both the West Bank and Gaza after 1967, turned a blind eye to this lawless violence. They only provided direct financial aid to the Islamic Academy in Hebron, where many of Hamas’s military leaders would receive their training. Yet in 1978 Israel granted official recognition to Mijamma, allowing it to meet openly and publicly, at a time when all other Palestinian parties were banned as illegal terrorist organizations.

The Birth of Hamas

During the 1987 insurrection, called the Intifada, Mujamma renamed itself Hamas. Their founding document, which disputes Israel’s right to establish a religious state on Palestinian territory, is full of references to common anti-Semitic conspiracies. In addition to quoting from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a proven forgery), it blames “the Jews” for the French revolution, the Communist revolution and secret societies like the Freemasons, Rotary Club and Lions. Nevertheless despite their full participation alongside the PLO in the Intifada, Israel continued to allow foreign money to flow freely to Hamas, while they continued to freeze PLO assets. Likewise Israel allowed Hamas to keep their schools open in Gaza, while they force West Bank Palestinian schools to close.

In 1990, Israel finally began cracking down on Hamas, following the murder of two Israeli soldiers. Their leader Sheikh Hassan was arrested, tried and imprisoned. Three years later, Israel illegally (under international law) deported 400 Hamas members, following the kidnapping of an Israeli border guard.

Meanwhile the PLO, Hamas’s rival, made the tragic mistake of endorsing Sadam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991. This resulted in the suspension of all aid the PLO previously received from wealth Gulf oil states.

To be continued.

Beverly Milton-Edwards is Professor in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. Steven Farrell, who has dual British-Irish citizenship, is Middle East Correspondent for The New York Times.

1987 Intifada - note slingshot

Like the 1976 Soweto uprising, the teenagers who sparked the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987 were influenced by a similar breakdown in parental authority, though for different reasons. From 1967, when Israel first seized the Gaza strip from Egypt, until the 1987 Intifada, Gaza, which has always been much poorer than the West Bank, was little more than a cluster of refugee camps. This meant there was no central authority, other than the soldiers from the Israel Defense Force (IDF), who maintained order. According to a recent study by EuroMed Youth  (http://www.euromedyouth.net/IMG/pdf/07-EuroMedJeunesse-Etude_PALESTINE.pdf), the lack of central authority laid the groundwork for the breakdown of parental authority. Because civil society broke down following Gaza’s separation from Egypt, it was up to young people, who freely intermingled in schools, universities and the streets to create the social/political arena in which intellectual debate could occur. In 1987, Yasar Arafat and the other Palestinian resistance leaders in the PLO – who would later assume this role – were still in exile.

Children Who Supported Their Families

Other factors contributed to the strong sense of autonomy Palestinian teenagers felt from their families. Witnessing the routine humiliation of their parents by Israeli soldiers was a major factor in undermining their authority. Although some Palestinians were allowed to cross into Israel to work, their wages were extremely low. Many families depended on the income of children and teenagers, working as street vendors. In some cases young people were the sole source of income.

Demographic factors also played a major role in the empowerment of Palestinian youth in the late eighties. Approximately 65% of Palestinians were under 25 (due to low life expectancy, older age groups are underrepresented). In 1987, this group had a 37% unemployment rate.

Children take on the Israel Defense Force

The first Palestinian Intifada started spontaneously when Palestinian children, teenagers and college students rioted in response to the killing of six Palestinian students by the IDF. Initially Palestinian youth battled Israeli solders armed only with rocks, bottles and slingshots. The movement quickly spread to the West Bank and was joined by underground Palestinian resistance organizations, such as Fatah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, who taught the youths how to make Molotov cocktails and sophisticated tactics, such as burning tires or constructing barricades to protect themselves from retaliation.

The response by the IDF was massive brutality, with random killings, arbitrary detention and torture of Palestinian children and teenagers. By 1989 13,000 Palestinian teenagers were in Israeli jails.

Israel Forced to Establish the Palestinian Authority

The first Intifada didn’t end until 1993, when under the Oslo agreement, Israel agreed to establish the Palestinian Authority, and Yasar Arafat and other PLO members returned from exile to run it.

From 1968: the Year That Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky

Kurlansky discusses a total of sixteen popular uprisings – in addition to those in the US, France, and Czechoslovakia – that occurred in 1968. I  list four more that have clearly altered the course of world events. As I recall, the way the mainstream media reported them minimized the threat they posed to established authority. Perhaps this is why many progressives tend to underestimate their significance.

Mexico

• Tlaleloco Massacre in lead-up to 1968 Olympics (September)

According to Kurlansky, the Tlaleloco Massacre, like the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, was the beginning of the end for Mexico’s corrupt and totalitarian PRI party, which ruled continuously between 1929 and 2000. Mexico’s 1968 student movement was extremely fractured until it unified in response to systematic and brutal police and army repression. Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, who was intensely paranoid about the increasing politicization of the Olympics (by black athletics protesting efforts to reinstate South Africa’s apartheid team), especially in light of the massive street protests that occurred a month earlier at the Chicago Democratic Convention.

The London Guardian reported 325 “official” dead in the massacre, though thousands more were imprisoned or simply “disappeared.” This triggered more than a decade of well-organized protests by family members demanding to know the whereabouts of their loved ones.

Spain

• Public emergence of the underground Basque separatist movement (ETA), with the adoption of a strategy of violent resistance to violent repression by Spanish police.

Palestine

• Adoption of strategy of violence by Fatah and the Palestinian Liberation Army (under Yassir Arafat)

In response to Israel’s territorial gains in the 1967 war (the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, Gaza Strip from Egypt and East Jerusalem from Jordan), Fatah and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, under Yassir Arafat, became the dominant force in Palestinian politics. Previously Palestinian/Israeli policy was controlled by pro-Baathist Arab nationalists in the Arab countries bordering Israel. Fatah and the PLO openly advocated a strategy of violence and the training thousands of Palestinian refugees in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan as guerrillas.

Nigeria

• Brutal siege by Nigerian army (with British assistance) of Biafra independence movement in oil-rich Niger delta.

Biafra was spun by the US media as yet another African famine, with all the images they showed is of starving Biafran children with their swollen Kwashiorkor bellies. The real story was that Nigerian forces (with British assistance) were brutally suppressing the Biafran separatist movement in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Besides shooting more than fifty thousand of them, the Nigerian army was deliberately starving them to death.

The US response was to turn it over to private relief agencies to airlift supplies. Lyndon Johnson and the UN turned a deaf ear to an urgent plea for military support for aid aircraft that were being shot down by the Nigerian army. He said we couldn’t interfere in the internal affairs of an African country (only an Asian country like Vietnam).

I have just watched a remarkable talk by Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi at the July 2010 Chautaqua convocation (see http://fora.tv/2010/07/13/Hanan_Ashrawi_Palestinian_Womens_Quest_for_Validation). Ashrawi, long a spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority, has been largely absent from the US media since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007. When the mainstream media focus shifted to attacks on Hamas, presumably to distract public attention from Fatah’s illegitimate control over the West Bank (they lost the January 2007 election and legally Hamas should govern both Gaza and the West Bank).

After the Hamas party defeated the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Fatah party in democratically contested elections in January 2007, both the US and Israel rejected the election outcome. With US support, Israel attempted to reinstate the military occupation of Gaza. When Hamas fighters repulsed the Israeli Defense Force, the US and its allies imposed economic sanctions on Gaza, and Israel imposed a crippling blockade (violating UN conventions stipulating that foreign occupiers provide the necessities of life to occupied populations). The mainstream media tends to get these details wrong, which is why I clarify them.

Now that Obama has got Israel and the Palestinians to agree to resume peace talks, Ashrawi is in the news again.

Hanan Ashrawi and the Third Way Party

Dr Hanan Ashrawi is a 63 year old Palestinian Christian legislator, activist, and scholar. She was educated both at the American University of Beirut and the Univiersity of Virginia, where she received a PhD in literature. She was a protégé, colleague and close friend of the late internationally renowned Palestinian activist Edward Said.

She has been elected numerous times to the Palestinina Legislative Council and is a member of the Third Way party, founded in December 2005 as an alternative to the two party domination of Fatah and Hamas. In the January 2006 elections, the Third Way received 2.41% of the popular vote and won two seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. The low numbers belie their actual political strength. On June 15, 2007, Palestinina National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas named Salam Fayyad, founder and leader of the Third Way, as Prime Minister of the new “emergency government” (remember Abbas’ Fatah party lost the election), following Israel’s failed attempt to reoccupy Gaza.

The Role of Women in the Intifada

Ashrawi’s presentation at Chataqua provides a view of the Palestinian struggle rarely seen in either the mainstream or the progressive media. She focuses on the critical role Palestinian women played in building the Intifada (the Palestinian resistance movement) and the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. She points out that Israel’s wholesale imprisonment of Palestinian men during this period left it mainly to Palestinian women to carry oout the struggle against Israeli occupation.

In her view, the most important accomplishment of Palestinian women during the Intifada was the building of grassroots non-governmental organizations to provide essential services – schools, health clinics, garbage collection, security – ending the Palestinians’ reliance on Israel to provide this infrastructure. As Ashrawi points out, the women’s movement recognized early that fighting the occupation wasn’t sufficient – that they had to devote equal attention to building the infrastructure of a future Palestinian state. Palestinian women also carried out a highly effective campaign of non-violent resistance that, in 1994, allowed Yasir Arafat and other PLO leaders to return from exile to form the Palestinian Authority.

She also describes of the ongoing battle of the Palestinian women against the sexism of PLO leaders who expected them to withdraw from political life and return to their kitchens once they had won their battle for them.

Ashrawi’s Views on Hamas

Her observations on Hamas are also very interesting. She feels their victory in 2007 represents a protest vote against the failure of Fatah to end increasing Israeli encroachment on Palestinian territory and against notorious cronyism and corruption in the Fatah party. She also points out that Hamas providing a variety of essential services to sectors of the Palestinian population totally overlooked by Fatah.

She is highly critical of the US and Israeli for their violent “collective punishment” of the Palestinians for electing Hamas in 2007. In fact, she feels the US and Israel are chiefly to blame for turning the Palestinian struggle into a culture of violence, which she asserts is unlikely to be productive in building a viable Palestinian state.

Her presentation leaves no doubt the Palestinian women’s movement is the strongest in the Arab world, which Ashrawi feels is a direct result of the self-knowledge that results from fighting occupation and repression. And as she also points out, Palestinian feminism isn’t limited to educated middle class women, as in many western countries. Instead it represents a genuine cross-class movement built from the ground up. It is also her firm belief that the failure to involve the women’s movement in past peace negotiations is largely responsible for their failure.