Hamas victory restores the original equation

The legitimate electoral victory in Palestine by the group opposed by the US and Israel actually promises the best chance for justice and resolution in the Middle East

by Reed Eurchuk <reurchuk@republic-news.org>

Local activists supporting the Palestinian cause are defending the legitimacy of the recent elections in the Palestinian territories. Hamas, an Islamic organization that has historically provided social welfare services to Palestinians while struggling against Israel, won a clear victory. Despite warnings from the United States and Israel that they will not deal with Hamas, whom they regard as a terrorist organization, long-time activists believe the election holds promise for the Palestinian people. Supporters characterize Hamas as an uncorrupted and democratic organization that provides essential services and subscribes to the essential tenets of international agreements.

The election process was transparent, democratic, and offered a wide variety of choices to the electors, said Eyad Alnuweiri, who sits on the executive board of the local Palestine Community Centre. Alnuweiri applauded the high participation rate among the citizenry (78%), despite difficulties caused by the Israeli occupation. Hamas won 76 out of a total of 132 seats, as well as 4 elected independents aligned with them. Alnuweiri said that, unlike the previous government which exercised complete control and bestowed privileges and positions of favour to their cronies, Hamas is not seeking to monopolize power. Proof of this, Alnuweiri continued, is the fact that Hamas has moved to include all elements of the diverse society in a “government of national unity.”

One source of Hamas’s victory lay in its “acknowledged record of impartial and committed service to meeting the daily needs of Palestinians, running school and clinics for example,” according to a recent pamphlet put out by the Vancouver chapter of the Canada-Palestine Support Network. Israeli professor Neve Gordon wrote on the Counterpunch website that Hamas provided its social welfare services to all “families in economic distress [and they] did not need to be Hamas members, or even practicing Muslims in order to qualify for aid.”

The two areas where the supporters of the Palestinians clash most visibly with the supporters of Israel revolve around, first, Hamas’s approach to what Israel and the United States call the “peace process,” and second, Hamas’s refusal to disavow armed struggle. Regarding the latter, Alnuweiri pointed out that the Geneva Convention allows a people the right to resist any occupation of their land by a foreign power. As well, there are many historical examples of governments negotiating with opposition parties while they continued the struggle against them. Alnuweiri points to the United Kingdom’s ongoing negotiations over Northern Ireland with the IRA, even as they continued to fight against the UK. As well, the United States negotiated with representatives of the Vietnamese opposition while the war continued there.

One year ago, Hamas unilaterally ceased its campaign of suicide bombings. Hamas has now proposed a complete cessation of violence on both sides.

Yet the most difficult area for Israel and the country that sustains their occupation, the United States, revolves around the peace process. They worry a Hamas-led government will turn its back on the previously negotiated accords.

But many Palestinians and their supporters hope that Hamas will disavow the Oslo peace process. To them, Oslo and the associated peace initiatives represent a long, barren road, one punctuated each step of the way by further encroachment of Palestinian land, the building of new illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied lands, collective punishment (destruction of citizens’ housing, uprooting of lemon groves and olive trees, monopolization of water by Israeli occupiers), summary executions by Israelis of Palestinians, and the imprisonment and torture of thousands, many without charges. As ex-Israeli Dr Oren Ben-Dor wrote in an article posted on Counterpunch, Hamas is reintroducing the ethical dimension into the debate by attempting “to bring the actuality of Palestinian catastrophe, the Nakbah, in 1948, into our consciousness.” The Nakbah, the original dispossession of the Palestinians in the creation of the Israeli state, lies at the root of the dispute. Hamas is reasserting that reality.

“It is important to understand Israel and the United States’s response to the election” warned local activist Mordecai Briemberg. Briemberg recounts the continued disintegration of Palestinian society throughout the years as the Palestinian Authority vainly attempted to satisfy Israel’s demands on it. “Israel never entered into serious negotiation with the Palestinians” he argues. Instead, Briemberg suggests, the “roadmap to peace” is a long detour, “allowing Israel to create facts on the ground”—building more settlements on the occupied land, building its apartheid wall, demolishing Palestinians homes—while claiming to seek peace. To continue their project of building a larger Israel, Briemberg warns, “they need to create a new detour,” and they may use Hamas’s election for just such an opportunity.

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