The Hamas problem

Don't miss Helena Cobban's very informative piece in Salon on Hamas and the prospects for peace negotiations with Israel:  Who is the real Hamas? by Helena Cobban 03/02/06.  This is a good description by her of the current US policy dilemma:

For Palestinians and Israelis alike, Hamas' victory has been likened to an earthquake. Some Palestinians are apprehensive about the rise of the hard-line group, but many more applaud the fact that they will now be represented by negotiators who are as tough as the Israelis. For Israelis, the Hamas victory has created fear and uncertainty. Most Israelis see Hamas as a murderous group of religious zealots who refuse to recognize the Israeli state, want to see it destroyed and are willing to be very patient in seeking its doom. For them, the triumph of Hamas confirms their worst fears about Palestinian attitudes and intentions. And nothing that any of the Hamas leaders can say - short of immediately recognizing Israel and unconditionally renouncing violence - would reassure them.

The U.S. pressed for the elections that brought Hamas to power, but now it largely shares the Israeli position. The Bush administration has worked furiously hard to try to isolate the Palestinian Authority's emerging Hamas-led government - even before that government has been formed. (The U.S. apparently differs with Israel on whether it is still worth working with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas or not.) But though Washington has had some success with the Europeans in its campaign to isolate Hamas, it has had far less success to date with its Arab allies.

Cobban's article is especially good in explaining the diplomatic niceties around the idea of Israel negotiating with Abbas in his role as head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), not officially as president of the Palestinian Authority.

One factual point that I found intriguing was in her inteview with Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador the the United Nations who took a very negative view of Hamas. Gold is head of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.  The title of one of Dore's books, Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos (2004), may give some indication of his perspective.

In talking about Hamas, Gold decribes them as "offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood", which was originally an Egyptian Islamic fundamentalist group.  He mentioned Israel's own past encouragement of Hamas:

"All these groups that have their origins in the Muslim Brotherhood have a strategy that includes two phases: first daawa [long-term education and preparation] and then jihad. You know that prior to 1987 Israel actually helped the Muslim Brotherhood people because we saw them as not politically active. But they were doing daawa, and then in 1987 they transformed themselves into Hamas. Those transformations can happen at any time. So perhaps you'd have a tahdi'eh [truce] for five years - but then they would bring in weapons and be acting under an Iranian nuclear umbrella. Yes, a Hamas with a long-term cease-fire could certainly continue with daawa and with bringing in weapons." (my emphasis)

In his book Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (2005), Robert Dreyfuss writes about Israel's early relationship with Hamas as an example of "blowback".  The United States, and also Israel in the case of Hamas, encouraged fundamentalist Islamic groups in Arab countries during the Cold War as a way of trying to draw appeal away from leftist and pan-Arabic groups that were feared to be too friendly to the Soviet Union.

Dreyfuss mentions the claims by some that Israel actually founded Hamas. For instance, he quotes Charles Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, saying, "Israel started Hamas.  It was a project of Shin Bet [the Israeli domestic intelligence agency], which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO."

Dreyfuss' account makes it clear that the origins of the group were considerably more complicated than that statement might make them sound.  But Dreyfuss also writes of Israel's efforts to use the Brotherhood and later Hamas as counterforces to Al Fatah and the PLO:

U.S diplomats and CIA officials were aware that Israel was fostering Islamism in the occupied territories.  "We saw Israel cultivate Islam as a counterweight to Palestinian nationalism,"says Martha Kessler, a senior analyst for the CIA who early on was alert to the importance of the Islamist movement and the threat it could pose to U.S. interests in the region.  But neither the CIA nor the State Department tried to stop it. ...

"I thought they were playing with fire," says David Long, a former Middle East expert at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.  "I didn't realize they'd end up creating a monster.  But I don't think you ought to mess around with potential fanatics."

But they did.  And so did the US.  And now we have blowback all over the place.