Confronting Hamas.

• Author: Simon, Steven

ON AUGUST 19, 2003, a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas detonated himself aboard a Jerusalem bus. In addition to killing 21 Israeli civilians and injuring over a hundred more, this attack ended the fragile cease-fire between the Israelis and Palestinian terror groups, prompted the resignation of Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and stalled a peace process premised on the so-called roadmap. Slated to last for at least three months, the cease-fire lasted less than two, and Hamas immediately proclaimed that its attacks would continue. It appears to be making good on that threat.

If terrorism persists unabated, Israel will be compelled to continue retaliation. But even unsentimental counter-terrorism practitioners recognize the limits of this dispensation. In September 2003, Ephraim Halevy announced his resignation after four years as head of the Mossad and a year as director of Israel's National Security Council. He thinks the Israeli government must "offer more and demand more" to create a stable final settlement. In particular, it must offer a viable, secular Palestinian state and demand "that the Palestinians recognize the legitimacy" of the state of Israel. In other words, when required, a political dimension must be added to Israel's military strategy of "mowing the grass." In mid-November 2003, four former heads of Shin Bet, Israel's security service, gave a joint interview to Israel's largest daily, Yediot Ahronot. Ami Ayalon, Shin Bet chief from 1996 to 2000, said that trying to defeat the Palestinians militarily "hasn't worked", and the other three agreed that bolder peace initiatives had to replace hard-line policies. Some Israeli soldiers are even questioning the morality and effectiveness of their government's tactics.

Hamas, the strongest of the religiously-motivated Palestinian terrorist groups, is the most formidable obstacle to peace. Yet targeted killings of militant leaders seem to boost the group's popularity among Palestinians during times of crisis (including those of Hamas's own making). Even moderate Palestinians were outraged by Israel's attempt to kill Hamas's halfblind, paraplegic spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Against this background, American support for Israel's current policies could eventually impede Washington's larger goal of democratizing the region. It is therefore central to U.S. interests in the Middle East (notably, its interest in denying Al-Qaeda new recruits) that Humus be tamed, Israeli retaliation curtailed and a two-state solution to the conflict forged. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the prime cause of U.S. problems in the Middle East, but ameliorating it must be part of the solution.

Easing Hamas into nonviolent politics, so that it might restrain itself as the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) has done, would be preferable to outright coercion. But Hamas does not appear amenable to a Northern Ireland modus vivendi: it requires a political outcome that Israel and interested major powers cannot feasibly deliver. Forcibly dismantling the organization's military apparatus would thus seem the only effective option.

Hamas and the Peace Process

HAMAS AROSE during the first intifada in December 1987. From the beginning, three broad factors determined its lack of interest in political compromise. First, its ideological mission, as articulated in its "Introductory Memorandum", is absolutist and inherently violent:

Hamas believes that the Zionist colonization scheme can only be extirpated through a comprehensive holy struggle in which armed struggle is a basic instrument. Hamas also sees that the best way to conduct the fight with the Zionist enemy is to mobilize the resources of the Palestinian people to raise the banner of struggle in Palestine and to keep the embers of conflict burning until the conditions for a decisive battle with the enemy are complete .. .. [B]elieving in the sacredness of Palestine and its Islamic status, Hamas believes it impermissible under any circumstances to concede any part of Palestine or to recognize the Zionist occupation of it. Hamas considers Palestine wholly Muslim land, such that surrendering any of it would be sinful. One passage of its charter suggests that religious redemption turns on destruction of the Jews. Thus, Hamas's leadership cannot easily endorse even tactical acquiescence in, still less a public endorsement of, a two-state solution. Consistent with this, Hamas has rejected peace deals like the one Israel and the Palestinians were negotiating at Taba in January 2001.

The second factor is Hamas's understanding of what constitutes a successful strategy. Many Hamas activists interpret Hizballah's bleeding of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) as the cause of Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon. This action is then assumed to be the strategic model for ousting Israel from the West Bank. Though such a view is wrong-pacifying the West Bank is more central to Israeli security and domestic political imperatives than occupying southern Lebanon--it resonates nonetheless. (1) It also helps to explain why Hamas's leadership believes that, over enough time and through sustained violence, it can accomplish its absolutist goals. (Ironically, growing Israeli resentment of Jewish settlers, and the perception that the IDF is in the West Bank to protect them, may turn Hamas's wishful scenario into reality.)

Finally, there is Hamas's institutional psychology. Like most political and military organizations, Hamas is divided between relative doves and hawks. It can therefore seem schizophrenic on issues of compromise and violence. On a practical level, it exploits revenge attacks on Israel to boost morale and recruitment for the looming confrontation with its secular adversaries.

These characteristics do not stop Hamas from intermittently dialing back terrorist operations and edging toward negotiation, but they do suggest that the group's motivation for doing so is merely tactical. True, some Hamas leaders have, since 1988, advocated an interim solution involving an armistice, an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967 (including all of Jerusalem) and negotiations on other rights. Hamas leaders also established informal contacts with Israeli officials during the Oslo process. Nonetheless, hard-liners have effectively vetoed any formal armistice offer and rejected Israel's attempts in 1993-94 to establish a dialogue aimed at convincing the organization to renounce violence in exchange for a guaranteed political role in any peace settlement. The fact remains that all ten of Hamas's declared or offered cease-fires between 1993 and 2002 emerged when it needed breathing room to regroup after pressure was exerted by a superior adversary--either Israel or the Palestinian Authority (PA). None has lasted longer than a few weeks.

As matters now stand, Hamas is extremely unlikely to dispense with violence as a political tool. It wants an Islamic Palestinian state in all of mandate Palestine, which Taba failed to provide. Corresponding to this ideological complaint is a pure power struggle: Taba would leave Fatah the dominant Palestinian party and cornerstone of the secular resistance, and that is equally unacceptable to Hamas. The two other key elements of Taba are objectives that Hamas shares, as far as they go, with the PLO-dominated PA and Fatah: a substantial end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and, most importantly, the creation of some Palestinian state. Due to Hamas's present popularity, Fatah leaders may assess that they lack the credibility to suppress the group in the hope of pre-empting future problems. Accordingly, Hamas can afford to wait, nurturing its popularity through social welfare operations...