Only the PLO can beat Hamas
When former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad resigned in 2013, Thomas Friedman lamented the death of “Fayyadism.” “If there is no place for a Salam Fayyad-type in [Palestinian] leadership,” he wrote, “an independent state will forever elude you.” As fighting rages in Gaza, a two-state solution seems more elusive than ever. At the Atlantic Council on Thursday, Fayyad articulated his vision for lasting peace in the region.
Fayyad traced many of the current problems to failed implementation of the 1993 Oslo Accords. Oslo was supposed to solve the permanent status issue, and ultimately create a Palestinian state. In signing the accords, the Palestinians accepted a temporary extension of the occupation. This “provisional” extension has lasted more than twenty years and is at the root of current Palestinian indignation towards the ruling Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
In 2011, Israel traded more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been captured by Hamas six years earlier. The next year, PLO President Mahmoud Abbas sought to gain recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations. Israel retaliated by authorizing construction of 3,000 additional housing units in the West Bank. The message, said Fayyad, is clear: violence trumps political solutions.
Abbas has paid dearly for his cooperation with Israel, with little to show for it. For many Palestinians, his party has come to represent weakness and capitulation. Hamas is seen as the last remaining pocket of resistance in a region that has all but abandoned the Palestinian cause. Hamas’ hand has only been strengthened by current war.
There can be no sovereign Palestinian state without Gaza, which has been ruled by Hamas for the last seven years. All parties, including Gaza, must be represented in any final-status agreement. And there cannot be agreement until the Palestinians demand, with one voice, a “date certain” for an end to the occupation.
Israel is mistaken if it believes it can “defeat” Hamas in the traditional sense. While Hamas has been in control of Gaza for seven years, it is not a state. Non-state actors measure winning and losing differently. As Henry Kissinger said, “The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.” Hamas can still rise from the rubble and claim victory.
Fayyad said that it is unreasonable to condition a ceasefire on total demilitarization of Hamas. Israel couldn’t achieve this even when they were occupying Gaza. The Hamas-PLO Unity agreement should remain in place, he added. It is time to hold another election. Without electoral legitimacy, neither faction can govern effectively.
The new order cannot look like the old one. It will not be easy, he said, but long-term reforms must be embedded in any lasting ceasefire agreement. The despair in Gaza is palpable, and it only burnishes Hamas’s credentials. As one woman told him recently, Gazans are alive “simply because there isn’t enough death to go around.”
In 1993, Palestinians recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace and security. Israel did not reciprocate. This goes to the heart of the disillusionment felt by most Palestinians. Fayyad was not optimistic about Israel’s willingness to recognize a Palestinian state. Since Oslo, he noted, politicians in Israel have been increasingly unfriendly to the idea of a two-state solution.
Israel will not vanquish Hamas militarily, Fayyad said. In the end, the only way to defeat Hamas is by empowering the PLO. This will only be possible is Israel ends its occupation of Palestine.
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The Palestinians have been waiting 20 years for a state? Perhaps they should reconsider the commitment of a people that promised itself for 2000 (approx.) years to return to their land before they assume their descendants will simply give up and go somewhere else because of threats.
So, Hamas gave it its best shot, and ended up with nothing in the way of concessions. In the past they were able to point to gains even when they lost militarily, but this time? They were already losing support among Arab governments, who have reason to be nervous themselves about terrorist organizations these days – Israel seems to have had their at least tacit support during this latest round of fighting. And even before this round of hostilities Hamas’ popularity with the people of Gaza had been declining. What will it be now, with their homes destroyed and children dead, knowing that Hamas leaders stayed at hotels outside the region or retreated to bunkers underground? People interviewed by the TV journalists asked “Where are we supposed to go?” after being warned by Israel to get out of the way. Maybe now they’ll start asking themselves why Hamas made no provision for protecting them, with all that cement provided by the internationals for rebuiding, letting them go instead to UN shelters where Hamas had stored their rockets? Just maybe, resistance for the sake of resistance will eventually begin to seem irrational.
Not that the present situation can become permanent. The two-state solution may not be workable, since any Palestinian government in the future could renounce a treaty made under international pressure, and the idea of defeating a Western power still seems so attractive to the people, if not all the governments, of surrounding states. Could Israel decide to hug their enemies closer and go for some kind of federation, offering the Palestinians personal and economic freedom in a moderated autonomy? Hamas’ threats to the airport almost immediately after the shootdown of MH17 should have helped sober up anyone who thought that giving an unfriendly and irresponsible government the ability to station rocket launchers in positions to attack international aircraft was a workable idea.
My first teacher of Arabic was a young guy from Jenin. He used to tell me, back in 2004 or so, that the West shouldn’t worry so much about Hamas – he knew those guys, they were interested in fixing the streets and building hospitals. And that’s probably the platform they won on, that and a cleaner government than Fatah’s. Whether there was a change in plans, or the plans only became clear after they finally took power, the people of the Gaza Strip now have to decide for themselves how long they are ready to continue sacrificing for “the resistance.”