Centerfield

Trouble with Hamas?

Here are two completely different perspectives on how the Palestineans are dealing with Hamas. In The New Republic, Rober Satloff criticizes Mahmoud Abbas (or Abu Mazen) for coddling Hamas and not confronting it to stop what Satloff calls the "anarchy" in the Palestinean areas. According to this view,

Abbas's political strategy is based on being nice to the terrorists and the hooligans--members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and even his own Fatah party's most violent wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades--rather than actually implementing his own principle of "one authority, one law, one gun." Indeed, when one radical group threatened to break what passes for a ceasefire last week, Abbas didn't threaten its leaders with jail; he ordered the release of nine terrorists from jail.

In The New York Review of Books, a more liberal periodical, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, have a different view. They argue that Abbas is essentially trying to coopt Hamas by persuading it to participate in the elections and to work inside the system rather than outside. They argue that

Abu Mazen hopes that, given adequate time, as well as guarantees from the Authority and sufficient pressure from the Palestinian public, Hamas will allow its pragmatism to work out new and different policies. Hamas may sponsor suicide bombers, but it is not suicidal.

Agha and Malley argue that the policies Satloff advocates--confronting Hamas and forcing it to renounce violence--are not realistic.

To those who criticize Abu Mazen's approach as naive, his response is to ask for a credible alternative. The status quo allows Hamas both to function outside a system from which it benefits and to discredit any political arrangement with Israel without having to propose a substitute. It further deprives outsiders of any ability to influence the debate between hard-line and pragmatic wings within the organization. For the Palestinian president, shunning Hamas also means putting his current strategy at perpetual risk of an armed attack. Once Hamas is brought into the legislature and the PLO, he believes, he can more confidently rely on Hamas's commitment to implement the cease-fire and on its discipline in enforcing it.

Satloff would certainly not agree with such reasoning.

With each passing day, the situation in Gaza and much of the West Bank seems to grow more like Jordan circa 1970-71, when King Hussein felt he had no choice but to cede authority to emboldened Palestinian fedayeen, then led by Yasir Arafat. Eventually, Hussein's own army forced him to take tough action against the militants, lest his regime perish. In the Palestinian areas, however, it's not even clear there are enough officers and soldiers itching to do the job; the Abbas regime--a noble experiment in popularly elected government--may perish without a fight.

It's easy to dismiss Agha and Hussein as left-wing apologists for Hamas or as naive. (They acknowledge in the article that some call Abu Mazen's approach naive.) And, on the other side, Satloff would be called an obstructionist. But they both present different facets of the problem in the Middle East. The Israelis, reasonably enough, fear that Hamas will never renounce its goal of eliminating Isreal (as do I). On the other hand, Hamas is an entrenched part of Palestinean society and has a much better reputation than Fatah because of its history of providing social services. One could argue that Hamas is similar to the IRA in Northern Ireland; a terrorist organization without which it is essentially impossible to make peace. But the IRA never called for the destruction of England or even of the Protestants. Mazen is gambling that he can control Hamas by coopting it; I'm sure Hamas thinks that it will be able to hijack Fatah. And Israel has an obvious interest in strengthening Mazen, but does it trust Mazen enough to accept his way of dealing with Hamas? And should it? Sharon is having enough trouble selling the Gaza pullout to his public--allowing Hamas a more public role is only going to make it harder.

Sharon and Mazen need each other, yet they are faced with having to satisfy constituencies that are, in many ways, incompatible. Given these realities, I find it hard to be terribly optimistic.