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Moving Forward: Palestinian Political Parties and Reconciliation with Ms. Nadia Bilbassy-Charters
Friday, July 24, 2009
Edited Transcript of Remarks by Ms.
Nadia Bilbassy-Charters
Transcript No. 315 (24 July 2009)
Transcript No. 315 (24 July 2009)
In a recent
Palestine Center briefing, Nadia
Bilbassy-Charters, chief news correspondent at
Middle East Broadcasting Center, argues that by
tracing the history of the development of
Palestinian political parties, we can come to a
better understanding of the rise of Fateh and
Hamas, the fault lines between them and amongst
their leaders, the internal and external
dynamics which shape each party’s actions and
the difficulties in reconciling.
Ultimately, the current leadership is
ill-equipped to unite, and it is up to the
people to find leaders and determine policies
which will further Palestinian interests with
the goal of establishing an independent
Palestinian state.
To view the video of this briefing online go to
http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/6441/pid/3584
The Palestine Center
Washington, D.C.
7 July 2009
Ms. Nadia Bilbassy-Charters:
I’m glad that you are here today, and I’m honored to start this first lecture in the summer lectures. I don’t know how much you know about the Palestinian cause, particularly about Fateh and Hamas. So to reach to the point that we’re talking about--reconciliation in Cairo that was postponed and supposed to resume again on July 25th--I think I want to take you back just to set the stage to the beginning. I’m not going to talk in detail just in case you do know the full picture.
As Zac said, I started my career in Gaza actually as a freelance for the French news agency AFP, Agence France Presse, and one of the very stories I covered was the first intifada. And that was in the winter of December 1987. At the time, if you remember, it was an incident that four Palestinian workers--as you know at the time most of the Palestinians in Gaza were dependent completely on Israel as daily laborers--so they would go, they would cross the road, they would come back through the Erez checkpoint. Four of them were run over by an Israeli truck driver. And at the time, people didn’t know if it was an accident or if it was intentional. But it sparked a kind of a protest that multiplied in its magnitude and it became the first intifada, basically. People were resenting 30 years of Israeli occupation that led to a very organized way of civil disobedience that resulted in the first communiqué. At the time, the main resistance movement in the occupied territories was the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization and all the branches; it was an umbrella group. So, you had Fateh, the leading organization; you had the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; you had the DFLP, the Democratic Front; you had the communist party. They managed to get together and issue the first communiqué, and it was very effective.
At the time, if you talk about resistance groups, it was only the PLO, and you had Islamic Jihad. But Hamas was nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be heard of. Hamas was formed as a remnant of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has been a party existing in Egypt and other parts of the Arab world. But they were dormant. They didn’t have much effect at all.
Actually, I remember as a young kid in Gaza--I grew up in Gaza in the 70s--the refugee camps, mainly Jabalya, was whole controlled by Marxist groups. And there was battles between them and the Israelis. It was all about a popular struggle through the ideology of nationalism that has no religious or Islamic roots whatsoever. Now, some members of Fateh, of course, they are moderate in their perception of Islam, but it was never an ideology as such. No party was based on religion as a way to resist the occupation. Soon after, I think, the Muslim Brotherhood were very practical and they were very moderate in their outlook. They decided that if they do not do something now, they will be left out. So, they immediately formed a new group, and they called it by the acronym Hamas, which stands in Arabic for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, the Islamic Resistance Movement. And they tried to impose themselves as an alternative to the PLO. And they were trying to compete for loyalty.
At the time, I remember there was a popular doctor, Dr. Haidar Abdel Shafi, who became a chief negotiator for the Palestinians in the Oslo agreement. And he ran a local NGO that had medical services for the poorest in Gaza--the refugee population. They had a library; they had other basic services. And I remember that some of these Muslim groups ran into the compound [and] they were trying to burn it down for accusations that Haidar Abdel Shafi was a communist, etc. And this is anti-Islamic ideology; it does not sit with the people. Gaza was still under occupation so you have Israeli soldiers completely in control of Gaza. But at the time, they didn’t do anything; they didn’t try to stop Hamas. And I think the logic or the understanding was that it was a simple calculation of divide and rule. If the Israelis can create another force on the ground to compete with the PLO, it will be easier for them to impose a solution on the Palestinians from an Israeli perspective. And you know, I think they tried in the early 80s. Many of you probably remember Village Leagues--basically the Palestinians saw them as collaborators with Israel, and the Israelis thought they were trying to find some sort of legitimacy to represent the Palestinians and they failed. So, the only way for them to impose a solution was to allow these forces to exist. Now again, funny enough it’s a miscalculation.
And I remember I saw [Israeli Opposition Leader] Tzipi Livni here in Washington about six months ago after the war in Gaza, and I asked her this very question. I remember 20 years ago that the Israelis were allowing Hamas to exist. Now, the Israelis did not create Hamas, but they allowed the circumstances for them to operate and to flourish. And I said to her that they were trying very much to weaken the PLO by allowing Hamas to exist, and 20 years later they’re reversing the logic, which is trying to weaken Hamas and allowing the PLO to go back to Gaza where it became now the PA [Palestinian Authority]. So, I think the concept of Hamas existing was helpful to other parties but mainly the Israelis.
Hamas immediately understood what’s at stake, and they were very, very clever. And they were very motivated. And they were very dedicated. They knew that when you have a failed state, just like most of the Islamic organizations--whether it’s in Egypt or Hizballah in Lebanon or elsewhere in the Arab world--when you have a failed state you step in to provide services. And this is what they did. And they were very effective in that. So, they will work with the population because if you exist as a political party or as a resisting group you need the civilian population. Without them, you’ll be cut off. So, they will be the backbone of everything that you do. And they understood this very well. So, they start providing the services for people in Gaza. As you know, 70 percent of the population in Gaza are refugees. They live in squalid refugee camps in subhuman conditions whether it’s in Jabalya or Shati or wherever.
Most of the leadership now that leads Hamas, whether it is Prime Minister [Ismail] Haniyeh or [Hamas co-founder] Mahmoud Al-Zahar or others, actually come from Shati refugee camp, which is one of the biggest refugee camps in Gaza City. And they have the popular support of the refugee population. So, they stepped in, they created kindergartens, they created medical centers, they created something for the youth, etc. And they managed through that to penetrate through the civilian population. And they were very good. And the other good things about them, they are not corrupt. So, people trust them, and this is very important. I don’t know what it is about secular movements in the Arab world, but secularism goes with corruption and Islam goes with good governance. And there are so many lessons, I think, to be learned from them. The bottom line is basically through their ability to work with the civilian population to gain support, to pose themselves as an alternative, they actually became very successful.
And we’re talking about 20 years later. We’re talking about them now as a viable force on the ground to be reckoned with to the degree that from ‘87 to now, 2009, we’re talking about [how] two factions have to sit down at the negotiating table, as we see now in Cairo, to reach an agreement so that ultimately they will sit down with the Israelis and present something. Without going into too much detail, as you know in 2006, there was an election. And of course you know, the Oslo agreement--and I’m not going to go into the details of that--that led to the return of the PLO from exile, [late Palestinian President] Yasser Arafat and others. And Hamas continued to exist, continued to build on the support and continued to arm itself.
I think the success of the first intifada--it was an act of civil disobedience. There were no arms involved. And I think later on they realized that the Palestinians had tried the armed struggle, which was [what] the nationalist groups, whether it was Fateh or the PFLP or the DFLP, tried but realized later that doesn’t get them anywhere. So, they reversed that with Hamas, [who] adopted that as a resistance kind of a slogan. And the PLO, after recognizing Israel in the ‘80s and then the Oslo agreement in ‘93, they realized that it was the other way around. You had to sit down with the Israelis to negotiate without using violence.
The ground was set for the first election in 2006--and I’m jumping over the years here. I’m sure if you have any questions we can come back to that. At the time, there was a huge division between Fateh itself. And the division was, as always with all liberation movements, between the external leadership that lived in exile--namely it was in Lebanon, in Jordon, Tunisia--and the indigenous population that ultimately gave birth to local leaders. And the local leaders were the first leaders that I talked about in the unified leadership in the issue of the communiqué.
I still believe the worst thing that could happen to the Palestinians was the Oslo agreement and the return of the PLO because Israel would have been better off dealing with the local leadership for many reasons. Number one is because they lived under occupation, so they know what it is like. They have the Palestinian interest at heart. And they’re not corrupt. And they’re influenced by Israeli democracy, whether you like it or not. It’s not a perfect democracy, but its something closer to them that’s different from the rest of the Arab world.
But this, it didn’t happen. So because of the division in the old guard represented by the old leadership, the PLO leadership, and the current leadership inside, Hamas managed to win. It is very easy when you see it here in American elections; when you have a third party candidate it always takes from the other two. So, one of them will win. And this is what happened with Hamas. Saying that, I think people voted for them because they were fed up with the corruption of the PLO or the PA. It’s understandable. I mean if we are talking about politics, all politics is local. If somebody is going to come collect the garbage from your house and is going to provide you with an alternative to healthcare and is going to give you social security, you are going to vote for them. You’re not going to vote for a big grand, national project, the PLO--we’re talking about it in terms of a Palestinian state and reconciliation--because nobody believed in it.
And second, I think there was frustration among the Palestinians that since the Oslo agreement in ‘93 until the time that Hamas won the election in 2006, nothing has happened on the ground to change the Palestinian reality. Actually, it was the opposite because settlement activities went up, roadblocks were multiplied, people’s lives were restricted. They couldn’t travel for any reason, whether it’s medical treatment, whether it’s to study abroad, whether to see a relative--collective punishment against the majority of people in Gaza. So, the frustration has shown itself in the ballot box. So, people went and voted and they thought we’re going to try Hamas because we tried the PLO; it didn’t work. We tried nationalism; it didn’t work. It didn’t get us anywhere. So, maybe this is the only solution. And also, it was influenced, I think, by the bigger spread of the Islamic movements in the whole Arab world, even to a larger extent in the Muslim world. So, they were posing the slogan “Islam is the solution (Al-Islam who wa al-hal).” And therefore, people voted, and they thought we’ll try it.
The Palestinian election according to many observers, including Jimmy Carter, former [U.S.] president, many international and local observers believed that it was the most transparent election in the Middle East--more than what you saw in Iraq, what you saw in Lebanon, what you saw in Kuwait, whatever it was. One man, one woman, one vote. There was hardly any irregularities, and they won fairly.
But the results did not suit the United States or Europeans or even probably the PA because they didn’t like it. And I think many of you read how former [U.S.] Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in the gym when the results came, and she couldn’t believe it. There was no way Hamas would have won. But they did. Then what do you do? Now, as a superpower like the United States that likes to present yourself as an advocate of human rights, of democracy, of transparency, of good governance, you have to accept the results. But also, on the other hand, you see this party as an enemy of the United States because it uses violence or terrorism. It refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. It allies itself with Iran. So really on so many levels, you don’t want them to win. So, what do you do? You’re really stuck.
So while acknowledging that the democracy idea was wonderful and great, many people, by the way, thought that having the elections at that time was a wrong decision because election is the end of the process; it’s not the beginning. Democracy is not just elections. You know you vote in the end, but you have to build the institutions. Democracy is about informed choices. You have to make people understand what’s at stake and then you let them vote. It’s not just ok let’s go have elections and see who’s going to win and then we either accept or annul the results. And I think that was a problem. So, the official policy of the United States was ok, we are with the experiment, with the process but we didn’t like the results. So, what they’re trying to do, they’re trying to undermine Hamas.
And I think there’s always a problem. You’ve seen it in so many other parts of the world, places like where I’ve covered in Africa, for example. It’s always that difficult process of transition between a resistance movement, a national aspirations movement, and they’re trying to realize whatever’s at stake or independence or autonomy for its people and a governing party. Being a government. I’ve seen that in Eritrea, for example, where they fought for 30 years and now it’s almost turning into dictatorship—[Eritrean President] Isaias Afewerki. You see it in Cuba. You see it in Palestine even with Arafat. So, that transition is very, very sensitive, and people very often are unable to make it successfully.
So with Hamas--I don’t know if they were given the chance if they would be able to govern or not. I have no idea. But they were not given the chance. And therefore, they were given the excuse to justify everything that they were doing. So, the United States was trying to undermine them. I don’t know if you’ve seen it of Khaled Meshaal. Khaled Meshaal is the leader of Hamas who’s based in Damascus, and he is considered the de facto leader of Hamas, actually. He gave a major foreign policy speech just like [U.S.] President [Barack] Obama did in Cairo and [Israeli] Prime Minister [Binyamin] Netanyahu did recently. And he talked about this new spirit of this new American administration. That one of the things that he demanded was the withdrawal of [U.S. Lieutenant] General [Keith] Dayton from the West Bank because he thinks that he’s undermining the reconciliation effort by training Fateh security forces against Hamas, and he doesn’t want to see that. He thinks that there is an outside interference to the reconciliation effort that ultimately will undermine any chance of it to succeed. So, he wants that to be stopped. Now, there were some reports--I don’t know how true or not--at the time that the [former U.S. President George W. Bush] administration were trying very much to arm the security forces of Fateh. And I think, actually, to say that some of them went on the record to say that if we have to choose between Fateh and Hamas, we will always go with Fateh. And that’s understandable. So if you see the interference from outside, for whatever reason, you can see why the process cannot go through. That’s on one side.
On the other side, Hamas is also although it’s an indigenous movement born in Palestine--and I think it’s so wrong of so many people, even within the previous administration, to lump all these organizations together and say, “Ah Hamas and Hizballah and al-Qaeda and Dar al-Islam--they’re all the same, they use violence, they want to kill civilians, etc.” These people don’t. I mean they are seen as a legitimate resistance group by the eyes of millions of people in the Arab world and the Muslim world. And they do not carry attacks indiscriminately against targets overseas. They believe that the violence is a method; it’s not an end by itself. And once Palestine is liberated then they will cease to use violence. And people, to a large extent, believe that’s the case.
Now, there is a debate among the Palestinians whether using violence is actually an effective way to get you anywhere near your ultimate target, which is an establishment of a Palestinian state--a two-state solution on the West Bank and Gaza on the ’67 border. That’s another question. But for the time being, what Hamas is doing is that they pointed out the failure of the peace process. And it’s very effective, and anybody can understand the logic of that. And as I said, they will say, “Here look. Here’s the PA. They entered into negotiations with Israel with successive administrations in Israel. Probably now, they will see it as a worse one, having a right-wing government led by Likud and a foreign minister that advocated transfer of Palestinians. But, you know, it gets them nowhere. So, maybe the only card that we have now in our hands is the resistance card, the violence card, etc.”
Although, they know very well that firing a rocket from Gaza to Sderot and killing some poor Israeli woman or an Israeli child, it backfires. And if they really want to be responsible as a governing party or they want to move, to shift from being a resistance movement to a political party, they will realize that they have a responsibility towards the people. And the responsibility is that you cannot stand to an enemy a billion times stronger than you. And when you kill an Israeli woman, you know the Israelis are going to retaliate with a massive force. I mean, we’ve seen that in the war of Gaza. It’s just using F-16 airplanes to bomb a place, a highly populated area--just like using F-16s to bomb Manhattan--because you wanted to destroy one building and in the process you can destroy ten. And somehow people have some justification for that because they see the rocket fired and they don’t see the incoming.
And, of course, the media has played a role because the Israelis were very clever to stop all the foreign media from entering Gaza during the war. So, you really didn’t see much of the coverage. And if the American media were serious about finding out, they could have set up the “Gaza desk,” as I always say, like they did with Iran. You know, when the Iranian government stopped foreign media from not even entering but limiting them to certain coverage, they set up this alternative way of telling you what’s happening though Twitter and cell phones. You know the technology, etc. But anyway, this didn’t happen.
So, the bottom line [is] that Hamas is not showing any responsibility toward the people by the act of what they are doing now. But, in the end when the Israelis fire rockets, they don’t blame Hamas; they blame the people who are firing the rockets, which is the Israelis. But saying that, the opinion poll that I’ve seen recently actually shows that Hamas support among the Palestinian people has gone down considerably in the West Bank and Gaza. So maybe, it does have some effect. But, I think the long blockade on the population of Gaza, the collective punishment, the siege that’s been put around Gaza for years, it’s not just 2006. I forgot an important and significant event, which is in 2007, Hamas decided to stage a coup and take Gaza by force. So, in the process, Gaza has been cut off from the West Bank, and people start talking about a three-state solution--you have Gaza on one side, you have the West Bank and you have Israel. And I cannot see any lessons in history that any liberation movement can go and present its case divided.
So ultimately, I think, whether it’s Hamas or Fateh, if you really truly believe in the long goal which is to establish a Palestinian state, a two-state solution, then they have to consider putting their differences aside and sitting together for the sake of the people. But to be honest, I do not see this happening soon. Now, the Egyptians have been moderating these talks in Cairo for awhile, and sometimes you are very optimistic and you think they’re on the verge of breaking and they’re just about to sign something. And then, they go back. And now, I think the Egyptians also have another motive, which will serve their interests, because they don’t want Hamas also to succeed because that will set a precedent to the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned political party in Egypt. But they’ve been very practical in hosting these talks.
Now, the other issue you see is two competing forces on the ground. And from the PLO that I talked about in the ‘80s, which was nationalist and secular, it has different groups; now it’s almost gone. Nobody talks about the PFLP or the DFLP. They don’t exist anymore. They don’t have the support. They don’t have the leadership. They don’t have the material support. They don’t exist almost. I mean they’re just like small little parties; you think of them romantically--what they used to do in the ‘60s and the ‘70s. But if you talk about two actual formidable forces on the ground, it’s Fateh, or the PA represented by Fateh, and Hamas. Then, what do you do now?
If you’ve followed the news, you will see that there has been so much accusations between the two sides. You have seen arrests and counter arrests. So, Hamas forces will go and arrest Fateh members in Gaza, and I think the PA will retaliate by arresting people in the West Bank. It has been confrontation recently as you’ve seen in Qalqilya, which is a city in the north of the West Bank, in which there was a raid on Hamas activists and there was an exchange of fire and there was like seven people dead, including Palestinian security forces, members of relatives of the people who had the weapons, etc. The PA accused Hamas of trying to organize to stage another coup in the West Bank. They said their guns are not directed at the Israelis, but they are directed against the PA. So, there’s a power struggle of whose going to control what. And I think this will carry on.
Now, obviously, there were other things that we wanted to discuss, the election that is due in January of next year, 2010. Just before I came actually, I heard Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] giving an interview, and he said if Hamas wins the election, I’m happy to hand over things to them. And I think that that’s by implication; he realizes that they are not going to win. So, I don’t know if the election is going to happen or not, but part of the negotiation and reconciliation process in Cairo is basically to set up a date for the election, to reform the security forces and to talk about these arrests and counter arrests, as we’ve seen very often.
Too many parties are involved, so this is why I don’t see them just sitting down together and putting their differences aside. As you know, just like the PLO in the old days, you have internal leadership and external leadership. It’s the same for Hamas. You have Khaled Meshaal who is based in Damascus, and you have the rest of them, whether it is former Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh or others who are inside. Some will say that the local leadership are willing to compromise and they’re more practical, and the ones outside are more, probably, stricter in trying to have some kind of a deal. The problem that faces Hamas now is, I think, a question of recognition or legitimacy. The word has changed after 9/11, and I think they understand that. And they’re not that dumb to the degree that they obviously entered the election because if they had rejected the whole Oslo process--the Oslo process brought them to power--because without competing in the election, they wouldn’t be there in the first place. While Islamic Jihad, for example, and other Muslim groups, they refuse the process. They don’t want to be part of it. So, I think that shows there is some kind of practical side of them. But the question for them now, as the Quartet put it, to enter the peace process, they have to do certain things. And the certain things are: recognize Israel’s right to exist, acknowledging all the peace treaties we signed before and renouncing violence. Now, for them, to do that, they will lose legitimacy because they’re raison d’être is to sell themselves to the Palestinian people as the only alternative to a failed process. So, you give your weapons away, what do you have? You’ll become a PA. So, you really don’t have much to compete with the other side.
So, what they wanted to do is they wanted to acknowledge the two-state solution without spelling out the words of recognize Israel’s right to exist. Although, I think that Meshaal said it many times that he will accept a state on the ’67 border, and he will agree into the two-state solution. But I think they know that they don’t want to be seen as obstructing the peace process considering that this administration has taken a different stand from the Bush one, and they are quite serious about trying to find some kind of solution. So, I think Khaled Meshaal knows quite well that Israel will not accept the two-state solution. We know that Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn’t accept it and just now kind of managed to mention the words but he put so much caveats into it. And they wanted the state on the ‘67 border, and they wanted East Jerusalem to be the capitol of a future Palestinian state, and they want the right of the refugees to return. And we know that the failure of the peace process is precisely because of these issues and being postponed from the [former U.S. President Bill] Clinton administration to the Bush one and now to Obama’s. So, they were willing to play the game, I think. And they know, in the end, that they don’t have to do much.
Take into consideration that these are not just two local players. That sometimes you will see a proxy war between the United States and Iran played by the surrogates, including Hamas. And this is why I think this administration realizes that you really have to do something about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because they pull the carpet or the rug from underneath other conflicts. It makes it easier for them to solve it. It’s not going to make it be solved, but it makes it much easier. So, I will say that the reconciliation, my personal opinion, and you know I might be wrong--I said that about the Sudan peace process and they did sign an agreement and I was wrong--I don’t know if they can manage to do something to be honest because I think the differences between them is a matter of who will be able to kind of cancel the other. It’s not a matter of putting your interests together to come in a unified situation. And I think that serves Israel’s purposes very well. As long as you have a divided Palestinian leadership, you cannot really go forward.
The only scenario that can change this dynamic is the people because in the end Hamas only exists and the PA only exists if they have legitimacy in the eyes of the people. If the people realize that these people do not represent us and they don’t have our interests in their hearts, they will draw that support; they will be forced to modify their position. And I think we have seen that in many conflicts in the world--the people’s power. When the people decide to stand on one side or the other, then things will change. And I’m not just talking about public opinion because now it’s been taken into consideration. I’ll give you an example that happened recently with Hizballah in Lebanon. During the war in Gaza, people feared that, actually, Hizballah is going to open another front from the north. So, Israel has to fight on two fronts. But they didn’t. And they calculated. They didn’t, not because they didn’t want to, but because they were calculating every move they were doing because there were elections coming. And the concept of participating and being accountable to the people was very important to them. So, it was because of the public opinion in Lebanon [that] turned against Hezbollah during that last war because they blamed them for, you know, inviting the Israelis to basically destroy their country. They realized this calculation was very important. So, it did have some effect. So, they’re not completely blind to realities around them.
But what I’ll say is that reconciliation--two things just to end up. One thing is that you cannot win if you’re divided, and that’s a simple logic. I don’t have to tell you that. But, particularly, when you’re struggling as a liberation movement, you have to unify your forces. And ultimately, neither side can destroy each other militarily. I mean they can if they want to and they can let Gaza go to Hamas and keep the West Bank in Fateh hands, etc. But that’s not the solution. And second, we see a shift in the whole region in terms of influences on these two parties. I cannot also see them sitting down together and coming up with a solution. The pressure is immense on them, especially now that they have to do something before the end of July. If they don’t, the negotiation will be postponed or suspended until Ramadan, which is the holy month where all Muslims fast. It will be after September, probably the 30th of September, after they can sit down together. And things, if you leave them, it gets worse; it doesn’t get better. So, I hope I’ve set up the stage for you without kind of missing major dates of where we were and where we are now. And I don’t know how things are going to materialize soon.
But I’ll leave it to that and probably we can fill anything that I haven’t mentioned in a Q&A session. Thank you.
Nadia Bilbassy-Charters is the chief news correspondent for the Middle East Broadcasting Center in Washington, D.C. where she covers the White House and the State Department.
This transcript may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center. The speaker's views do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jerusalem Fund.
To view the video of this briefing online go to
http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/6441/pid/3584
The Palestine Center
Washington, D.C.
7 July 2009
Ms. Nadia Bilbassy-Charters:
I’m glad that you are here today, and I’m honored to start this first lecture in the summer lectures. I don’t know how much you know about the Palestinian cause, particularly about Fateh and Hamas. So to reach to the point that we’re talking about--reconciliation in Cairo that was postponed and supposed to resume again on July 25th--I think I want to take you back just to set the stage to the beginning. I’m not going to talk in detail just in case you do know the full picture.
As Zac said, I started my career in Gaza actually as a freelance for the French news agency AFP, Agence France Presse, and one of the very stories I covered was the first intifada. And that was in the winter of December 1987. At the time, if you remember, it was an incident that four Palestinian workers--as you know at the time most of the Palestinians in Gaza were dependent completely on Israel as daily laborers--so they would go, they would cross the road, they would come back through the Erez checkpoint. Four of them were run over by an Israeli truck driver. And at the time, people didn’t know if it was an accident or if it was intentional. But it sparked a kind of a protest that multiplied in its magnitude and it became the first intifada, basically. People were resenting 30 years of Israeli occupation that led to a very organized way of civil disobedience that resulted in the first communiqué. At the time, the main resistance movement in the occupied territories was the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization and all the branches; it was an umbrella group. So, you had Fateh, the leading organization; you had the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; you had the DFLP, the Democratic Front; you had the communist party. They managed to get together and issue the first communiqué, and it was very effective.
At the time, if you talk about resistance groups, it was only the PLO, and you had Islamic Jihad. But Hamas was nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be heard of. Hamas was formed as a remnant of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has been a party existing in Egypt and other parts of the Arab world. But they were dormant. They didn’t have much effect at all.
Actually, I remember as a young kid in Gaza--I grew up in Gaza in the 70s--the refugee camps, mainly Jabalya, was whole controlled by Marxist groups. And there was battles between them and the Israelis. It was all about a popular struggle through the ideology of nationalism that has no religious or Islamic roots whatsoever. Now, some members of Fateh, of course, they are moderate in their perception of Islam, but it was never an ideology as such. No party was based on religion as a way to resist the occupation. Soon after, I think, the Muslim Brotherhood were very practical and they were very moderate in their outlook. They decided that if they do not do something now, they will be left out. So, they immediately formed a new group, and they called it by the acronym Hamas, which stands in Arabic for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, the Islamic Resistance Movement. And they tried to impose themselves as an alternative to the PLO. And they were trying to compete for loyalty.
At the time, I remember there was a popular doctor, Dr. Haidar Abdel Shafi, who became a chief negotiator for the Palestinians in the Oslo agreement. And he ran a local NGO that had medical services for the poorest in Gaza--the refugee population. They had a library; they had other basic services. And I remember that some of these Muslim groups ran into the compound [and] they were trying to burn it down for accusations that Haidar Abdel Shafi was a communist, etc. And this is anti-Islamic ideology; it does not sit with the people. Gaza was still under occupation so you have Israeli soldiers completely in control of Gaza. But at the time, they didn’t do anything; they didn’t try to stop Hamas. And I think the logic or the understanding was that it was a simple calculation of divide and rule. If the Israelis can create another force on the ground to compete with the PLO, it will be easier for them to impose a solution on the Palestinians from an Israeli perspective. And you know, I think they tried in the early 80s. Many of you probably remember Village Leagues--basically the Palestinians saw them as collaborators with Israel, and the Israelis thought they were trying to find some sort of legitimacy to represent the Palestinians and they failed. So, the only way for them to impose a solution was to allow these forces to exist. Now again, funny enough it’s a miscalculation.
And I remember I saw [Israeli Opposition Leader] Tzipi Livni here in Washington about six months ago after the war in Gaza, and I asked her this very question. I remember 20 years ago that the Israelis were allowing Hamas to exist. Now, the Israelis did not create Hamas, but they allowed the circumstances for them to operate and to flourish. And I said to her that they were trying very much to weaken the PLO by allowing Hamas to exist, and 20 years later they’re reversing the logic, which is trying to weaken Hamas and allowing the PLO to go back to Gaza where it became now the PA [Palestinian Authority]. So, I think the concept of Hamas existing was helpful to other parties but mainly the Israelis.
Hamas immediately understood what’s at stake, and they were very, very clever. And they were very motivated. And they were very dedicated. They knew that when you have a failed state, just like most of the Islamic organizations--whether it’s in Egypt or Hizballah in Lebanon or elsewhere in the Arab world--when you have a failed state you step in to provide services. And this is what they did. And they were very effective in that. So, they will work with the population because if you exist as a political party or as a resisting group you need the civilian population. Without them, you’ll be cut off. So, they will be the backbone of everything that you do. And they understood this very well. So, they start providing the services for people in Gaza. As you know, 70 percent of the population in Gaza are refugees. They live in squalid refugee camps in subhuman conditions whether it’s in Jabalya or Shati or wherever.
Most of the leadership now that leads Hamas, whether it is Prime Minister [Ismail] Haniyeh or [Hamas co-founder] Mahmoud Al-Zahar or others, actually come from Shati refugee camp, which is one of the biggest refugee camps in Gaza City. And they have the popular support of the refugee population. So, they stepped in, they created kindergartens, they created medical centers, they created something for the youth, etc. And they managed through that to penetrate through the civilian population. And they were very good. And the other good things about them, they are not corrupt. So, people trust them, and this is very important. I don’t know what it is about secular movements in the Arab world, but secularism goes with corruption and Islam goes with good governance. And there are so many lessons, I think, to be learned from them. The bottom line is basically through their ability to work with the civilian population to gain support, to pose themselves as an alternative, they actually became very successful.
And we’re talking about 20 years later. We’re talking about them now as a viable force on the ground to be reckoned with to the degree that from ‘87 to now, 2009, we’re talking about [how] two factions have to sit down at the negotiating table, as we see now in Cairo, to reach an agreement so that ultimately they will sit down with the Israelis and present something. Without going into too much detail, as you know in 2006, there was an election. And of course you know, the Oslo agreement--and I’m not going to go into the details of that--that led to the return of the PLO from exile, [late Palestinian President] Yasser Arafat and others. And Hamas continued to exist, continued to build on the support and continued to arm itself.
I think the success of the first intifada--it was an act of civil disobedience. There were no arms involved. And I think later on they realized that the Palestinians had tried the armed struggle, which was [what] the nationalist groups, whether it was Fateh or the PFLP or the DFLP, tried but realized later that doesn’t get them anywhere. So, they reversed that with Hamas, [who] adopted that as a resistance kind of a slogan. And the PLO, after recognizing Israel in the ‘80s and then the Oslo agreement in ‘93, they realized that it was the other way around. You had to sit down with the Israelis to negotiate without using violence.
The ground was set for the first election in 2006--and I’m jumping over the years here. I’m sure if you have any questions we can come back to that. At the time, there was a huge division between Fateh itself. And the division was, as always with all liberation movements, between the external leadership that lived in exile--namely it was in Lebanon, in Jordon, Tunisia--and the indigenous population that ultimately gave birth to local leaders. And the local leaders were the first leaders that I talked about in the unified leadership in the issue of the communiqué.
I still believe the worst thing that could happen to the Palestinians was the Oslo agreement and the return of the PLO because Israel would have been better off dealing with the local leadership for many reasons. Number one is because they lived under occupation, so they know what it is like. They have the Palestinian interest at heart. And they’re not corrupt. And they’re influenced by Israeli democracy, whether you like it or not. It’s not a perfect democracy, but its something closer to them that’s different from the rest of the Arab world.
But this, it didn’t happen. So because of the division in the old guard represented by the old leadership, the PLO leadership, and the current leadership inside, Hamas managed to win. It is very easy when you see it here in American elections; when you have a third party candidate it always takes from the other two. So, one of them will win. And this is what happened with Hamas. Saying that, I think people voted for them because they were fed up with the corruption of the PLO or the PA. It’s understandable. I mean if we are talking about politics, all politics is local. If somebody is going to come collect the garbage from your house and is going to provide you with an alternative to healthcare and is going to give you social security, you are going to vote for them. You’re not going to vote for a big grand, national project, the PLO--we’re talking about it in terms of a Palestinian state and reconciliation--because nobody believed in it.
And second, I think there was frustration among the Palestinians that since the Oslo agreement in ‘93 until the time that Hamas won the election in 2006, nothing has happened on the ground to change the Palestinian reality. Actually, it was the opposite because settlement activities went up, roadblocks were multiplied, people’s lives were restricted. They couldn’t travel for any reason, whether it’s medical treatment, whether it’s to study abroad, whether to see a relative--collective punishment against the majority of people in Gaza. So, the frustration has shown itself in the ballot box. So, people went and voted and they thought we’re going to try Hamas because we tried the PLO; it didn’t work. We tried nationalism; it didn’t work. It didn’t get us anywhere. So, maybe this is the only solution. And also, it was influenced, I think, by the bigger spread of the Islamic movements in the whole Arab world, even to a larger extent in the Muslim world. So, they were posing the slogan “Islam is the solution (Al-Islam who wa al-hal).” And therefore, people voted, and they thought we’ll try it.
The Palestinian election according to many observers, including Jimmy Carter, former [U.S.] president, many international and local observers believed that it was the most transparent election in the Middle East--more than what you saw in Iraq, what you saw in Lebanon, what you saw in Kuwait, whatever it was. One man, one woman, one vote. There was hardly any irregularities, and they won fairly.
But the results did not suit the United States or Europeans or even probably the PA because they didn’t like it. And I think many of you read how former [U.S.] Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in the gym when the results came, and she couldn’t believe it. There was no way Hamas would have won. But they did. Then what do you do? Now, as a superpower like the United States that likes to present yourself as an advocate of human rights, of democracy, of transparency, of good governance, you have to accept the results. But also, on the other hand, you see this party as an enemy of the United States because it uses violence or terrorism. It refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. It allies itself with Iran. So really on so many levels, you don’t want them to win. So, what do you do? You’re really stuck.
So while acknowledging that the democracy idea was wonderful and great, many people, by the way, thought that having the elections at that time was a wrong decision because election is the end of the process; it’s not the beginning. Democracy is not just elections. You know you vote in the end, but you have to build the institutions. Democracy is about informed choices. You have to make people understand what’s at stake and then you let them vote. It’s not just ok let’s go have elections and see who’s going to win and then we either accept or annul the results. And I think that was a problem. So, the official policy of the United States was ok, we are with the experiment, with the process but we didn’t like the results. So, what they’re trying to do, they’re trying to undermine Hamas.
And I think there’s always a problem. You’ve seen it in so many other parts of the world, places like where I’ve covered in Africa, for example. It’s always that difficult process of transition between a resistance movement, a national aspirations movement, and they’re trying to realize whatever’s at stake or independence or autonomy for its people and a governing party. Being a government. I’ve seen that in Eritrea, for example, where they fought for 30 years and now it’s almost turning into dictatorship—[Eritrean President] Isaias Afewerki. You see it in Cuba. You see it in Palestine even with Arafat. So, that transition is very, very sensitive, and people very often are unable to make it successfully.
So with Hamas--I don’t know if they were given the chance if they would be able to govern or not. I have no idea. But they were not given the chance. And therefore, they were given the excuse to justify everything that they were doing. So, the United States was trying to undermine them. I don’t know if you’ve seen it of Khaled Meshaal. Khaled Meshaal is the leader of Hamas who’s based in Damascus, and he is considered the de facto leader of Hamas, actually. He gave a major foreign policy speech just like [U.S.] President [Barack] Obama did in Cairo and [Israeli] Prime Minister [Binyamin] Netanyahu did recently. And he talked about this new spirit of this new American administration. That one of the things that he demanded was the withdrawal of [U.S. Lieutenant] General [Keith] Dayton from the West Bank because he thinks that he’s undermining the reconciliation effort by training Fateh security forces against Hamas, and he doesn’t want to see that. He thinks that there is an outside interference to the reconciliation effort that ultimately will undermine any chance of it to succeed. So, he wants that to be stopped. Now, there were some reports--I don’t know how true or not--at the time that the [former U.S. President George W. Bush] administration were trying very much to arm the security forces of Fateh. And I think, actually, to say that some of them went on the record to say that if we have to choose between Fateh and Hamas, we will always go with Fateh. And that’s understandable. So if you see the interference from outside, for whatever reason, you can see why the process cannot go through. That’s on one side.
On the other side, Hamas is also although it’s an indigenous movement born in Palestine--and I think it’s so wrong of so many people, even within the previous administration, to lump all these organizations together and say, “Ah Hamas and Hizballah and al-Qaeda and Dar al-Islam--they’re all the same, they use violence, they want to kill civilians, etc.” These people don’t. I mean they are seen as a legitimate resistance group by the eyes of millions of people in the Arab world and the Muslim world. And they do not carry attacks indiscriminately against targets overseas. They believe that the violence is a method; it’s not an end by itself. And once Palestine is liberated then they will cease to use violence. And people, to a large extent, believe that’s the case.
Now, there is a debate among the Palestinians whether using violence is actually an effective way to get you anywhere near your ultimate target, which is an establishment of a Palestinian state--a two-state solution on the West Bank and Gaza on the ’67 border. That’s another question. But for the time being, what Hamas is doing is that they pointed out the failure of the peace process. And it’s very effective, and anybody can understand the logic of that. And as I said, they will say, “Here look. Here’s the PA. They entered into negotiations with Israel with successive administrations in Israel. Probably now, they will see it as a worse one, having a right-wing government led by Likud and a foreign minister that advocated transfer of Palestinians. But, you know, it gets them nowhere. So, maybe the only card that we have now in our hands is the resistance card, the violence card, etc.”
Although, they know very well that firing a rocket from Gaza to Sderot and killing some poor Israeli woman or an Israeli child, it backfires. And if they really want to be responsible as a governing party or they want to move, to shift from being a resistance movement to a political party, they will realize that they have a responsibility towards the people. And the responsibility is that you cannot stand to an enemy a billion times stronger than you. And when you kill an Israeli woman, you know the Israelis are going to retaliate with a massive force. I mean, we’ve seen that in the war of Gaza. It’s just using F-16 airplanes to bomb a place, a highly populated area--just like using F-16s to bomb Manhattan--because you wanted to destroy one building and in the process you can destroy ten. And somehow people have some justification for that because they see the rocket fired and they don’t see the incoming.
And, of course, the media has played a role because the Israelis were very clever to stop all the foreign media from entering Gaza during the war. So, you really didn’t see much of the coverage. And if the American media were serious about finding out, they could have set up the “Gaza desk,” as I always say, like they did with Iran. You know, when the Iranian government stopped foreign media from not even entering but limiting them to certain coverage, they set up this alternative way of telling you what’s happening though Twitter and cell phones. You know the technology, etc. But anyway, this didn’t happen.
So, the bottom line [is] that Hamas is not showing any responsibility toward the people by the act of what they are doing now. But, in the end when the Israelis fire rockets, they don’t blame Hamas; they blame the people who are firing the rockets, which is the Israelis. But saying that, the opinion poll that I’ve seen recently actually shows that Hamas support among the Palestinian people has gone down considerably in the West Bank and Gaza. So maybe, it does have some effect. But, I think the long blockade on the population of Gaza, the collective punishment, the siege that’s been put around Gaza for years, it’s not just 2006. I forgot an important and significant event, which is in 2007, Hamas decided to stage a coup and take Gaza by force. So, in the process, Gaza has been cut off from the West Bank, and people start talking about a three-state solution--you have Gaza on one side, you have the West Bank and you have Israel. And I cannot see any lessons in history that any liberation movement can go and present its case divided.
So ultimately, I think, whether it’s Hamas or Fateh, if you really truly believe in the long goal which is to establish a Palestinian state, a two-state solution, then they have to consider putting their differences aside and sitting together for the sake of the people. But to be honest, I do not see this happening soon. Now, the Egyptians have been moderating these talks in Cairo for awhile, and sometimes you are very optimistic and you think they’re on the verge of breaking and they’re just about to sign something. And then, they go back. And now, I think the Egyptians also have another motive, which will serve their interests, because they don’t want Hamas also to succeed because that will set a precedent to the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned political party in Egypt. But they’ve been very practical in hosting these talks.
Now, the other issue you see is two competing forces on the ground. And from the PLO that I talked about in the ‘80s, which was nationalist and secular, it has different groups; now it’s almost gone. Nobody talks about the PFLP or the DFLP. They don’t exist anymore. They don’t have the support. They don’t have the leadership. They don’t have the material support. They don’t exist almost. I mean they’re just like small little parties; you think of them romantically--what they used to do in the ‘60s and the ‘70s. But if you talk about two actual formidable forces on the ground, it’s Fateh, or the PA represented by Fateh, and Hamas. Then, what do you do now?
If you’ve followed the news, you will see that there has been so much accusations between the two sides. You have seen arrests and counter arrests. So, Hamas forces will go and arrest Fateh members in Gaza, and I think the PA will retaliate by arresting people in the West Bank. It has been confrontation recently as you’ve seen in Qalqilya, which is a city in the north of the West Bank, in which there was a raid on Hamas activists and there was an exchange of fire and there was like seven people dead, including Palestinian security forces, members of relatives of the people who had the weapons, etc. The PA accused Hamas of trying to organize to stage another coup in the West Bank. They said their guns are not directed at the Israelis, but they are directed against the PA. So, there’s a power struggle of whose going to control what. And I think this will carry on.
Now, obviously, there were other things that we wanted to discuss, the election that is due in January of next year, 2010. Just before I came actually, I heard Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] giving an interview, and he said if Hamas wins the election, I’m happy to hand over things to them. And I think that that’s by implication; he realizes that they are not going to win. So, I don’t know if the election is going to happen or not, but part of the negotiation and reconciliation process in Cairo is basically to set up a date for the election, to reform the security forces and to talk about these arrests and counter arrests, as we’ve seen very often.
Too many parties are involved, so this is why I don’t see them just sitting down together and putting their differences aside. As you know, just like the PLO in the old days, you have internal leadership and external leadership. It’s the same for Hamas. You have Khaled Meshaal who is based in Damascus, and you have the rest of them, whether it is former Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh or others who are inside. Some will say that the local leadership are willing to compromise and they’re more practical, and the ones outside are more, probably, stricter in trying to have some kind of a deal. The problem that faces Hamas now is, I think, a question of recognition or legitimacy. The word has changed after 9/11, and I think they understand that. And they’re not that dumb to the degree that they obviously entered the election because if they had rejected the whole Oslo process--the Oslo process brought them to power--because without competing in the election, they wouldn’t be there in the first place. While Islamic Jihad, for example, and other Muslim groups, they refuse the process. They don’t want to be part of it. So, I think that shows there is some kind of practical side of them. But the question for them now, as the Quartet put it, to enter the peace process, they have to do certain things. And the certain things are: recognize Israel’s right to exist, acknowledging all the peace treaties we signed before and renouncing violence. Now, for them, to do that, they will lose legitimacy because they’re raison d’être is to sell themselves to the Palestinian people as the only alternative to a failed process. So, you give your weapons away, what do you have? You’ll become a PA. So, you really don’t have much to compete with the other side.
So, what they wanted to do is they wanted to acknowledge the two-state solution without spelling out the words of recognize Israel’s right to exist. Although, I think that Meshaal said it many times that he will accept a state on the ’67 border, and he will agree into the two-state solution. But I think they know that they don’t want to be seen as obstructing the peace process considering that this administration has taken a different stand from the Bush one, and they are quite serious about trying to find some kind of solution. So, I think Khaled Meshaal knows quite well that Israel will not accept the two-state solution. We know that Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn’t accept it and just now kind of managed to mention the words but he put so much caveats into it. And they wanted the state on the ‘67 border, and they wanted East Jerusalem to be the capitol of a future Palestinian state, and they want the right of the refugees to return. And we know that the failure of the peace process is precisely because of these issues and being postponed from the [former U.S. President Bill] Clinton administration to the Bush one and now to Obama’s. So, they were willing to play the game, I think. And they know, in the end, that they don’t have to do much.
Take into consideration that these are not just two local players. That sometimes you will see a proxy war between the United States and Iran played by the surrogates, including Hamas. And this is why I think this administration realizes that you really have to do something about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because they pull the carpet or the rug from underneath other conflicts. It makes it easier for them to solve it. It’s not going to make it be solved, but it makes it much easier. So, I will say that the reconciliation, my personal opinion, and you know I might be wrong--I said that about the Sudan peace process and they did sign an agreement and I was wrong--I don’t know if they can manage to do something to be honest because I think the differences between them is a matter of who will be able to kind of cancel the other. It’s not a matter of putting your interests together to come in a unified situation. And I think that serves Israel’s purposes very well. As long as you have a divided Palestinian leadership, you cannot really go forward.
The only scenario that can change this dynamic is the people because in the end Hamas only exists and the PA only exists if they have legitimacy in the eyes of the people. If the people realize that these people do not represent us and they don’t have our interests in their hearts, they will draw that support; they will be forced to modify their position. And I think we have seen that in many conflicts in the world--the people’s power. When the people decide to stand on one side or the other, then things will change. And I’m not just talking about public opinion because now it’s been taken into consideration. I’ll give you an example that happened recently with Hizballah in Lebanon. During the war in Gaza, people feared that, actually, Hizballah is going to open another front from the north. So, Israel has to fight on two fronts. But they didn’t. And they calculated. They didn’t, not because they didn’t want to, but because they were calculating every move they were doing because there were elections coming. And the concept of participating and being accountable to the people was very important to them. So, it was because of the public opinion in Lebanon [that] turned against Hezbollah during that last war because they blamed them for, you know, inviting the Israelis to basically destroy their country. They realized this calculation was very important. So, it did have some effect. So, they’re not completely blind to realities around them.
But what I’ll say is that reconciliation--two things just to end up. One thing is that you cannot win if you’re divided, and that’s a simple logic. I don’t have to tell you that. But, particularly, when you’re struggling as a liberation movement, you have to unify your forces. And ultimately, neither side can destroy each other militarily. I mean they can if they want to and they can let Gaza go to Hamas and keep the West Bank in Fateh hands, etc. But that’s not the solution. And second, we see a shift in the whole region in terms of influences on these two parties. I cannot also see them sitting down together and coming up with a solution. The pressure is immense on them, especially now that they have to do something before the end of July. If they don’t, the negotiation will be postponed or suspended until Ramadan, which is the holy month where all Muslims fast. It will be after September, probably the 30th of September, after they can sit down together. And things, if you leave them, it gets worse; it doesn’t get better. So, I hope I’ve set up the stage for you without kind of missing major dates of where we were and where we are now. And I don’t know how things are going to materialize soon.
But I’ll leave it to that and probably we can fill anything that I haven’t mentioned in a Q&A session. Thank you.
Nadia Bilbassy-Charters is the chief news correspondent for the Middle East Broadcasting Center in Washington, D.C. where she covers the White House and the State Department.
This transcript may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center. The speaker's views do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jerusalem Fund.