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News > January 23, 2006

Hamas: Sharons Legacy?

By Neve Gordon

Campaign posters for the January 25 elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council on a wall in Hebron.

Both the Israeli and Palestinian political arenas are in turmoil. In Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke has left the country and his newly established party, Kadima, in disarray. In the Palestinian territories, the ruling Fatah party is rapidly losing popular support, and the Islamist party Hamas is gaining ground. Paradoxically, Hamas’ steady ascent is part of Sharon legacy, while its imminent victory in the upcoming elections will help Israel’s new leader transform Sharon’s political vision into reality.

Sharon, the father of Israel’s unruly settlement enterprise and the person responsible for thousands of deaths in the Lebanon debacle, including the Sabra and Shatila massacre, altered his strategic thinking during the last couple of years. After leading Israel’s efforts to expropriate Palestinian land for three decades, Sharon finally realized that as the messianic and militaristic visions of a greater Israel became reality and the border between Israel proper and the territories it occupied in 1967 was erased, the very idea of a Jewish state, where Jews are the majority, was being “threatened.” While he considered the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza appealing from a geographic point of view, he joined the vast majority of Israeli Jews who feel endangered by the fact that today the majority of people living between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea are not Jewish.

For years this demographic “threat” was kept at bay by denying the occupied Palestinians Israeli citizenship and subjecting them to military rule. Israel, in other words, created an apartheid regime in the West Bank (and Gaza) in order to sustain the Jewish majority within its borders. It installed dual legal systems within a single territory, one for Jews, the other for Palestinians. This incongruence between Israel’s geographic aspirations and demographic reality led to a political juncture whereby it had to choose one of two options: continue maintaining a system of apartheid or, conversely, give up the idea of a Jewish state.

Sharon decided to adopt a third way. He withdrew from the Gaza Strip and made plans to annex several parts of the West Bank so as to radically alter the region’s demographic and geographic reality. He used the separation barrier—which is made up of electronic fences, barbed wire, patrol roads, trenches and massive concrete slates—as the means to unilaterally implement his political vision. Thus, even though the barrier is constantly presented as a “temporary” security apparatus, in reality its primary objective is to redraw the map between Israel and the Palestinian entity.

Demographically, the barrier will surround 56 Jewish settlements from the east, annexing the land that they now occupy so that 171,000 West Bank settlers will be incorporated into Israel’s new borders. The wall being built in East Jerusalem is meant to reinforce the 1967 annexation of this part of the city, and to legitimize the 183,800 Jewish settlers living there. If the barrier does indeed become the new border it will solve the problem posed by about 87 percent of Israel’s illegal settlers. The remaining 13 percent, or 52,500 settlers, will have to be forcibly evacuated, like the Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip.

Geographically, the barrier is meant to enlarge Israel’s internationally recognized territory by annexing West Bank land, while creating self-governing enclaves for the Palestinians. The barrier’s route cuts up the Palestinian territory into 16 small internal enclaves containing specific villages, towns or cities. In addition, it cuts the West Bank in at least two (north/south) and perhaps four larger enclaves (the north is divided into three parts, north of Ariel, south of Ariel and south of Jericho). Taking the Gaza Strip into account, it becomes clear that when the barrier is complete, the future Palestinian “state” will be made up of three to five main regions.

The regions will be closed off almost completely from each other, while Israel will continue to effectively control all of the borders so that it can implement a hermetic closure whenever it wishes. What is new about the barrier is not the attempt to create enclaves in the Occupied Territories, but the effort to transform these enclaves into quasi-independent entities that will ostensibly form a Palestinian state.

It is not surprising that Sharon’s unilateral solution has in the past two years been sowing the seeds of hatred. One would expect the international community to condemn Israel’s myopic unilateralism. Yet now more than before there is a good chance that once Sharon’s successors try to secure international approval for his program they will receive widespread support, since in the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism, everything is permitted.

This is where Hamas enters the picture. Hamas, an abbreviation of Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, namely, Islamic Resistance Movement, was founded in 1987 by Sheik Ahmad Yasin at the outbreak of the first Palestinian Intifada. While Hamas tends to be identified with its military arm, Izzeddin al-Qassam, well known for its attacks on Israeli targets, it has always also been a vibrant political and social movement. It has kindergartens and schools that offer free meals for children, education centers for women, and youth and sports clubs. Its medical clinics offer subsidized treatment to the sick and it extends financial and technical assistance to those whose homes had been demolished and to refugees living in sub-standard conditions. Thus, ever since its establishment, Hamas has offered Palestinians extensive community services and has responded constantly to the changing political reality by making pragmatic decisions.

The changing power relations within Palestinian society, in which the ruling Fatah party has lost many of its supporters to Hamas, will no doubt help Israel advance its unilateral solution. As In These Times went to press, it seemed highly likely that Hamas would become the largest party in the Palestinian territories in the January 25 elections, if not winning them outright. This will benefit Sharon’s heir, since it will help him convince not only the United States but also Europe to back Israel’s intent to establish new borders, turning a blind eye to the ongoing violation of Palestinian rights that Israel’s unilateral action entails. Ultimately, this will leave the Palestinians both rightless and stateless.

Sharon, a brilliant strategist, seems to have recognized this long ago, and over the years implemented policies that have strengthened Hamas. The International Crisis Group has shown, for example, that Hamas has been empowered by the economic calamity caused by Israeli assaults and closures. The resulting economic disaster created a gap that Hamas’ charitable organizations could fill and the Palestinian Authority could not. Thanks to Sharon’s military and economic policies in the Occupied Territories, practically all doors have been closed except, of course, the mosque doors.

Sharon’s actions during his tenure as prime minister strengthened Hamas, while Hamas’ ascendancy in the Palestinian street will ultimately enable Sharon’s followers to pursue his plans unhindered.

Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, and is the editor of From the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights.

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  • Reader Comments

    Ah, of course. Blame the victim. Oh. Wait a minute. It is all the Israeli’s fault.

    Disclaimer: This is a response to only the headline. I don’t have time to read such nonsense.

    Posted by Jay Cline on Jan 23, 2006 at 4:40 PM

    Well, I see I didn’t beat the first Zionist to the Comments section here. His arrogant, ignorant and unsurprising words speak volumes.

    I expect over the next few days to see Neve Gordon Savaged (as in Michael) by “liberal” Jews whose heart-felt beliefs in human rights, morality, fairness and international law stop at Israel’s illegal borders and do not extend to the sub-human Palestinians (or any Arabs/Muslims for that matter).

    But I will remind them nonetheless (and for all the good it will do) that not all of us liberals are Zionists and many of us still retain the ability to discern right and wrong, just and unjust as well as legal and illegal. And though you will certainly pronounce this discernment as “anti-Semitism,” it is not. But if it makes you feel better to slander me, go ahead. It is your only defense.

    It is my fervent hope that this view I hold is a contagious condition that will spread not only throughout the liberal, progressive community but the entire country itself. Yet I realize there are decades of propaganda and mythology to overcome.

    No, that would not bode well for business as usual in Israel or Washington.

    Good.

    Posted by opeluboy on Jan 23, 2006 at 8:10 PM

    Yes, a round-about way to say that Israel is stealing land, and dividing the Palestinians into “enclaves” so that their movement and organization can be controlled by Israeli forces.

    The wall reminds me of something...what was that...everyone has heard about it....WW II.... oh, yeah ---the Warsaw Ghetto!!!

    What is Sharon up to anyway? Is he dead yet? Will we get the pharoah’s funeral on Fox?

    I hear you opeluboy. They can worship caribou for all I care. What the Israelis are doing to the Palestinian people is shameful and evil.  Ah, but the oppressed do yearn to be the oppressor.

    You know we’re going to be hearing about the suicide bombers. The suicide bombers justify everything. Oh yes, the suicide bombers. Israeli snipers are helpless in the face of suicide bombers, suicide bombers, suicide bombers. Oh the most awful thing in the world is suicide bombers. Shoot them in the head---shoot seven year old children in the head when they throw rocks, so that they don’t grow up to be suicide bombers. Shoot thechildren in the head, because they might grow up to be suicide bombers.

    Posted by wileywitch on Jan 24, 2006 at 12:02 AM

    The more people make Israel and its occupation a distinctly Jewish issue the further we get from the topics to be addressed by the peace movement.  The fact is that poll after poll find most Jews both in the diaspora and in Israel in favor of an end to the illegal occupation and a total withdrawl from the Palestinian territories.  The Jews don’t control the Israel government or its decisions anymore than most Americans control what goes on with the political decisions of the Bush Administration.  One of the real problems is the Wests actual love affair with religious fundamentalism.  The answer to this phenomenon is very simple.  Backward religious nuts and the populace they control through fear and ignorance are far weaker and easier to control than enlightened people and movements guided by the ideas underlying nationalism, democratic socialism, developmentalist challenges to the free market and neoliberal orthodoxy, and secular humanist agenda.  This is why Sharon actually promoted Hamas functionaries in the Occupied Territories as a counter-wieght to Fatah-the more modern and realistic threat to Israeli hegemony.  This is why Hamas affiliated Shiekhs in Arab towns inside the Israeli greenline are allowed to be elected Major and recieve lavish Israeli funds for their municiple budgets and free services while secular nationalists like Bassam Shakha gets his legs blown off and peaceful opponenets of Zionism and proponents of a non-aligned, secular, democratic, non-apartheid, cooperative Israel/Palestine like Mustafa Barghouthi languish in Israeli military prisons.  US policy in Iraq is also benefiting the most religiously fanatical elements such as the Shiite SCIRI and its terrorist military arm, the Badr Brigades. The war on terror is not meant to be won but to continue on while providing a smokescreen for the crushing of democracy everywhere!  Bush and Sharon’s Muslim fundamentalist allies help in this task as ordinary people suffer!

    Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Jan 24, 2006 at 12:14 AM

    Hi cabdriverinchicago, glad you could make it. Do you have space making capability on your puter? If you could break your posts into shorter paragraphs, that would be wonderful. If not, I’ll read ya anyway, I’ll just get lost sometimes.

    Actually, I hear about a third of the Israeli population wants peace, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are willing to give up the occupied territories.

    I have never heard anyone complain about the Jewish problem in Israel. It is always the state sponsored terrorism and militancy that is criticised. The knee jerk reaction against any criticism of Isreal as being anti-semitic is a pathetically low blow.

    The Jewish and Christian Zionist bedfellows are a horribly strange combo. Most Christian Americans have no clue that Christians were much better off in Iraq under Hussein, than they are in Israel, now.  I hear a lot of jewish Israelis are going to Russia because the caste system in Israel is so fossilized.

    I hate to say this, but I think the Iranian honcho made a good point when he said that since Europeans oppressed the Jews, and the Europeans want the Jews to have a homeland, then Europe should offer them land to establish their state instead of demanding that Palestinians give up their homeland. Sure, he’s a little nutty, but I hear the imams are keeping him on a leash, and it is hard to argue with the logic in any secular way. If Israel insists on a religious argument....well....then what? Will we be anti-semitic then? If they insist that we interpret their behavior in the light of their religion, or race, or however they define jewry will we be anti-semitic when we criticise their behavior? 

    You seem to be pretty well informed on this topic. Please post links when you can.

    Posted by wileywitch on Jan 24, 2006 at 1:14 AM

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