jerusalem | Hamas’ runaway success in recent Palestinian municipal elections is raising fears of a possible victory for the terrorist group in the parliamentary election in January, dampening the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and possibly leading to a renewal of the intifada.
Several key players are making last-ditch attempts to block Hamas’ rise. Israel and the United States have been trying to pressure Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to bar Hamas from the January vote. More significantly, on Wednesday, Dec. 21, Israel banned Jerusalem Arabs from taking part in the parliamentary election. The Palestinian Authority responded by saying the decision could prompt it to defer the election indefinitely.
Hamas’ cause is helped by a generational rift in Fatah, the secular ruling party. Unhappy with the list of Fatah candidates drawn up by Abbas, young Fatah members broke away last week to form a new party called al-Mustaqbal and submitted a list of candidates of their own, headed by jailed activist Marwan Barghouti.
Members of Fatah — most of whom returned to Palestinian areas from Tunis with Yasser Arafat in the mid-1990s — are known as “Fatah-Tunis,” or the “outsiders.” The young generation is made up of “insiders,” Palestinians who grew up under Israeli occupation.
“Fatah-Tunis” face a double challenge — from Hamas and from its own young, insider generation. Both accuse the Tunis leadership of mismanagement and corruption. But whereas Hamas rules out any accommodation with Israel, the young Fatah leaders do not.
If it gains a large share of power, Hamas’ dilemma will be whether to press its social agenda or to emphasize its rejection of Israel. Hamas’ popularity on the local level is based largely on its welfare work and its benevolent image.
Pressing for wider adoption of its 1988 charter — which denies Israel’s right to exist and calls for a total economic boycott of the Jewish state — could prove less popular. Polls show that 60 percent to 70 percent of Palestinians support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which Hamas rejects.
The key question is whether power would moderate Hamas, or whether Hamas in power would radicalize the Palestinians.
The Arab affairs expert for Ha’aretz, Danny Rubinstein, maintains that Hamas is not yet ready to make the choice, since it currently enjoys the best of both worlds. It “can preach reform,” while leaving Abbas and his Fatah colleagues “the dirty work of making agreements and compromises with Israel,” Rubinstein writes.
In power, however, Hamas may be forced to make ideological concessions or any hope of peace between Israel and the Palestinians could be lost — and the Palestinians could forfeit economic support from the United States and European Union.
To pre-empt this, some young Fatah activists are saying that Hamas must be stopped.
“We didn’t fight 40 years to hand Hamas power on a platter,” Fatah activists told the Hebrew daily Yediot Achronot.
Israel is urging Abbas to disqualify Hamas from the elections. Israeli officials note the Oslo agreements stipulate that parties that maintain armed militias or that don’t recognize the state of Israel can’t participate in elections.
But authority officials aren’t bowing.
“The democratic right to participate is guaranteed by law. We cannot exclude anybody,” declared Palestinian spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh.