The Palestinians at the crossroads

The Fatah owes its defeat to many factors, prominent being its exhaustion, a lacklustre leadership after Arafat, its abysmal corruption and Mahmoud Abbas' apparent inability to infuse life in now dead roadmap for peace leading to Palestinian statehood. During the last year the situation obtaining with regard to Palestinians got worse from day to day. The scourge of occupation made normal life and commerce impossible. The West Bank settlements were enlarging continuously. The 'security' wall which consumes about ten percent of West Bank territory was nearing completion. No important prisoner including Marwan Bargouti, a likely challenger to Mahmoud Abbas was released. Many of the votes cast in favour of Hamas had therefore nothing to do with peace, religion or fundamentalism -- as thought but with protests against prevailing maladies.

Israel's western patrons however availed in it an opportunity to scuttle the possibility of a peace settlement and subsequent establishment of Palestinian state. Led, of course, by the US and Britain the post-poll refrains are familiar -- that of virulent rejection: No talk with Hamas until it recognises the Israel's right to exist.

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Let's begin with Israel's reaction. Rennan Gissin, the spokesman for Israel's prime minister reacted to the Hamas success by saying that 'Israel will not deal with any government that includes Hamas'. The day after the election results were out Israel's interim prime minister, after three hours of emergency meeting, said that Israel wouldn't negotiate with a Palestinian government that has any relation with Hamas. Israel's foreign minister Livni appealed to the EU, the biggest donor to the Palestinian Authority (PA) to firmly oppose the creation of a government by the Hamas which, according to him was a terrorist organisation.

Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief told a press conference in Gaza that it would be very difficult for the help and money that go to the PA to continue to flow if the Hamas was in the future government. After their meeting in London on January 30, the Middle East Quartet -- the US, UN, EU and Russia responded positively to Israel's call and issued a statement demanding that Hamas renounces violence and accepts Israel's right to exist. They threatened that EU aid to PA would not be released in the event of the latter's non-compliance.

Even if the Hamas leaders held their composure and were conciliatory in expressing their desire to include in their government the Fatah leaders not tainted with corruption and willingness to engage Israel in peace negotiation the barrage of condemnation of the election result continued unabated. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlosconi moaned that the Hamas' trouncing of Fatah was a 'very, very bad result.' In New York the Anti-Defamation League pronounced the result 'a tremendous setback.' In the words of FBI Director, Robert-Mueller, 'Hamas has a choice to make.' Others insisted that the significance of election couldn't be known until Hamas decides whether or not to abandon its foremost objective, the liquidation of Israel. It was a line echoed everywhere from the British foreign office to New York Times' editorial pages.

Yet in a significant sense the election result is the best one that could have been hoped for. Because this surprise win by the Hamas is an unambiguous reality check into the nature of Palestinian society and its psyche. And if there is one thing that the West is in dire need of, it is more of realism, not delusion about the Palestinians. This realism alone can induce them to understand why a people behave in a certain way. For years whether through the perpetuation of atrocities or a show of neglect and contempt the message to the Palestinians was clear: Israel understands only the language of force. So the Palestinians have put in power a party which speaks that language.

Almost an orchestrated refrain of rejection both by Israel and its allies has brought to the fore a very basic question: if they indeed want a negotiated solution of Palestinian imbroglio. The question assumes greater relevance in a historical context. Israel and its patrons also did not want to talk to the PLO by bringing the same set complaints against it. Throughout 1970s and 1980s the Israeli government declared that it would never negotiate with PLO, because they were terrorists. It charged that the PLO had a charter calling for the destruction of Israel. Arafat, it charged, was a monster, a second Hitler and so on. Therefore it said that there would be no talk, no negotiation with the PLO.

In the end, after much bloodshed, Israel and PLO recognised each other and the Oslo agreement was signed. It is true that PLO also, like Hamas, refused to recognise Israel and its Fatah faction did have an armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade having record of dare-devil actions against Israel. Israel's allies carefully clipped the wings of PLO before its forlorn leader in far-off Tunis was pitchforked to the spotlight of White House to participate in now dead Oslo process. Arafat, once disarmed by the peacebrokers, helplessly watched the erosion of Oslo process till it was finally buried. Arafat's rise and fall till his incarceration in PLO's Ramallah HQ went perfectly according to the game plan scripted by Israel and her patrons.

Now came Mahmoud Abbas with whom Sharon was asked by the US to negotiate peace by reviving the roadmap for peace. Sharon already saw through a stalwart like Arafat who fell flat on the ground before his crookery. Even if he was asked to negotiate now with a 'moderate' -- an euphemism for 'compliant' -- Sharon had no intention of doing so. Because such negotiations would inevitably have led to a situation that would have compelled him to give up almost all of the West Bank. Why should he negotiate when he can annex most of it unilaterally with the blessings of his allies! With that intention he in a dramatic way left his Likud party and formed the 'Kadima' which will be the catalyst of his dream.

The rejection of the Hamas by the world at large is very welcome to Sharon's Kadima party which openly calls for the unilateral annexation of territory. It will help also the Likud and Labour hawks whose mantra is "we have no partner for peace -- so, to hell with the peace!" What would the Hamas do with its heavy responsibility of fulfilling the Palestinians' aspiration, their freedom from occupation and statehood?

The freedom and sovereign statehood are seldom given on the platter. Even if it is to be negotiated it has to be done from a position of strength. It will be litmus test for the Hamas to be steadfast or not before all the world's pressure to disarm themselves and accord a stamp of recognition to an adversary, out and out atrocious resorting to state terrorism.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.