The Rise of Hamas in Gaza

The Origins of Hamas

When the Hamas charter was first published in 1988, the New York Times observed that the group’s formation represented “the first serious split of the nine-month-old Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied territories”.  Hamas was “critical of the Palestine Liberation Organization” and “not only poses a threat to the secular, P.L.O.-oriented leadership of the uprising, but has also complicated the efforts of several West Bank leaders to press Yasir Arafat and the P.L.O. leadership abroad to capitalize on their political gains by offering to come to terms with Israel.”

Despite having become “a major force in the Gaza Strip”, the Times noted that “Israeli authorities have taken no direct action against Hamas” and that “Many Palestinians maintain that the fundamentalists are being tolerated by the Israeli security forces in hopes of splitting the uprising, noting that such tactics have been used in the past in the Gaza Strip to set Islamic fundamentalists against Palestinian leftists.”[1] Israel had reportedly gone even further and directly funded the Hamas parent organization, which was legally registered in Israel a decade before the Hamas charter was announced.[2]

Hamas would go on to deserve its reputation among the international community as a terrorist organization. In April 1994, Hamas claimed responsibility for the first Palestinian suicide bombing in retaliation for the murder of 29 Muslims in a mosque in Hebron by Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler armed with an assault rifle.[3]

Israel’s initial support and encouragement for Hamas is widely acknowledged among analysts. This may seem at first like an oddity, but there is a quite logical explanation. The main problem facing Israel was the threat of peace posed by a PLO increasingly recognized by the international community as having rejected the tactic of terrorism in favor of engagement in the political process. Israel was dealing with a PLO that had dangerously accepted the international consensus on a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This consensus is based on the requirement of international law that Israel withdraw from the territories it occupied during the 1967 war, a principle reflected in U.N. Security Council resolution 242 and numerous subsequent resolutions. In Israeli policymakers’ political calculus, the ultimate threat was not that of terrorism but of the possibility of having to give up the land it wanted as part of Israel in order for a viable Palestinian to be established.

That this has been the political calculus of Israeli leaders is well evidenced by its policies and their predictable consequences, and is perhaps the only logical explanation for Israeli actions. Israel’s continued occupation, oppression, and violence towards the Palestinians have served to escalate the threat of terrorism, but this is a price Israeli leaders are willing to pay. Indeed, the threat of terrorism has often served as a pretext for carrying out policies furthering political goals that would not be politically feasible absent that threat.

That its policies served to increase the threat of terrorism was well recognized among its leadership. In October 2003, for instance, Israel’s chief of staff of the military criticized the policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, pointing out that they served to increase hatred of Israel and strengthen terrorist organizations.[4] The next month, four former chiefs of Israel’s Shin Bet security service similarly spoke out, saying Israel was headed in the direction of “catastrophe” and would destroy itself if it continued to take steps “that are contrary to the aspiration for peace”, such as the continued oppression of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. “We must admit that there is another side,” said Avraham Shalom, Shin Bet director from 1980 to 1986, “that it has feelings and that it is suffering, and that we are behaving disgracefully.”[5]

But the policies continued, with Israel often acting violently to provoke a violent response, including its use of extrajudicial killings. On March 22, 2004, for example, Israel assassinated Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a quadriplegic. “I could not recognize the sheik, only his wheelchair,” said one witness to the attack. Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei called it “a crazy and very dangerous act” that “opens the door wide to chaos” because “Yassin is known for his moderation, and he was controlling Hamas”.[6] Analysts predicted that the action, rather than lessen the threat of terrorism, would “likely lead to increased violence against Israel in the form of retaliation attacks”.  Criticism of the attack included members of Sharon’s own government, including Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, who made similar observations.

The Sharon “Disengagement” Plan

The fact that it was predicted to have the opposite effect certainly casts doubt on Israel’s claimed motive of wanting to mitigate the threat of terrorism by eliminating the head of a terrorist organization. Furthermore, other predicted consequences point to a much different rationale for the decision. Some experts argued the assassination was in part “intended to build domestic support for a planned Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank.” But more importantly, the attack had “devastated prospects for a peace settlement in the Middle East”, which was also precisely the outcome that the planned withdrawal from Gaza was intended to produce.[7]

That the actual goal was to undermine prospects for peace is underscored by the fact that Yassin had just a short time prior said “that Hamas could accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip”, with Hamas offering a long-term truce in exchange for withdrawal from the territories, “a major shift in policy from Hamas” towards acceptance of the international consensus on a two-state solution.[8]

At the time of Arafat’s death later that year, Israel had been openly talking about withdrawing from Gaza not as a means to implement steps towards a negotiated peace settlement, but as a means to derail it. This purpose was typically obfuscated in U.S. media coverage of the development, which tended to characterize it as a move intended as a gesture of goodwill done to advance the peace process. But the true nature of Sharon’s “disengagement” plan did occasionally slip through the cracks. The Washington Post reported, for instance, that according to Sharon’s “top aides”, “once Gaza was evacuated, the whole [peace] process would go in a deep freeze for many years – leaving Israel in control of the West Bank, where its most populated and richest settlements were located.”[9]

In contrast to Western accounts, the Sharon government itself offered few pretenses about the true motivations behind the plan. Israel announced that while the withdrawal took place, it would at the same time expand settlements in the West Bank. Israel additionally declared that large portions of the West Bank would “remain part of the State of Israel” as the illegal construction of what was effectively an annexation wall continued. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, while insisting that the wall was intended to prevent terrorist attacks, later admitted that “One does not have to be a genius to see that the fence will have implications for the future border.” While she characterized these “implications” as merely incidental, this is hardly plausible in light of Israel’s policy of four decades of occupation and illegal settlement of Palestinian territory.[10]

But Israel needed political cover for its plan to consolidate its control over land in the West Bank and to disengage from any kind of effort towards a negotiated settlement. This was where the withdrawal from Gaza would come in. It was part of a little-disguised public relations campaign. Once implemented, Israel declared that although it would “monitor and supervise the outer envelope on land, will have exclusive control of the Gaza airspace, and will continue its military activity along the Gaza Strip’s coastline” and would “continue to maintain military presence along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt”, there would be “no basis to the claim that the Strip is occupied land”.[11] The move would also offer the U.S. government political cover so Israel could gain its much-needed support for the “disengagement” plan.

The Sharon government continued with its plan to derail efforts to negotiate a two-state settlement (in this sense, it was rightfully called a “disengagement” plan), winning cabinet approval for the Gaza pullout in February. The New York Times reported that “Mr. Sharon wants to complete the West Bank separation barrier” while at the same time “consolidating Israel’s control over the large settlement blocs.” Palestinians, the Times added, “view the move as a land grab and an attempt by Mr. Sharon to unilaterally set a future border on territory they want for a state.”[12]

Three days later, a Times editorial acknowledged that the Palestinian “view” was perhaps the correct one. It said that the Times “has long been very wary of any moves by the Israeli government to further consolidate land it seized after the 1967 war without negotiations with the Palestinians.” The editors “were a little queasy about” how Sharon “coupled” plans to withdraw from Gaza with further construction of the wall, “a chessboard-worthy move”. Essentially, “Mr. Sharon is sacrificing Gaza in return for the world’s acceptance of Israel’s ‘de facto annexation of 7 percent of West Bank territory’” (the quote was from an Israeli columnist writing in the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot). The editorial asserted that the wall “should not be treated as a permanent boundary when the time comes for peace talks about a final settlement with the Palestinians”. Despite these acknowledgments about the true nature of the plan, the editors expressed their “enthusiasm” for the withdrawal.[13]

One month later, another editorial in the Times noted that Israel had since acted to expand settlements in the West Bank and that “Mr. Sharon is unfairly trying to stack the deck before peace talks even begin”, as predicted. It asserted that “Israel can’t simply exchange Gaza for more settlements in the West Bank”, the understood purpose for the plan to withdraw the Times had just a short time before greeted with such “enthusiasm”.[14]

In April, U.S. President George W. Bush sent a letter to Sharon that welcomed the “disengagement plan” and gave a green light for the policy of settlement expansion and construction of the wall. While paying lip service to the notion of a Palestinian state, it effectively endorsed the Israeli policy of prejudicing the outcome of any future negotiated peace settlement.[15]

A month later, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer said in an interview with Israeli media that it was U.S. policy that “Israeli major populations areas [in the West Bank] in our view should remain within the State of Israel.” This is the policy, he said, that had been communicated in the letter from President George W. Bush to Sharon. So as to leave no uncertainty, Kurtzer reiterated that “U.S. policy is the support that the President has given for the retention by Israel of major Israeli population centers as an outcome of negotiations. It is very, very clear to both the United States and Israel what this means.”[16]

Kurtzer’s remarks caused “a diplomatic furor”, forcing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to contradict it by saying that Israel’s settlement expansion was “at odds with American policy.” The New York Times correctly observed that Sharon “has justified his plan” to withdraw from Gaza “on the basis of his belief that Washington will support Israel’s intention to keep its main settlement blocks” in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem, but described the contradiction between rhetoric and action as “Diplomatic ambiguities”.[17]

There were no “ambiguities” about the matter in Israel, which had been made “very, very clear” about it. Sharon responded to Rice’s remarks by telling his cabinet, “We can’t expect to receive explicit American agreement to build freely in the settlements.” But, he added, settlement blocs in the West Bank “will remain in Israel’s hands and will fall within the (separation) fence”. He added that “we made this position clear to the Americans.”[18] There were no misunderstandings.

Not all commentators in the U.S. mainstream media were mystified by the “ambiguities” of U.S. policy. The reality of the situation did manage occasionally to slip out. Thus, one could read in the Washington Post that Sharon had a “bold agenda” to “obtain support of President Bush for a unilateral Israeli solution.” Having abandoned “ a decade of efforts at negotiations – not to mention Bush’s own ‘road map’ for a two-state solution – Sharon aimed to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, then impose a border of Israel’s choosing in the West Bank, fortified by walls and fences. Rather than seek accord with the Palestinians, whom he knew would never accept his terms, Sharon sought to anchor his initiative in a deal with Bush, whom he asked for an endorsement of Israel’s eventual annexation of West Bank territory and its determination never to accept the return of Palestinian refugees.” This was a plan with which “Bush signed on.” Sharon had “straightforwardly” said “that his whole purpose is to avoid the result of a negotiated settlement” and his “closest aide, Dov Weissglas, has been equally forthright. ‘The significance of our disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process,’ he told the newspaper Haaretz last October. ‘It supplies the formaldehyde necessary so there is no political process with Palestinians.’” U.S. officials “understand very well what Sharon’s goals are but choose not to notice them”.[19]

But such candid observations were far from the norm in U.S. accounts, and after the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, the mainstream press and government officials alike exercised collective amnesia when Israel announced that it had agreed to a deal under the Bush administration to allow for “natural growth” of the settlements. Thus a headline in the Washington Post in April 2008 could read, “Israelis Claim Secret Agreement With U.S.” with a subheading that read “Americans Insist No Deal Made on Settlement Growth”.[20]

Following the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in the summer of 2005, a headline in the British daily The Independent summarized one key aspect of the “disengagement plan” in a few words: “Sharon pledges to expand West Bank settlements as last Israelis leave Gaza”.[21]

Underscoring another key element of the plan, Haaretz reported that “The main message Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will bring to meetings with world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly this week is that Israeli responsibility for the Gaza Strip has come to an end.” Sharon had “adopted the Foreign Ministry’s position that it would be out of place to declare ‘the end of the occupation’ in Gaza, at least as long as the Palestinians do not control the border crossings, airspace and territorial waters. Instead, the ministry prefers ‘the end of Israeli responsibility.’” In other words, Israel would reject any suggestion that it had responsibility for the suffering of the people in a territory that it proceeded to place under a state of siege, a calamitous situation that persists to this day.[22]