Hamas
and the Peace Process
Yehezkel Shabath
Policy Paper No. 127, 2001
Summary
Hamas is a branch of the Islamic movement.
It was formed in Gaza in 1987 by the Moslem Brotherhood with the goal of
establishing an Islamic state in “Palestine”. Its leader was Shaykh Ahmad Yasin,
who together with other Shaykhs, drafted the Islamic Charter. The articles of
this charter are very extreme – stating that Palestine in its entirety is sacred
to Islam in perpetuity and that no Moslem has the right to relinquish even the
slightest part of it.
During the years of the intifadha*,
Hamas committed extremely cruel acts of terror, including suicide bombings
perpetrated in the wake of the killing at the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the
elimination of Yahya Ayyash. Hamas vehemently opposed the peace process,
criticized it, battled against it and believed that it would fall. After
‘Arafat’s entry into Gaza in July 1994 and the consolidation of his power in the
autonomous territories, Israel urged him to arrest members of Hamas in order to
prevent them from carrying out further acts of terror. ‘Arafat partially acceded
to Israeli demands in order to acquire additional areas in Judea, Samaria and
the Gaza Strip.
The leaders of Hamas saw that the Peace
Process was successfully progressing and the Palestinian Authority was securely
established in the autonomous territories, while their own policies were
suffering repeated failures and they decided, for the time being, to toe the
line and “bend in the face of the storm”. In the course of 1996, they began to
issue relatively moderate declarations and the head of the Hamas political
office – Musa abu-Marzuq – presented a new plan. According to the plan, Hamas
expressed willingness to sign a cease-fire agreement with Israel and stop all
terror attacks in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza
Strip, Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem and the dismantling of all settlements.
In their declarations, the leaders of Hamas
added that they would support ‘Arafat’s policies in order to attain as much as
possible of Palestine in this generation and leave the liberation of the
remainder to future generations. Hence, Hamas, for all intents and purposes,
adopted the “step-by-step policy”, which had been the policy of the PLO for some
time.
During the years 1996-1997,
`Arafat
continued to “eat away” at Hamas. In those years, three major factions developed
within Hamas: One, a relatively small faction, abandoned the jihad and
returned exclusively to cultural and philanthropic activities; the second,
central faction, supported suspending the jihad, for the time being, and
focusing on political activity as opposition within the Palestinian Authority;
and the third, smallest faction, continues to advocate the path of jihad.
The central faction, which is the predominant one, established, in 1996, a party
named the “Islamic National Salvation Party”. This party is, so to speak, a
political arm of Hamas and functions as a legal, political opposition party in
the context of the Palestinian Authority.
In addition, the Islamic movement has, to a
certain degree, split, and other small Islamic parties which function within the
Palestinian Authority have been established. The central faction in Hamas
attempts, as far as possible, to avoid a confrontation with the Palestinian
Authority which would lead to a situation similar to the one encountered by the
fundamentalist Islamic movements in Egypt and Algeria – a bloody war with the
current regime.
* Transliteration of Arabic and Hebrew names and terms was done
by Professor Shabath.
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