Bernard Spiegal

This is Part two of a two-part article. In Part one I focus on the wrongness and futility of proscribing Hamas. Here, in Part two, I set out in outline Hamas’s position on ceasefires and ultimate objectives.

Hamas: from 1988 to now

Hamas’s original 1988 Charter prompted accusations of antisemitism, because it characterised the conflict over Palestine as one against Jews rather than Zionists.  This was a serious error.

The revised 2017 Charter corrects, in effect nullifies, the one formulated in 1988.

Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.

Of course, a cynical or sceptical observer might question how secure is the change, this based on the view that a ‘leopard never changes its spots’. This may or may not be the case, but Hamas would not be the first liberation movement to radically change its position. Ireland and Sinn Fein spring to mind.

Note also that antisemitism is very much a European phenomenon.  There is a long history of positive relationships between Jews and Muslims in the Arab world, most recently attested to by the historian Avi Shlaim, who, in his memoir – Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew  – describes himself as an Arab or Iraqi Jew[1]. This is not to say that the relationship was always smooth and untroubled. It is to say that in the pursuit of understanding it is wrong and unhelpful to overlay the European experience of antisemitism on to the Muslim world.

Scope of the resistance

It is Hamas’s policy not to conduct operations outside of historic Palestine. Khaled Meshaal, Head of Hamas’s diaspora office explained in ‘The political thought of the Islamic movement, Hamas’ that:

We have limited our resistance to that against the enemy that has occupied our lands and violated our people and our sanctities; it is not against anyone else. We do not even target those who support our enemy and provide it with every means of power and deadly arms to kill our people. This is an important point to remember.

By way of contrast, it is a bitter irony that Meshaal was the subject of a bungled Israeli assassination attack in 1977. This attaches to a wider point: It too often passes unremarked that Israel’s policy of assassinating those it disapproves of is a gross violation of international law.

Assassination is an Israeli practice very much in operation currently. The assassinations often, perhaps always, involve killing – assassinating – those civilians living with, or in close proximity to, Israel’s target. Such actions carried out by a non-state actor would surely qualify as terrorism. Here, though, the slogan ‘Israel is a terror state’ seems evidentially justified.

Grounds for a negotiated settlement: Hudna, a short-term peace

According to Daud Abdullah, Director of Middle East Monitor, in ‘The making of Hamas’s foreign policy’, there is a distinction to be drawn between an immediate (ajil) settlement, and one that is delayed (mu’ajjal). These distinctions are an aspect of Hamas’s thinking about a Hudna – a short-term truce, initially for 10 years.

On 1 November 2006, an adviser to [Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh] Ahmed Yousef, wrote an article in the New York Times that:

Here in Gaza, few dream of peace. For now, most dare only to dream of a lack of war. It is for this reason that Hamas proposes a long-term truce during which the Israeli and Palestinian peoples can try to negotiate a lasting peace.

A truce is referred to in Arabic as a hudna. Typically covering 10 years, [it] is recognized in Islamic jurisprudence as a legitimate and binding contract. A hudna extends beyond the Western concept of a cease-fire and obliges the parties to use the period to seek a permanent, nonviolent resolution to their differences.

The Koran finds great merit in such efforts at promoting understanding among different people. Whereas war dehumanizes the enemy and makes it easier to kill, a hudna affords the opportunity to humanize one’s opponents and understand their position with the goal of resolving the intertribal or international dispute.

More detail on the recent history of Hudna can be found here in Peace News.

In terms of ajil, the focus is on unifying Gaza with the West Bank and East Jerusalem under one, democratically elected government. But this is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate – mu’ajjal – goal is the liberation of historic Palestine. Muhammad Nazzal, a member of the Hamas political bureau explains:

We are with any transitional solution but without recognition of the Israeli enemy or the continuity of its entity, meaning we do not oppose a withdrawal from any part of Palestine on condition there is not recognition of Israel. Likewise, Hamas does not oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state on any part from which the enemy withdraws voluntarily or forcefully.’

Husam Badran, a member of the Hamas Political Bureau, as reported 30 June this year, reinforces the point made above. He has called for a national consensus democracy to take root in a unified Palestine of Gaza, the West Bank, as well as East Jerusalem under one government in which all Palestinian factions can take part in governance.

Historic Palestine: a united, democratic space for all?

What Hamas will not concede is recognition of Israel as a specifically Jewish state.  To recognise such a state would be tantamount to, in the 1990s, expecting the ANC to recognise South Africa as an Apartheid state.

Hamas’s principled position of non-recognition, in conjunction with, as set out above, a hudna [that] affords the opportunity to humanize one’s opponents and understand their position with the goal of resolving…dispute, could create the context for examining the potential viability of creating One Democratic State between the river and the sea, in historic Palestine.  

[1] Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew published by One World