This will be published (next week) in the upcoming issue of News from Within...But we thought it was worth to send it around now, so...here...
http://alternativenews.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=381&Itemid=1&lang=ISO-8859-1
From: News from Within, Vol. XXII, No. 2 February 2006
The US and the Palestinian Legislative Elections: “Shocking Results,” Same Policy
By: Josh Friedman
In the wake of the recent Palestinian Legislative elections, analysts in the US began talking about the potentially devastating consequences of a Hamas controlled government for President Bush’s Middle East peace plan.
With Hamas in power – a party which will prove significantly more difficult for the US and Israel to deal with – many analysts and US officials have expressed reservations about the viability of President Bush’s policy in the region and foresee a decrease of US involvement in Israeli-Palestinian politics. As predicted, President Bush has officially refused to fund or negotiate with Hamas until it disarms its militant wing and officially recognize Israel. Hamas, for its part, seems unlikely to oblige. The movement gained power in Palestinian society not only by presenting itself as an alternative to the corruption of Fatah, but largely due to the reputation it cultivated for resistance to exactly the sort of pressure the US is trying to apply. Hamas has already suggested it will look to alternative sources of funding, and continues to express its unwillingness to cave under international pressure.
The US reaction should hardly come as a surprise. Even if the Bush Administration intended to negotiate with Hamas, the movement is listed as a terrorist organization according to the US State Department – a classification that makes negotiation with and funding of a Hamas controlled PA not simply difficult, but technically illegal. Moreover, many of those who have traditionally wielded influence inside the White House – namely the Christian Right and the hawkish neo-conservatives – have generally taken an even more hard-line stance than the Bush Administration. Many are calling on both the White House and US Congress to not only shun Hamas, but also to label the Palestinian Authority itself a terrorist organization.
Of course, the response in the US has not been uniform, and there are voices of dissent and moderation. For example, members of prominent think tanks such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Middle East Institute (MEI) have urged more practical approaches. In the words of Clinton Swisher, program director for MEI: “We in the West are going to have to stop looking at Hamas as if they’re al-Qaeda or the Taliban: they’re not. […] We’ll have to deal with a group [Hamas] that is authentic of the Palestinian street. […] We have to come to terms with this.”(1) However, because such sentiments tend to arise, in general, from more liberal, progressive, or leftist circles, they maintain little clout with the current administration.
With regards to pubic opinion within the United States, matters concerning Islam and politics fit into a paradigm that does not easily lend itself to calm, careful analysis like that of Swisher. Historically, and especially since 9/11, the popular discourse on Islam within US society has rarely been characterized by the type of nuance one might expect in dealing with a religion that spans vastly different social, linguistic, historical, and political contexts. Particularly when it comes to political Islam, the fact that the religion maintains a different relationship to politics in, for example, Indonesia or Turkey, as opposed to, say, Afghanistan has not impeded the tendency in the US to lump together movements like Hamas or Hezbollah with the markedly different al-Qaeda. This is not to suggest that Hamas’s ascendance in Palestinian society is wholly disconnected from the rise of political Islam in the region, but only to point out that, in the United States, accounts of Hamas have tended to ignore those factors specific to Palestinian society – the consequences of the first and second intifadas, the ongoing Israeli occupation, and the political, cultural and economic effects of the Oslo process – out of which the Hamas emerged. In the US, one has come to expect the sort of over-dramatized and oversimplified reactions to matters of Islam and politics like those that accompanied the Hamas victory.
In this context, the prospects for an engaged US administration seem bleak; in its absence, we can expect Israeli unilateralism to continue more or less unabated. Many are claiming that the scaling back of US involvement in the region may signal the death kneel of President Bush’s “Road Map” to peace, which is predicated on negotiations rather than the unilateral actions of the Israeli government. However, to call this a shift in US policy is to suggest that the Administration’s recent initiatives in the wake of the Hamas landslide represent some drastic sea change in the US approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, despite the high profile unveiling of the Road Map in the summer of 2002, which supposedly signaled the engagement of the Bush Administration in the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, the US has continued to take a more or less ‘hands off’ approach. In this way, despite the controversy over the US decision to shun Hamas, such developments represent a continuation of, rather than a shift in, US policy towards Israel and Palestine.
Facilitating Israeli Unilateralism
Analysts who claim that the Palestinian elections represent a blow to the Bush agenda have misread US involvement in the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the Road Map, which is predicated on negotiations, represents official US policy, it must be read in dialogue with Israel’s actions on the ground. From this perspective, while the Road Map may represent the official government line, in practice it functions as diplomatic cover under which Israel has been able to pursue its own unilateral agenda according to Ariel Sharon.
The prerequisite for the implementation of the Road Map was the emergence of, in the words of President Bush, “new leaders not compromised by terror.” To the United States, what this required was the departure of Yasser Arafat from the political scene and the facilitation of new elections – a process that in and of itself was four years in the making. Between the US and Israel there developed a consensus that Arafat would never accept peace with the Jewish State and should therefore be isolated until a more desirable leadership emerged.
The election of Mahmoud Abbas supposedly signaled the arrival of just such a leadership. However, although the US praised the 2005 election of Abbas, the White House did very little to support him. Not only did the Bush Administration take few steps to curb Israeli military actions against Palestinians – which continued even during the Abbas brokered ‘truce’ and drastically undercut the new President’s legitimacy on the Palestinian street – the Road Map placed requirements on the Palestinian President which were simply impossible to meet. The most problematic of these requirements was the Road Map’s insistence that Abbas completely halt militant operations against Israel and disarm groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah’s own Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.(2)
This requests amounted to a ‘catch 22’; the Israeli military’s strategy during its re-incursion into the West Bank focused significantly on the infrastructure and personnel of the PA. Israeli tanks, helicopters and fighter jets bombed countless government buildings and, for long stretches of the intifada, PA police and other officials were explicitly targeted. One only needs to stroll through any Palestinian city to see what remains of the old PA police station or, in Nablus for example, even the city’s only fire department.
Such actions drastically crippled the PA and empowered Hamas. Needless to say, the ability of the PA to carry out even basic governing functions was significantly hampered by the Israeli offensive. This not only made Palestinian society even more dependent upon Hamas’s network of social services, but strengthened the image of the Islamic movement as the true defender of Palestinian national rights.
That Israel or the US believes that these attacks on the PA were justified is wholly beside the point with regards to their contemporary social and political consequences. Although the Bush Administration has consistently criticized – even during the Abbas era – the “unwillingness” of the PA to disarm militants, the fact remains that, largely as a result of the Israeli military’s tactical decisions during the Al-Aqsa intifada, the Palestinian Authority completely lacks the power to effectively do so. To suggest otherwise is absurd; Fatah does not have the ability even to prevent its own militants from taking foreign hostages in efforts to secure employment, let alone the legitimacy to check a movement like Hamas.
As the US called on the PA to adhere to the impossible requests of the Road Map, significant developments were unfolding on the ground. Under the leadership of Ariel Sharon, Israel began implementing a different, though not wholly disparate, unilateral agenda. It is this program that continues today; it includes the disengagement from isolated and unmanageable settlements – like those in Gaza and the Amona outpost – the construction of the Wall around as much of Israel’s settlement infrastructure as possible, and the creation of isolated Palestinian cantons, which, if the PA wants, it can call “a state.” It is this unilateral plan which, particularly if Kadima is elected as predicted in the upcoming Israeli elections, will continue to take shape in the future.
Different Party, Similar Approach
Hamas’s unwillingness to disarm at the behest of President Bush deviates little from the political dynamic before the elections – in which a Fatah controlled PA was unable to disarm them. Had Fatah managed a victory, US policy, at best, would likely have continued as before: calling on the PA to do things which were not within its power, and consequently allowing the Sharon plan to proceed on schedule. At worst, Hamas would still be unwilling to disarm and – perhaps sensing a Fatah submission to Israeli demands – renege on the ceasefire.
Even with Hamas in power, it is unlikely that the White House will take a completely hands off approach. Already there is talk about the US dealing only with Abbas, or negotiating through the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), of which Fatah still holds the reigns. However, it is doubtful that Hamas will simply allow itself to be pushed aside if final status negotiations commence; in some way or another, the US and Israel will eventually be forced to reckon with the new Palestinian Government.
As far as the Palestinian people are concerned, US-Israeli-Palestinian agreements that attempt to sidestep Hamas are potentially dangerous, as they will undoubtedly ignite intra-Palestinian tensions. In the meantime, Israel will continue to build the Wall and the US will continue to call on Hamas to disarm and recognize Israel – all while Sharon’s plan, with or without him, continues to take shape. In this sense, the Bush agenda has not lost much of anything; for the US and Israel, it’s business as usual in the Occupied Territories.
Notes:
(1) “‘Earthquake’ in Middle East Challenges U.S. Policies Election of Militant Hamas Party Will Test the Efficacy of the Democratic Process,” Anna Badkhen in The San Francisco Chronicle, 27 January 2006.
(2) It is worth mentioning here another substantial impediment that faced Abbas even if he had managed to successfully confront Palestinian militant groups. According to agreements struck between the US and Israel, any Israeli-Palestinian peace plan was to leave in place all the major settlement blocks and completely reject the Palestinian Right of Return. It is unclear how Abbas, or any Palestinian leader for that matter, would have justified such an agreement to the Palestinian people.
-- Bryan Atinsky Editor, News from Within e-mail: bryan at alt-info.org Tel: (972)2-624-1159 P.O. Box 31417, Jerusalem 91313 http://www.newsfromwithin.org http://www.alternativenews.org