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Has Hamas Come Out Stronger From The War In Gaza? No, It Has Not

January 20, 2009

Has Hamas Won The War On Gaza? No, It Has Not Martin McCauley writes:Hamas is an extraordinary movement. The word ‘Hamas’ is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement. It is the only political group in Palestine which does not have the word ‘Palestinian’ or ‘Palestine’ in its name.

Why is this? It is because it sees itself as playing a political role far beyond the frontiers of Gaza.

It is a democratically elected government in Gaza. However, it used armed force to remove Fatah officials and supporters from their positions of influence in Gaza. Fatah was simply driven out of the strip. It also closed down non-governmental organisations. It is less corrupt than Fatah. One of the victims of its cleansing was the Arafat clan that had lost all its business interests in Gaza.

Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has a clear political agenda. It intends to recover all Palestinian land that has been occupied by Israel. This literally means it needs to wipe Israel off the political map.

During the six month ceasefire with Israel, which ended last month, it fired thousands of rockets into Israel. Why? To warn Tel Aviv that it has the capacity to kill Israelis. Or,a s some think, to provoke Israel to attack.

Presumably, it believed that it could resist an Israeli attack and emerge stronger, both politically and militarily, when the fighting stopped. Since the war was asymmetrical, with Israel being a much stronger side militarily, Hamas was taking a huge gamble.

Israel did not achieve all its military objectives during the 22 day war in Gaza. Tel Aviv prepared for the war well in advance. One of its goals was to destroy Hamas’s arsenal of weapons, smuggled in from Iran and Syria through its tunnels on the Gazan-Egyptian border. Another objective was to take out as many Hamas leaders as possible.

Comparisons have been made with the Israeli attack on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in July 2006. Then Israel was confident of success because of its total command of the air and its vastly superior arsenal. Yet Hezbollah astounded the Israelis by devising tactics to neutralise the Israel’s military superiority. Tel Aviv had to send in ground troops into Lebanon, something it initially did not expect to do.

Eventually Israel had to withdraw. It did not lose the war but it did not win it either. International peace keepers were installed along the Lebanese-Israeli border. Behind them Hezbollah consolidated its power base. It also formed part of the coalition government in Lebanon.
Has Hamas done as well as Hezbollah? No. The most striking difference is that in Gaza Israel could rely on an army of collaborators. Some of them were able to pinpoint where senior members of Hamas lived. Israeli rockets killed some top Hamas officials, including the Minister of the Interior. Hence Hamas’s security position in Gaza is nothing like as good as that of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The conflict in Gaza has split the Arab and Muslim worlds. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kuwait on one side and Syria, Iran, Turkey, Qatar and Oman on the other.
Three summits to find a solution to the conflict reveal the divisions which have opened up. One in Qatar last week gave prominence to Hamas. It was attended by Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and, quaintly, by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Khalid Mashal, the President of Hamas, who lives in exile in Damascus, was the first speaker. He sent out a defiant message and called on all Muslims to come to the support of Gaza.

The second summit was at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, last Sunday. It was chaired by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. Also attending were Ban ki- Moon, the UN Secretary General, and senior politicians from Germany, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Jordan.

The Qatari summit was intended to boost the profile of Hamas and the longstanding question of the return of Palestinian land. The Egyptian summit was to limit the damage from the conflict and ensure that Hamas did not become stronger. In so doing it could pose a security threat to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other US allies in the Middle East. A major issue discussed at the summit was stopping the smuggling of arms into Gaza from Egypt.

The third summit was in Kuwait on Monday and Tuesday. There Saudi Arabia tried to act as the peacemaker among the squabbling Arab and Muslim nations. The Saudis promised $1 billion to rebuild Gaza but the money was not to be channelled through Hamas. The goal is to promote Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority at the West Bank as the rebuilder of the territory. The EU also said that it would provide aid, but not to Hamas, unless it renounced violence.

Hence the two sides are poles apart. The radicals want Hamas to rebuild and continue the struggle with Israel. The conservatives want to sideline Hamas and hope that the people of Gaza will blame it for the carnage and destruction of their territory. The Israelis will control the flow of aid to Gaza and will do all they can to weaken Hamas.

The Gazan conflict has transformed the political landscape in the Middle East. The most significant change is that Turkey has switched sides and now supports Hamas that states that Turkey is the only state it trusts. Jordan – perhaps because half of its population are Palestinians – is no longer clearly on the Israeli side.

Hamas is now much weaker than Hezbollah. It has to begin the slow process of rebuilding Gaza. If it resumes firing rockets into Israel, Tel Aviv will reply with crushing force. Hamas knows that no Arab army will come to its aid. Will this force it to become more moderate?

President Barack Obama’s Administration – he is President as of today – has a window of opportunity here. If it can broker a lasting deal in Gaza it will have taken the first step towards creating a more peaceful Middle East.

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