What do you have to do to be recognized as a revolutionary Islamist group using terrorism, backed by Iran, to seek to wipe Israel off the map and kill the Jews? It isn’t easy. People keep trying to make you into something else – incipient moderate, multifaceted debating society – insisting that you just don’t really mean it.
Such is the case with Hamas. Every day – in speeches, articles, violence, mosque sermons and the media – Hamas makes its positions absolutely clear. And every day, someone in the West just doesn’t want to believe it.
Now Hamas has formed an alliance (of convenience?) with the Palestinian Authority, run by Fatah. It’s a remarkable situation, or would be anywhere outside of the Middle East.
After all, Hamas won an election, made a deal with the PA, and then staged a coup to take over the Gaza Strip that included shooting wounded Fatah fighters dead in hospitals. Fatah and the PA regularly repress Hamas on the West Bank. So why are they “working together?” The PA wants to show unity to the world; Hamas hopes that it can take over the PA.
Is it true that “as older leaders of Hamas claim some degree of moderation, younger radicals refuse to give up violence?” Not exactly. First, there is no real division along age lines. Nor is it all, but merely some, leaders of Hamas who “claim” some moderation.
But what’s important is that word “claim.” They do not claim it when talking to their people and they do not claim it on their television stations or their debates with the PA and Fatah. They only claim it when they are talking to Westerners, usually reporters or sometimes diplomats. In other words, it is just a public-relations exercise.
What about the “Salafi-jihadist” groups? Clearly, there are some differences, often relating to external alliances. Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood group; the dissidents sympathize with al-Qaeda. Yet they don’t pose any serious challenge since Hamas is far stronger. Hamas also uses them as deniable purveyors of attacks on Israel, assaults that Hamas can allow but also deny. The most important non-Hamas group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, very much plays that role.
There has been some effort to set up a distinction between Hamas, as the relative moderates, and the new small groups as the radicals. This would legitimize Hamas as protecting everyone from the real extremists. But the problem with these other groups – and that includes al-Qaeda – is that they are too tactically inflexible. They only use violence rather than base-building, reject elections and never pretend to be moderate.
Thus, while these groups can stage terrorist attacks or violence, they are not the real threat. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, or Hamas, or Hezbollah, they cannot take over whole countries. And if in the Gaza Strip they ever do challenge what Hamas wants to do, they will be slapped down without mercy. That’s not because Hamas is moderate but because it will accept no rival.
Indeed, one reason why Salafi-jihadist groups have not been successful among the Palestinians is that there is already a strong Islamist organization – Hamas – that can combine the nationalist and religious cards. Among the Palestinians, Hamas are the Salafists and jihadists. Who needs any alternative?
But, as the article goes on to explain, whenever these Hamas leaders discuss such an idea, they make clear that this is a temporary measure. It’s designed to get a state that can be used as a platform for destroying Israel. The PLO accepted such a “two-stage strategy” more than 35 years ago but no one thought that was moderate at the time.
Who needs “radicals” when you have Hamas. Incidentally, the same arguments can be applied to the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or any number of other militant groups. There is always someone even more radical. But the most extreme of the extreme simply are not good at building a mass organization, in part because they are so much on the edge.
