Posted on 03/01/2003 5:40:53 PM PST by NormsRevenge
There are signs that the leaders and activists of the Hamas movement are feeling a sense of strength, an intoxication with power.
The reasons are clear: Their political rivals have been weakened considerably. Their chief rival, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's government, is continuing to crumble. In the West Bank, PA institutions function only partially and Palestinian security organizations were effectively broken up about a year ago in Operation Defensive Shield.
In Gaza, too, there are now signs the Palestinian security forces are being neutralized, as the Israel Defense Forces' incursions into the Strip become deeper and more frequent.
Arafat is imprisoned in the Muqata and the parliament of the PA (the Legislative Council), with all its committees, has almost ceased to function.
The Fatah movement - the ruling Palestinian party - is going through a severe crisis. Many of the activists in its military arm - the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - are publicly defying the Fatah leadership and supporting the Hamas policy in word and deed.
Even the veteran slogan of Arafat and his people - "The Palestine Liberation Organization is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" - is not as valid as it was in former years. The Hamas movement is not a member of the PLO (nor is the Islamic Jihad movement).
More than 10 years ago, there were discussions about bringing the Hamas into the PLO. The Hamas demanded 40 percent representation in the Palestinian National Council (the PLO's parliament), and in the organization's steering committee. At the time, Arafat and his people thought this was an exaggerated demand and rejected it. Today the situation is different and many in the Hamas believe a majority of the Palestinian population supports them.
About two weeks ago, Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas activist in Gaza, said his movement had a suitable infrastructure to make a bid against the Fatah in elections for the leadership of the Palestinian people. His challenging remarks elicited a sharp response and he hastened to retract them. But they left an impression that remains and has been echoed in statements by Palestinian figures.
Last week, Ismail Haniya, also a Gaza Hamas activist, was asked whether the subject of participation in the PLO had come up in meetings between the various Palestinian factions in Cairo. The reply was: "We did not bring up ... the idea of establishing an alternative to the PLO, but we proposed a comprehensive reform in the Palestinian institutions and Palestinian decisions, so that all of us would have a common basis for our struggle."
The only interpretation of these remarks is that they are the expression of the Hamas' opposition to what, in Palestinian political terminology, is called "the unity of representation."
In other words, the PLO, which was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people by the Arab summit (in 1974 in Morocco) and later by the entire world, including the State of Israel in the Oslo agreement, is not recognized as such by the Hamas movement - the second largest political body in the Palestinian camp (if not the largest).
Haniya was responding to a statement issued by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the secretary general of the PLO and head of the Fatah delegation to the Cairo talks, implying the Cairo talks were going to be renewed and the arrival of the sides at the meeting depended on their agreement to the Egyptian document that declares a one-year cessation of the terror attacks.
Abu Mazen spoke in Moscow and his statement aroused the ire of the opposition factions, first and foremost the Hamas. Usama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, said he was surprised by Abu Mazen's announcement. "There is no Egyptian invitation to come to Cairo and, on the part of the Hamas, there is no agreement on a break in actions against the occupation," he said.
Similar things were said by other Hamas spokesmen, as well as by spokesmen of the Jihad and the leftist fronts.
Abu Mazen was also asked (on Kul Falastin radio) whether the Hamas movement and the Islamic Jihad want to establish an alternative to the PLO. He replied: "This question has not come up at all. We firmly reject this and we will not haggle over it. The PLO welcomes the entry of the Hamas and the Jihad into the organization without any scrapping and without casting doubt on the legitimacy of the PLO."
In various Hamas publications, such as their Internet site, they have given detailed analysis of what they see as their movement's far-reaching successes. As they see it, the military actions (terror attacks) carried out by Hamas activists have led the various political elements to take the movement into consideration and to court it. Egypt and the European Union, inspired by the Americans, had to invite them to the Cairo meetings and plead with them to agree to a pause in the terror attacks. The Egyptians feel the regime of their protege Arafat is crumbling and they are trying to rehabilitate it through a return to diplomatic talks.
But the Hamas is not prepared to change its ways.
"We came to the Cairo talks in order to convince our Palestinian brothers that our way is the right one," declared the movement's publications. Hamas' policy allows them, they said, to harvest political fruit without giving up their belief whereby they must on no account give up the resistance actions and the struggle against the "Zionist entity." (The movement's publications have gone back to the Arabs' formula from previous years, when they refrained from mentioning the name of the State of Israel).
From the viewpoint of the Hamas leadership, the meetings in Cairo showed the PA as an empty vessel. Arafat and his people want to stop the terror attacks in order to get the PA monies that have been confiscated by Israel and to get more European aid, which would be used to repair their cooperation with the Israeli security services. But the Hamas will not enable this.
The sense that the Hamas has grown considerably stronger of late is not only the feeling of the movement's activists. It has also been widely discussed in Arafat's surroundings. Ahmad Qaria (Abu Ala), the chairman of the Palestinian parliament, said recently in private conversations that the Cairo meetings afforded the Hamas political standing, as well as Arab and international standing.
The strengthening of the Hamas is felt on the ground, as well, especially in Gaza. The PA security outfits, first and foremost the Preventive Security organization headed by Rashid Abu Shabak, are incapable of thwarting the activities of the Hamas cells.
About six months ago, young Hamas activists - members of the Aql family from the Nuseirat Refugee Camp - abducted Rajah Abu Lehiya, a senior officer in the Palestinian security system, in the middle of a main Gaza thoroughfare. The abductors took him to Nuseirat and killed him.
The Aql family accused Abu Rajah of commanding the dispersal of a demonstration in Gaza in which three demonstrators, including a member of their family, were shot and killed.
Arafat's people have tried in vain to arrest Abu Rajah's abductors and murderers. Since then, there has been another series of bloody incidents between Hamas activists and Palestinian police. And, as time goes by, the commanders of the PA have been admitting that it is not within their powers to operate against the Hamas.
Just as at the Cairo meetings, there were clear signs of the emergence of the Hamas as a political alternative to the PLO - in the Gaza Strip there are quite a few signs that the military cells of the Hamas are ruling the streets, along with the waning of the status of the PA's military units.
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