A legally constituted and rising political party in the occupied Palestinian territories

By Sayid Marcos Tenório

 

 

Much has been said about the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas(i). The Palestinian party is a constant subject on many newscasts because of its resistance actions against the Israeli occupation, mainly in Gaza, where its largest social base is located. its political and military command. US, Israel and other countries declare it as a terrorist organization that threatens the existence of Israel. Countries like Russia, South Africa, Norway, Iran and Brazil do not consider Hamas as a terrorist organization, but a legitimate Palestinian resistance movement.

 

 

Anyone who searches on " Google"  for the word "Hamas" will receive a myriad of links to alleged terrorist actions, homemade rocket attacks from schools against Israeli cities, men and women bombs, incendiary kites, children serving as human shields and a host of other fantasies spread mainly by Israeli sources and Jewish organizations mirrored around the world.

 

 

But ... what is the reality of Hamas? Unlike what we imagine in the West, Hamas is not just a "terrorist group" whose aim has been to attack Israel without purpose, the so-called "only democracy in the Middle East." The truth is that it is a legally constituted and rising political party in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a Palestinian national movement of Islamic orientation, liberation and resistance, which represents one of the main forces of Islamic nationalism in Palestine.

 

 

Founded in 1987, at the beginning of the First Intifada (Palestinian revolt), it is today the largest of the various Palestinian groups and parties, with a very strong social base in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank. Its goal is to "liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project", as announced in the recent "Document of general principles and policies", approved in May 2017.

 

 

The movement is recognized by many as a popular and sociopolitical force deeply rooted in Palestinian society, which has been able to do extensive work, both in relation to the military confrontation against the Zionist occupation, and the social work aimed at the most disadvantaged, through social assistance, religious and ideological mobilization and maintained relations with states, parties and movement around the world.

 

 

Hamas emerged forcefully in the eyes of the West following the election results for the Palestinian Legislative Council, [ii] held on January 25, 2006. The result was surprising, with Hamas elected 76 of the 132 deputies, while its biggest rival, Fatah, [iii] got 43 seats. The immediate question was: how did Hamas manage to win elections in Palestine, do I have an almost outlawed movement? The victory of Hamas was the result of its opposition to the Oslo process, and internal divisions in Fatah led to the electoral victory in 2006. This electoral victory was never recognized by the Western powers, with the Gaza Strip besieged and transformed into the largest prison in the open air of the world.

 

 

During the Palestinian electoral process, the Movement launched an "Electoral Platform for Change and Reform", where the issue of military resistance was relegated to a secondary level, addressing the issue in a language more subtle than the language used on earlier platforms. Thus, the formulation of "destruction of Israel" - a slogan widely used by the Western media to demonize Hamas - gave way to the expression "end of occupation", which dominated the entire Platform.

 

 

The Platform was based on the idea of ​​a comprehensive program for the liberation of Palestine, the return of the Palestinian people to their lands and the establishment of an independent Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital, in a clear rejection of the Agreements, even though little convincing to many Palestinians, since the existence of the Legislative Council is inseparable from the Oslo Accords.

 

 

This was a theme that had strong repercussions in the electoral debates and raised the tone against al-Fatah, with Hamas saying that its participation in the Legislative Council would be part of its "resistance program" and that the realities showed that Oslo was an issue unharmed by Israel, a dead letter in a paper that was used against the Palestinians.

 

 

Hamas accused the PLO of transforming itself from a movement for the liberation of Palestine, an indirect guarantor of Israel's security in the occupied territories, in order to nullify any form of resistance to occupation. An instrument used by Yasser Arafat and his allies to ensure their retention in the power of the ANP as the sole representative of the Palestinians. On the other hand, he complained that the Oslo peace talks had served only the interests of PLO leaders, who had left exile to take political control of the Palestine.

 

 

There was, at that moment, a concern and distrust regarding the role of the ANP after the Oslo Accords, where Hamas accused the ANP of being Israel's prefect in Palestine. And it pointed as evidence that the ANP is concentrating its efforts and financial resources on programs of security cooperation with Israel, while the well-being of the population was in the background. He also said that security cooperation between ANP and Israel was aimed at deterring and entrenching Palestinian movements and the actions of opposition groups that threatened Israel.

 

 

Today, 25 years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, the understanding of Hamas is that these Agreements put contradictory and well-known objectives to the table, since the PLO declared the quest for an end to Israeli colonialism, while the State of Israel aimed to create an indirect control system over the occupied territories in 1967.

 

 

The objectives of the Agreements have never been realized, leaving questions to which the "Declaration of Principles" listed, such as the status of Jerusalem, the question of refugees, Jewish settlements in Palestine, issues of security and borders, relations and co-operation with neighbors and other issues relating to problems of common interest.

 

 

Writer Edward Said [iv] in his book The Feather and the Sword (2012) was disappointed by the results of those agreements, saying he had "a very strong conviction, after the Oslo agreement, that the discrepancy between that damned piece and the enormous history of expropriation, suffering and loss that constitute the true Palestinian history is so great but so great that it must be told. It has to be told. You can’t just disappear. "

 

 

The peace process that was expected to exist after the Oslo Accords did not represent the various Palestinian and Israeli political sectors. They were fought by the Palestinian left, especially by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and by the Democratic Movement for National Liberation. And also by Islamic-oriented movements such as Hamas and the  Islamic Jihad Movement.

 

 

Although it was known that the agreements would not result in the creation of a Palestinian state, but only on the representation of residents in the occupied territories, sectors of the Israeli extreme right also demonstrated their discontent and strongly opposed the peace agreements with Palestinians. They wanted (and continue to want) the whole territory and no concession to Palestinians. The Zionist prime minister who negotiated the deals, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated by an extremist on 4 November 1995.

 

 

When the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, there were 260,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Today, that number has risen to more than 600,000, evidencing Israel's contempt for the Accords and their interest in Peace. In addition to the clear violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which clearly prohibits countries from moving populations to territories occupied in war. With this, Israel once again demonstrates its disrespect for international law and human rights, through non-compliance with the Oslo Accords.

 

 

In the 2006 elections, the Movement declared that a more comprehensive commitment to the struggle against occupation was necessary and urgent, through a change and reform that would be undertaken to build "an advanced Palestinian civil society based political pluralism and the alternation of power. "He also stated that" the political system of Palestinian society and its reforming and political agenda would be directed towards the fulfillment of Palestinian national rights. "

 

 

This proposal was a critique of the monopoly on power by the PLO, which had neglected to promote unity and discipline in the Palestinian political scene, since it had been in power since the 1960s and had never included in its agenda the possibility that other Palestinian political forces and resistance to take part in the Palestinian National Authority.

 

 

It was a broad program that dealt with internal and external issues, such as administrative reform, anti-corruption, patronage and exchange of favors, judicial and political reform, freedom of the people and rights civil society, religious orientation, social policy, cultural and media policy. It also addressed issues such as youth and women's policies, health, environmental, housing, agriculture, economic, financial and fiscal policy, labor issues, and transport issues such as the passage between Gaza and the West Bank, as the Declaration of Principles in Article 10, clause 1, sub-clause, the existence of "a safe passage connecting the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for the movement of persons, vehicles and goods". These clauses were violated daily by Israeli soldiers and policemen who not only did not control the passages, but practiced (and continued to practice) violent acts at checkpoints, turning the crossings into nightmares and the West Bank into a fragmented space with no links to each other or to the Gaza Strip.

 

 

It was with this program and with the wide mobilization, mainly of young Palestinians tired of waiting for the unsuccessful agreements reached by Israel, that Hamas won a majority of votes for the Palestinian Legislative Council.

 

 

Victoriously, Hamas presented its "Platform of government", based on seven points:

 

First: resist the occupation and oppressive onslaughts against the Palestinian land, its people, resources and sacred places;

Second: to ensure the security of the Palestinians and to end the chaos in security;

Third: to reduce the economic difficulties of the Palestinian people;

Fourth: undertake reforms and fight against financial and administrative corruption;

Fifth: to reorder Palestinian internal affairs through the reorganization of their institutions on a democratic basis that would ensure political participation for all;

Sixth: strengthen the status of the Palestinian issue in Arab and Muslim circles;

Seventh: to develop Palestinian relations at the regional and international levels to serve later on the main interests of the Palestinian people. "

 

This platform allowed the leadership to claim respect from the international community for the choice of the Palestinian people in electing Hamas. As for the US and its positions on the Hamas government, the Movement stated that it required the US administration - which lives by preaching democracy and respect for people's choices around the world - to support the Palestinian people's desire and choice . "Instead of threatening the Palestinians with the boycott and cutting off aid, he must deliver on promises he made to help establish an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as capital and the return of refugees."

 

 

The future of Palestine in the Hamas vision

 

In the recent "General Document of Principles and Policies," adopted in May 2017, Hamas presents a political platform, addressing issues such as defining Palestinian territoriality, establishing its understanding of the Palestinian cause, working principles to be used to promote its goals and the limits of flexibility used to interpret it.

 

 

Thus, in Hamas's view, "Palestine is the territory that extends from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and from Ras Al-Naqurah in the north to Umm Al-Rashrash in the south, is an integral territorial unit. This is the land and home of the Palestinian people. The expulsion and banishment of the Palestinian people from their land and the establishment of the Zionist entity in its place does not nullify the right of the Palestinian people over their entire land and does not recognize any right in it by the usurping Zionist entity. Palestine is an Islamic Arab land. It is a sacred and blessed land that has a special place in the heart of every Arab and every Muslim. "

 

 

The Document ensures that the Palestinian people are made up of the Arabs who lived in Palestine until 1947, regardless of whether they were expelled or remained after the Nakba (tragedy). "Every person born of a Palestinian Arab father after that [1947, beginning of the Zionist occupation], whether inside or outside Palestine, is a Palestinian. (...) The Palestinian people are one, made by all Palestinians inside and outside Palestine, regardless of their religion, culture or political affiliation. "

 

 

For Hamas, regardless of the catastrophes that have plagued the Palestinian people since 1948 as a consequence of Zionist sharing and occupation and its policy of ethnic cleansing and displacement, Palestinian identity will not be erased or denied. The Palestinian will never lose his national identity and rights even after acquiring a second nationality. Palestine will always be "the land of the people who are determined to defend the truth - within Jerusalem and its environs - that is not banished or intimidated by those who oppose it and by those who betray them, and it will continue its mission until the promise of God is fulfilled. "

 

 

The movement denounces the Zionist project as being based on racist, colonial and expansionist aggression, hostile to the Palestinian people and their right to freedom, liberation and self-determination.

 

 

Jerusalem, for the Movement, is the capital of Palestine. And it states that its religious, historical, and civilizational status is fundamental to the world at large, regardless of whether it is a Christian, Muslim, Druze, Armenian or Jew, Arab or Western. The same is true for sacred places. And he states that the measures taken by the Zionist occupier such as the Judaization of Jerusalem, by building settlements as a fait accompli of the Israeli presence in the holy city, are void and void actions because they contradict the rules and International Law.

 

 

It warns the world that the action of the Zionists is not only for Palestine, but for the Arab and Islamic Nation, and constitutes a major threat to international security, peace and stability in the region. Along the same lines, Hamas refutes the idea that the conflict spanning more than 70 years is not a war on Jews for being Jewish, although Zionism strives to identify Judaism and Jews with its colonial apartheid project . But he claims that he is fighting a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine.

 

 

By rejecting the religious or sectarian bias of the struggle against occupation, Hamas condemns any form of persecution of any human being or denial of their rights. For the Movement, "the Jewish problem, anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews is a phenomenon fundamentally linked to European history, not to the history of Arabs and Muslims or their heirs. The Zionist movement, which was able to occupy Palestine with support from Western powers, is the greatest threat of settlement occupation that has disappeared from much of the world and needs to disappear from Palestine. "

 

 

The Islamic Resistance Movement points out in its "General Document of Principles and Policies" a set of up-to-date positions for the resistance struggle and the search for solutions to the problem of Zionist occupation in Palestine. Among them is the rejection and nullity of documents such as the Balfour Declaration, the British Mandate document, the UN resolution on the partition of Palestine and the Oslo Accords, as it considers that they have generated actions that violated the rights of the Palestinian people, usurping their lands and banishing them from their homes. Thus, "resistance and struggle for the liberation of Palestine will continue to be a legitimate right, a duty and an honor for all the sons and daughters of our people and our Nation,"

 

 

According to the Document, the establishment of the so-called "State of Israel" on the basis of those unilateral decisions is completely "unlawful and transgresses the inalienable right of the Palestinian people and goes against their will and the will of the Nation; is also a violation of human rights that are guaranteed by international conventions, the first among them being the right to self-determination. "

 

 

Hamas also claims that it will not recognize "Israel" or anything that happened in Palestine in terms of occupation, settlement building, judaization of historical and sacred places or change in characteristics or falsification of facts, because it understands that the Palestinians' right to their land and places will never expire.

 

 

While rejecting a solution other than the liberation of Palestine from "the river to the sea," without compromising its rejection of "Israel" and without abandoning any Palestinian right, Hamas considers "the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as their capital along the borders of June 4, 1967, with the return of refugees and displaced persons from their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus. "  that rejects any attempt to disarm the resistance or inhibit its ability to develop measures and mechanisms of resistance, such as the "Great March of the Return", which have taken place in Gaza since March 30 and have claimed the lives of hundreds of martyrs and left thousands injured.

 

 

Its leadership has stated that it believes and strives to re-establish relations and joint actions of Palestinian organizations based on pluralism, democracy, national partnership, acceptance of the other and adoption of dialogue as an objective to strengthen unity to meet the aspirations of the Palestinian people . It recognizes the PLO as a reference for the Palestinian people that needs to be preserved, developed and rebuilt on democratic bases inside and outside Palestine in order to ensure the participation of all the forces fighting to protect the rights of the Palestinians.

 

 

With regard to the Palestinian National Authority, the Movement considers that it must serve the Palestinian people and safeguard their security, their rights and the national interest, on a democratic basis and based on the national partnership, including the right of resistance and free and fair A movement that will be enriched by its prominent personalities, institutions of Palestinian society, youth groups, students, trade unionists and women whose role is defined as fundamental in the process of building Palestinian history and in the purpose of resistance and conquest of freedom.

 

 

Referring to what it calls the Arab and Islamic Nation, Hamas believes that the Palestinian issue is the central cause and believes in the cooperation of States without entering into disputes that occur in different countries. And it has been striving to establish balanced relations on the basis of a combination of the aims of the Palestinian cause and the interest of the Palestinian people in one hand, with the interests of the Nation, its rebirth and its security in another hand.

 

 

With regard to the humanitarian and international aspects, Hamas understands that supporting and sustaining this cause is a humanitarian and civilizing task, since the Palestinian issue is one of the largest and prerequisite for truth, justice and humanitarian values . And resistance as a legitimate activity, that is, an act of self-defense and an expression of the natural right of all peoples to self-determination.

 

 

Finally, the document calls for internationalism, preaching rejection of attempts to impose hegemonies on nations and peoples of the world, condemning all forms of colonialism, occupation, discrimination, oppression and aggression in the world.

 

 

Here is a question: Will upgrading your program and redefining Palestinian resistance and liberation tasks will make Hamas weaker or stronger in the near future?

 

 

What we can conclude is that, since its founding in 1987, Hamas has been on a growth path. It has certainly suffered defeats, setbacks and difficult times, but in general terms and based on the circumstances of its history of struggles, it is impossible to predict whether Hamas will become stronger or weaker. What we can affirm is that its growth will be commensurate with the continued brutality and humiliation of the Zionist occupation of the Palestinians associated with the failure of Hamas's rival secular Palestinian organizations to promote negotiated solutions with Israel.

 

 

The efforts of Israel, the Western media and the Palestinian Authority to discredit and impede the growth of Hamas' role and popularity in Palestinian society will not materialize as long as Israel exercises control over historic Palestine by preventing the creation of a Palestinian state . As long as Israel maintains its occupation and apartheid that dominates, it segregates and restricts the freedom of movement of Palestinians with walls and checkpoints. As long as Israel limits health care, education, and prevents access to land and the development and economic growth of Palestinians, resistance will exist and become more active.

 

 

The settlement of agreements, not fulfilled by the occupier, is one of the engines of Hamas' growth. Palestinians thirsting for justice and frustrated by the collapse of negotiations will continue to believe that resistance is the only way and will increasingly come closer to the Islamic Resistance Movement, which is a natural consequence of the brutal occupation, and that force that underpins the Palestinian rights, freedom and self-determination.

 

 

Sayid Marcos Tenório is a historian and General Secretary of the Brazil-Palestine Institute (IBRASPAL)

Email: hajjsayid@gmail.com - Twitter: @hajjsayid

 

 

(i) From Arabic Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamat al-Islāmiyyah. The word Hamas is also understood as "enthusiasm".

(ii) The Palestinian National Council - the legislative power of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), was established in 1995 as a result of the Oslo II Agreement. It is a unicameral body that initially was composed of 88 members, but a law of June of 2005 changed its number to 132, who are elected in 16 electoral districts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The last election was held in 2006.

(iii) The Fatah Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini, literally the "National Liberation Movement of Palestine", was founded in 1969 in Kuwait by Yasser Arafat, Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) and other members of the Palestinian diaspora. It is a center-left nationalist party and secular, which is part of the PLO.

(iv) Edward Wadie Said (1935-2003) was one of the most important Palestinian intellectuals, literary critic and activist of the Palestinian cause. His most important work is Orientalism, published in 1978 and translated into 36 languages, which is considered as one of the founding texts of postcolonial studies.