How Israel Misjudges Hamas and Its TerrorismBy Ehud Sprinzak In a recent interview on "60 Minutes," Hassan Salameh, arch terrorist of the Palestinian group Hamas, confirmed what had been long suspected by students of the Mideast conflict: that the assassination of Yehiya Ayash, a Hamas leader known as "the Engineer," had prompted his followers to organize the three suicide bombings that stunned Israel in 1996. Salameh said that he smuggled explosives into Israel a day after the funeral of Ayash, who had masterminded the suicide bombings that terrorized Israel from April 1994 to the summer of 1995. Ayash was killed by an exploding cellular phone planted by Israeli agents. Salameh's statement suggests that the 1996 suicide bombings did not stem from a strategic decision to bring down the Israeli peace government, as former Labor Party prime minister Shimon Peres and others have contended. Rather, it was triggered by a desire to avenge Ayash's death. It is not difficult to guess why Israeli authorities (who must have heard Salameh's claim when they interrogated him months ago) would have little interest in sharing this sort of information with the public. In 1996, Peres experienced a dramatic decline in popularity because of the Hamas bombings. He could not admit that his risky order to execute the Engineer had precipitated the return of suicide terrorism. It was more expedient to tell Israelis that Hamas wished to bring his government down. Peres's successor, Binyamin Netanyahu, also needs to demonize Hamas. He does not truly believe in the Oslo peace process, never has. Citing the public rhetoric of Hamas -- which since 1988 has called for the destruction of Israel -- helps him make his case. This dissection of the motivation for Hamas terrorism may seem talmudic to some, but it is important. The history of Hamas -- in contrast to its stereotypical image in the Western media -- suggests that its opposition to the peace process has never led Hamas leaders to adopt a strategy of wholesale suicide bombing. Rather, suicide terrorism has been allowed by Hamas leaders as a measure of tactical revenge for humiliating Israeli actions. This history is especially relevant in the wake of Israel's recent foiled assassination plot against a Hamas leader in Jordan. When Palestinian bodyguards captured the two would-be assassins, Jordan's King Hussein forced Israel to release Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the blind cleric who founded Hamas in 1987. Yassin's return to a hero's welcome in Gaza raised fears in Israel and Washington that Palestinian terrorism had been strengthened. In fact, the evolution of Hamas and its policy of armed struggle against Israel suggests that Sheik Yassin may prove to be a moderating influence. During the intifada, the Palestinian uprisings that shook the Israeli occupied territories from 1987 to 1993 Hamas increasingly attacked Israeli soldiers and settlers, citing the right of self-defense against illegal foreign occupation. The organization, however, showed no intention of blowing up buses carrying innocent civilians inside Israel. Hamas only resorted to this atrocious type of terrorism after February 1994 when Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli physician and army reserve captain, massacred 29 praying Palestinians in a Hebron shrine. Hamas vowed to teach Israelis a lesson they would never forget. The pledge was to put the Jews through a number of infernos of the kind experienced by the Hebronites. Joined by members of a smaller group, Islamic Jihad, Hamas terrorists mounted seven suicide bombings within Israel proper. This series of suicide strikes -- and Israeli counter strikes -- exhausted itself in the summer of 1995. The assassination of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995 probably provided an added sobering effect on both the Hamas leadership and Israeli security officials. At that point, the Palestinians had little reason to complain. The Peres government had overseen a large Israeli redeployment from West Bank cities that produced many smiling faces in Gaza and the West Bank. There was little doubt of Peres's personal commitment to peace, and tens of thousands of Palestinian workers brought their bread from Israel. Hamas, including its extremist wing abroad, showed little interest in resuming suicide bombings and even allowed the semi-retirement of the Engineer in a remote Gaza strip town. Without Ayash's execution, it is quite likely that Israel would not have experienced the three suicide bombings in 1996 that killed 55 people and wounded 265. The recent wave of Hamas suicide bombings, the third in the series, did not start after the 1996 ascendance of Netanyahu to power. Nor did it follow the Jerusalem tourist tunnel fiasco on September 1996, which led to rioting, gunfire exchanges between Palestinian and Israeli policemen and the deaths of more than 80 people. What restarted the Hamas suicide bombing machine was a series of Israeli insults since the beginning of this year: Netanyahu's calculated decision to humiliate the Palestinians by building in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa, by effectively ending agreed-upon redeployment of troops from the occupied territories, by cynically insulting Yasser Arafat and by resuming West Bank settlement on a large scale. The view that Hamas is an organization that will resort to terrorism anywhere, anytime is simplistic. Why, for example, did Hamas leaders not resort to suicide bombings before April 1994; between August 1995 and February 1996; and bete March 1996 and July 1997? The official Israeli explanation (which presupposes the existence of a grand Hamas strategy of suicide terrorism) gives much credit to the Israeli secret services and a small amount to the cooperation of Arafat's security forces. Though not entirely false, this theory has serious flaws. The militants of Hamas, if they are willing to take great risk, can mount operations that escape detection by the Israeli and Palestinian authorities. There are huge amounts of explosives in the West Bank and Gaza. There are sophisticated "graduates" of Israeli prisons, such as Salameh, ready to organize terror strikes. And there are dozens of young Palestinians ready to die, if only asked. A better explanation for Hamas's willingness to refrain from violence is found in the nature of the Hamas movement. In contrast to its most persistent image in the Western media, Hamas is not just a terrorist group comprised of criminal suicide bombers in the occupied territories and a radical faction in Damascus that orders bloody operations against innocent civilians. It also is a large socio-religious movement involved in communal work within Palestinian refugee camps. It is responsible for the building and maintenance of hundreds of mosques and religious schools, dozens of clinics, nurseries, and adult education centers. Its origins go back to the largely nonviolent Muslim Brotherhood, which started in Palestine in the 1940s. The reason Hamas is so popular among ordinary Palestinians (an estimated 20 percent to 30 percent describe themselves as supporters), is not because the group has killed and wounded hundreds of Israelis, but because the organization has made it possible for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to survive and live a semblance of a decent life. In contrast with many Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) activists around Arafat who have become increasingly corrupt, the Hamas activists are honest. The fact that the majority of them live among the poor only increases their appeal. The Muslim Brotherhood was not always supportive of armed struggle against Israel. In 1979, the Israeli government tacitly supported the establishment of an affiliated political organization, the Muslim Association, in an effort to draw support away from Arafat's PLO. The group only took up arms in 1988. After years of nonviolent educational and communal work, it was not an easy decision for the group. It met resistance from a number of clerics who were afraid that terrorism and life in the underground would destroy their daily contacts with the people. But the brutal reality of the Israeli repression during the intifada and the pressure of more radical groups led Sheik Yassin and others to establish Hamas as a political and military organization. Neither Yassin nor other Hamas has ever given up the movement's legal infrastructure and its charitable work. Though terrorism against settlers and soldiers has become an increasingly popular response to Israel's massive arrests, violence was never allowed to become the main occupation of the organization. The vast majority of Hamas operatives, though hostile to the Oslo process and critical of the PLO, have, nevertheless, continued to work with the poor and remained committed to the construction of a Palestinian civil society. Yassin, upon his release from prison, reiterated the group's position that Arafat is the only legitimate leader of the Palestinians and that Hamas would only act against him as a loyal opposition. It goes without saying that the life of the Israelis and the implementation of the Oslo accords would have been much easier without the terrorism of Hamas's military wing. But the complex motivations of Hamas leaders suggest that this Muslim organization is not the insurmountable obstacle to peace that most Americans (and Israelis) believe it to be. Three conclusions deserve particular attention. Whether we like it or not, Hamas is a Palestinian fact of life. Those who demand the elimination of this organization as a pre-condition for peace are saying, in effect, that there will never be peace. Aggressive policies by the government of Israel such as a unilateral continuation of settlements and the assassination of Hamas leaders are bound to drive the organization's heads to resume suicide bombings inside Israel. The continued presence of Hamas on the Palestinian scene does not imply perennial suicide bombing. It is, in fact, likely that a significant improvement in the political and socio-economic conditions of the Palestinian masses -- and their recognition that terrorism and instability threaten these achievements -- will reduce Hamas's incentives to commit atrocities against Israeli civilians and drive its pragmatic leaders to greater cooperation with the Palestinian Authority. Ehud Sprinzak, a Hebrew University professor, is a Jennings Randolph senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington. © Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
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