A Political Opening for Hamas

GAZA CITY —  Messages spray-painted by the Palestinian militant group Hamas adorn the walls on both sides of Palestine Street. Along one wall, the mural shows heavily armed combatants and declares that suicide bombers pave the road to liberation.

On the other side of the street, the graffiti read: “Hamas to the people: Your vote counts! Don’t waste it!”

The death of Yasser Arafat on Thursday has given Hamas and other radical Islamic groups here a golden opportunity to join the political mainstream and reach levels of government previously hard to imagine.

Hamas, which was already planning on fielding candidates for local offices in upcoming municipal elections, is contemplating entering the race for a new Palestinian legislature. Although it probably would not make a run for the presidency, Hamas has demanded a share in the transitional regime, alongside Arafat’s Fatah party and other mostly secular factions, that will lead the Palestinians until the elections are held.

Previously, Hamas boycotted elections in the Palestinian territories, refusing to recognize the 1993 Oslo peace agreement that established the Palestinian Authority. It rejected formal inclusion in the government and instead stoked Islamist fires to build an ever-growing opposition movement.

Gradually, over time and especially in the last four years of the latest intifada, or Palestinian uprising, the popularity of Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad -- and of their hard-line, anti-Israeli positions -- has soared. Apart from their military prowess, the Islamists are a political force that the Palestinian establishment cannot afford to ignore, analysts and officials say.

“This is the best opportunity for Hamas to enter the Palestinian Authority,” Mohammed Ahmad, a Hamas supporter and an engineering student at Gaza’s Islamic University, said outside the Palestine Mosque where he came for prayers. “The only competition to Hamas was Yasser Arafat.”

Under Palestinian law, elections to replace Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority must be held within 60 days of his death.

Hamas militants are responsible for most of the suicide bombings that have killed more than 1,000 Israelis in the last decade. Despite their demand to be included in a future government, they do not appear ready to renounce their more radical ideas, including their belief that Israel should not be allowed to exist.

In fact, the militant wing of Hamas said Thursday that Arafat’s death would spur it to increase attacks on Israelis. In meetings last week with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Korei, Hamas leaders rejected his request for a cease-fire.

Arafat spent much of the 1990s trying to clamp down on Hamas and other militant groups. In 1994, Arafat’s police opened fire on Hamas members and other Islamists at the Palestine Mosque, killing 14 protesters in one of the bloodiest incidents of internecine violence inside the Palestinian territories.

Last week, however, Hamas was among the first organizations to issue a message of condolences, broadcast from Gaza City mosques.

Hamas is nothing if not pragmatic and has always been careful to take the temperature of public opinion and act accordingly. Despite the crackdown by the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s, the movement never unleashed all-out civil war against the established order because of the likely cost in popular support. And Hamas leaders may sense a desire among ordinary Palestinians for a smooth transition into the post-Arafat era.

“Hamas has restraints and limits,” said Menachem Klein, an Israeli expert in Islamic fundamentalism. “In the long run, it hopes to come to power, legitimately, through elections, and not in a coup d’etat.”

Ziad abu Amr, a Palestinian legislator who has written extensively on Hamas, warned that to ignore Hamas now is to do so at one’s peril. No leader who succeeds Arafat will have the standing to be able to exclude factions, as Arafat did, and will have to rule through a coalition, he said.

“Hamas has tremendous negative power and can undermine any arrangement,” Abu Amr said. Making Hamas a partner, he argued, is the only way to exert influence on the group and extract promises such as an agreement to suspend hostilities.

“They’ll never agree to a cease-fire if they’re sitting on the outside looking in,” he said.

Abu Amr was a key participant in negotiations that coaxed Hamas into a truce last year, which eventually fell apart. He remains convinced that the movement’s leaders, despite their public rhetoric, may be interested in an informal cease-fire.

Hamas emerged from the mosques in the Gaza Strip and rose to prominence capitalizing on festering disillusionment among Palestinians over the Oslo accords and Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, widely seen as corrupt and inefficient. The movement used suicide bombings to derail the peace process in ‘90s and again during the current intifada.

At the same time, the civilian branch of the movement has built a network of charities, soup kitchens, free clinics and other social programs that attract thousands of new followers. Hamas led the way in a recent voter-registration drive, exhorting its supporters to sign up and be prepared to vote for “strong and honest” politicians.

Hamas candidates steadily won elections at universities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Its popularity eventually surpassed that of Fatah; surveys have shown Islamist parties drawing 30% to 35% support for months.

And in a little-noticed shift in late September, Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader, outpolled Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah firebrand often considered as the only Palestinian after Arafat with a wide following. The poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research asked Palestinians whom they would vote for in the race for president. Arafat received 35% support, Zahar 15% and Barghouti 13%. The difference in support for Zahar and Barghouti, who is currently in an Israeli jail, may be statistically insignificant, but it is the first time a Hamas official received such a high score. Nasser Khafarna, an official with the leftist, secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that although Hamas’ numbers were higher, the combined total of nonreligious parties was sufficient to balance the Islamists.

“Hamas is there. They’re on the ground. They have support. They have strength. But I’m definitely not worried,” he said. “In a free and fair election, they won’t take the whole thing. It shouldn’t frighten anyone.”

In the last year, Israel has assassinated nearly every member of Hamas’ senior leadership, including the group’s spiritual founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin. That has shifted the center of gravity to leaders in exile, many of whom are seen as more pragmatic, while a generation of up-and-coming Hamas leaders is emerging from universities in the West Bank and Gaza.

Jihad Wazir, a prominent Gazan businessman and Palestinian Authority official, said the Hamas leadership had been evolving for some time and leaders had seen the need to join forces with a government they might not like in order to gain power.

“If they can [come to power] through the ballot box, well, that’s democracy,” he said. “It becomes a challenge for the secular side.”

Some Palestinian analysts argue that Israel’s campaign against Hamas, combined with mounting despair and poverty in Gaza, have pushed more people into Islamist circles. If Hamas and Israel halt their fighting, the dynamics could shift significantly, the analysts say.

“If the people see a meaningful return to the peace process, if they have hope, if Israel eases restrictions and the Americans reengage ... then the pressure cooker is relieved and the moderates have a chance,” Wazir said. “If not, people will go for Hamas.”

Eyad Sarraj, a Gazan commentator, agreed.

“If the Palestinian people have hope for a state, Hamas will be nothing more than a small Islamic party within the law,” he said.

Many will be watching to see whether Hamas joins the mainstream and then fades, or joins and then takes over.

In Lebanon, for example, the Islamic militant group Hezbollah has fully integrated into the legislative body of a secular government. But Hezbollah has also maintained an armed wing that still menaces Israel’s northern border.

Hezbollah has “a long-term strategy of the Islamization of society, peacefully and gradually,” Abu Amr said. “It’s their 1,000-year plan.”