MB Civic

Hamas Or Chaos?

Nathan J. Brown

May 22, 2006

Nathan J. Brown is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University.

When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert meets with President George W. Bush this week, one of their major tasks will be how to overcome the effects of their successful isolation of the new Hamas government in Palestine. Indeed, hours of discussions with Palestinians during my recent visit to the West Bank suggest that the pressures brought to bear by the U.S., Israel and Europe after Hamas’s victory are already having a dangerous impact. While Palestinian officials were brimming with plans for internal reform and cleaner government, none could present to me any formula to confront bankruptcy and diplomatic isolation.

Most ordinary Palestinians expect their new leaders to change their positions to confront the difficult realities imposed upon them. But the evidence also suggests that Hamas cannot possibly transform totally and instantaneously, as the international community is demanding. The U.S. and Israel must therefore choose between the current undeclared policy of trying to bring Hamas down or the alternative of encouraging the movement’s transformation. The first path has realized impressive short-term success but serves no long-term strategy. The second path will be more difficult and controversial in the short term but is far more realistic.

The problem with the first path—throwing Hamas out of power—is that it may bring down the entire Palestinian political and economic order in the process. The West Bank and Gaza, already in a deep depression, face massive job loss. With most international assistance funneled now to purely humanitarian needs rather than economic development, Palestinians are being expressly told that the bread they eat comes from international largesse rather than Hamas’s government or social services.

Many Americans and Israelis would view collapse of the Hamas-led government as a good thing—but few have any idea what would follow it. Politically, no alternative to a Hamas government currently exists: President Mahmoud Abbas is too weak, Fatah is both discredited and totally devastated, and no other opposition party has established itself as a viable force. Alternatives might arise, but they will not do so overnight. According to the Palestinian constitution, there can be no parliamentary elections until 2010, and even if there were early elections, the results would be no better for opponents to Hamas.

Thus, if the current government collapses, it will be replaced not by a reform-oriented, dovish leadership but by chaos and further disintegration that serves nobody’s interest. Palestinian society would increasingly be divided into armed camps often competing in their ability to attack Israel.

What of the second path—inducing a transformation in the policies of the new Palestinian leadership? Hamas faces enormous pressures from all directions. Key Arab states have been stingy with funds but free with advice to moderate.

But perhaps the most imposing source of pressure is Palestinian public opinion. Recently, when I asked an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarian if he thought Hamas leaders would accept a two-state solution, he paused and then answered that they would, with time: “They will have to. The people will demand it.”

Some of the new leaders are far more dovish than the movement’s reputation. The second-ranking official in the government has publicly distanced himself from the movement’s extreme ideological program for years. And the task of forming a government under significant domestic and international constraints has led the movement as a whole—and not merely individuals within it—to bend. The group has dropped most of its domestic agenda related to Islamization. Hamas’s original claims about Israel—that jihad was the only path and that negotiations were impossible—have been replaced by the current leadership’s proposal that both negotiations and resistance be viewed as means rather than ends. Movement leaders have hinted repeatedly that, while they might themselves oppose a permanent two-state settlement, they would accept the results of a referendum. These hints fall short of meeting international (much less Israeli) conditions, but they do suggest that the task of coaxing Hamas—however slow—is not impossible.

But the international community is presenting Palestinians with a brick wall rather than a stark choice. Any Palestinians who still hold some hope that the Americans are seeking to transform the leadership are dissuaded—not so much by the conditions Hamas is being asked to meet but by the starkness with which they have been made and the rapidity with which Hamas is required to respond. The basic demands—that Hamas accept Israel and an end to violence—are quite sensible. But the bar is set much higher than it needs to be—higher indeed than it has been set for other parties. Hamas must not only explicitly repudiate past positions but do so immediately; it must meet conditions that Israel has not—such as accept the “Road Map.” And it is offered no viable diplomatic process in return.

This is a time for supple rather than sledgehammer diplomacy. Current policy shows every sign of ignoring the lesson of Iraq—that it is far easier to bring a regime down than to put a political system back together.