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ast week Palestinians went to the polls in the third round of municipal elections across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Islamic Resistance Movement, better known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, found little resistance among voters. It won 27 local councils (compared to the ruling Fatah party's 33) to add to its victories in the previous 2 rounds. What's more, the number of Hamas voters exceeded that of Fatah by more than two to one--450,000 compared to 190,000. If this trend continues, there can be little doubt that the group will be breathing down Fatah's neck in the parliamentary elections to the Palestinian National Council scheduled for July.
Many argue that Hamas's electoral success isn't really cause for concern. They point to the fact that some Hamas voters are merely grateful beneficiaries of the group's social welfare handouts, or that others are fed up with the Palestinian Authority's corrupt governance--both true. They also argue that the group's growing legitimacy at the ballot box will cause it to morph from a militant organization into an ordinary political party that eschews violence and terrorism--as have other revolutionary movements in the third world. "The very fact that Hamas is participating in elections is a bonus for Mr. Abbas's strategy to wean the gunmen off violence by co-opting them into the political process," wrote the Times of London. Others were no less Panglossian. "Hamas is going through a process that most of the religious movements in the region are now going through," wrote Zvi Barel of Ha'aretz. "It's a process in which political achievements are important in and of themselves, even if they have an ideological price. ... The need to read the popularity map politically is something new for Hamas, and that might be the greatest achievement of all in these elections." In The New York Sun, Hillel Halkin argued that a Hamas-run government wouldn't be such a bad thing for Israel: "A Hamas that is accountable for all of Palestinian society, rather than for just its own fundamentalist constituency, will have far more to lose in another armed confrontation with Israel, both in tangible assets and in public support, than a Hamas that merely snipes from the side."
This line of reasoning badly misunderstands Hamas. The group, which is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, sees the struggle for Palestine as neither an ordinary political dispute between two contending nations (Israelis and Palestinians) nor even as a struggle for national self-determination by an indigenous population against a foreign occupier. Rather, it sees Palestine as but one battle in a worldwide holy war to prevent the fall of a part of the House of Islam to infidels.
Hamas's constitution not only promises that "Israel will exist until Islam will obliterate it" but presents the organization as the "spearhead and vanguard of the circle of struggle against World Zionism [and] the fight against the warmongering Jews." The document even incites anti-Semitic murder, arguing that "the Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.'"
There's more. According to its constitution, Hamas was established not merely to "liberate Palestine from Zionist occupation" or to wipe out Jews but to pursue the far loftier goals of spreading Allah's holy message and defending the "oppressed" throughout the world: "The Islamic Resistance Movement will spare no effort to implement the truth and abolish evil, in speech and in fact, both here and in any other location where it can reach out and exert influence."
Hamas's extreme belief that a perpetual state of war exists between it and anyone, either Muslim or non-Muslim, who refuses to follow in the path of Allah does not permit it to respect, or compromise with, cultural, religious, and political beliefs that differ from its own. Moreover, Hamas's commitment to the use of violence as a religious duty means that it will never accept political defeat at the ballot box. As the movement's slogan puts it: "Allah is [Hamas's] goal, the Prophet its model, the Koran its Constitution, Jihad its path and death for the cause of Allah its most sublime belief." These are hardly the characteristics of an organization that can participate constructively in a pluralistic democracy.
In the words of Atef Edwan, a Gaza-based professor of political science, Hamas "is an ideological movement whose supporters strongly believe in its ideology." But just in case anyone forgets what it stands for--and wrongly chooses to interpret Hamas's involvement in the political process as a sign of its readiness to live in peace with Israel--the group takes every available opportunity to restate its position. Thus, on the eve of last week's election, Muhammad Nasal, a senior figure in the group, told the 1,000 delegates at the Conference of the International Campaign Against American and Zionist Occupation in Cairo that his organization's agreement to a ceasefire was "a fighter's rest to rebuild the Palestinian house" and that "resistance is the only way we can liberate our lands." Meanwhile, Khaled Mashal, head of Hamas's political wing, acknowledged recently, "I cannot be satisfied with the 1967 borders alone and see it as a permanent solution."
Hamas's current and future electoral success thus poses a real problem for Israel, which may soon have to choose between dealing with Hamas politicians who openly call for its destruction or boycotting legitimately elected representatives of the Palestinian people. It is an equally formidable problem for Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah, who are rapidly losing their grip on power and may well rue their decision to support Hamas's inclusion in the political process without dismantling its terrorist infrastructure as required by the Oslo Accords and the roadmap.
Most of all, Hamas's electoral victories are a problem for the Palestinian people. As recent events in Northern Ireland--in particular the brutal murder of Robert McCartney and the IRA's staggering offer to shoot those members guilty of this heinous crime--have clearly demonstrated, terror groups, especially those committed to extremist goals, cannot easily be integrated into political life without undermining democracy and poisoning the norms of civil society. Unfortunately for the Palestinian people, that's not something the wishful thinking of pundits can change.
Efraim Karsh is the head of the Mediterranean Studies Programme at King's College, University of London. Rory Miller is Senior Lecturer in Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London.
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