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Why Palestinians voted for HamasBy Jeff Halper*
25 March 2006
Jeff Halper says that electing Hamas was the Palestinians' way of saying "To hell with you!" to a world that has supported and colluded in their oppression by Israel. He argues that the vote for Hamas was "a rational, intentional and powerful statement of non-cooperation in a political process that is only leading to Palestinian imprisonment", and that Hamas "stands for steadfastness ... the refusal to submit" and "resistance to occupation".
As the new Hamas government is sworn into power in the Palestinian National Authority, we might ask: what would bring a people, the most secular of Arab populations with little history of religious fundamentalism, to vote Hamas? Mere protest at Fatah ineffectualness in negotiations and internal corruption doesn't go far enough. While warning Hamas that their vote did not constitute a mandate for imposing an Iran-like theocracy on Palestine, the Palestinians took the only option left to a powerless people when all other avenues of redress have been closed to them: non-cooperation.
Gandhi put it best:
| How can one be compelled to accept slavery? I simply refuse to do the
master's bidding. He may torture me, break my bones to atoms and even
kill me. He will then have my dead body, not my obedience. Ultimately,
therefore, it is I who am the victor and not he, for he has failed in
getting me to do what he wanted done. Non-cooperation is directed not
against ... the governors, but against the system they administer. The
roots of non-cooperation lie not in hatred but in justice. |
This is not to equate Hamas with Gandhi, but merely to point out that non-cooperation, perhaps the most powerful means of non-violent resistance, arises in situations when the oppressed have no other avenues to achieve their freedom and their rights. Since it is the international community, the US, Israel and, yes, Fatah, who have closed all avenues of redress to the Palestinians, they carry the "blame" for the rise of Hamas. It is to them that the message of the Palestinian electorate is aimed: "To hell with all of you!"
To hell with the international community that closed off Palestinians' appeal to international law and human rights conventions. Had only the Fourth Geneva Convention been applied, Israel could never have constructed its occupation in the first place, since international law defines an occupation as a temporary military situation that can be resolved only through negotiations. Settlements and the construction of Israel-only highways that link them to Israel proper; the extension of Israel's legal and planning system into occupied Palestinian areas; the plunder of Palestinian water and other resources for Israeli use; house demolitions and the expropriation of Palestinian lands; the intentional impoverishment of the local population; military attacks on civilian populations, construction of the "Separation Barrier" all these are patently illegal. But what has been done to stop the occupation's entrenchment?
To hell with the United States that closed off negotiations as an avenue for redressing Palestinian rights and for enabling Israel to make its occupation permanent. At the very start of the Oslo "peace process", at Israel's urging, the US reclassified the Palestinian areas from "occupied" to "disputed", thus removing international law as the basis of negotiations and pulling the rug out from under the Palestinians. Had international law been respected, the occupation would have ended under the weight of its own illegality. But once power became the only basis of negotiations, Israel easily overwhelmed the Palestinians. To this day, Palestinians have nothing to look for in negotiations. With the Americans supporting Israeli unilateralism, with the US veto neutralizing the UN as an effective avenue of redress, and with European passivity, they have been cut adrift.
To hell with Israel that has closed off even the possibility of a viable Palestinian state by expanding into Palestinian areas. The mantra of Hamas "not recognizing Israel" is self-serving and cynical at best. Israel has never explicitly recognized the Palestinians' right to self-determination, and it never negotiated with [Palestinian President Mahmud] Abbas despite his government's recognition. The world and Israel, which wants land more than peace ignored the Palestinians' "generous offer" to Israel which could have ended the conflict: recognition within the 1967 borders in return for a Palestinian state in the occupied territories. Or in other words, an Israel on 78 per cent of historic Palestine with the Palestinians today a majority in the country accepting a state only on 22 per cent. Israel is now posed, with American support and international complicity, to make its occupation permanent and reduce the Palestinians to a prison-state truncated into five "cantons", all controlled by Israel. No borders, no freedom of movement, no water, no viable economy, no Jerusalem, no possibility of offering a hopeful future to the traumatized, brutalized, undereducated, unskilled, impoverished Palestinian youth.
And to hell with Fatah that, in addition to enabling corruption, did not effectively pursue the Palestinians' national agenda of self-determination. The Palestinian National Authority ran its affairs removed from the people, failing to provide material and moral support to victims of Israeli attacks and policies of house demolitions. Most Palestinians did not vote Hamas (only 44 per cent did), so the door was not closed on Fatah which, most Palestinians seem to hope, will learn its lesson from this setback.
Indeed, the vote for Hamas was not a closing of the door at all, but a rational, intentional and powerful statement of non-cooperation in a political process that is only leading to Palestinian imprisonment. Hamas, if anything, stands for steadfastness, sumud, the refusal to submit. But also resistance to occupation. Knowing that the conflict is too destabilizing for the global system to let fester, the Palestinians are saying: you can all impose upon us an apartheid system, blame us for the violence while ignoring Israeli state terror, pursue your programmes of American empire or your notions of a "clash of civilizations", we the Palestinians will not submit. We will not cooperate. We will not play your rigged game. In the end, for all your power, you will come to us to sue for peace. And then we will be ready for a just peace that respects the rights of all the peoples of the region, including the Israelis. But you will not beat us.
As an Israeli Jew who sees how the occupation has eroded the moral foundations of my society and, indeed, my entire people, and as a resident of Israel-Palestine who knows that my fate is intricately intertwined with that of the Palestinians, I pray that such an end will come sooner rather than later. As a member of civil society, I realize that the Palestinians have only one staunch ally: us, the people. Governments will not pursue peace and justice without our prodding. If the Palestinians remain steadfast and resist, it is our duty to actively support their fight for freedom and justice. Otherwise - to hell with us.
*Jeff Halper is the coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and a candidate for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. He can be reached at <jeff@icahd.org>.
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