Who is the real Hamas?

March 2, 2006 | JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH, West Bank -- The decisive victory of the militant Islamic group Hamas in the Palestinians' Jan. 25 elections stunned just about everyone involved in Palestinian affairs and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Hamas' victory raises a host of questions, but it is clearly one of the most significant developments in decades in this debilitating and frequently lethal conflict, which even more than the war in Iraq remains the greatest source of anger and misunderstanding between the U.S. and the Arab/Muslim world. As a long-standing observer of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with many close contacts among players on both sides, I wanted to see for myself how Hamas' triumph was playing out. To find out, I embarked on a 20-day reporting trip to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

For Palestinians and Israelis alike, Hamas' victory has been likened to an earthquake. Some Palestinians are apprehensive about the rise of the hard-line group, but many more applaud the fact that they will now be represented by negotiators who are as tough as the Israelis. For Israelis, the Hamas victory has created fear and uncertainty. Most Israelis see Hamas as a murderous group of religious zealots who refuse to recognize the Israeli state, want to see it destroyed and are willing to be very patient in seeking its doom. For them, the triumph of Hamas confirms their worst fears about Palestinian attitudes and intentions. And nothing that any of the Hamas leaders can say -- short of immediately recognizing Israel and unconditionally renouncing violence -- would reassure them.

The U.S. pressed for the elections that brought Hamas to power, but now it largely shares the Israeli position. The Bush administration has worked furiously hard to try to isolate the Palestinian Authority's emerging Hamas-led government -- even before that government has been formed. (The U.S. apparently differs with Israel on whether it is still worth working with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas or not.) But though Washington has had some success with the Europeans in its campaign to isolate Hamas, it has had far less success to date with its Arab allies.

Some have proposed -- and I am among them -- that the advent of Hamas need not necessarily be viewed as a threat, but that the organization's long reputation for internal discipline and its solid nationalist credentials could potentially be viewed as an asset in the crafting of a stable peace in the region. An interview I conducted on Feb. 25 with a senior Hamas official provided further evidence for this assessment. Mahmoud Ramahi, the chief whip of the new 74-seat Hamas bloc in the Palestinian Legislative Council, strongly indicated that Hamas was prepared to cease hostilities with Israel if it returned to its 1967 borders. Ramahi, an Italian-trained anesthesiologist, also said that Hamas is pursuing a plan to allow the Fatah-dominated Palestine Liberation Organization to conduct the Palestinians' foreign affairs, including its ever-sensitive negotiations with Israel, while the new Hamas "government" of the Palestinian Authority would concentrate on internal economic and social affairs. Such a position would avoid an immediate collision between Israel and Hamas, by using Abbas, who is president of both the PLO and the P.A., as a crucial intermediary.

For Israelis like Dore Gold, who was Benjamin Netanyahu's ambassador to the United Nations in the 1990s, Ramahi's moderate-sounding words are meaningless. Speaking to me in the lovely stone mansion on West Jerusalem's Tel Hai Street that houses the think tank he now heads, Gold scoffed at the idea that Hamas might be persuaded to undergo any meaningful political transformation. "The Brits love to lecture on this point. They talk to us endlessly about how they transformed the IRA through the Good Friday Agreement. But even that didn't work!" he said. "Hamas' goal is to replace the whole of Israel with an Islamic state."

The Qalandiya crossing point between Israeli-controlled East Jerusalem and the Ramallah District, which is administered by the P.A., is just six miles north of downtown Jerusalem , but it feels like a completely different universe. At Qalandiya, Israeli soldiers perched atop ugly enclosed watchtowers peer down over a bizarre, lunar landscape where two looping segments of the shockingly high, still-under-construction concrete wall come close together without touching -- and Palestinians wishing to cross between Jerusalem and Ramallah have to shuffle through a series of Israeli-controlled cattle pens, one-way gates, and waiting sheds in the desolate, dust-clogged space between them. The anger of people forced to bear this treatment for, now, 10 years is pervasive, deep and often only barely suppressed. The Israeli army units stationed here and in the other heavily defended forts that ring Ramallah continue to undertake some missions inside that city, but their main job is to exercise tight control over all movements of Palestinian people and goods between Ramallah and Israeli-controlled Jerusalem.

The 220,000 Palestinians who live in and around Ramallah are deeply concerned about how Hamas' victory will affect the relationship with Israel that dominates their every daily transaction. I heard a few expressions of fear that relations with Israel might worsen, but more expressions of satisfaction that at last a Palestinian political force had emerged that had shown it was ready to stand up straightforwardly for the Palestinians' basic demands. This is in strong contrast to P.A. President Abbas, whom many Palestinians view as far too compliant with Israel's ever-escalating demands and also quite unsuccessful in winning any Israeli reward for his continuing flexibility.

But Palestinians in Ramallah and elsewhere are also very concerned with how the transition of their own administration from one dominated by Abbas' Fatah movement to one dominated by Hamas will proceed. After all, the peaceful hand-over of power from one party to another is a key test for any emerging democracy. Most Palestinians are keenly aware, in addition, that their very vulnerable society cannot afford to be wracked by more internal fighting. Most such fighting to date has been between the different factions of Fatah, or has involved splinter groups of Fatah taking various lawless actions against foreigners, especially in Gaza. Very, very little of it has involved Hamas. But there has been some fear of how the ill-organized Fatah factions might respond to the imminent displacement of their ill-organized party from power. A few incidents right after Jan. 25 further stoked that fear.

When I went to the PLC's seat in Ramallah on Feb. 25 I found it much more peaceful than I had expected. At the suggestion of an old friend who knows the Hamas luminaries well, I simply walked into the nicely appointed, stone-faced office building where the parliamentarians have their offices and asked to see the new PLC speaker, Aziz Dweik, and the Hamas chief whip, Mahmoud Ramahi.

(Hamas' designee for the premiership, Ismail Haniyeh, lives in Gaza. Like all other Gazans, he is forbidden to travel to Ramallah. Indeed, nowadays "Palestine" is oddly bicephalous, with one head in Ramallah and one in Gaza. When the new PLC held its first session on Feb. 18, roughly half of the parliamentarians convened in Ramallah, and the other half took part via a video link from a public hall in Gaza. And then, there were the dozen-plus elected members who are still held in Israeli jails; they could not participate at all.)

Security in the PLC office building was almost nonexistent, and parliamentarians from Fatah and Hamas were visiting each other's offices in apparent amity. Dweik's people said he was busy, but Ramahi agreed to see me. He was polite and welcoming. As a female I was ready -- after many experiences with Islamists in Lebanon, Iran, etc., over the years -- not to shake a male hand but to do the old hand-over-the-heart thing on greeting Ramahi. But he walked out from behind his desk with his hand extended for a handshake. (And for what it's worth, he has no beard.) But he, too, turned out to be busy, so we made an appointment to meet later in the afternoon.

When we finally did sit down together, we spoke for about half an hour. He answered all my questions in nearly impeccable English.

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