Hamas between politics and struggle .. Will the Palestinian elections threaten the weapons of the resistance?

On the evening of March 25, 2006, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sat in his office at the presidential headquarters in Ramallah to meet with the veteran journalist of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Akiva Eldar. Heritage seats and guest paraphernalia are fitted, and in the hospitality hall, in their elegant suits, the staff wrapped in patterned rugs, inspecting the minutest details. Abbas, seventy-one, wanted to send a set of letters to Israeli officials as part of his answers to “Eldar” questions, chief among them “reprimanding” them for not allowing his forces to be armed well. So, as soon as the Israeli journalist threw his question to Abbas about his failure to fulfill his promise to unify the security services and disarm the militants, Abbas answered in a sharp tone: “When I asked Israel to approve the entry of weapons, they said, buy from the mafia and from the smugglers …Neither Israel nor the United States fulfilled any of my requests and entered into a dispute with the organization with two empty hands. “

Abbas intended specifically to confront the Hamas movement, which expelled with its weapons the elements of the authority from Gaza during the so-called “military decision” or “Hamas coup”, which resulted in the fall of the Gaza Strip under the control of the movement after its victory in the legislative elections that were held in early 2006. Now After 16 years have passed since the Palestinian division, President Mahmoud Abbas is still on his position on Hamas’s arms, despite the array of regional and international changes that have recently pushed him to accelerate the process of reconciliation with the movement and approve three consecutive rounds of national elections (before he issued a decree to postpone the elections early) . As a result, there are fears that have dwelt in the Palestinian memory since 2007, when the issue of Hamas’s weapons in the Gaza Strip and its fate were raised after the next elections, should they be held. This is the vital issue based on the fact that weapons are the only way to achieve the principle that “what is taken by force can only be recovered by force”It may lead to a repeat of the scenes of the internal division that occurred in 2006-2007.

In a large hotel hall decorated with Palestinian and Egyptian flags, Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of the political bureau of Hamas, sat opposite Fatah Secretary General Jibril Rajoub, and around them were leaders of 13 other factions and officials from the Central Elections Committee. The atmosphere of the Palestinian national dialogue has been unprecedentedly positive for 15 years. Reconciliation at that time depended on the success of Saleh and Gabriel, the two arch rivals who have been friends for years in the prisons of the Israeli occupation, in reaching a consensus that demonstrates the maturity of Palestinian reconciliation efforts after a decade and a half of division. During the meeting that took place on September 13th, the first lines of actual movement towards holding the general elections that had not been held since 2006 were laid down, and the Palestinian factions in Cairo signed the “honor document.”, Which affirmed the factions ’commitment to invoking the amended election law No. 1 of 2007, respecting the role of the Central Elections Commission and Arab and international observers, and not resorting to weapons or violence in the legislative elections that were supposed to take place on May 22.

We can dwell a little on the tenth item in the 25-page document, relating to “the criminalization and prohibition of the use of weapons during electoral activities”. This clause remembers the painful scenes that occurred in 2007, when Palestinian weapons were used to impose the result of the 2006 elections, which took place.Hamas has 74 seats in the Legislative Council, compared to 45 seats for Fatah. In light of the electoral victory of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, which had held power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1994, began to crack down on the elected leaders of Hamas, and, in turn, with the occupation, the winning representatives and ministers of the elected government were placed in prisons. Matters reached a climax with the decision of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007 to dismiss Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh after the Martyr Ezz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, took control of the security services’ centers in the Gaza Strip, and appointed Salam Fayyad, the finance minister in the Gaza Strip. The national unity government headed by Haniyeh after the Mecca agreement between the two parties in February 2007, in the position instead.

In the end, Hamas surrendered to the coup against it in Ramallah, but it raised its arms in Gaza not only to obtain its right to rule, but to protect itself from what it thought threatening its existence, but its approach has become a major reason for imposing a continuous Israeli and international siege on Gaza in order to force the movement To lay down arms and derail their course. The International Quartet Committee (the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations) called on Hamas to “renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, recognize the agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians, and disarm,” in return for recognizing it as an acceptable party in the Palestinian arena.

Domestically, reconciliation efforts since 2007 have focused on three basic issues, namely, the disarmament of Hamas in Gaza, reform of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the holding of new elections. The Palestinian Authority insisted on the existence of a unified weapon under the auspices of its security services and not to allow the model of private weapons similar to the Lebanese Hezbollah, while Hamas has not shown any willingness whatsoever to give up its weapons. However, the movement softened its rhetoric and approach under the weight of siege and international pressure, as it did in 2017 when it showed its willingness to place weapons under the responsibility of a joint national entity that defines the nature of the resistance and allows the use of weapons or not, in exchange for reconciliation with Fatah. https://www.youtube.com/embed/9lkarL5uWeI?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=ar&autohide=2&wmode=transparent

The announcement of what will be included in the episode of the program “What is hidden is greater”, which was broadcast by Al-Jazeera in Qatar last September, 2020, ensured that several intelligence services were ready to follow the episode with a large crowd of viewers. In one of its most powerful investigative media programs, Hamas has chosen to generate whatever information it wants about its weapons supplies. The timing of the episode was also important, as it coincided with the popular shock at the Gulf normalization agreements with Israel that followed the announcement of the “deal of the century” aimed at turning Gaza into a demilitarized zone.

The program carried several messages about the military situation of Hamas, so in its first disclosure of its combat equipment, the Al-Qassam Brigades deliberately confirmed that the efforts made to prevent it from arming it had failed, as on the one hand it manufactures quality weapons in Gaza, and on the other hand it brings weapons from countries such as Syria and Iran. Hamas men appeared in the program episode as a beehive that works regularly to increase manufacturing capacity in various fields of combat, as the movement revealed different types of missiles such as the Iranian “Fajr-5” with a range of 100 km, and a number of drones and anti-tank missiles, as the movement revealed its plans. To obtain anti-ship missiles and guided missile radar systems (1). So growing Hamas ‘s military capabilities and its production capacity of missiles and aircraft march with the support and financing of an Iranian, to become the Qassam Brigades today is like a “semi – regular army”, as according to a reportAn Israeli affirmed that the Qassam Brigades “have transformed from unorganized divisions and battalions into a semi-regular army with a clear hierarchy, which will make the next direct military confrontation different from the previous one.”

During the period between March 14-19, a non-governmental “Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research” – non- governmental – polled the views of the Palestinians about their choices in the upcoming May elections, and the results showed that the Hamas and Fatah movements would not obtain a parliamentary majority, as the respondents chose their opinions. To give the Fateh list 43% of the vote, while 30% chose the Hamas list. The surprise was what the poll predicted that Fatah was facing an unprecedented challenge in the Gaza Strip from two independent lists of the leaders dismissed from the movement, Muhammad Dahlan and Nasser Al-Kidwa. Despite the diversity of the competing lists and the different expected scenarios for the course of the now-postponed elections, dealing with the dilemma of Palestinian factions’ arms and armed action against Israel from the Gaza Strip will be a crucial file that may determine the outcomes of Palestinian politics after the elections.

Palestinian political analyst Sari Orabi says in this regard that if Hamas wins, its weapons will surely take over the center of political disputes between it and Fatah, and the movement may come under pressure again regarding its weapons so that it is allowed to integrate into the Palestinian political system or any coalition government that is established. For the next legislative council. Then, the specter of division, disruption of the political path, and then a blockade because of the weapons of the resistance looms on the horizon. And in the event that Hamas loses and Fatah wins, Orabi says that the movement will return to raising its permanent slogan on unifying the Palestinian Authority’s arms, “unless there are good intentions and a willingness to agree on a national issue of this kind between the two movements.”

Orabi believes that it is difficult to integrate the resistance weapon into the ranks of the Palestinian forces, as the latter is governed by the context of the occupation and its restrictions in the West Bank, as well as by the Palestinian Authority and its functions related to the agreements with the Israeli occupation. Hence, the integration of the resistance weapons under the banner of the Authority will inevitably affect the calculations of the resistance, its practices, and its armament, but it will also affect on the other hand, if the two parties succeed in reaching a good national formula for cooperation, in the security doctrine of the Palestinian Authority itself in a way that the occupation will not be satisfied with. Never, and this is a complex situation that is difficult to understand between Hamas and Fatah.

Ultimately, Hamas insists on adopting its military infrastructure as a means to achieve its strategy and prove its demands for recognition as a leader of the armed struggle. As for the most that the Hamas leadership can agree to after the elections, if they are held, is to enable the Palestinian Authority to return to Gaza and accept the civil administration in the region. However, this settlement itself could turn into a bumpy slope that gradually leads the Palestinian arena to a model similar to the Hezbollah model in Lebanon. In turn, Abbas will not agree to take over Gaza while the continued presence of other weapons in it other than those subject to the orders of the Palestinian Authority, a position that has not been changed by the various pressures he was subjected to.

Starting with the deal of the century and the promises of the liquidation of the two-state solution that appears on the horizon, passing through the continuing wheel of settlement in full swing, and reaching the splits within the Fatah movement, the Palestinian Authority and its seventieth leader have been subjected to unprecedented pressures since its establishment, which prompted it to accept reconciliation with Hamas and announce the holding of legislative elections. New for the first time since 2007, however, those elections – now suspended indefinitely – did not budge Abbas’s persistence in disarming the “Tanzimat” as he calls them. (2) In the end, the Palestinians and all of their neighbors realize that the Palestinian issue is at a crossroads, and that opening the door to elections, towards which everyone is now seeking to achieve short-term gains, may return Palestinian politics to its stagnant course for a little over a decade, and perhaps it will allow the emergence of new alliances and equations that will restore Defining both the Palestinian Authority and the resistance.