The Changing Priorities of Hamas

Hamas, started in 1980s as an Islamic Resistance Movement against the Israeli occupation (Hroub, 2006). The famous scenes of children and youth resisting Israeli soldiers with nothing more than stones changed the rules of the game. The relatively “peaceful” resistance was often met with brutal force from the Israeli army, and members of the Knesset questioned IDF practices in breaking the bones of those little children. Hamas was so effective that it probably was one of the reasons why Israel was forced into signing Oslo Accords with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (Zuhur, 2008). Hamas was perhaps more effective as a resistance movement than a ruling power. As a resistance movement, it could always act as an informal army of the Palestinian cause, inflicting damage on Israel without giving an excuse to Israel for retaliation on Palestinian population. However, there was a shift in the priorities and ideology of the Hamas group that was accelerated by the Gaza conflict (Gunning, 2007).

After seizing power in 2007, it became increasingly evident that Hamas’s priorities changed. Survival and sustaining its position in power became Hamas’s first priority. The Palestinian cause had to take a back seat (Byman, 2010). In pursuing its own agenda, new words and titles replaced old ones. Instead of talking about restoring Palestinian rights, the news talked about lifting Gaza’s blockade (Byman, 2010). Instead of demanding returning occupied lands and ensuring the right of return to Palestinian refugees, the new narrative was about the Fatah and Hamas dispute and the opening of Rafah crossing with Egypt. Hamas has reduced the Palestinian cause from one where Palestinians deserve a viable State to live on like any other nation, to a series of petty quarrels and disputes over side issues (Klein, 2007).

Hamas has managed to distort the Palestinian issue from one where Palestinians are rightfully demanding their land and the right to live a decent life in peace on ancestral Palestine, to a Palestinian-Palestinian quarrel between Hamas and Fatah, or a Gaza-Egypt conflict over the Rafah crossing. Hamas’s biggest concern became resuming daily collection of the millions of dollars in revenues from operating over 1,600 illegal tunnels between Gaza and Egypt (Klein, 2007). The tunnels became the main source of wealth to Hamas leaders who collected fees from smuggling of goods through the tunnels. These tunnels were tolerated by Mubarak regime to provide Gaza a break. The tunnels were allegedly used by Hamas during the January revolution of 2011 to infiltrate Egyptian borders with fighters who helped storm prisons where Brotherhood leaders were detained and released them (Klein, 2007). Egyptian security believes that upon Morsi’s removal, the tunnels were used to smuggle arms to terrorists in Sinai responsible for countless attacks on Egyptian targets with hundreds of death amongst police and military personnel as well as tribal leaders and civilian victims.

In 2017, The rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah have signed a preliminary reconciliation deal in the latest in a series of attempts to end a decade-long Palestinian territorial, political and ideological split that has crippled statehood aspirations (Walsh, 2017). The deal, signed in Cairo in the presence of Egyptian intelligence officials, focuses on who should control the contested Gaza Strip and on what terms. The two sides’ mutual hostility has defined the stark geographical and ideological division in Palestinian society between the West Bank and Gaza, which they have ruled separately since clashes that broke out in 2007 (Walsh, 2017).

Under the agreement, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority is to resume full control of the Hamas-controlled Gaza, according to a statement from Egypt’s intelligence agency (Walsh, 2017. According to reports the agreement would also see Palestinian Authority forces take control of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. With the new shift in power and restoring order back to Gaza, there is a new era coming for Hamas. Now with a territorial dispute hopefully coming to an end, Hamas can get back to its original roots of fighting for rights for Palestinians.

Bibliography

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Gunning, Jeroen. Hamas in Politics, Democracy, Religion, Violence. 2007, p. 111.

Herzog, Michael. “Can Hamas Be Tamed?” Foreign Affairs, vol. 85, no. 2, 2006, pp. 83–94.

Hroub,  Khaled “A ‘New Hamas’ through Its New Documents,” Journal of Palestine Studies,
Vol. 35, No. 4, Summer 2006, p. 6.

Klein, Menachem. “Hamas in Power.” Middle East Journal, vol. 61, no. 3, 2007, pp. 442-459.

Walsh, Declan, and David. “Unity Deal Offers Hope for Palestinians and a Respite for Gaza.”
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Zuhur, Sherifa “Hamas and Israel: Conflicting Strategies of Group-Based Politics,” Strategic
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