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VIEW: Victory of Hamas: chickens come home to roost —Farish A Noor

The more the leaders and members of Hamas were targeted, arrested and assassinated, the grander its hall of martyrs and heroes grew. While the PLO was seen as growing increasingly moderate, Hamas claimed the glory of being one of the organisations most hated and feared by Israel. This gave it an aura of power it initially lacked

Hamas’ spectacular victory at the polls has caught many Palestine watchers by surprise. It should not have been a surprise at all.

The resounding victory — it won 76 seats compared to Fatah’s 43 — has given Hamas an outright majority in the parliament. The high turnout (77 percent) also indicates that the victory is no fluke. It is indeed a decisive indictment of Fatah and other moderate Palestinian leaders to keep the Palestinian pact going and to persuasively argue Palestine’s case on the international stage.

All eyes are now on the Hamas leadership to see whether it can and does opt for the democratic constitutional path to politics and governance or uses the overwhelming mandate to interpret its victory as a resounding sanction for continued violence.

Its leaders like Mahmoud Zahar have insisted that Hamas will retain its original objective of fighting for the total freedom of Palestine and all Palestinians. To add to the worries of the powers-that-be in Washington and Israel, they have dismissed the idea of asking the movement’s militias to stand down.

It is too early, however, to tell if this is all bluster and rhetoric or a prelude to the eventual softening up of Hamas. After all, if Hamas is about to enter the corridors of power its leaders — like politicians elsewhere — will sooner rather than later learn that smart business suits and silk ties do not sit well with Kalashnikovs and grenades. Hamas has only to look at another former militia movement that has made the successful transition to constitutional politics: Hizbullah.

Hizbullah, which commands the support of hundreds of thousands of Shias in the region, began as a militant movement that was even more dogmatic and doctrinaire in its politics and praxis. It refused to compromise and work with other movements such as the Mujahideen in Afghanistan that it argued were in the pay of Washington. For years it supported only the most kosher of resistance movements, such as the IRA, and the liberation movements in North Africa, Latin and Central America that it regarded as being firm in their commitment to anti-imperialism.

Hamas, on the other hand, has always been seen as more political in form and content, to the point that it has been accused of being aided (indirectly) by Israeli agents who were keen to tarnish the image of the once-popular and credible PLO under the late Yasser Arafat.

This tangled history makes it all the more problematic to determine where Hamas will go next. Caught up in the internecine political labyrinth of Palestinian politics, Hamas is as much a turf-war fighter as it is a liberation movement. Its support base comes mainly from disenfranchised Palestinian Muslims disillusioned with the secular nationalist ideology and rhetoric of the PLO.

While the PLO was a broad-based movement that fought for the liberation of Palestine and all Palestinians — regardless of religious, ethnic or clan background, Hamas is blatantly and unashamedly exclusive. Its rhetoric has been shaped by the religious vocabulary of absolutes and a monochromatic view of the world that divides people between Good and Evil, friends and enemies. It is the sort of language President Bush Jr should be more than familiar with.

Hamas’ coming to power therefore reads as a case of the militant chickens coming home to roost. For decades, the Israeli government, with the backing of the USA, has sought to discredit the more inclusive and secular nationalist movement led by the PLO. The PLO’s left-leaning nationalist agenda was seen as too inclusive and capable of uniting Palestinians of different religious and ethnic backgrounds, and its ultimate success in the 1970s of gaining global recognition — up to the level of the United Nations — made it seem even more dangerous for Israeli politicians bent on containing and defeating the Palestinian movement once and for all.

The emergence of Hamas was, ironically, a boon of sorts for Israel. Here was a Palestinian movement that could easily be demonised and marginalised thanks to its fiery rhetoric, replete as it was with talk of hellfire and damnation for the unbelievers. Cast as a demonic fundamentalist threat, Hamas was presented as a global terrorist bogeyman long before wannabes like Osama Bin Laden were even on the scene.

But Hamas’ enemies failed to appreciate a vital factor: movements like Hamas thrive on demonisation and stigma. The more the leaders and members of Hamas were targeted, arrested and assassinated, the grander its hall of martyrs and heroes grew.

While the PLO was seen as growing increasingly moderate, Hamas claimed the glory of being one of the organisations most hated and feared by Israel, ending up on the black list of every developed industrialised nation. This gave Hamas an aura of power and influence it initially lacked. Israel’s demonisation of Hamas was its best publicity campaign.

Now that the votes have been counted and it is clear that Hamas is about to step into the murky political arena of Palestinian politics for the first time, it remains to be seen whether its leaders can retain the edge and reputation of sacrifice and martyrdom that has been their political and cultural capital for so long.

Hamas, like many other movements that have remained outside politics, thus far has developed the image of a movement untainted by the dirt and grime of realpolitik. But governance is a dirty job. It soils reputations as fast as it adds to the waistline: just ask the failed and discredited leaders of Fatah.

Should Hamas play the game of constitutional politics by the rules, it will be only the latest Islamist militant movement that has undergone the discursive change to enter the world of politics. This may leave a vacuum that may later be filled in by yet another marginal group that claims the authenticity of being ‘outside the system’ and thus cleaner, purer and holier. Hamas will therefore have to find the means to both domesticate itself and retain the support of its impatient constituents and supporters. This will hardly be an easy task.

But for now at least, while the AK-47s are being shot skywards in joy rather than anger, the neo-cons of Washington and the elites of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem can sit back and pause for a second: Hamas’s victory is not novel. Indeed it is the perfectly logical consequence of a sustained policy of oppression, dehumanisation and subjugation of a people. What did they expect, save an angry chicken coming home to roost?

Dr Farish A Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist, based at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin

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