The Israeli Factor in the Rise of Hamas

The Israeli Factor in the Rise of Hamas

Osman Bahadır Dinçer

The recent events in the Middle East have been watched by sensitive people around the world approximately for two weeks. Yet, the decision makers, who could not understand it is impossible to reach a solution by only condemning, are only watching the ‘state terrorism’. Israel is still going its own way by ignoring the others, carrying out its own specific executions by using its and the US’s ‘legitimate’ special methods as usual. Not only the UN, the EU and the US, but also most of the Arab leaders are silent. The reasons behind the attacks and the possible outcomes have been discussed by the experts all around the world as well as in Turkey.

In this essay, rather than trying to analyze the recent events, I would like to call your attention to a different topic. I would like to say something about Hamas and Israel by going back to late 1980s.

There are many factors leading to the rise of radicalism in the Middle East in general and in Palestine in particular. Yet, it is a fact that Israel was another factor conducing radicalism to spread especially in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Though Israel could not achieve its aims in the long run, it supported Islamism, in other words, Hamas and like-minded groups during their first years, in order to counterbalance the nationalist and secular movements.

Israel was not taking Islamism and Islamist organizations into account seriously in the early years of Islamism. Even in coming years, Israel viewed them as counter-forces against the secular nationalist groups. Since in the Cold War period, in which the competition of ideologies was at peak level, the impact of Marxist ideologies in the Palestinian groups was remarkably high enough, for Israel, creating cleavages in PLO could be achieved by endorsing such Islamist groups. Besides, some Christian Arabs were supporting PLO. It was expected that as the Islamist discourses increased in the Palestinian cause, the support and the influence of Marxists, other secularists and the Christian Arabs in the Palestinian cause would decline.

In this general framework, it is a truth that to a certain extent Israel supported and helped Hamas which was considered as an alternative force against El Fatah. On January 11, 1993, it was written in Al Arab that the person who allowed Hamas to be organized in Gaza was the Israeli military governor of Gaza and also it was claimed in the same newspaper that the main aim was to divide PLO by helping to found Hamas. This is not surprising. Not only Israel but also the USA supported, encouraged and tolerated the developments of Islamist radicals to a certain degree in the sake of their own interests. Israeli leaders did this in order to divide the Palestinian society and to attenuate the PLO. In this sense, they allowed Hamas to be founded and to organize demonstrations and to raise money. In other words, Hamas emerged by the help of Israel as an alternative to the classical Arafat nationalism to lessen the Arafat’s power in the Palestinian struggle. Foundation of Hamas as a militant Islamist organization provided an alternative ground against the secular and nationalist structure of the PLO. The direct impact of Israel on the formation of Hamas could be evaluated so. Yet, from a different point of view, the indirect effect of Israel in the improvement of Hamas is also an incontestable reality.

Indirect Impact of Israel in the Rise of Hamas

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Particularly, since the beginning of Al Aksa Intifadah in 2000, the increasing number of civilian deaths in the Israeli attacks has been severely slashed by many circles. For instance, the President of Palestinian Authority, Mahmut Abbas, just after the Israeli attacks on Gaza Strip in June 2006, stated that “Israel is conducting state terrorism”. In this sense, if we remember the days in June 2006, it can be easily conceived that the logic, the perceptions and the methods of Israel have not been changed.

Hamas, which is on the list of the terrorist organizations of the world, also heads the groups which criticize Israel claiming that Israel has been carrying out state terrorism. Halid Meshal, the exiled leader of Hamas, accused Israel of being a terrorist state, just after the unsuccessful assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997. He answered the questions of the newspaper AL Khaleej in October 15, 1997. Let me give one question and one answer from that interview:

Q: ... Many suicide bombers attacked to civilian buses in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. What do you say about these?

Meshal: ... we are not pointing our weapons to civilians. Our men are not going out to the streets to kill civilians. But, the Zionist enemy has been pressuring on us to use any way of war. Let me give an example: More than 300 thousand Jewish settlers have been living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. All of them are armed people. They have been killing our children and civilians. We have been struggling to survive under economic siege. More than five thousand Palestinian teenagers are under torture in Israeli prisons. No medicine! Health and education services are not enough. In such a situation, how come you say that we are attacking civilians? The world should look at the Israel first. They are the real terrorists. (This statement was made nearly ten years ago, but, the parallelism between the recent statements with this one is obvious.)

At this point, Palestinians are not the only people castigating Israel. There are also many Israelis who have been dissatisfied and despondent by the Israeli attacks for many years. Moreover, international public opinion has been stating that Israel has been making mistakes. Especially, the Israeli military tactics and the operations carried out according to these tactics have been perceived within the concept of state terrorism by many circles. The Jewish Sociologist, Dr. Lev Grinberg, from Ben Gurion University, was just one of the people assessing the Israeli aggression as terrorism. Dr. Grinberg, also argued that whereas the USA perceived the Israeli ‘state terrorism’ as self-defense, it considered the individual operations carried out by Palestinians as terrorism. According to him, the nuance between these operations is that the Israeli attacks are led by the Israeli leaders themselves (Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Ben Elizer, Shimon Peres, Shaul Mofaz), yet, the Palestinian activities are not led by Arafat himself. In other words, individual operations are carried out without the knowledge of Arafat. In addition, there was another important figure who was also criticizing Israel. One of the former Israeli Ministers of Education, Shulamit Aloni, made a statement for the newspaper Kul Al Arab, in July 29 2005 arguing that Israel had been committing war crimes and Ariel Sharon should have been put in appearance in the court. She also claimed that Israel had been committing crimes against humanity and Israel has become worse than Palestine in terms of its terrorist operations. Moreover, she evaluated that although Israel has one of the most powerful armies of the Middle East, it has been still playing the role of victim, and unfortunately, this has been confirmed by the USA which is also unacceptable. For her, Israel has been following the way of Mussolini.

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Steve Bell, The Guardian 3/23/2004 http://www.vtjp.org/images/bell1.jpg

Through the military operations carried out in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and during the assassinations directed to the Palestinian leaders, Israeli Defense Forces has been causing many civilian casualties and deaths, which have been severely inveighed and considered as violation of human rights. For instance, in 1982, Israel mounted a full scale assault to Arafat in Beirut where as a result of the collapse of the building 200 civilian lost their lives. Just after this tragedy, Arafat was based in Tunis, and here again, as a result of another assault, 73 people were killed in 1985.

Actually, the illegal activities operated by the Jewish guerillas during the pre-state Palestine have been still perpetuated by the help of modern tools. There are many illegal activities: open and shut, outlawed attacks and the assaults, which are launched as unintentional mistaken operations, are among those illegal activities. A Jewish Journalist Richard Ben Cramer, holding a Pulitzer award, tells the whole real story about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his book How Israel Lost. He talks about many illegal realities on the ground one by one, for instance, he mentions the inflictions on the check-points in occupied territories and the illegal assassinations of the Palestinian leaders before the eyes of the world. In this regard, in my point of view, being humiliated and insulted by the Israeli soldiers is also a kind of psychological attack. Cutting the tax revenues of the Palestinians by Israel and the restrictions at the borders could also be evaluated within the framework of state terrorism. First of all, the assassinations of Hamas leaders in 2004 have been assessed as terrorist activities which were actually, according to Israel, carried out as anti-terror operations. For instance, the assaults, without a court decision, against the Palestinian leaders, who are claimed to be terrorists by Israel, were described as war crimes by the Human Rights Committee of the Israeli Bar Association in 2001.

The mutual terrorist attacks make people paranoid in both sides, especially in the Israeli side. The security controls at the borders and the security cautions, not only in airports or terminals but also in cafes and bars, are good signs of this paranoiac culture. In fact, it means that if you attack, you get afraid! In other words, Israel has been suffering due to its own seeds of violence which have been cultivated for more than sixty years. The Israeli occupation, which has been leading severe social and economic conditions, causing terrorism and human rights violations, has aggravated the nationalist and religious extremism to very dangerous levels in the occupied territories.

At this point, looking at Prof. Alon Ben Meir’s book, The Last Option, would be useful. Dr. Ben Meir argues that the main concern of the Israel is how to protect itself from violence. However, for him, the main problem is the failure and the uselessness of the precautions (the operations carried out to arrest the militants in Palestine, building of the wall, check points, and the reoccupation of some places under the control of PA) taken by the Israeli governments to resolve these rightful concerns. These sorts of precautions, unfortunately, are bound to raise the desperation and the anxiety among the Palestinians instead of diminishing the suicide attacks. These ‘so called’ preventions lead more violence and deepen the tension instead of ending the conflict. Consequently, all these things help the radicals in both sides inadvertently.

Osman Bahadir Dincer

Middle East Expert - USAK

obadir2001@gmail.com

[1] Alain Gresh ve Dominique Vidal, The New A-Z ofThe Middle East, (Londra: I.B. Tauris, 2004), p.108.

[2] Faik Bulut, slamc Örgütler, (stanbul: Tüm Zamanlar Yaynclk, 1994), p.239 .

[3] Marvin E. Gettleman ve Stuart Schaar, The Middle East and Islamic World Reader, (New York: Grove Press, 2003), s. 287.

[4] Stephen, Schwartz, Two Faces of Islam Saudi Fundementalism an Its Role in Terrorism, (New York: Anchor Books, 2003), p. 181.

[5] John L. Esposito, Unholy War Terror In The Name of Islam, (New York: Oxford University Pres, 2002), p. 95.

[6] ‘Abbas accuses Israel of state terror’, El Cezire, June 14 2006. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/8E724927-E0BC–4168-916A-6D5F75E142A8.htm

[7] Murat Erdin, Düünceleri, örgüt yaplar ve eylemleriyle Hizbullah ve Hamas, (stanbul: Sarmal Yaynevi, 1999), p. 107.

[8] Lev Grinberg,‘Israel's State Terrorism’, Tikkun Magazine,April, 1, 2002, http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0401-04.htm

[9] Roee Nahmias, ‘Israeli terror is worse’, Yedioth Ahronoth, July, 29, 2005, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3119885,00.html

[10] ‘Arafat: End of a charmed life’, BBC, Novemner, 12, 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4007159.stm

[11] For detailed information see.. The author talks about the details, and share his own observations with the readers. He mentions the mutual mistakes made by both Israelis and the Palestinians.

[12] Todd Sandler ve Walter Enders, The Political Economy of Terrorism, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), s. 28.

[13] Roana Carey ve Jonathan Shainin, The Other Israel: voices of refusal and dissent, (New York: The New Pres, 2003), s. 3.

[14] Bahadr Dinçer, ‘Korkuyla Yaamann Ad: srail’, USAK Stratejik Gündem,November, 3, 2006 http://www.usakgundem.com/yazarlar.php?id=470&type=19

[15] Bülent Aras, Filistin-srail Bar Süreci ve Türkiye, (stanbul: Balam Yaynclk, 1997), p. 49.

[15] Sedat Laçiner, ‘Israeli style in combatting against terrorism’, Journal of Turkishweekly, July, 20, 2006.

[16]Alon Ben-Meir, The Last Option, (New York: The New Press, 2003), p. 15.

Thursday, 8 January 2009