Who benefits from the elimination of Hamas?

Countries living in a state of conflict have always benefitted from the state of the opposition as a stick to wave in the face of others.

In Israel, former Prime Minister Rabin often used the country’s right-wing elements as a deterrent in the face of the Palestinian negotiator, claiming that the Israeli opposition desired the elimination of the Palestinians and rejected negotiations with them. This was an attempt on his part to scare the Palestinians into making concessions and signing settlement agreements

In the Palestinian case, the strength of the opposition (Hamas) was not used to improve the Palestinian position, neither in negotiations nor in threatening the occupation. On the contrary, it further served to undermine the Palestinian cause through internal division. It has been said that the late President Abu Ammar had on multiple occasions demanded that things were “moved along” by instructing some groups to carry out military activities to intimidate the occupation and drive it to negotiate. Regardless of whether this was a policy or a tactic, this ultimately benefited the Palestinian opposition as spearheaded by Hamas.

Today, it has been eight years since the Palestinian division and the PA policy of undermining Hamas by arresting its members, revealing its secrets, depriving members of employment, and confiscating the movement’s property and institutions. This has greatly weakened Hamas as an organisation both on a political level in the West Bank and on a military level, leaving it greatly absent in this regard. Of course, I do not deny that over the past few years there have been a number of attempts to restore the strength of Hamas’s military wing in the West Bank. Some operations have succeeded, and some were thwarted or failed, but today we have a situation in which a weak Hamas barely constitutes a meaningful opposition.

The decision to eliminate Hamas is not disputed by anyone within the Palestinian official institution, in other words the Palestinian Authority represented by Fatah. No one is convinced of the political talk about the need for reconciliation as long as the PA continues to pursue tactics and policies aimed at weakening Hamas’s strength on the groud.

What I would like to discuss in this article is the potential result that would be achieved by eliminating Hamas and the state of extreme weakness we have reached, which seems to reflect on the general Palestinian situation. We have been cornered by the occupation and when it is not killing us, confiscating, destroying, and looting out homes, it is persecuting the resistance and burning children to death from Abu Khdeir to Dawabsheh – the list goes on.

No one disputes the fact that the absence of Hamas’s military strength in the West Bank has helped the occupation dominate in the way we are seeing today. The magnitude of the media campaign launched by Palestinian officials against a Palestinian party is far greater than the campaign launched by the Palestinian officials against the occupation, and this also is indisputable in the Palestinian arena.

Some Palestinian factions (i.e. the PA and Fatah) have made it their main job to fight other Palestinian factions (Hamas), while the occupation and its settlers enjoy safety and security, committing one crime after the other without any confrontation. This is not an exaggeration; rather it is a detailed and accurate description of what is going on today. Fatah and the PA have convinced themselves that Hamas is a monster and that if it gains strength in the West Bank it would attack them and eliminate their presence – such as what happened to them in Gaza, over which Hamas gained control overnight. I cannot dissuade them of this, as they are absolutely convinced and nothing we can say will reassure them.

All I will say is that Hamas’s weakness in the West Bank has weakened the PA and Fatah and has made their image too frail to respond to the occupation’s crimes. It has turned the PA from an authority that resists the occupation to a faction that is preventing another Palestinian faction from rising up and regrouping while the occupation preys on the entire country.

It is not easy for the PA to change its position on Hamas, and it not easy for Hamas to convince Fatah of its intentions and the nature of its conflict in the West Bank. Even more difficult than this is the fact that the Palestinian cause will not be able to move forward from the state it is in without these two factions, whether we like it or not. The rest of the factions in the West Bank have distanced themselves and will not be able to get us out of the situation we are in. Even their participation in municipal elections in light of Hamas’s absence did not get them to the stage of resolution, as they do not represent the alternative represented by Fatah and Hamas.

The occupation benefits the most from this elimination of real political debate in Palestine, and the PA is the greatest loser in this battle. The Palestinian people are suffering more and more oppresses ion in light of the escalation of the crimes committed by the occupation. Calling on the people to respond rattles the occupier and calms the anger of those who were burned to death and those who are trying to divide Al-Aqsa.

Until these convictions reach the Palestinian officials and they work on changing the status quo, the nation will continue to weep over its situation and will feel pain over its state.

Translated from Arabi 21, 9 September 2015.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.