The conventional wisdom is that the dramatic victory of Hamas over the ruling Fatah party in the elections to the Palestinian legislative council was driven by political despair and outrage at corruption. But we should not take Hamas rhetoric at face value.
Complaints by its voters about corruption in the Palestinian Authority are often followed by gripes that local representatives of the authority have not pulled enough plums out of the foreign aid pudding for their friends and family. And tub-thumping about resistance is accompanied by polls that show most Palestinians support a negotiated, two-state solution.
Now, however, the Palestinians must, like any grown-up political community, take responsibility for their decisions. They have voted into power a group of fanatics with a retrograde social vision and a political outlook not far removed from that of Osama Bin Laden.
But purblind Israeli policies too helped usher Hamas into power, in particular Ariel Sharon’s refusal over the past five years to conduct meaningful negotiations and his decision to withdraw from Gaza unilaterally rather than by agreement and in coordination with Mahmoud Abbas, the most accommodationist Palestinian leader the Israelis have ever faced.
Just two days before the election, the acting Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, signalled a commendable shift in position when he declared: “We will not be able to continue ruling over the territories in which the majority of the Palestinian population lives. We must create a clear boundary as soon as possible, one which will reflect the demographic reality on the ground.”
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This, he said, would be accomplished by “negotiations between the two countries, in the accepted manner in which countries resolve their differences”.
Immediately after the Hamas victory, however, he announced: “Israel will conduct no negotiations with a Palestinian government of which even a part is a terrorist organisation that calls for [Israel’s] destruction.”
His new political ally, Shimon Peres, left the door a little more ajar: Israel, he said, would “have to see where [Hamas] is going — back to the road of violence and terror or ahead to the route of peace”.
Are talks between Israel and Hamas conceivable? Three years ago Ephraim Halevy, then head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, uttered some heretical and prophetic thoughts when warning that Hamas was a rising force.
“Anyone who thinks it’s possible to ignore such a central element of Palestinian society is simply mistaken,” he said.
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“In my view, the strategy vis-à-vis Hamas should be one of brutal force against its terrorist aspect, while at the same time signalling its political and religious leadership that if they take a moderate approach and enter the fabric of the Palestinian establishment, we will not view that as a negative development. In the end there will be no way around Hamas being a partner in the Palestinian government.”
Halevy added: “I am looking for the crack in history. I believe my task is to find that crack and enter it and from there to breach the rock.”
Does this moment offer such a “crack in history”? The most widespread Israeli reaction to the rise of Hamas has been refusal to contemplate negotiation with men with blood on their hands.
In this vision, the Palestinians are judged incapable of negotiations leading to genuine political agreement. Better then to retreat behind an “iron wall”, close the door and throw away the key.
This would be a fundamental error. Such a policy may be a short-term palliative to the threat of terrorism; but it is a recipe for long-term alienation and enmity. One way or another Israel, after her own elections on March 28, is likely to resume her slow retreat from territories she occupied in 1967.
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Whoever rules Palestine and Israel, both have an interest in ensuring that occupation is succeeded by a stable society rather than by chaos and renewed cycles of terror and repression.
Bernard Wasserstein, a professor of history at the University of Chicago, is the author of Israel and Palestine: Why They Fight and Can They Stop?, Profile Books, £7.99