For Now, Peace Goes through Hamas
Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Hamas
If the horrific events in Israel and Gaza have taught us anything, it is that Netanyahu’s strategy to bypass Palestinians and bomb supposed Hamas bases to seek peace in the region is misguided to say the least. The Abraham accords have not promoted peace in the region, they have only allowed Arab dictators to legitimize their repressive agendas in the eyes of Western governments. Bombing Gaza has not worked any better. Hamas continues to operate despite the repeated bombings and the uncountable number of civilian lives lost. It turns out that Mr. Netanyahu cannot achieve a durable peace without negotiating with Palestinians nor can he bomb Hamas out of existence. If durable peace is to be achieved we need to recognize that Israel must negotiate with Palestinians.
The problem is who speaks for the Palestinians? The last elections held in the Occupied Territories and Gaza were conducted in 2005 and since then, the two main political actors in these territories have been Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority has little legitimacy among Palestinians. Marred by issues of corruption and a latent authoritarianism encouraged by Western Powers, its popularity is at an all time low. The other actor just committed a massacre killing more than a 1000 Isralis, most of which were civilians. But even in the face of this atrocity, we cannot neglect Hamas. They are, by far, the most important political actors in Gaza and the Occupied territories. They hold an influence too large to just ignore as the Israeli government has since its inception.
It follows that if we want a durable peace, then we must seriously consider the role of Hamas in any future negotiations. After all, we do not negotiate peace with our friends but with our enemies. But to negotiate, the other party has to be willing and must be ready to make concessions. I believe that Hamas is both of those things.
What do they want?
It is hard to consider Hamas as anything other than a terrorist group after the October 7th attack but we owe it to ourselves to think clearly and calmly about prospects for peace. This includes a sober discussion about Hamas’ political nature and its interests.
Is Hamas a viable negotiating partner? What does Hamas want? If we were to listen to the New York Times or the BBC, we might be tempted to regard them as nihilistic fanatics that just want the destruction of Israeli society. This gloomy vision dooms Israelis and Palestinians to the bloody cycle of retaliations between Hamas and Israel which has defined the conflict since 2014. But this view is both ahistorical and dangerous. It disregards Hamas' recent history and the explicit and implicit goals it has set for its own organization. If we look at the trends in the organizations’ political behavior, we might keep the hope that it is open to negotiation and a peace settlement.
For the past 20 years, Hamas has tried to fashion itself as a credible political actor, capable of both managing its territory and building relationships with other players. The first steps came with the declaration of a 100 year truce in 1999. This truce was conditional upon the end of Gaza’s military occupation (which ended in 2005), the end of settlements in the West Bank, and the recognition of Palestinians’ right to self determination. If this sounds like a familiar compromise, it might be because it constitutes the basic tenets of every peace proposal for a two state solution.
After their election in 2005, these efforts were followed by a gradual moderation in their stance towards the conflict, including, among others, a change in their charter in 2018 to reflect their openness to discussion. In this revised charter, they went from demanding all of the territory in Israel and Palestine to only the Palestinian territories within the internationally sanctioned green line.
Its communication also reflects a desire to play by international rules. In a press release to The Guardian, Ismail Haniyeh expressed Hamas’ will to abide by UN Security Council resolutions and to revive their political opponents, the PLO, to continue “speaking for the Palestinians and presenting their case to the world.” Even after the attack, which was by all means a break in the conventions of war, they continued to use the language of international law. In a pre-recorded press release, Hamas spokesperson Bassem Naim argued that the use of violence against civilians was an ultimate resort because of the failure of the United States and Israel to uphold international law in the conflict. With every communiqué, Hamas signals that it wants to play by the rules of the international community but that it feels that this game is rigged.
Incentives to moderate
The other strong reason to believe that Hamas wants to be part of a negotiation is that it has every interest to do so. After its victory in the 2005 elections, Hamas has been a political actor as much as a military one. It has had to manage the Gaza strip. For that, it needs more than people willing to sacrifice their lives in terrorist attacks, it needs popular support to effectively govern. Their support among Palestinians has been dwindling. To maintain their legitimacy, they have to prove they are viable political actors, which includes dealing efficiently with Israeli blockade on the strip.
This is either by gaining concessions from the Israelis through force or by negotiation. The former option seems ludicrous, even today. Hamas does not have the military capacities to coerce Israel’s extremely well equipped armed forces. Negotiations seem to be the easier route. Throughout the last decade, Hamas has managed to keep an intermittent and fragile equilibrium with Israel, letting a limited number of Gazans cross the border and work in Israel as well as alleviating the brutal siege. But other than maintaining this upsetting status quo, Hamas has not been able to leverage any significant concession from the Israeli government.
Why the turn to violence then?
Putting the organization in its historical context, the escalation of violence on Hamas’ part since 2021 can be seen as a failure to gain even the internationally sanctioned concessions from the Israeli government. Gaining nothing from its various attempts to moderate, and in fact continuing to lose popular support, Hamas has seen that its tactic of moderation and relative openness failed to produce any politically advantageous outcome. But why choose this form of violence? Many argue that the atrocious acts of October 7th have damaged the reputation of Hamas internationally and have allowed the Israeli far-right to make a case for the moral superiority of their cause. The indiscriminate attack on military and civilian targets has damaged Hamas’ capacity to show the world that it has a righteous, internationally sanctioned cause.
The fog of war impedes a good answer, and intelligence on the planification and the goals of this attack are still trickling in. However, we can quickly rule out that it wanted to subjugate Israel militarily or reclaim territory. I highly doubt that the Qassam brigades that flew into one of the most militarily sophisticated countries with paragliders and motorcycles had any illusion of gaining a military victory, at least not in the conventional sense. Most likely, the atrocities Hamas perpetrated on October 7th were meant to send a political message in the context of the recent Abraham accords.
Israelis were trying to promote this idea that “peace” could be achieved with the aid of other Arab countries and at the expense of Palestinians. Hamas’ display of force was to convince them and the World otherwise. The attack in that sense was a reaction to the blatant disregard Israelis had of their attempts to get to the negotiating table. Only when they were pressured by a lack of international support for the Palestinian cause, and a domestic loss of popularity did they conduct the atrocities we witnessed. Their emphasis when carrying out the October 7th incursion was to signal that Israelis would not be able to live in peace as long as Palestinians are left out of the negotiation rooms. In the light of Hamas’ political history, this narrative seems to be the only one that can explain the horrific events of October 7th.
Now what?
It seems hard to tell what the future will be. What is clear is that if Israel wants to preserve the life of its citizens, it cannot continue ignoring Hamas and, short of a total genocide, it probably won’t be able to eradicate them fully either. If the Israeli government wants to stop Hamas’ violence it either has to snuff them out politically or engage with them in discussions. The first option seems remote. Hamas is the first political force in Palestine. The other main political actor, the Palestinian Authority, has little legitimacy among the Palestinian people. To snuff them out politically we would need another political actor to rise up either in a geographically and administratively fragmented West Bank or in a brutally besieged Gaza where Hamas is in control. Although there are other actors, the capacity for these to rise to the popularity of Hamas seems unlikely in the near future.
We are then left with the second option: Engaging with Hamas. Even after the humanitarian disaster of the past few weeks, this option seems like the best chance we have of starting a new peace process in the near future. Hamas is willing to negotiate and even though they might not be the best partner, they are the last credible
