Israel's land-grabbing Wall has recruited support for Hamas and the platform on which it was elected.
There seems little likelihood ot this happening. Hamas has clarified its pragmatic recognition of the fact
Israel's existence, and declared that its interim aim is a truce lasting "a generation or two".
There will be discussion and cooperation on the ground, but further political negotiations are unlikely, and the Oslo process is almost certainly finished.
A Hamas-led government is likely to demand the release of political prisoners as a precondition for any talks. Prominent prisoners, including Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti and PFLP leader Ahmed Sa'adat were elected. Sa'adat, convicted of the assassination of the rightIsraeli Rehavam Ze'evi, is actually held in a PA prison, and Hamas has promised that his release will be one of its first alls
Hamas will also lay far greater emphasis than Fatah on the right of return for Palestinian exiles. In an article in the Guardian, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mishal reminded readers that "our people are not only those who live under siege in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip but also the millions languishing in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria and the millions spread around the world unable to return home".
unis issue wil De a suck na point for both sides: Israel
The Hamas leadership, are
seen as honest
and competent, and not tainted by
the failures and
excesses of the
past decade. will maintain its permanent refusal even to discuss the matter, while Hamas will not be prepared, as ratah has been, to play down the issue and hope for it to go away.
Indeed, relationship between Palestinians living under direct Israeli rule, and thus living in exile, is likely to again become a central issue in Palestinian politics. Conflict of interest
It is thirty years since Palestinian academic Hussein Agha, now a member of the Palestinian negotiating team, pointed out the possible conflict of interest between those Palestinians desperate to end Israeli military occupation, who might accept a two-state approach, and those in exile, tor woom renum ao toe eno ot partition were central conCOLIS.
Fatah and the PLO originated from the Palestinian exile, and for ten years were based there exclusively. A crucial turning-point was reached 1n the first Palestinian Intifada, in 1987, when Palestinians in the 1967-occupied territories altered their slogan from "We support the PLO" to "We ARE the PLO"
This assertion of the primacy of the internal struggle was one of the reasons that Arafat and his cronies accepted the Israeli invitation to return and act as surrogate rulers over une occupied Palestinians.
Rabin made it clear that they were to rule "without rule of law"; this job description, combined with corruption and nepotism, arbitrary rule, and the lack of any coherent political strategy to confront Israeli brutality and intransigence, served to discredit the so-called "Tunisians" who had returned with Arafat.
The Hamas leadership, along with a new generation of leaders schooled in the Israeli prisons and the first Intifada, are seen as honest and and
COLCLCHL. 11OL tainted by the failures and excesses ol tne past accade.
Their reality (and for many of them, their entire life) has been the Israeli military occupation, and the pressures on them to come to a deal to end the occupation, even at the expense of the Palestinian diaspora, will be huge.
For this reason, many Palestinian
SUDported the demand for all Palestinians to take part in these elections.
Others, recognising this as a trap that would legitimise the Oslo agreement, rejected any participation in the electons, position wellexpressed by economist Adel Samara in Ramallah, who wrote
"Since it was expected that the PLC elections were going to be used to terminate the Right of Return, and because the western capitalist pressure were expected as well, the Islamic Jihad Movement, the Arab nationalist current and some sociausis declareo une boycott of these elections. I
like all these people, alll, proud to say that my thumb was not stained by the ink of these elections".
Hamas appears to be proposing a way to square these interests. In his Guardian article, Khaled Mishal spoke of reforming the PLO, while other Hamas leaders have proposed that the elected candidates should represent the 1967-occupied territories in a reconstituted Palestine National Council.
Mishal himself is apparently already in discussion with Fatah head Farouq Qadumi, who refused return to Palestine alongside Aralat. A new PLO?
A reformed and reinvigorated PLO, with full participation of Palestinians both inside and outside Palestine, would be able to reassert the unity of the Palestinian people and to more effectively TESISL Israeli attempts divide and rule.
This alone, however, will not be sufficient to build a movement capable of defeating Israel and building a free Palestine.
This will need also the involvement of the lett and liberal parties (who suffered a humiliating defeat in these elections, winning a total of just seven seats) and of the dormant Israeli radical left (who appear to have lined up behind Amir Peretz and the Labour Party, or even behind the dying Sharon's Kadima).
The responsibilities of the Palestinian and Israeli left are enormous, and unless they respond more effectively in the coming period than they have since Oslo, they will again be abandoning the field to the fundamentalists in both communites