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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 March 1999 Issue No. 419 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 March 1999 Issue No. 419
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Hamas leader remains defiant
By Khaled DawoudSince he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, in September 1997, the Amman-based chief of Hamas's political bureau, Khaled Misha'al, has been living under tight security.
In order to arrange an interview with 45-year-old Misha'al, I had to leave my personal details with his office so that I could be checked against their "black list". After several more calls, a date was finally set, but I was not told where the meeting was to take place. A Hamas activist picked me up from my hotel at the set time after which we made a half-hour detour through Amman's backstreets to make sure nobody was tailing us. Finally, the car stopped in front of a building on a fairly busy main road. After a specified number of knocks, we were let into a small office. I was kept waiting for another half hour, wondering whether we had finally reached the venue for my interview with Misha'al.
Unlike many Islamists in other Arab countries, these Hamas activists seemed surprisingly open, exchanging jokes and even allowing their visitors to smoke despite the common ruling among Islamists that smoking is totally forbidden. After chatting with my companion for some time, further knocks were heard on the door. The smiles vanished and I was chivvied into another room. After a few minutes the door opened, and a smiling Misha'al entered accompanied by two huge bearded men who never took their eyes off me. When my tape ran out and I wanted to get a new one from my jacket in the other room, I was escorted by one of the bodyguards who then checked that my tape was what it appeared to be.
By the end of the interview, I was wondering whether it would be a wise move to get close to Misha'al or to shake his hand. The two Mossad agents who tried to kill him simply came up to him in the street and injected his neck with a mysterious poison. Saving him required the personal intervention of the late King Hussein, who forced the Israeli government to provide the antidote. Israel was also pressured into releasing Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in return for handing over the two Mossad agents arrested in Amman.
When the interview was over, further precautions were taken to ensure Misha'al's safety: three identical white cars were waiting in front of the building and I was unable to tell which one of these he was whisked away in.
Misha'al knows all too well that he is still likely to be targeted by the Israelis. After the scandal following the first failed assassination, Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon told Israeli television that during negotiations to release the Mossad agents he had informed King Hussein that Israel intended to finish the botched job. "I said, 'You should know that we will liquidate Misha'al. I can tell you that we won't do it on your soil, but we will do it'," Sharon was quoted as saying.
Hamas' relationship with the Jordanian authorities is a difficult one. On the one hand, the group insists that it is committed to respecting Jordan's sovereignty and denies any involvement in the country's internal affairs. On the other hand, the group's vehement rejection of the Palestinian-Israeli peace deal, and its sharp criticism of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat leads to occasional "misunderstandings" with the Jordanian government.
After the signing of the Wye River Accord between Israel and the Palestinians in Washington in late October, the Jordanian government said that it had asked Hamas activists not to intensify their campaign against the deal, particularly as Jordan was to receive 250 million dollars of aid as part of the agreement. When Misha'al tried to travel to Damascus in November to attend a Palestinian opposition meeting, he was barred by the authorities and humiliated at the border crossing. The Hamas spokesman in Amman, Mohamed Nazzal, was prevented from travelling to Qatar three months ago to take part in a controversial television talk show.
After the death of King Hussein, Jordanian newspapers reported that a Mossad office, which had been operating in Amman but was ordered to shut down after the attempt on Misha'al's life, was to be reopened. Jordanian opposition figures maintain that the office has resumed its activity although the government denies this.
Misha'al told me that he expected relations between Hamas and the Jordanian government to remain stable despite the death of King Hussein. "We do not see any reason to expect a change in the relationship between Jordan and Hamas," he said. "This relationship is based on mutual respect, non-interference in [Jordan's] internal affairs and the avoidance of any action that would harm the stability and security of Jordan or of any other Arab country. As Palestinian people, it is in our interest to see stability in all Arab countries because that would benefit the Palestinian cause."
As for the deteriorating relations between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, Misha'al said that his organisation was committed to self-restraint, emphasising that the prevention of Palestinian in-fighting would remain one of Hamas' top priorities. "Hamas is able to act with restraint and will not respond to attempts to spark an internal Palestinian conflict. This is a strategic position and not a tactical one," he said. "Although we reject the PA's provocation, we continue to see our main struggle as that against the Zionist occupation. We are more concerned with the suffering of our Palestinian people than with the harm done to us as a movement, and we do not want to add to this suffering by starting internal fighting."
Yet he accused the PA of widespread corruption, violations of freedom of expression and creating a mini police state through countless numbers of security bodies. "This situation has widened the gap between the PA and the Palestinian man-in-the-street," he argued. "In Hamas, we seek to coordinate with other opposition groups to condemn and criticise the PA's practices. The majority of Palestinians have now given up any illusion of a peaceful settlement, because our Zionist enemy does not understand the language of peace and is lying when it claims that it seeks peace. Therefore, our mission right now is to unite our ranks to prepare for the upcoming confrontation with our Zionist enemy over the expansion of settlements. Through our social network of services, we also seek to ease the daily suffering of our people because the PA is not doing its job."
Misha'al denied that there had been any deals with the PA to stop military attacks against Israel, saying that "resistance continues and we carried out several operations against settlers in recent months." However, he admitted that the group's military wing, Ezzeddin Al-Qassam, is facing an "adamant war, not only by the PA and the Israeli intelligence, but also by the CIA." Misha'al claimed that the CIA has been in the forefront of the fight against Hamas for nearly two years, "and participated in plots to assassinate leaders like Emad and Adel Awadallah and Mohieddin Al-Sharif. We even have documented evidence on how the CIA was directly involved in the arrest of some of our members."
"We know that this is an unbalanced war, but resistance will continue. The only way to stop resistance is to end occupation, and this is a natural right. Nobody can prevent a people from fighting occupation, and even if they kill some of Hamas' leaders, new ones will emerge. We [Palestinians] have been struggling since the 1920s, and that is the way it has been. No one has been able to end our resistance."
