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Al-Ahram Weekly 19 - 25 August 1999 Issue No. 443 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 19 - 25 August 1999 Issue No. 443
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Hamas on the warpath
By Khaled AmayrehAfter a self-imposed moratorium lasting nearly 10 months, the main Islamist Palestinian opposition movement, Hamas, has decided to resume armed attacks on Israeli targets, particularly soldiers and settlers.
The decision has found expression in a series of recent shootings and ambushes in the West Bank and in Israel proper in which at least one Israeli man was killed and a dozen settlers and soldiers wounded.
The most serious of these attacks occurred on 10 August when a 23-year-old Palestinian youth from a Bethlehem refugee camp, named Akram Alkam, rammed his car into a group of Israeli soldiers waiting for a lift to their bases, injuring eight soldiers before he was himself shot dead.
The suicide-driver, as the Israeli media referred to him, did not have any formal affiliation with Hamas. However, one Islamist preacher praised Alkam in his Friday speech as a "a martyr who couldn't bear living in perpetual oppression". Hamas did not seek to take credit for the incident nor did it distance itself from it.
Hamas' military wing, the Izzidin Al-Kassam Squads, did take credit, however, for the shooting incident in Hebron's old quarter in early August in which two Jewish settlers were wounded. According to Hamas sources, the group's military wing has been undergoing an arduous rebuilding and restructuring process following the killing of a number of its top leaders by Israeli soldiers and undercover agents in the last few years.
The third incident in which Hamas was pointed out as a likely perpetrator took place near the northern West Bank town of Jenin. An Israeli immigrant from the former Soviet Union, an aircraft designer, was killed by unidentified Palestinian gunmen.
Another attack was aborted when an explosive device went off inside a storehouse at the Hawuz neighbourhood in Hebron on 15 August. Palestinian Authority (PA) police said two brothers who had been released from an Israeli jail after serving a five-year sentence for belonging to Hamas had been preparing a plastic toy-car bomb, which they intended to detonate at an Israeli settlement site in downtown Hebron. The two men escaped after the explosion.
Hamas denied PA assertions, saying the incident was concocted by the PA to find a pretext to round up Hamas supporters in Hebron in exchange for Israel agreeing to free hundreds of Fatah prisoners from Israeli jails. However, Hamas' denial seemed to be defensive in nature and far-fetched.
So far, the attacks have been relatively minor, but the message is sufficiently clear for all parties concerned, particularly Israel and the PA. Israeli officials from Prime Minister Ehud Barak on down have warned that the peace process "can't continue in the shadow of terrorism".
"The resumption of terrorism harms Israel and the Palestinian Authority as well as the peace process, hence we both have a common interest to fight it and keep it at bay," said Israeli official Ephraim Sneh during a visit to the Gaza Strip on 14 August.
Sneh further suggested that Barak would not be able to sell possible concessions to the Palestinians to his right-wing coalition partners, let alone to the larger Israeli public, in the shadow of terrorism.
The Palestinian Authority has voiced an understandable concern about the potentially disastrous consequences of a full-fledged resumption of armed attacks, particularly suicidal bombings, on Israeli targets.
"These attacks put us in a weak position vis-à-vis Israel," said PA Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Nabil Amre in a radio interview. "They further weaken our ability to extract our rights from Israeli hands."
The attacks, Amre added, could "take us back to a nightmarish situation similar to that which preceded the election of [Binyamin] Netanyahu," when Hamas launched a series of lethal suicide bomb attacks in Israel's urban centres, killing scores of Israelis and contributing to the downfall of Israel's then caretaker premier Shimon Peres.
Amre's remarks came in response to earlier statements by a Hamas official based in Jordan, Khaled Misha'al, alleging that renewed attacks on Israel would actually strengthen the Palestinian negotiating position.
Hamas' rationale to that effect stems from the belief that the resumption of armed resistance against Israel, although tactically detrimental to PA interests in the short run, will prove beneficial for the overall Palestinian national cause and interests in the long run.
"The resumption of armed struggle carries with it the message that there can be no real peace or stability in this region as long as the Palestinians have not received their dues in full," said a senior Hamas official based in Ramallah, who asked for anonymity.
Asked why Hamas would not maintain the moratorium on armed struggle until after Israel has carried out the Wye River Memorandum, the Islamist official said "Barak shouldn't be given the benefit of the doubt. He already said he would keep Jerusalem along with the bulk of the West Bank in the context of any final settlement with the Palestinians, so why should we wait?"
Meanwhile, Hamas has probably come to realise that it no longer has much to lose by renewing attacks on Israeli targets, as the PA continues to intern hundreds of Islamist activists without charge or trial, apparently to appease Israel and the United States and to ward off their tendentious charges that the PA does not combat terrorism effectively.
