Palestine: Is Hamas Digging Away Its Political Ground?

The diplomatic fencing since President Obama's Cairo speech has been mainly between the US and Israel over the issues of Israeli settlements and a two-state solution. This is far from the only development, however.

While Washington and Tel Aviv manoeuvre, another often-violent intra-Palestinian dance is going on between Hamas and Fatah. Indeed, that conflict is so intense that one might ask if Hamas is undermining its international legimitacy and giving extra time to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he positions himself towards and against Palestine.

In Cairo, Obama said:

Violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.

Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people. Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”

While Hamas gave a cautious welcome to engagement with the US, tension escalated in the West Bank and Gaza. A Damascus-based Hamas spokesman Talal Nasser called on Palestinians to fight the Palestinian Authority as though they were fighting the Israeli occupation. Moreover, Hamas security forces abducted several Fatah leaders and loyalists in the Gaza Strip overnight and killed one.

This was not just a one-sided shift, as Fatah has been upping the pressure on Hamas in the West Bank. Several members of Hamas' military wing, including two prominent leaders, were killed in fire-fights with Palestinian Authority forces in the last week. Yet Hamas's role in escalation of tension risks being seen as more emotional rather than rational, dragging its policy towards a dead end. The organisation can be portrayed as "extremist", rationalising a decision to exclude it from the peace process.

And so Israel's need for some political breathing space, perhaps ironically, is met not in Washington but in the streets of Palestine.

Jerusalem: Obama the Pragmatist Puts A Challenge to Israel

Related Post: After the Obama Speech - Hamas Asks, “Is He Ready to Walk the Way He Talks?”
Related Post: After the Obama Speech: Israel Re-Positions on Settlements, Two-State Solution

On Friday, the Obama Administration announced that it was delaying the decision on moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for another six months.

The decision is significant in two ways. First, it separates Obama the President from Obama the Presidential candidate. Last spring, when he was still not quite the Democratic nominee for President, Obama declared to the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

Second, the delay is a gesture of goodwill to Arab states, hoping that they in return will make some symbolic step of reconciliation with Israel. Leaders of these states would prefer a longer-term US suspension of the move to Jerusalem but will weclome this as an initial signal from Washington in the start-up of the peace process.

With this decision, Obama the "pragmatist" has again come to the fore, rebuffing the declaration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 21 May that “Jerusalem would be the capital of Israel forever”. On the same day, Obama outlined this pragmatism in an  interview with C-SPAN:

SCULLY: Your Senior Advisor David Axelrod describes you as a pragmatist, what does that mean?

OBAMA: Well, I think what it means is that I don’t approach problems by asking myself, is this a conservative – is there a conservative approach to this or a liberal approach to this, is there a Democratic or Republican approach to this. I come at it and say, what’s the way to solve the problem, what’s the way to achieve an outcome where the American people have jobs or their health care quality has improved or our schools are producing well educated workforce of the 21st century.

And I am willing to tinker and borrow and steal ideas from just about anybody if I think they might work. And we try to base most of our decisions on what are the facts, what kind of evidence is out there, have programs or policies been thought through.

I spend a lot of time sitting with my advisors and just going through a range of options. And if they are only bringing me options that have been dusted off the shelf, that are the usual stale ideas, then a lot of times I ask them, well, what do our critics say, do they have ideas that maybe we haven’t thought of.

Now that issue of pragmatism crosses to Israel. Given the Friday decision and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's guarantee that East Jerusalem would be the capital of the Palestinian state, how does Netanyahu --- facing a difficult position in his Cabinet and with Israeli public opinion --- respond?