Hamas Has Failed

by polylogue | January 6, 2009 at 07:53 pm

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The following is an excerpt from a piece that appeared in Abu Dhabi's The National on January 4. The author, Sultan Al Qassemi, states that Hamas has failed in its role governing Gaza and "regardless of the outcome of the barbaric Israeli Operation Cast Lead, one things is certain; it is high time for Hamas to step down as the keeper of Gaza." He says that Hamas is "incompetent" and that its 18-month rule has been one of gang warfare -- spending its effort tracking down and killing political opponents or "alleged" collaborators. Meanwhile, Khaled Mashaal, the group's leader, from the safety of Damascus, calls for continued resistance against Israel.

Al Qassemi says that despite millions donated to Hamas for the "resistance", it has not amassed "little more than long-range fireworks that it launches into neighbouring towns, but which do more damage to its own image than to any infrastructure in Israel." All this while, hospitals lack medicines and raw sewage is dumped into the sea.

Many thought that Gaza and the West Bank were inseparable entities until Hamas’s bloody takeover of the Strip in the summer of 2007 damaged that notion. Their 18-month rule is marred by lawlessness, extra-judicial public killings and gang warfare that is more reminiscent of Somalia than a civilised state.

Time magazine reported on the violence that followed the takeover then: “Gangs have tossed enemies alive off 15-storey buildings, shot one another’s children and burst into hospitals to finish off wounded foes lying helplessly in bed.”

Last week, Taghreed El-Khodary of the New York Times reported that Hamas militants in civilian clothing again resorted to killing wounded former inmates of Gaza’s central jail who were accused of collaboration with the enemy. These unproved “collaborators” were executed in public even though Palestinian Human Rights groups repeatedly claim that “most of these people are completely innocent”. Hamas seems to be either unable or unwilling to stop such extrajudicial executions.

Additionally, on the first anniversary of Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip, the Christian Science Monitor found a lack of medicines in hospitals as well as of clean drinking water in the territory, and raw sewage streaming into the sea. And this isn’t because Hamas’s dignity prevents it from meeting the enemy.

Hamas’s vast propaganda machine around the Arab world mysteriously fails to report on the meetings between its members and Israeli government representatives. For example, after a 90-minute meeting with an official from the Israeli state electricity company in order to sort out the town’s electricity needs, the Hamas-affiliated mayor of Qalqilya told the BBC about the meeting: “It was civil, without any problem between him and I.”

Where do you think Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in the Strip, gets his electricity from?

By any standards Hamas has failed miserably. It has failed in peace, failed in governance, and moreover failed in war. In addition to Hamas’s ambiguous political agenda, their goal seems to be resistance for the sake of resistance, a quagmire where the journey really is the destination. It is time for Khaled Mashaal to step down and allow more competent leaders to emerge before he causes even more damage to his cause. The question is if Hamas leaves, what is the alternative?

In fact, probably the only good thing that can be said about Hamas is that they are not Fatah.