Dr. Ghazi Hamad, high-ranking Hamas activist, harshly criticized the movement’s since its rise to power. He harshly criticized the military takeover of the Gaza Strip, calling it “a terrible strategic mistake” and urged the Hamas leadership to deal positively with its errors.
Overview
1. Dr. Ghazi Khamis Yussuf Hamas , formerly Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya's spokesman, recently wrote letter to the Hamas leadership. It gave an agonizing appraisal of how the movement has conducted itself since it won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections and became an important actor on the Palestinian stage. He was particularly critical of Hamas' military takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 , calling it a “trap” Hamas had fallen into and “a terrible strategic mistake.” Excerpts from the letter were made public by AP and Reuters, and the full text was published on the Amad 1 Website on October 21. “A high-ranking Palestinian source” said that the letter was not intended for publication and that Hamad denied having sent it, although in our assessment it is authentic (the letter and the translation of its main points are in the appendices below).
2. The popular Arabic daily Al-Hayat reported (October 29) that according to Palestinian sources in the Gaza Strip, after Hamad's letter was made public his membership in Hamas was suspended (as was that of Ahmad Yussuf, Ismail Haniya's political advisor). The reason given was dissatisfaction with his atricles, especially the letter to the Hamas leadership, which was considered the last straw. The fact that Hamas suspended their membership shows the dominance of Hamas' radical wing, which prefers not to allow differences of opinion within the movement to become public. Hamas spokesmen and Ahmad Yussuf himself issued denials of the item in Al-Hayat . Ghazi Hamad has not yet commented.
Evaluation
3. Hamas movement . While he was still the Hamas government spokesman he wrote an editorial for the daily newspaper Al-Ayyam (August 27, 2006) on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip, in which he claimed that the Palestinians did not know how to exploit the disengagement for the socio-economic development of the Gaza Strip. Instead, he said, they had turned the Gaza Strip into a focal point of anarchy and corruption whose sources were mainly within Palestinian society and not necessarily the Israeli occupation. He also claimed that launching rockets into Israeli territory did more harm than good and its continuing hurt the interests of the Gaza Strip population. 2
4. Ghazi Hamad expressed opposing opinions which do not represent the positions of the Hamas leadership and do not reflect broad internal discourse . Today Hamas in the Gaza Strip is controlled by the radical hawks as represented by Ahmad al-Jaa'bari (head of Hamas' terrorist operative wing in the Gaza Strip) and political leaders such as Mahmoud al-Zahar and Nizar al-Riyan . In our assessment, Ghazi Hamad's criticism is, to a great extent, aimed at the radical Islamist hawks who were behind Hamas' military takeover. The takeover caused an unprecedented schism within the Palestinian Authority and, in his opinion, damages which he details in his letter to the Hamas leadership.
5. Ghazi Hamad belongs to Hamas' path-finding generation, which sought to broaden and establish support for the Hamas' movement within the Palestinian populace. His unique appraisal, which the other members of the leadership were not able to make, is the result of the broad gap between Hamas' radical Islamic ideology and the practical aspects of running the PA , with which the movement has had to deal since it came to power. Once in power Hamas found itself confronted by day-to-day problems and the need to find a solution for the distress of the Palestinian population. So far Hamas has failed because an enormous amount of pragmatism and flexibility are necessary to rule. Hamas remains intractable, still clinging to its dogmatic conceptions of radical Islam and its commitment to the path of violence and terrorism.
6. Ghazi Hamad's criticism of Hamas is not unique. During the 20 th century many revolutionary movements, both within the Arab world and without, regardless of their national or social ideologies, had to deal with the discrepancy between their pre-rule ideology and the needs of governing. Some of them knew how to become pragmatic, even at the expense of abandoning basic ideological principles, and more than once were roundly criticized at home. Others, such as Yasser Arafat, did not learn how to adopt patterns of governing a state, and failed miserably once they had risen to power.
7. At this point it is still difficult to judge the case of Hamas, which is a unique example in the Arab world of a radical Islamic movement taking over a government with a combination of a democratic process and the use of force. 3 The way Hamas has conducted itself so far, as criticized by Ghazi Hamad's, shows that Hamas is finding it extremely difficult to acclimatize to its governmental duties and has failed to find pragmatic solutions to the daily distress of the Gaza Strip residents (Ghazi Hamad: “It was not easy for [Hamas] to change from oppositional thinking to governmental thinking.”).
Appendix I
The main points of Ghazi Hamad's letter to the Hamas leadership
1. Ghazi Hamad begins the letter with a detailed account of 25 years of Hamas activities, and before that of the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is the Palestinian wing). He notes his close relations with Hamas leaders, including sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi, his five years in prison and his roles as senior journalist for both Al-Wattan and Al-Risala , Hamas government spokesman and spokesman for the prime minister. He notes that during those years he saw how the Hamas movement became stronger and larger until it was an important actor on the Palestinian stage.
2. He then says that throughout the years of its existence, Hamas has not changed its worldview and methods. It has created an image for itself of a movement that finds it hard to adapt to the rapid changes occurring in the region. Its taking over the government and moving into the political arena created shock waves and it was forced to deal with many complex considerations for which it was unprepared.
3. For that reason, he says, it was difficult for Hamas to adapt itself to the new conditions, internally, regionally and internationally, and it found itself involved in power struggles with many different factors, such as the presidency (i.e., Abu Mazen), Fatah, the security services and the international community. After that there was the “military showdown in the Gaza Strip” which exacerbated the crisis between Hamas and all of the above factors, the other forces and factions within the PLO, the media and civilian institutions (“Hamas was worn out on secondary fronts. Unfortunately, it was trapped by having to fight on many fronts at the same time…” ). According to Hamad, “Hamas did not understand that politics involves very special considerations which are different from the considerations of military men, of force and of mass marches. They are considerations resulting from the meeting of [mutual] interests, making alliances and skill in maneuvering and [the use of] careful tactics…”
4. In addition, he said, because of “political inflexibility” Hamas had missed the opportunity to strengthen the perception of political Islam . The political changes within Hamas resulted from the exigencies of reality. They were not the result of planning and vision, and thus [Hamas] lost the element of surprise and initiative. Hamas could have gotten Fatah on its side, it could have gotten the Palestinian factions and even the presidency on its side if it had been clever enough to market itself within a broad, flexible framework while keeping its principles. According to Ghazi Hamad, “If Hamas had examined things more deeply…[it would be] striding up the steps of government with a sure tread, as [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan did in Turkey , without confrontations, without violence and without bloodshed.”
5. The result, according to Hamad, is that today Hamas has become a focus for disagreement and argument within the Palestinian arena. “It is criticized by forces, factions, human rights organizations and journalists' institutions.” Thus Hamas is isolated without allies or friends. For that reason, says Hamad, Hamas needs to appraise itself and give a genuine assessment of what has happened. “The volume of daily events has robbed the movement of the time it needs for deep thought to plan for the future…”
6. Hamad is of the opinion that the “military showdown” Hamas sought in the Gaza Strip was not justified . He regards it as “ a serious strategic error which put a greater burden on the movement than it can bear .” Hamas' military takeover of the Gaza Strip solved a security problem but at the same time “ generated a thousand extraneous political problems .” He lists those problems one after another: instead of fostering international relations, Hamas finds itself squeezed into a narrow territorial strip; the noose is tightening and the plight of the population worsens; Hamas lost the unity government, which was its lever to a national partnership, and is now forced to bear the burden alone; the hatred between Hamas and Fatah between Hamas and the various trends and factions has worsened; the lack of security moved from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank where Hamas activists are oppressed; daily problems keep cropping up, such as the salary crisis, the problems with the border crossings and the disengagement between the government offices in the Gaza Strip and Ramallah.
7. Hamas' exclusive control of the Gaza Strip is rife with difficulties and mistakes caused by the “weight of the responsibility and the lack of its experience in ruling.” As a result Hamas has fallen into a trap . It is “taken up with details concerning health services, the Friday prayers, announcing the results of matriculation exams, changing over from daylight saving to standard time and pilgrimages to Mecca . It is downing in the problems of the Executive Force and friction with the populace and hundreds of other subjects, and it would be better if it didn't have to deal with them. [But] it deals with them instead of with the national project, reform and change, expelling the occupation and waging war against it.” In addition, Hamad lists a series of nefarious actions performed by Hamas, such as detentions, acts of aggression and confiscating private property, which gave Hamas a bad odor and injured its reputation . The Hamas leadership did not deal assertively with those actions, wasting some of the credit it had with the Gazans and spoiling the image it had as a clean movement.
8. Ghazi Hamad ends his letter with the three things Hamas needs now :
1) A political vision which will extricate it from its crises with the Palestinian environment, the region and the international community. Hamas, he says, must adopt a clear strategic viewpoint and become flexible in its tactics and political maneuvering. It lacks political sophistication and when dealing with politics its positions are fossilized positions and it uses empty slogans.
2) It needs to adopt a culture of coexistence and cooperation which will end the crisis in its relations with the various forces and factions, especially Fatah. That problem was created by “narrow factional education and media, which helped distance people from the movement.” Hamas should abandon its extremism and aggression and educate its followers on the basis of “a language of reconciliation, acceptance of and cooperation with others.”
3) There is also a need for self-criticism, responsibility and to deal with its mistakes , by implication the leadership needs them, since it has not yet appraised its own situation. It should do so in the fashion of the first (and revered) generation of Islam, led by the prophet Muhammad.
9. In all probability Ghazi Hamad, who was aware that such criticism of the Hamas leadership is unacceptable and put him in the minority, ends his letter with the hope that the Hamas leadership will not rush to judge harshly the words of a loving and loyal member of the movement.
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