There has been hilarity among some US commentators about Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia's condemnation of the murder of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin; especially his characterization of Yassin as a Hamas leader who was known for his moderation and ability to control Hamas, which has been painted as an attempt to elevate the "spiritual leader" Yassin into some kind of Muslim equivalent to Mother Teresa.
What Qureia is actually saying is that Yassin was a moderate within the context in which he operated i.e. within Hamas. For the record, here are a few brief thoughts on why I think Qureia is correct to call Yassin a moderate in the context of Hamas (and in contrast to the leadership that succeeds him).
1. Quietism v. Armed Resistance
Yassin was a "moderate" in the sense that for him, the priority for Palestinian Muslims should be spiritual renewal and education in their religion. For Yassin, the pursuit of tarbiyeh (education) and da'wah (preaching) was a more urgent priority than the struggle against Israel. That is what would differentiate him from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which sees Islamic awakening among Palestinians as only possible after the end of occupation, and from the more militant wing of his own movement.
In fact, when Yassin first led the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, challenging the "pork eaters and wine drinkers" of the secular PLO was much more of a priority for him than fighting the Israelis. That was why his organisation was allowed Israeli licenses and funding to operate in Gaza and the West Bank, when the PLO was not - a fact which, hard as it is to imagine now, earned him some accusations of collaboration with Israel. The Israelis gambled that Yassin's emphasis on spiritual renewal first would postpone the danger of holy war against Israel into the distant future, and in the meantime foment civil war among the Palestinians. It was only when the first intifada broke out that the Muslim Brotherhood had to climb aboard the bandwagon of immediate resistance or else lose their activists to Fatah and PIJ, so they established Hamas.
2. Hudna and a Two-State Solution
We have to be realistic. We are talking about a homeland that was stolen a long time ago in 1948 and again in 1967. My generation today is telling the Israelis, ‘Let's solve this problem now, on the basis of the 1967 borders. Let's end this conflict by declaring a temporary ceasefire. Let's leave the bigger issue for future generations to decide. - Interview with al-Ahram (Egyptian daily), May 1999.
It was Yassin that brought Hamas into the "Road map hudna" last June, over the objections of the external leadership and local Gazan leaders like Abdel-Aziz Rantisi. It was also Yassin who first proposed "long-term hudna" as a means of breaking the violent stalemate between Hamas and the Israelis, when he suggested a thirty year ceasefire in 1997. He subsequently offered a hudna of up to one hundred years in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967. As I've blogged elsewhere, extended hudna - although discounted as a trick by the Sharon government - might actually be the only means by which a fundamentalist group like Hamas can signal support for a two-state solution without destroying its credibility with its own supporters.
3. Participation in the Political Process
Hamas is characterized as a "rejectionist" movement, i.e. one that rejects the Oslo Accords and the political processes that flow from them, including Presidential elections for the PA and parliamentary elections to the PLC. Yassin was markedly more moderate in this area than the leadership as a whole, in that he believed that Hamas should have put itself up for election in 1996 like any other party, and so participated in the political process. In my opinion, this would be the area where Yassin's moderating influence could have ultimately been most effective, as in the long term Hamas is much more likely to be accomodated by drawing it into the political mainstream - where compromise and accountabilty will be required of it - than it is to be destroyed by military means.
(There is some limited precedent for this approach, in the local government arrangements that grew out of the Gaza-Jericho agreement of 1994. Faced with creating local councils to govern the two areas, President Arafat appointed the Gaza council himself - and packed it with Fatah loyalists - but delegated the establishment of Jericho's council to his minister of local government. In Jericho, a national unity government was brokered, which brought into the administration even the Oslo rejectionists, including Hamas. Today, Jericho is the only Palestinian city where the PA still actually functions, the only Palestinian city that has not joined the armed intifada, and the only Palestinian city never to have sent out a suicide bomber against Israel. I know there are numerous reasons for Jericho's unusual status among West Bank cities, and I would not want to prioritize them, but the absence of a parallel terror infrastructure operating in the Jericho area alongside the institutions of the PA is hardly irrelevant.)
Yassin's moderation or otherwise is now a moot point anyway. But the second part of Qureia's assessment - that Yassin had the ability to control Hamas - still has relevance. Yassin's status as a founder and undisputed spiritual leader of Hamas allowed him the elbow room to adopt relatively moderate positions without losing the trust of the Palestinian street. That is a luxury that less-respected leaders will not have. What Yassin could give up and have interpreted as a sign of wisdom and compromise will probably be seen as a sign of weakness in his successors. And the ongoing policy of decapitating Hamas will only exacerbate the problem: the further down the food chain that Hamas has to look for leaders, the less likely it is to produce leaders capable of compromise. It will be very hard for subsequent leaders with lesser status to make the concessions that Yassin could have made (and which, for the PLO, only Arafat can make).
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