In 1991 the United States convened the Madrid Peace Conference in the aftermath of the first Gulf War and the expulsion of Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait. With Arabs everywhere fragmented because of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the ensuing war, and a weakened Palestinian position because the PLO had sided (verbally and politically) with Iraq against the American-led coalition troops, the PLO’s negotiating position in Madrid was fragile. Not unexpectedly, the Conference failed to produce a Palestinian/Israeli peace treaty, but succeeded in confirming the historic shift on the side of the PLO towards negotiation instead of armed struggle as its preferred strategy to end the conflict.
In 1993 an initial agreement was reached between the PLO and Israel, the Oslo Agreement, after months of secret talks in Norway. Endorsed in Washington by the Clinton Administration, the agreement was in theory divided into two phases: a five-year interim phase (essentially meant to explore and test the competence of the Palestinians to peacefully rule themselves and control ‘illegal’ armed resistance factions) starting in 1994, which if it proved successful would be followed by a second phase of negotiations on a ‘final settlement’. The Palestinians were almost evenly divided in response to the Oslo Accords. Those who supported Oslo argued that it was the best deal that the Palestinians could hope to achieve given the unfavourable conditions they faced and the tilted balance of power that remained unassailably propitious to Israel.
Those who opposed it argued that it simply constituted surrender to Israel, by recognizing the Israeli state and officially dropping the armed struggle without any concrete gains. In the five-year interim period there was to be no addressing any of the major Palestinian issues such the right of refugees to return, the status of Jerusalem, the control over Palestinian borders, and the dismantling of the Israeli settlements build intensively in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. According to the Accords, these issues were all to be relegated to the final talks, which as it turned out, would never take place anyway.
Hamas has consistently opposed the Oslo Agreement, believing that it was designed to serve Israeli interests and compromised basic Palestinian rights. After more than ten years of Oslo, the Palestinians had become completely frustrated and their initial shaky trust in the sincerity of peace talks with Israel had evaporated. During the interim period of years that would supposedly pave the way for permanent peace, Israel did everything possible to worsen the life of Palestinians and enhance its colonial occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. During that period of time, for example, the size and number of Israeli colonial settlements in the West Bank – a major obstacle facing any final peace agreement – doubled. With the failure of Oslo, a second intifada erupted in 2000 against Israel, giving more power and influence to Hamas and its ‘resistance project’.
In March 2005 Hamas made three successive historic decisions, each of which represents a milestone in the movement’s political life. The movement decided to run for the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It decided that along with other Palestinian factions it would put on hold all military activities, for an unspecified amount of time and on its own terms. And it considered joining the PLO.
Hamas seemed to have decided to move firmly towards the top of the Palestinian leadership. The most important of these three milestones was Hamas’s decision to participate in the legislative elections in January 2006. This decision was completely in the opposite direction to its previous refusal to take part in 1996 elections because Hamas perceived them as an outcome of the Oslo Accords. By way of justification of the new move it put forward the new conditions since the September 2000 intifada. Hamas was also becoming confident of its own strength, after having won almost two-thirds of the seats in the January 2005 partial municipal elections.
Hamas’s decision to take part in the elections had a profound impact on the nature of the movement, on the Palestinian political scene and on the peace process at large. At the level of its internal make-up, it would help politicize the movement – at the expense of its well-known militarism.
Hamas the Palestinian Resistance Front against Zionist Expansionism
