Revolutionary and statesman: the two roles have often been played by the same leaders. Will this be the case with Hamas, asks Abdel-Moneim Said The images published in newspapers of the first meeting of the Palestinian cabinet were intriguing, not least because of the way in which they departed from the customary representation of newly appointed cabinets in Arab states. For the first time we saw ministers sitting before laptops rather than surrounded by the heavy files that more normally suggest the weight of responsibility that they must bear. But then the Palestinian cabinet is much younger than the majority of its peers. Eighteen of its members are under 50. It is also better educated: 12 Palestinian ministers hold PhDs. It is also the first Arab cabinet to contain real revolutionaries. Five current Palestinian ministers have taken part in military operations while a majority of the cabinet has spent time in Israeli prisons as a result of their participation in the Palestinian national liberation movement, most because of their affiliations with Hamas. The Palestinian example is a classic example of revolutionaries attaining the trappings of power in a country that remains occupied. It resembles events in a number of Arab states where freedom fighters reached power while the battle for independence was ongoing. In 1924 Saad Zaghloul, who had led the 1919 Revolution, formed the first Egyptian government at a time when British forces continued to occupy Egypt, enjoying the kind of advantages that the Israelis enjoy over the Palestinians, courtesy of the Oslo Accords. In the case of Egypt, resistance would continue for a further three decades. Typically, the revolutionaries of yesterday gradually transform into statesmen as they undertake two historical missions: continuing the struggle to free the nation from occupation, while at the same time building the institutions that will allow the state to practice its hard-won independence. The Palestinian case, though, remains unique in several ways. Most significantly, it is probably the first time in history when the occupied do not recognise the legitimate existence of the occupier. A similar situation in Egypt would have involved the denial of the legitimate existence of the United Kingdom. The victory of Hamas adds to the uniqueness of the case, since it implies there can be no lasting solution without the return of refugees to their homes. In practice this means an end to the Hebrew state as its founders and citizens know it. The struggle will not end, as other colonialist battles have ended, with the evacuation of the colonising state. Rather, it will end only when a deep-rooted change occurs within the nature of the occupying state, in terms of geography, demography, and politics. The immediate question Hamas now faces is how it will fulfill the complicated tasks it has been elected to fulfill: certainly, a strategy is needed other than resorting to an equation that cannot produce a solution. In the past Hamas has rejected dealing with the Israelis on a practical basis because it does not recognise them. Hamas's strategic point of view, as expressed by a handful of spokesmen on Arab satellite stations, is based on several assumptions. The first is that global leadership, throughout history, has rotated. The Soviet empire fell, following its ill-fated Afghan adventure, and the same will happen to the American empire, as a result of resistance in Iraq and of internal fractures within American society and an increasingly indebted economy. The second is that other international powers are rising -- China, Japan, Europe, India, and to a lesser extent Russia, which still harbours its own dreams of empire. This will result in an external sapping of relative American power. The third assumption is that the world will quickly rid itself of the American domination that characterised the 1990s. Signs of revolt have already appeared in the US's backyard, Latin America, as populist and socialist governments emerged. It is no coincidence that Khaled Meshaal has announced his intention to visit Venezuela. Any setback in the circumstances of the United States, Hamas argues, involves a concomitant setback in the circumstances of Israel, and as power balances shift the Palestinian national movement will, in the future, be able to secure the kind of gains it has failed to make in the past. It is an argument that has dominated the discourse of Arab and Palestinian revolutionary powers for three decades, sometimes characterised by romanticism, at others appearing to be little more than a daydream. The emergence of other international powers cannot, after all, conceal their organic relationships with the United States, and it would be foolish to assume that they will automatically adopt a position on the Palestinian issue opposed to America's. What, after all, is Chavez expected to do to liberate the Palestinian territories? He can make fiery statements, and vote on UN resolutions, but the fact remains that Venezuela sells 20 per cent of its total oil production to the US. Chavez's own social programmes are dependent on oil receipts. Never before has a revolutionary movement based its vision of the enemy on denial. Hamas, though, is now no longer just a revolutionary movement. It now has a mandate to build a state and achieve what others -- Fatah -- did not: ie liberate Palestine from occupation and perhaps even from any Israeli presence. To achieve this its leaders cannot live in a world of delusion. Providing the necessary conditions for the building of the state have in the past triumphed over revolutionary fervour. Lenin accepted the Brest-Litovsk Treaty during WWI in order to establish socialism in one state. Mustafa El-Nahhas accepted the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936 to secure Egypt's presence in the League of Nations before WWII. The Irish accepted a state lacking its northernmost six counties because English settlers had made themselves a majority in that area. Malaysia accepted Singapore, realising the presence of a flourishing neighbour need not bring evil. Of course, it is Hamas's right to retain its revolutionary spirit, it is just that it will further postpone the emergence of a Palestinian state.
