Since its election victory, Hamas has been threatened with sanction and destabilisation -- but there are cracks in the wall, writes Graham Usher in Jerusalem Three weeks after the Palestinian elections the fault-lines are being drawn. On the one side there is an Israeli-United States "iron wall", stipulating the conditions a "Hamas government" must fulfil if it is to enter the pantheon of respectable nations: recognising Israel, ending "violence" and abiding by previous PLO-Israeli agreements. On the other hand there is Hamas and what it calls the "strategic depth" of its Palestinian, Arab and Islamic constituency. This, it hopes, will become increasingly mobilised around Hamas's core condition: that recognition will come and resistance can end but only when Israel recognises Palestinian self- determination by ending the "occupation that began in 1967". And in between there is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah movement, torn between "respecting the democratic choice of the Palestinian people" and maintaining ties with the superpower on which his and its entire political project rests. The latest twist in the fracture was revealed by The New York Times on 13 February. Quoting officials and diplomats, the New York Times stated that the US and Israel were "discussing ways to destabilise the Palestinian government so that the newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again." The preferred means were not (as yet) dirty tricks and coups of Chilean and Iranian vintage. Rather they were campaigns of economic sanctions and political isolation that would either force Hamas to surrender to Israel's terms or collapse through being unable to govern. "The point is to put this choice on Hamas's shoulders. If they make the wrong choice, all the options lead in a bad direction," said one Western diplomat quoted in the New York Times. The plan rests on questionable premises. The first is that Palestinians voted for Hamas for reasons of governance rather than out of appreciation for the armed struggle it waged or that successive Fatah-led "peace processes" had only deepened Israel's neo-colonial control of their lives. Another is that while Hamas won a majority of parliamentary seats, it did so with a minority of votes, with the implication (or hope) that Palestinians will have little tolerance for a government that brings only economic hardship and political ostracism. The third premise is that Abbas and Fatah will be party to this barely disguised scheme to subvert the democratic will of their people. The first two assumptions smack of wishful thinking. But there are ominous signs that Israel and the US may be on to something with the third. Since the elections on 25 January, Abbas has amassed power in his hands of almost Arafatian dimensions. In a series of "presidential decrees", he has placed the PA's security, financial and media institutions under his ultimate authority, despite a Palestinian constitution which states that all must be shared with the elected prime minister. In the last session of the outgoing Fatah-dominated parliament on 13 February, two more decisions were taken to tighten Abbas's grip. The first was the appointment of four Fatah loyalists as heads of the PA's personnel, salaries and pensions, government comptroller departments as well as the new post of "administrative chief" of the parliament -- all critical portfolios for Hamas if it is to be true to its election promise of bringing "change and reform" to government. The second was to grant Abbas the prerogative to appoint a new nine-judge constitutional court with the power to resolve any dispute between the presidency and the parliament, including the right of the president to "cancel any law approved by the new parliament on the grounds that it is unconstitutional". Newly elected Hamas member for Hebron, Abdul-Aziz Dweik, was limpid as to the political motive behind the move. "This law means giving full powers to President Abbas to dissolve parliament any time he wishes," he said. For now Hamas appears to meeting the threat of destabilisation and Abbas's "bloodless coup" with diplomacy, seeking "a firm Arab and Islamic position to confront the challenge", says Hamas MP for northern Gaza Mushir Al-Masri. It has already scored one triumph, though not yet from the Arab and Islamic position. On 8 January Russia broke ranks with the US-led moratorium on Hamas by announcing it would invite a delegation from the newly Palestinian government to Moscow, probably before the end of the month. "Our position concerning Hamas differs from the American and Western European position. The Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation never declared Hamas a terrorist organisation," said Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hamas expressed its "deepest appreciation". Putin has reportedly assured the US and Israel that Russia will use the meeting to impress on Hamas the importance of meeting their conditions. Hamas will listen, while reasserting its condition, rehearsed by its political leader Khaled Meshaal in an interview with a Russian newspaper on 13 February. "If Israel recognises our rights and pledges to withdraw from all occupied lands, Hamas, and the Palestinian people with it, will decide to halt the armed resistance." But the critical achievement for Hamas is that the meeting is unconditional. As such it will strengthen Hamas's hand as its delegation embarks on a tour of the Arab and Islamic world that so far includes stops in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran as well as perhaps Jordan and Malaysia. It may even open the doors to non-Islamic countries like France, Spain and South Africa. At the very least it will serve as a question and leverage with Fatah as the two parties discuss the formation of next Palestinian government: will Fatah agree to unity in line with the Palestinians democratic choice and nationalist sentiment? Or will it subvert that sentiment by agreeing to be a small cog in a larger Israel-US wheel?
