If the international community responds creatively, Hamas's elections victory will offer new hopes for peace, writes Ayman El-Amir* Hamas's victory in the Palestinian legislative elections has left governments in the Middle East and beyond squirming. Not only did the results surprise everyone, including Hamas, but they also elicited reflexive reactions from those most flabbergasted -- the US, Israel and the European Union. Arab regimes, as usual, were in a quandary as Hamas's victory sent them scurrying for new scenarios. They now have to re-package their moderating role in the Palestinian problem and carefully examine the implications for their domestic affairs of the triumph of a radical Islamist nationalist movement. Yet the victory of Hamas may be a blessing in disguise. It is a historical paradox that seasoned armed resistance movements are often the best peacemakers. Hamas may yet turn out to be the best hope for a lasting peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. Historical evidence in support of this premise abounds. The Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) fought the French colonial rule for eight years and lost one million men and women while its political wing negotiated the independence that was finally attained in 1962. In Vietnam the US fought a costly war for more than a decade before concluding a peace agreement with North Vietnam and the Vietcong national liberation movement in January 1973. The Paris peace negotiations were conducted between the US, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the Vietcong while the US was bombing North Vietnam and Vietcong bases and supply routes in Laos and Cambodia. When Egypt signed its historic peace agreement with Israel it was not the Israeli Peace Now movement with whom the late Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat negotiated and signed but the terrorist-cum-prime minister Menachim Begin. Israel's own political history contains a long line of terrorist leaders -- from Begin to Sharon -- and organisations. In its first official statements following the results of the elections Hamas struck a moderate note. Khaled Meshaal, one of the movement's most prominent leaders, offered a pragmatic agenda including a broad-based government of national unity, respect for commitments (made by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority) and recognition of realities on the ground. To reject Hamas's victory, to try to coerce it, intimidate it or dictate in advance its future course of action will be counter- productive. The movement itself is engaged in political soul-searching and is mulling over its options just as carefully as its surprised opponents. US President George W Bush walked a tight political line between recognition of Hamas's victory as a reflection of the will of the Palestinian people as expressed through democratic elections and rejection of its national liberation agenda against Israel. Shocked Israeli leaders predictably overreacted, though 67 per cent of the Israeli public said in a poll it would be possible for Israel to negotiate with a Hamas-dominated government. US threats to withhold an estimated $270 million of assistance to the Palestinian Authority, similar signals from the European Union and financial harassment from Israel are short-sighted and will in all likelihood produce nothing more than intransigence on the part of Hamas. For Arab regimes the Hamas victory, in as much as it represents the political sentiment of the average individual on the street, is a wake-up call. Decades of repressive governance and corrupt, self-perpetuating dictatorships have choked all aspirations to democratic change. As governments experimented with socialism, secular nationalism and pseudo-liberalism, under the watchful eyes of ruthless state security apparatuses, the masses sought refuge in their faith. The suppression of burgeoning liberal democratic movements gave the Islamists a lead in parliamentary elections. It started in Algeria in 1991 and moved on to Jordan, Iraq and Egypt and, to a lesser degree, Lebanon and Syria. Islamists preach Islamic, as opposed to Western liberal, democracy. They distance themselves from the self-styled Islamic monarchies in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and oppose US presence and alliances in the Arab region. Except for the Iraqi Shia, no religious-oriented movement had won a legislative majority sufficient to form a single-party government until Hamas's victory in democratic elections, which will now act to mutually-reinforce all Islamists in the region, particularly those who share the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology of Islam as the solution. Hamas faces as many challenges as the accolades it has garnered. To cobble together a national consensus that can assuage the loss felt by many Fatah loyalists requires the movement to prove that it is above party politics -- that it can act as an umbrella for Palestinians of all political persuasions who seek the elusive goal of an independent state. It will also have to live up to the democratic ideals and clean image that brought it to power in the first place. And it will have to maintain the moral courage and resilience so many Arab regimes lack in dealing with both friends and foes. It should be remembered that the Fatah leadership compromised its revolutionary ideals by trying to play all sides of the street. The victory of Hamas gives Israel, and its most ardent supporters, a historic opportunity. Not only do they have a battle-tested partner that can negotiate peace from a position of strength but a government that can rally a consensus of Palestinians to the two-state solution endorsed by the international community. It would be futile to try and revive the step-by-step process of the so-called roadmap when a golden opportunity to work out a bold, comprehensive solution is presenting itself. A genuine effort on the part of Israel to meet Hamas halfway and offer imaginative initiatives would go a long way towards achieving a comprehensive and lasting peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. Hamas's powerful landing on the Middle East political scene is as significant as Sadat's landing in Jerusalem 28 years ago to offer Israel peace from a position of power. To try to hold Hamas hostage to its armed struggle against Israeli occupation as a way of dictating conditions would be unwise. The movement came to power on the basis of its dual record of charitable work and armed resistance. Both represent the will of the Palestinian people in the face of Israeli settler's expansionism. To characterise it as a terrorist organisation is no more credible than Nazi Germany's condemnation of the French resistance during World War II -- both terrorist organisations "terrorised" the illegal occupiers of their lands. All interested parties will have to move beyond this fault line if productive negotiations have to start. For Hamas, armed struggle has been its raison d'être and it should keep that option in the same way all Palestinian movements kept the Intifada option. Jittery Arab governments, twiddling their thumbs over the significance of Hamas's landslide, must embrace the new reality. A strong show of support, both political and financial, will help maintain the movement's self-confidence and encourage moderation, especially at the time when the US, Israel and the EU are threatening to cut financial flows. * The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
