Hamas and Hizbullah are two resistance movements on different paths. But both must effectively transition from armed resistance to governance. How successfully they do this will significantly affect the Arab region in the months ahead.
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Advisory Release: 29 August 2006
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Hamas, Hizbullah Face Their Greatest Challenges
by Rami G. Khouri
BEIRUT -- The Arab world's two leading self-styled "Islamic resistance movements" -- Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine -- seem to be moving in different directions, but there are lessons to be learned from both. The main one is that armed resistance is primarily a means for these groups. Their ultimate goal is a national order that reflects their society's valid concerns on political legitimacy, sovereignty, ideology and social values. Above all, their success reflects their ability to respond to the real needs of their constituents, rather than to promote any sort of ideal Islamic society or espouse revolutionary rhetoric and wage perpetual war.
As Hizbullah holds its own in Lebanon and the region, it also finds itself preoccupied with the challenges of shifting its center of gravity -- or at least its international image -- from guns to governance. After achieving the two striking feats of driving the Israeli army out of south Lebanon in 2000 and fighting it to a draw in 2006, it has no room left for military endeavors, and nothing more to prove on the battlefield.
It asserted itself in recent years by defying five parties: a weak Lebanese central government, other Lebanese political groups, Israel, the United States, and the dominant regimes in the Arab world. In return, these forces have now physically and politically hemmed it in: The Israeli army will destroy all Lebanon after the next provocation, the Lebanese government has moved 15,000 soldiers to the south, the UN Security Council dispatched another 15,000 international peace-keepers, and Lebanese and Arab political leaders call on Hizbullah to engage and integrate fully in the national governance and security system.
History suggests that fighting resistance wars to liberate one's occupied land is much more straightforward than making a subsequent transition to political responsibility. Hizbullah's most important test is just starting: It must erase the haze of its own inscrutability, remove the ambiguity of its relations with Iran and Syria, and slay the demons of mistrust that plague its relations with many key players, especially in Lebanon. It can do this and retain its integrity and impact, but only if it applies the same serious operating principles to the political realm that it has applied in recent years militarily, socially and in terms of its sheer focus, courage and efficiency.
The parallel lessons from Palestine are instructive and sobering. The Palestinian national resistance movement against Zionism and Western powers since the 1930s has passed through erratic stages of success and failure. The Fateh-dominated PLO made some major political achievements regionally and globally in the 1970s and 80s, only to sink into a sad cycle of complacency, corruption and incompetence after 1990. This ultimately led to its own marginalization, and the political and physical destruction of many aspects of Palestinian society.
Three key responses to this institutional mediocrity and political failure were the rise of Hamas and smaller Islamist groups, the waging of two grassroots and largely spontaneous popular intifadas against Israeli occupation, and the fragmentation of society into local political-military wards, militias and gangs. Hamas' success in resisting Israel militarily ultimately helped drive Israel out of Gaza; it achieved parallel political success in winning local and national elections in 2005-2006.
Its overall trajectory, however, has been more difficult than Hizbullah's. This is mainly because it has been fought simultaneously by a brutal Israeli military and political assault, Fateh and other Arab governments that fear its ilk, and the United States and Europe who have sanctioned and tried to break it. Yet it has also performed poorly in many cases, unable to build on the credibility and legitimacy that it had achieved since its founding less than two decades ago.
A respected member of Hamas in Gaza has now publicly admonished his fellow ruling Islamists and other Palestinians for their failures, charging that, "Gaza is suffering under the yoke of anarchy and the swords of thugs," and since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza a year ago, "life became a nightmare and an intolerable burden."
These sentiments were published in an article Sunday by Ghazi Hamad, a former Hamas newspaper editor and the spokesman for the current Hamas government. He urged Palestinians to examine their own performance and not blame Israel for all their problems and failures, though he also seemed to place most of the blame on assorted Fateh-linked armed groups in Gaza. His most important point was his insistence on "self-criticism and self-evaluation," instead of the habit of "blaming our mistakes on others."
Hamas has been through tough moments before, including repeated assassinations of its leaders, mass deportations and jailings of its members, and the current political and economic boycott of Israel, the United States and Europe. In light of the lessons of Hizbullah's performance in Lebanon, Hamas must now adjust quickly or risk the same doomed, but self-inflicted, fate as Fateh and the PLO.
As Ghazi Hamad aptly challenged it and Palestinian society to do, it needs to examine its own ways in order to achieve success by being more accountable to its constituents, rather than faithful to fiery or emotional slogans. The performance of Hizbullah and Hamas in the months ahead are worth monitoring, for they will impact greatly on political trends throughout the Arab world.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, and editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 29 August 2006
Word Count: 867
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for The Nation, The American Prospect, Le Monde diplomatique, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Mark Hertsgaard, Rami G. Khouri, Tom Porteous, Patrick Seale and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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