The Islamic fundamentalist Hamas movement may have been weakened militarily by Israel’s mass expulsion of its leaders, but there is little doubt it has gained politically.
Its main rival for support in the administered territories, the Palestine Liberation Organization, has been forced into backing Hamas’ insistence that Israel return the 415 Moslem activists deported to Lebanon on Dec. 17.
To do less would make the PLO vulnerable to charges of betrayal and even collaboration with the Israeli authorities.
Rapprochement between the two competing groups has gone even further. Their leaders held a first-ever summit meeting in Tunis to discuss coordinated policies.
At the same time, the Palestinian leadership in the territories met this week with visiting U.N. special envoy James Jonah to insist that Israel, at the very least, allow humanitarian aid to reach the deportees, who remain stranded in a tent encampment in southern Lebanon between Israeli and Lebanese army checkpoints.
But it is a bumpy road for Hamas. Its seemingly closer ties with the PLO have had little practical significance. Four days of meetings with the leadership in Tunis failed to persuade the PLO to order its proxies in the territories to pull out of the peace talks with Israel.
Hamas and the PLO agreed only to continue demanding that Israel return the deportees and to support an escalation of the intifada.
The two Palestinian organizations were unable to move closer than that because, in the long run, their goals are in conflict.
The PLO seeks a secular Palestinian state after territorial compromise with Israel. Hamas believes in jihad, a holy war, ending only in the destruction of Israel.
Hamas has suffered another blow. According to news reports here, its long- secret organizational infrastructure in the territories has been exposed as a result of the deportations and the arrest of over 1,000 activists that preceded it.
Seized documents indicate that Iran and Saudi Arabia have channeled funds to Hamas leaders, helping them develop the large-scale social, cultural and religious operations considered a major contributor to the growing popularity of the fundamentalist movement in the territories.
But despite the military setback and the failure to significantly close ranks with the PLO, Hamas is believed to have grown stronger since the deportations, at least in terms of popular support.
That strength is particularly evident in the West Bank town of Hebron, a traditional stronghold of the Islamic fundamentalist movement. Seventy-eight residents of Hebron were among those expelled to Lebanon, almost a third of the total number deported from the West Bank.
Many of those expelled are teachers or staff members of the Islamic College of Hebron. Others are active in the Moslem Welfare Society, the Red Crescent or a hospital currently under construction.
Hebron residents believe the fundamentalists have their interests at heart to a much greater degree than the PLO does. They say Hamas uses much of the money it gets from Saudi Arabia and Iran to fund schools and welfare activities, while the PLO is more interested in maintaining a bloated organizational bureaucracy.
The PLO is now facing the fact that Hamas’ popularity in the territories had been growing even before the deportations. The expulsions have only intensified the unhappiness of PLO supporters, who now see no option but to demonstrate support for their rivals.
At another level, PLO supporters are now expected to compete with Hamas in the religious realm and show they are more devout Moslems than the Moslem fundamentalists.
But it is the political sphere where the PLO battle for dominance over Hamas is the most evident.
Bassam Id, a well-known civil rights activist who works for the Israeli civil rights association B’tselem, said the dovish Meretz bloc, a partner in Israel’s coalition government, received a green light from the PLO to support the Dec. 16 Cabinet decision to deport the Hamas activists.
Id said in interviews last week with two East Jerusalem newspapers that the PLO-supported delegation to the peace talks met with Meretz activists at the home of Knesset member Yossi Sarid and said they could “tolerate” a blow to Hamas in the wake of the killing of five Israeli servicemen for which the fundamentalist group claimed credit.
Whether true or not, stories such as that leave the PLO little choice but to adopt a tough stand.
If and when they return to the peace talks, Palestinian negotiators can be expected to present new demands, according to Ali Jaddah, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the constituent groups of the PLO.
In hardening their position, they will ask for inclusion of official PLO negotiators and discussion of the delicate issue of Jerusalem, he said. They also can be expected to seek discussion of Israeli territorial withdrawal from the territories at this stage rather than in three years’ time, as presently stipulated by the terms of the talks.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
