THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 298, November 11, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
JONATHAN SHANZER'S HAMAS VS. FATAH:
FOREWORD
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
INADEQUACY & IMBALANCE IN COVERAGE OF THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT: ACADEMIC & JOURNALISTIC BIAS &
NEGLECT -- LACK OF ATTENTION TO THE INTERNAL STRIFE BETWEEN PALESTINIAN FACTIONS & TO THE DIFFERENCES
BETWEEN GAZA & THE WEST BANK -- U.S. MAINSTREAM MEDIA OVERREPORTING OF THE VIOLENCE BETWEEN
PALESTINIANS & ISRAELIS & PROVIDING LITTLE OR NO COVERAGE OF THE EARLY STAGES OF THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN
FATAH & HAMAS -- CONCEPTUAL MISTAKES & THE COST FOR U.S. FOREIGN POLICY OF INATTENTION TO THE
FATAH-HAMAS FITNA
FULL STORY:
Divisions among Palestinians generally do not receive their due attention, Jonathan Schanzer correctly points out, in the
immense academic and journalistic coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead, an official, propagandistic, and inaccurate
party line holds sway. To quote Rashid Khalidi, a former Palestine Liberation Organization employee now teaching at
Columbia University, [1] a "uniform Palestinian identity" exists. The Palestinians are one — full stop, end of story.
This simplistic and ahistorical understanding largely dominates how outsiders see the Palestinians, to the near exclusion of
other, more nuanced analyses, and the party line afflicts the whole history of the conflict — the period before 1948, [1] the
heyday of pan-Arabism, the emergence of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and especially the 20-year period, 1987 to
2007, that Schanzer studies in the following pages. As he puts it, "While the mainstream American media overreported the
violence between the Palestinians and Israelis, the ‘other struggle for Palestine,' which began to play out between Fatah
and Hamas, received little to no coverage in America."
Many differences divide Palestinians — Muslim and Christian, urban and rural, sedentary and nomadic, rich and poor,
regional — but Schanzer, a highly talented historian of the modern Middle East, establishes here the nature, extent, and
significance of two specific intra-Palestinian tensions: primarily that fight between Fatah and Hamas, for this has the most
acute and immediate political importance, and secondarily the dichotomy between the West Bank and Gaza.
Hamas versus Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine traces the history of the two groups' relations from the
emergence of Hamas in late 1987 to the Hamas conquest of Gaza in June, 2007, then surveys the implications of this hostile
but subtle relationship. In summary, Schanzer traces the simultaneous weakening of Fatah and strengthening of Hamas
over this period. By 2008, Fatah's leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is enfeebled, "no more than the president of the Muqata
compound in Ramallah," while Hamas rules the roost in Gaza, threatens to seize power on the West Bank, sends hundreds
of rockets into Israel, [3] and even challenges the government of Egypt. [4]
This dramatic shift in fortunes can be attributed to many factors, but perhaps most of all to the fact that whereas Yasir
Arafat's Fatah was all things to all Palestinians, Hamas represents a coherent movement, with a fixed outlook and specific
goals. Time and again Schanzer demonstrates how the discipline and purpose of Hamas has given it the edge over the
corrupt and amorphous Fatah.
Palestinian self-destruction, neglected or not, ranks as a major U.S. foreign policy concern, especially since 1993, when
Washington cast its lot with Yasir Arafat, Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Palestinian Authority,
hoping against hope that Western backing would transform a revolutionary movement long allied with the Soviet Union into
an agency of good government and status quo aspirations.
Among its many conceptual mistakes, this hope implied devoting too little attention to the competition raging between Fatah
and Hamas since 1987 for the backing of the Palestinian street, a competition that impelled Fatah not be seen as going easy
on Israel, but as aggressively anti-Zionist as Hamas. Given that Fatah was in negotiations with successive Israeli
governments and it had to make gentle noises to the Israeli and Western media, the organization had to take a particularly
ferocious stance on the ground. What American (and Israeli) policy makers tended to dismiss as incidental turned out to have
deep and abiding consequences; suffice it to say that the Palestinian constituency for accepting Israel as a Jewish state has
steadily lowered since the heady days of late 1993, to the point that it now represents only about a fifth of the body politic.
Schanzer also documents the cost for U.S. foreign policy of inattention to the Fatah-Hamas fitna (Arabic for "internal strife").
For one thing, it led to a misreading of the Palestinian mood in the period leading up to the January, 2006, elections, causing
Washington to keep promoting them in the happy expectation that its favorite, Fatah, would win; when elections came, the
crushing victory by Hamas over Fatah came as a shock. For another, in early 2007, what Schanzer calls "relatively weak
mainstream media coverage" of Fatah-Hamas fighting meant that the June conquest of Gaza by Hamas came as another
surprise to the Bush administration. In brief, those responsible for American interests neither anticipated nor prepared for the
two climatic events in Hamas's rise to power, a situation as embarrassing as it is revealing. So limited an understanding of the
issues almost guarantees severe policy mistakes.
Why, given the extent of intra-Palestinian differences and their importance, has this subject been so rudely ignored? Schanzer
prudently stays away from this sensitive topic, but what keeps researchers away in droves should at least be mentioned. I
believe it reflects the fact that few academics have a genuine interest in the Palestinians. Rather, they devote outsized
attention to this otherwise small and obscure population because it represents a convenient and potent tool with which to
malign Israel.
Organizations intent on criticizing Israel's every move [5] by default become masters of tiny Palestinian grievances. They
document in loving detail residential and transportation patterns in the West Bank, water and electricity grids in Gaza, and
impediments to reaching holy places in Jerusalem. Those intent on showing Israel in a bad light must champion the
Palestinians with allegations of mass executions, torture, denial of hospital services — but this should not be confused with
genuine concern for the Palestinians. Nor does it lead to an understanding of Palestinian life.
It particularly pleases me that the author undertook some of his initial research for this study while at the Middle East Forum,
the research institute I direct, notably his studies on Fatah versus Hamas, [6] on comparative Palestinian uprisings, [7] and
on the Gaza–West Bank split. [8] This last discussion, elaborated here in chapter 11, offers a particularly valuable review of
the many and growing differences between the "two Palestines," a subject on which there is hardly anything in English, but
the writings by Jonathan Schanzer.
Most books on the Arab-Israeli conflict tread well-worn ground. Hamas versus Fatah offers an original analysis of a
key topic.
NOTES:
[1]. Asaf Romirowsky and Jonathan Calt Harris, "Arafat Minion as Professor," Washington Times, July 9, 2004.
[2]. For a recent and notable exception, see Hillel Cohen, Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008).
[3]. Izz al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades Web site, "In January 2008 Al Qassam Brigades fired 540 rocket and missile and killed two Zionists," February 2, 2008.
[4]. Cable News Network, "'Dozens Hurt' in Gaza Border Clashes," January 27, 2008.
[5]. An excellent case study of this phenomenon can be found in Erik R. Nelson and Alan F. H. Wisdom, Human Rights Advocacy in the Mainline Protestant Churches (2000–2003) (Washington, DC: Institute on Religion & Democracy, 2004).
[6]. Jonathan Schanzer, "The Challenge of Hamas to Fatah," Middle East Quarterly (Spring 2003).
[7]. Jonathan Schanzer, "Palestinian Uprisings Compared," Middle East Quarterly (Summer 2002).
[8]. Jonathan Schanzer, "A Gaza-West Bank Split? Why the Palestinian Territories Might Become Two Separate States," Middle East Intelligence Bulletin (July 2001).
-----------------------------------
Originally Published as the Foreword to Jonathan Schanzer,
Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine,
(Palgrave-Macmillan, November, 2008)
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, November 11, 2008
Article URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/6016
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Israel & the Arabs -- The Israeli-Arab Conflict
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- Radical Islam & Islamic Terrorism
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is the Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
the Founder of Campus Watch, a signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S.
Institute of Peace, a former adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the
U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and
Technology, and a former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the
University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for Front Page Magazine, the New York
Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and developments in the Middle East
have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times,
and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network television, as well as at universities and
think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on
BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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