THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume IX, Issue # 27, February 8, 2007
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
HAMAS' INTERNATIONAL STRATEGY WORKS
By Dr. Michael Rubin
THE MIDDLE EAST, HAMAS, TERRORISM, & THE ISRAELI-ARAB CONFLICT: HAMAS' OPERATION OF A TYRANNICAL
DICTATORSHIP OVER THE PALESTINIANS IN GAZA & THE WEST BANK -- HAMAS' CONTINUING ACTS OF TERROR AGAINST
THE STATE OF ISRAEL & ENDORSEMENT OF MISSILE STRIKES ON ISRAELI CIVILIANS -- HOW THEIR FUNDING & SUPPORT OF
HAMAS & OTHER TERRORIST GROUPS HAS REAPED HUGE DIVIDENDS FOR IRAN, SAUDI ARABIA, & OTHER MUSLIM STATES
OF THE MIDDLE EAST -- HOW WESTERN EQUIVOCATION, VACILLATION, & LACK OF RESOLVE CONTRIBUTE TO TERRORISM &
DICTATORSHIP IN THE MIDDLE EAST -- THE U.S. GOVERNMENT'S ABANDONMENT OF ITS PROMOTION OF THE RULE OF LAW,
CONSTITUTIONALISM, FREE & UNFETTERED ELECTIONS, REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY, & HUMAN RIGHTS PROTECTIONS
IN MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES
FULL STORY:
On January 26, 2006, Hamas celebrated its election victory. Ismail Haniyeh, who would assume the Premiership, rededicated
his organization to violence. "Our fighting is only with the Zionist enemy," he explained. "We will continue our dialogue
with all brotherly factions in the Palestinian territories."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lauded the election process, but condemned its victors. "You cannot have one foot
in politics and the other in terror," she explained. "Our position on Hamas has therefore not changed."
Nor did Hamas change. To mark the six-month anniversary of its election the group staged a cross border attack on Israel,
killing two soldiers and kidnapping 19-year-old Israeli Defense Forces Corporal Gilad Shalit. Hamas continues to endorse
missile strikes on Israeli civilians. And, despite Haniyeh's calls for dialogue with Fatah, Hamas stewardship has led to daily
clashes with rival Palestinian factions.
Blame for the violence lies not only in Gaza and Ramallah, but also in Riyadh and Tehran. Hamas is not autonomous. Saudi
donors helped launch the group in 1987 and provided a steady flow of cash until at least 2004. In October 2002, the World
Association of Muslim Youth made Khalid Meshaal, the Hamas Political Bureau Chief and an unapologetic advocate of
terrorism, a guest-of-honor at its annual convention in Riyadh. After Saudi authorities, worried about blowback, cracked
down on funding Sunni extremists, Iranian authorities picked up the slack. Canadian intelligence estimates that Tehran
provides Hamas up to $18 million per year and welcomes Hamas fighters into its Revolutionary Guards training camps.
So where does Hamas stand a year into its tenure? As a governing force, it has failed. While Hamas leaders say they do
not have money to pay civil servants, they find sufficient cash to conduct military operations. Where Hamas has
succeeded, though, is in convincing some governments that it now deserves legitimacy. First, there was Turkey, which,
under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is more Middle Eastern than European. Less than a month after Hamas'
election win, Erdogan invited Meshaal to Ankara. A European Union travel ban collapsed soon after when the Swedish
government offered Hamas Minister Atef Adwan a visa. It was not long before European officials and many
non-governmental organizations insisted that the Western world had an obligation to fund Palestinian relief, even though,
with money fungible, such assistance mitigated pressure upon Hamas and enabled it to spend more on weapons.
European equivalence signals Hamas' sponsors that their strategy works. Europe's rhetoric may be strong, but its resolve
is weak. An Arab boycott of Israel can last more than half a century, but the West's boycott of terrorist groups cannot last
a month. Saudi princes and Iranian revolutionary foundation managers understand they should ignore Brussels and
perhaps even Washington and continue to launch, fund, and sustain groups that embrace terrorism and eschew the rule
of law, constitutionalism, and democracy.
Washington, however, has given Hamas and its radical sponsors perhaps their greatest victory. Not only did the Bush
administration fail to insist that forfeiture of armed political party militias should be among the ground rules for legitimate
democratic participation, thus allowing a Trojan horse into the election, but, once the scale of Hamas' victory became
known, the White House rewarded Middle Eastern terrorist groups and their sponsors with an effective abandonment of
the Bush constitutional democracy agenda.
Whereas Rice once spoke about the need for constitutional democracy and political reform at the American University of
Cairo, in her recent trips to Egypt, she has appeared beside Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak and said hardly a word about
reform. Neither the U.S. State Department nor the U.S. Ambassador in Cairo has spoken about the arson attack on the
Ghad Party headquarters, the kangaroo court conviction of its leader Ayman Nour, Mubarak's postponement of municipal
elections or the videos of Egyptian police torturing dissidents, videos that surfaced in November, 2006, after thieves stole
several police officers' cell phones at a wedding reception. The State Department has quietly squirreled away and diverted
funding to support Iranian democracy and no longer, in practice, supports reform in Saudi Arabia. Fathi al-Jahmi remains
imprisoned in Libya, where five Bulgarian nurses also face a firing squad.
Arab states and Iran have used Hamas to revert to a comfortable state of affairs in which they pay rhetorical heed to
Palestinian political demands but, in practice, are indifferent. They fund terrorism that prolongs conflict and causes the
Palestinians to further spiral into a morass. Their investment in Hamas has paid huge dividends. It will not end the Jewish
state but, for the region's kings, hereditary presidents and ayatollahs, it sidetracks the far more worrisome agenda of
democratization, reform, and accountability.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Israel -- The Israeli-Arab Conflict
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
American Foreign Policy -- Constitutional Democracy:
U.S. Promotion of Constitutional Democracy in Foreign Countries
Islamism & Jihadism -- Radical Islam & Islamic Terrorism
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
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. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public
Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute
for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson, of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff
advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense (2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of
History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of
Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at
the Council of Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and
International Affairs.
The foregoing article by Dr. Rubin was originally published in Bitterlemons International, February 8, 2007, and can
be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
February 8, 2007
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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