Lost amid the hand-wringing over Israel’s botched flotilla raid last month and speculation about the diplomatic fallout for the Jewish state has been perhaps the most significant development, namely the resurgence of Hamas.
On political and financial life support not even a month ago, Hamas has become the face of the Muslim world’s newest cause celebre: ending the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza. This newfound determination cannot end a “humanitarian crisis” that didn’t exist in the first place, but it just might end the political and economic crises that had been besetting Hamas over the past year.
While understandable on the surface, President Obama’s call last week to curtail the blockade of Gaza so as to stop only weapons is exactly what Hamas needs to emerge even stronger than when it won the 2006 election.
Although it was never well-explained to the international community, the joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade had a crucial secondary aim beyond thwarting weapons smuggling: crippling the Islamist regime.
What few Western leaders seem to realize is that the blockade was working. Hamas was in freefall, with its cash flow drying up and most Gazans turning on the party they had backed just a few years earlier.
In March, according to Associated Press, the Hamas government was only able to pay most employees roughly half of their salaries. Not coincidentally, this was right on the heels of Egypt’s most aggressive efforts to clamp down on smuggling, from building an underground steel wall to detonating tunnel entry points on Egyptian soil.
The following month, Hamas was once again unable to meet its payroll. This shortfall occurred despite a bevy of new taxes imposed by Hamas on everything from cigarettes to smuggled automobiles and gasoline.
The culprit for Hamas‘ financial woes? “We are having difficulties in getting the money in (to Gaza) because of the siege,” Deputy Finance Minister Ismail Mahfouz reportedly wrote on the Gaza Finance Ministry’s website.
While Gazans are far from suffering a “humanitarian crisis” - they have not experienced shortages of food or medicine - life has gotten markedly worse in the Hamas-controlled territory since 2006. Which has been the point of the siege all along.
The same world community now objecting to crippling an unreformed terrorist organization that consolidated its power through a blood-soaked coup was almost universally supportive of sanctioning and isolating apartheid South Africa - the goal of which was to sow unrest to help topple the government.
Never before have Palestinians been forced to make a stark choice between supporting terrorism and pursuing prosperity; they more or less had been able to enjoy both simultaneously. While growth was stagnant or negative during most of the so-called “intifada,” Palestinians started their terror campaign in the fall of 2000 with the wealthiest non-oil Arab economy.
Faced with the reality that continued Hamas leadership likely would result in even greater misery, most Gazans had soured on the terrorist group. According to figures released in January by respected pollster Nabil Kukali of the Palestinian Center For Public Opinion, Gazans’ support for Hamas had plummeted to 22 percent - making the Islamists much less popular in Gaza than Fatah.
In a surprisingly candid interview with Public Radio International in January, Hamas senior adviser Ahmed Yousef admitted that Hamas‘ popularity was suffering “because of the sanction*, the pressure.”
Should the economic siege of Gaza be broken, most Gazans likely will credit the “martyrdom” of the nine dead flotilla passengers - which only happened because of the violent ambush of descending Israeli soldiers. Though not the doing of Hamas, it certainly followed the spirit of Hamas - a point that probably won’t be lost on most Palestinians.
While clever Western diplomats might believe they can chart a path that will enable Fatah to receive the credit for ending the economic siege of Gaza, they would be wise to study carefully the aftermaths of Israel’s unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005.
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