Transcript of Remarks by John Voll and Amjad Atallah "For the Record" No. 258 (17 July 2006)

At a recent Palestine Center briefing, John Voll, associate director of the Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding at Georgetown University, and Amjad Atallah, president of the Strategic Assessments Initiative, analyzed the historical and current political standing of Hamas. John Voll argued that Hamas represents crystallization of the Palestinian nationalist movement and political Islam as they have evolved respectively during the twentieth century.

Amjad Atallah, speaking next, argued that Hamas has made itself indispensable to both the United States' and Fateh's short-term interests. He said Hamas is linking its steps with regional events but warned that only increased instability can result from attempts to overthrow either Hamas or Hizbollah because of their synchronized actions.

The Palestine Center
Washington, DC
12 July 2006

John Voll:

We both promise to not talk too long so you can, in fact, ask questions at the end. It is really interesting to see wall-to-wall people on this subject and think back to when I started my work in Islamic movements a long time ago. When I was a graduate student and decided that I would do my doctoral dissertation on a Sufi Tariqa, my classmates in the Center for Middle Easter Studies at Harvard would say, "What's a Sufi Tariqa?" When I would say, "I'm looking at how Islamic organizations that represent movements of renewal and resurgence cope with modernity," I would usually hear the rejoinder, "Ah, well, that's a nice sort of museum subject. But why don't you go where the action really is and study the Communist Party in Syria?" Or, "Why don't you work on Nasserism?"

If there would have been this center here in 1965, 40 years ago, and they would have announced a session on the religious dimensions of the Palestinian movement maybe three people would have appeared. That in itself is part of the important dynamic of my part of today's subject, which is to look at the past, or the background [of Hamas], and try to see where we are as we get to the 1990s and the twenty-first century.

It would be possible to do two totally separate narratives for the background and history and context of Hamas. One narrative would be the Palestinian one: How does Hamas fit into the development of Palestinian nationalism in the broader Palestinian movement? The other narrative, which could almost have no relationship to that first one, would be: How does Hamas fit into the narrative of the Islamic resurgence that grew in the second half of the twentieth century?

What I'd like to do is briefly to introduce both of those narratives and point out, in fact, how it is that, by the time we hit the 1990s, Hamas represents a historically significant development within a much broader framework than simply one particular organization among many in the Arab World.

The first reminder I'd like to make is to look at the Palestinian narrative-the narrative of the history of what we now think of as the Palestinian national movement in the twentieth century-and be reminded that our subject now changes the way we should be looking at the story of the Palestinian Movement in the first 87 years of the twentieth century. Most of the time that story is told without reference to Islamic movements. If we look back at the first 40 years of the twentieth century, however, it is possible to identify a religious dimension, particularly an Islamic dimension, which, if one is dealing with essentially the secular history, developed out of telling the story of Fateh and Yasser Arafat and company. [This story often] gets ignored.

Now we start with the Ottoman Empire and what later becomes thought of as the "Palestine Question." We start in the context of a totally different narrative and a totally different question. It's still a question but in those days it was the "Eastern Question," as in, "What happens to the Ottoman Empire?" There was no sense really of talking about Palestine or a variety of movements and peoples and groups that would later become important.

Instead, what we are looking at in the eastern end of the Mediterranean is a set of societies where you have great families that are the primary organizers of activity. You have regional identifications and you have religious identifications. From the very beginning, the organizations that were responding in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to the beginnings of Jewish settlements in the eastern Mediterranean were based on the abilities of families to mobilize support; the ability of people who were in urban centers or people who [were affiliated with] religious organization.

At the end of the First World War, when the contemporary boundaries of the Middle East were drawn by the European peace settlement as it was set for the Middle East, the British Governor General of the newly-created Mandate of Palestine arbitrarily appointed someone who was to speak for the Arabic-speaking population. That organization was the Supreme Muslim Council. When in the 1930s you had the great revolt of the Arabic-speaking people, it was organized in some way by what was called the Higher Arab Committee, or the High Arab Council.

That fact, as we look at it, tends to obscure the fact that when one scratches the first major era of activism, from 1936-39, its beginnings come with a fiery preacher named Izz ad-din al-Qassam. You have set in motion then the Qassam [Martyrs' Brigades]. Even though he is killed by the British very early on, you have as the organizing symbol of that group not a communist leader, not a brown-shirt Palestinian movement, but an organization whose primary symbolic label is associated with an Islamic leader.

When you get to the first war in 1948, there is by then a significant component for an Islamic organization in that conflict, where you have volunteers from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. I could go into lots of details, but what you have essentially is the presence of Islamic organizations of resistance that date back to the 1930s. As one looks at the highly visible dimension of the conflict, it later shifts. You have essentially the battle over the Palestine Mandate which becomes at the end of the 1940s and throughout the 1950s the Arab-Israeli Conflict. [You also have] the major headline-getters of existing independent Arab states who speak for the inhabitants of the former Mandate of Palestine.

It is not until 1960 that you get an organization set in motion that says the Palestinians should be operating for themselves. There you have the beginnings of Fateh. If you're looking at the Hamas historical narrative and the historical narrative of the Muslim Brotherhood at the beginning and in the late 1950s and in the early 1960s, there was some association. In the 1960s, what you have is the immergence of a non-religiously identified major set of Palestinian organizations that become the most visible dimensions of the Palestinian movement.

During the 1950s-60s, at least some of the historians in the Muslim Brotherhood and other organizations say that this was a period where it was fruitless to try to do open resistance. It was a period of mosque building and education, of looking forward to the next generation. There is this grand sort of movement in the 50s and 60s where you get Palestinian organizations. But following the 1967 war, the organizations that have greatest visibility-sort of the mainstream Fateh and the Palestine Liberation Organization and the radical groups or that full spectrum that goes from Arafat to George Habash or Nayef Hawatmah-and in the visible spectrum there isn't any Palestinian organization that is explicitly identified as Islamic in that narrative.

It's interesting to go back and look at the comprehensive studies of the late 1960s and early 1970s of the Palestinian movement-e.g., the remarkably helpful book edited by William Quant and in particular Anne Lesh's article in it. When you look at that, it is as if Islam really does not exist among the Palestinians. But if we look at that period with the perspective of 2006, we can say that in fact there were Islamic organization and groupings that were there. [They were overlooked] because-whether you were a Palestinian Marxist militant, a mainstream Palestinian nationalist, a policy maker in the United State or an Israeli-everybody tended to know that religion, because of modernization, was fading and was going to disappear.

Therefore people didn't have to pay attention to religion. Remarkably in this period, as the secular radicals and as Fateh become increasingly visible as the spokespersons for the Palestinian cause, the Israelis in opposition provide some support for the Islamic groups as a way of providing an alternative to the emergence of the Palestinian movement.

Now, of course, this all changes for a variety of reasons and in a variety of contexts by the end of the 1980s. You have, in late-1987 and 1988, the emergence of an explicitly Islamic organization that is heir to the Muslim Brotherhood of the Egyptian volunteers and the activities of Sheikh [Ahmed Ismail] Yassin. I'll leave that to my colleague to explain what we have now that comes from this, because I want to focus on the second context for a moment.

By the late 1980s having an Islamic organization as a recognized basis for mobilization was [accepted as] credible. It's not just credible on the streets of Cairo or the streets of Jerusalem, but it was credible here on the streets of Washington, DC as well. In 1965 the idea was that the Muslim Brotherhood was nothing except a has-been.

Some of you may have had Richard Mitchell's book on the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood assigned to you in class. Poor Dick was always trying to convince people that the Muslim Brotherhood really meant something in the late 1906s or early 70s and nobody would believe him Then by the end of the 1980s everybody believed-even more than they should-that "Oh, so the Muslim Brotherhood is a threat." Some of you may have seen the History Channel special on the Muslim Brotherhood called, "The Brotherhood of Terror." I had some part in that, but basically my major part was to try to tone down the inflammatory stuff that was put in. It is remarkable how much of it got through anyway. But the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat, of the dear old bureaucratic Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a threat, somehow became a credible notion by the end of the 1980s. It was because of the entire history of Islamic movements in general, or that second narrative that I mentioned.

In the 1930s, '40s and '50s you had movements like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the Jamaa't Islamiya in Pakistan that were dedicated to trying to Islamize the modernizing societies in which they found themselves. They were part of the old fashioned nationalism of the upper middle class nationalist who, "secured independence for their countries" in various movements, whether it was in Asia, the Middle East or Sub-Saharan Africa. They were the old fashioned guys whose basic vision was they wanted to get rid of the colonialists so they could sit in the same chair. Mustafa Nahas didn't want a radically socially changed or transformed Egypt; he just wanted to sit in the same chair-this is of course my personal political view-that Lord Cromer, the British Consul-General had sat in 50 years before.

So you had the old nationalism that had achieved independence for Syria, Lebanon or Jordan, and that faced then the problem of the Palestine Mandate. However, these were people with the color of my hair, the old grey-haired guys. By the 1950s it became clear that the old-fashioned nationalism didn't work. What you needed then were the bright, young, handsome military officers who could "get things done." This lead to the emergence of the radical, dictatorial nationalism that was to replace the old-fashioned nationalism. It was even less oriented toward trying to implement Islamic programs.

By the 1970s, it was clear that that kind of program had also not [proven successful]. The emergence of a revolutionary Islamism then led to what was the political Islam of the 1980s. In this context, you had the old, underground, under-emphasized Islamic dimensions of the Palestinian movement becoming more crystallized and clearer as an alternative to the old secular nationalist perspectives.

It's not that Sheikh Yassin was opposed the vision of an independent Palestine, but he did not necessarily accept the view that it should be essentially an Arafatian, or Nasserite, state. Let me suggest that the last great Nasserite-that is the last great standard-barer for the nationalism of the 1906s-was Yasser Araft. He survived the 1970s and 1980s because of the special conditions of Palestine.

However, by the end of the 1980s and early 1990s it was clear to many that there was the need for alternative programs. Hamas in a sense met that need. You have by 1987-89 a coming together of the evolution of the Palestinian movement and the evolution of political Islam in the twentieth century. Hamas in 1987, '88 and '89 represents essentially a crystallization, or synthesis, of those two trends in one organization.

I'll stop here so that I don't take up too much time. Thank you.

Amjad Atallah:

Thank you, Dr. Voll. It's great actually to get a historical perspective of a lot of the issues that we discuss. We always discuss them as if they have appeared out of nowhere. We're always surprised and shocked by them, so it is very useful to have that historical perspective. I also want to thank The Palestine Center for having this series of talks and for always providing a unique forum in which these types of discussions can take place. You don't hear them elsewhere in Washington.

And, I want to thank also the mother of prescience, because who could have imagined. I mean, the timing is perfect. Who could have imagined that the attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government in Palestine would have led to increased violence and regional instability? It falls into the "who could have predicted that disbanding the Iraqi army would have been a bad idea," or that the levies in Louisiana would have been breached.

That will be the only sarcastic part of this speech, but the point is that a lot of this was expected and a lot of this was predicted, so it's not a surprise that we're here [talking about Hamas]. I think what we'll do is discuss in a sense why everybody picked the policies that they picked, which have lead us to be right here.

I'll start with describing a Sufi story-which is actually not just a Muslim story, but a story that I guess you hear in many religious and mystical traditions-about the blind men and the elephant. You have probably all heard this. A group of blind men stumble across an elephant and each one is trying to describe the elephant. One grabs the trunk and says, "Well an elephant is like an anaconda." Another one grabs the leg and says, "No, an elephant is like a tree trunk." Another one touches the side and says, "No, an elephant is like wall." One grabs the ear and says, "No, an elephant is like a fan." One grabs the tail and says, "No, an elephant is like a vine."

The point is, of course, that all of them are right but also, all of them are wrong. In a sense, everyone who has been trying to analyze Hamas, or is looking at this from a specific unique perspective, has come up with an answer that sounds right to them, and which sounds right for the particular context in which they are discussing it, but in fact, which is wrong in terms of an overall picture. So today I will describe each of the blind men. I'm going to describe each of the specific perspectives, and since we're in Washington, I'm going to start with the U.S. and Israeli perspectives.

How is it that Israel and the United State perceive-and they are two separate views, I am not putting them together-how does Israel perceive Hamas and what is Israel's overall goal in the current context?

Israel wants a pliant Palestinian organization that is strong enough to keep the cease-fire with Israel, but not so strong as to ultimately challenge Israeli hegemony over Palestinian lives. It needs to be legitimate enough for Israel to deal with so that it can achieve that cease-fire, but not so legitimate that it could demand negotiations or change the context of the debate by leading a renewed revolution.

Now, that is a tricky thing for Israel to achieve. It's looking for a balance. Hamas recognizes this and made the same interpretation of Israeli concerns, and attempted to actually place itself where it thought Israel would find a quid pro quo, or where it thought it could create a quid pro quo with Israel.

For the United States, though, something different was wanted. Yes, they wanted a pliant Palestinian organization. It had to be one that paid lip service, though, to secular democratic principles-something the Israelis never cared about. It needed to be one that promised nonviolence against Israel and one that was willing to except the creation of an interim state before [U.S.] President [George W.] Bush leaves office. This mean it needs to be strong enough to fight other Palestinian factions, but not strong enough to fight Israel. It needs to be honest enough to have the support of the majority of Palestinians, but corrupt or cynical enough that it can be compromised by U.S. support.

Again, that's a very tricky balance, and Hamas was not very good-it still is not to this day-at reading American interests. Part of the reason, I think, that Hamas cannot read American interests is that it follows a simplistic "Israel controls America" kind of stereotype whereby if Israel wants to cut a deal with Hamas then it will go to the United States and say, "We want to cut a deal with Hamas, don't keep pushing for regime change," without recognizing that the United States may have its own interests in the region that would necessitate the U.S. taking a more ideologically hard-line position than Israel would have done on its own.

So, for Israel, this meant ambivalence. For Israel there is still-despite the current violence on the ground-ambivalence about where Hamas fits in its national strategic interests in the future. For the United States, there is no ambivalence. Hamas needs to be overthrown. This is a specific regime change operation designed to lead to a coups that would overthrow the democratically-elected government. It is that tension that, in many ways, has led to the confusing messages that you keep hearing from Tel Aviv and Washington and to the confusing policies that have resulted in, inevitably, an escalation of violence.

What about from a Palestinian perspective? What about Hamas as a Palestinian national liberation movement? Hamas has adopted the revolutionary rhetoric and methodology of the secular nationalist movements that preceded it. As Dr. Voll was saying, they started with an al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen [the Muslim Brotherhood] approach, but then in the late 1980s, they decided that they would actually compete head-on with the secular nationalist liberation movements and adopt-while keeping the al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen approach of grassroots organization, dawa and social services-the revolutionary methodologies that were adopted by Fateh, the PFLP and the DFLP earlier in their careers, when they were not so "grey-haired."

This included effective grassroots organizing, the voluntary creation and organization of charities, and a meritocratic leadership structure. This is important. Hamas could not have survived until today unless it had adopted a meritocratic leadership structure in which every time the Israelis assassinated one of their leaders, they would pick and choose the next-most qualified leader to move up into that position. The assumption of the forever-leadership style, or the idea that leadership is due or owed to forever be in power because it started a revolution or because it began the process, has not been one that has yet corrupted Hamas' leadership.

Hamas also was very effective in its use of violence against the occupying power, including the use of illegal violence. Now, I say "illegal violence." I'm a lawyer so, of course, I want to explain. You understand the [difference between] legitimate acts against an occupying power and illegitimate acts against non-combatants. Hamas was very good at using illegitimate attacks against non-combatants, as well as occasionally using those against military targets. And it would appear that Hamas is still debating, in the future when it resorts to large-scale violence, whether it will use the illegal or if it is going to use the more legal [approach].

Hamas also was able to make a connection between the use of violence and specific political aims. Now I'm saying all of this but I'm not discussing Fateh. However, in each one of these categories, Fateh failed, in the current or modern period. [On the issue of] grassroots organizing, Fateh stopped doing it. It felt it didn't need to do it. In effect, the Oslo process for Fateh was treated as if victory had been achieved.

[In terms of] voluntary organizations and charities, actually Fateh under Arafat had always used the patronage system, in which its leadership provided patronage to individuals, organizations and groups, which was meant to buy loyalty. The idea, though, of having voluntary organizations and charities that provided services, once the Palestine Liberation Organization was no longer the recipient of the largesse of the Gulf States or tax money collected from Palestinian salaries in the Gulf, simply stopped. They couldn't find an alternative; they didn't understand how to fundraise. If they couldn't get that money from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Qatar, they couldn't figure out how to do it. Oslo was the next logical step, and they attempted to effectively create a welfare state through the Oslo process to compensate for what they used to do before. However, they did it so inefficiently that Palestinians didn't give them credit for it.

[Regarding] a meritocratic leadership structure, obviously, there are still people in Fateh who believe that if you started in Fateh you should die in Fateh. You should be the leader that is with the organization for beginning to end, and that it is absolutely necessary that young blood not be allowed to move up into the leadership structure. That was one of the primary reasons Hamas won the election. Fateh kept having an internal fight as to who was going to be on the Fateh list; would they allow young people to be in the list; were they going to have primaries or not; were they going to allow people that have allegations of corruption against them to run?

[On the] effective, if occasionally illegal use of violence, Fateh decided to turn a blind eye to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, but their use of violence was not connected to a political aim. Their use of violence was actually connected to competing with Hamas. Hamas was using violence for a very specific aim: to overthrow the Palestinian Authority (PA). As long as Arafat was alive, Hamas did not believe that it could deal inside the PA, so the goal was the overthrow of the PA.

The use of violence was therefore directed at Israel in order for Israel to have the excuse to dismantle the PA for Hamas. Israel's attacks, you'll have to remember, for the majority of the intifada were not against Hamas; they were against the PA. So, Hamas would attack Israel and Israel would attack the PA, the PA being Fateh. That weakened Fateh considerably; it weakened the PA considerably; and it allowed Hamas to fill the vacuum. When Fateh used violence, they weren't using it very strategically. They weren't using it very tactically even. It was simply designed to try to maintain some level of support among the public that could compete with Hamas.

Finally, in terms of respect for popular will, Hamas is actually very explicit that it respects the concepts of pluralism and democracy. So does Fateh, so does the PFLP and so does the DFLP. So on that score they're all the same. In terms of Hamas' willingness to ascribe to democracy before it was willing to participate in the political system, well it wasn't. It wasn't willing to allow the political system that was in place before it decided to join to be considered legitimate. Likewise, Fateh, once it lost the election, was no longer willing to consider the political process that led to its ouster as legitimate. So it's hard to [know]. In the future we can judge, maybe, just how deep-seeded [Hamas' commitment is]. We can see with Fateh that, unfortunately, that commitment to democracy and pluralism-at least among the old guard-was not as deep-seeded as we would have liked to believe. We can't tell from Hamas yet because support for a democratic system when you're in the ascendancy is easy to do. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future.

The third [and final] perspective I want to talk about is Hamas within an Islamist spectrum, because, in the United States, we tend to lump everybody all together. So from Al-Qaeda to Zarqawi to Zarqawi's replacement, who's either in an Egyptian jail or somewhere in Iraq, everybody is the same. Everybody is part of some global "jihadist conspiracy" working to undermine the freedoms that we all love and cherish so much. Okay, that's a myth. It is simply a myth. It is so inaccurate actually that it's very dangerous to American national security interests, and I think the people who present that perspective are doing a tremendous disservice to the United States.

There is a spectrum among Islamist groups. Hamas and Hizbollah fall firmly within the nationalist side of that spectrum. They fall squarely within the middle to the left. Then you have groups like Al-Qaeda which fall to the right, and I would describe them, at the risk of over-generalization, as having these differences. For Hamas and Hizbollah, you have nationalist liberation organizations. These are groups that are primarily nationalist. They are nationalist almost before they're Islamic. They have an Islamist worldview within a nation-state system. They accept the nation-state system and they believe that their responsibility is to struggle within their own particular national context.

The other groups believe-there are other groups that are post-nationalists. As far as Al-Qaeda is concerned, the struggle is universal and can be fought anywhere. You can take any piece of Iraq if you can and use it as a base to attack other places. The ummah is one, in that sense it's a very traditional Islamic worldview, or Quranic worldview, and Muslims can operate anywhere within it.

Both are anti-occupation, but Hamas and Hizbollah except an international definition of occupation. They accept a "western" definition of occupation. As far as Hamas and Hizbollah are concerned, what is occupied is that which the United Nations Security Council considers occupied. It is that which the international community considers occupied. Therefore, they will comment very directly on Israel's occupation of the Sheba'a Farms, in terms of Hizbollah's concern, and Hamas on the occupation of Palestine. Hamas has made it clear that they generally mean the 1967 borders when they say that. The other groups, however, when they refer to occupation, effectively mean U.S. troop presence or non-Muslim troop presence anywhere in the Muslim world, which is a big difference.

Hamas and Hizbollah also fall on the spectrum of respect for democracy in terms of representative government. Maybe not democracy in the sense that we understand it in a Western-liberal sense, but even in the United States apparently we've moved significantly away from that. The other groups are very authoritarian, so their concepts of government are that there is an authoritarian, top-down, "This is what Islam is, and we impose Islam on the people." Hamas and Hizbollah believe very strongly in dawa [Islamic call to action], that, "we need to actually proselytize and convince the electorate of the positions that we want them to take, and that the way to get them to do what we want them to do is through the ballot box and through the elections." Hamas and Hizbollah also recognize pluralism; that Christianity and Judaism-and perhaps other religions, though it is unclear because they aren't political powers in Palestine or Lebanon, except for the Druze-are communities that have to be respected within the pluralistic state structure. Hamas is on record that Palestine will not be an Islamic state and that Palestine has to be a pluralist state because it has people of different religions in it.

Now, Hamas and Hizbollah are also influenced by various methods. Obviously Hizbollah is Shi'a and follows the Ja'afari mathab [Islamic school of thought], but it actually is respectful of the other mathabs. Hamas at one point seemed that it was very Hanbali, but has moved away or has tried to distance itself from a specifically Wahhabi perspective. On the right side though, when you're talking about groups like Al-Qaeda, they're explicitly Wahhabi. They are very, very puritanical in that sense.

In the middle, again, Hamas and Hizbollah see conflict as a result of continued colonialism. The reason that Hamas and Hizbollah have to fight, or the reason they believe that they have to fight, is because the colonial period never ended. It never ended at least for Lebanon and Palestine, and therefore those fights are continuing. However, on the right wing, again, are Al-Qaeda-type groups that see conflict as an inevitable clash between Muslims and Dar al-Harb or the land of war. If you're in America you call this the "clash of civilizations." It's a very similar concept, whereby conflict is inevitable between these two civilizations. One can only win and one has to be defeated. Again, in that sense, there is more of a similarity between some trends of thought in the United States and the right wing of the Islamist spectrum than there is between [the right wing and] Hamas and Hizbollah.

Hamas and Hizbollah believe very strongly in grassroots structures and creating political party bases. On the right wing you have the idea that you need to use revolutionary cell structures instead. Because of the nature of the revolution, you cannot create grassroots groups. You have to create revolutionary cell structures of two, three or four people that will do the operations that will create the change that you hope to see.

Hamas and Hizbollah loathe inter-Muslim conflict, but the right side, because they don't actually consider most Muslims Muslim, seeks inter-Muslim conflict. Groups like Hamas and Hizbollah effectively look to [governments] like Turkey, actually, even more than Iran in terms of how an Islamist political party becomes part of the political establishment, not only in the country but in the international system. Again, Hamas is on record as saying Turkey is the model it would most look for in terms of trying to rule. The other groups look to the Taliban as a model-the Taliban being basically Saudi Arabia without the royal family, where Wahhabism is seen as a pure expression of leadership.

So, within these different [contexts] if you look at Hamas across the spectrum from all these different perspectives, you can see a couple of things that I think are obvious; I could be wrong but this at least is my opinion. Hamas has set the foundations, and Dr. Voll, let me quote an anecdote to you, just so you understand how Palestinians perhaps feel about Hamas during this period.

As you know the Israelis have arrested about half of the Palestinian cabinet-or arrested would be the wrong word, they have been charged with anything. [Israel has] taken prisoner, or detained, half the cabinet and a third of the Palestinian Parliament. Now, they're obviously being used as bargaining chips for the release of the Israeli corporal who is being held as a prisoner of war by elements associated with Hamas.

Hamas' first request was that Palestinian minors being held without charge by Israel be released and that the women being held without charge be released in exchange for information about the Israeli corporal. So, the response of a number of [detained] Parliamentarians was to issue a statement saying to the government, "Do not negotiate for us in exchange for the corporal. Still negotiate for the women and the children and get them out of jail. If anybody's going to come out of jail let them come out of jail first. They've been in jail forever; let them get out of jail. We can stay in jail and we can be released later."

Now, regardless of whether or not you think cynically that it's a political ploy, imagine if you're Palestinian [what] your opinion [would be] of Hamas and the Hamas-elected officials who you've just elected and who are now in jail when they say, "No, leave us in jail. Get the children out." You can imagine the effect and the impact that has on the Palestinian public vis-a-vis the position the Palestinian executive branch took, which many Palestinians associate-rightly or wrongly-with support for the regime-change option.

What does this all mean at the end of the day? I think that Hamas has set the foundations for its own survival regardless of whether the choice is to allow them to govern or to allow them to fight. Those are the two options that Hamas has presented to the West. It is very clear to Israel, "You either allow us to govern and we keep a cease-fire and we govern, or you don't allow us to govern and we fight." In either category, Hamas thinks it will survive. I think that it has set the foundations for its survival at least better than Fateh has, so they will outlive Fateh through this process.

Now, the weakening of Hamas does not lead to the strengthening of Fateh. The weakening of Hamas will not strengthen secular nationalists. There is a historic process at play here. These movements have been working and have effectively created a new Weltanschaung [worldview] in the Middle East and they are not going to disappear overnight. Secular nationalism is going to have to work equally hard and over an equal period of time to re-establish itself in the Middle East.

The concept of an interim state, which is a U.S. policy goal, will fail without Hamas. And a negotiated end of conflict deal, which is Fateh's goal, will fail without Hamas. So Hamas has made itself indispensable to the short-term goals of the Bush administration and the Olmert administration, but it has also made itself indispensable to the long-term goals of Fateh. Regional instability will result from attempts to overturn elected and popular governments, but not because of the whole concept of the "Arab street rising up," or that kind of 1960s language and rhetoric we used to use. That's not going to happen. The Arab street is outraged but it is not going to rise up and overthrow its own governments because of what is happening in Palestine or what is going to happen in Lebanon in the next couple of weeks.

It is because Hizbollah and Hamas have developed strong popular bases and strong alliances regionally within each others' groups [that attempts at regime change will cause instability]. It is not a coincidence that every step Fateh took when it was in power, in attempt to get to negotiations, was not necessarily linked with what Egypt was doing, what Jordan was doing or what Syria or Lebanon were doing. But Hamas [on the other hand] is linking its steps with what is happening with regional players. Hizbollah's attack today can probably be construed as being linked to what's happening in the Gaza Strip, and the linkages that have been created will lead to increased instability from attempts to overthrow either Hamas or Hizbollah.

With that, I'll thank you and apologize for going over a little bit.

John Voll, Ph.D., is a professor of Islamic history and associate director of the Prince Al-Waleed bin Tala Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding at Georgetown University. He has published several books and numerous articles on modern Islamic history.

Amjad Atallah, Esq. is founder and president of Strategic Assessments Initiative, a Washington-based non-profit organization that assists with negotiations in conflict and post-conflict situations. He has advised the Palestinian negotiating team on issues relating to Israel and the United States and participated in discussions pertaining to the Quartet's "Roadmap."

This "For the Record" transcript may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center. The speakers' views do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jerusalem Fund.

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