Artículo de Zvi Bar´el en "Ha´a retz" del 29-11-02

"My brother Ibrahim, you must understand, liberation of the territories from the occupation is only one phase ... We do not distinguish between Palestine of 1948 and Palestine of 1967. Palestine is everything." The speaker, Khaled Meshal, head of the political bureau of the Hamas movement, looks like a teacher facing a disadvantaged student as he gives an interview to the Lebanese television station, LBC.

The interviewer asked for more and more details about the meeting that was held in Cairo between delegations from Hamas and Fatah. "Were you asked to stop the suicide operations?" he asked. "No, we were not asked and that subject was discussed only fleetingly," Meshal replied. "In other words, you will continue with the suicide operations?" the interviewer insisted. "We will continue with all the means at our disposal," came the reply. "Including inside the 1948 borders," the interviewer continued. "I already told you, my brother Ibrahim, there is no difference between 1948 and 1967. First of all we have to remove the Zionist occupation and we will be happy to establish a state in every area of the occupied lands that is liberated," Meshal stated.

Those who were impressed by the "secret" document that the Israeli army seized in a raid on a base of the Palestinians' Preventive Security forces in Gaza, could have heard most of its contents, expressed openly and calmly, by Khaled Meshal a few days before the document was made public.

Born in 1956, Meshal holds a first degree in physics from Kuwait University. He lived in Kuwait until the start of the Gulf War in the early 1990s, having moved there in 1967 from his village near Ramallah, in the West Bank, after completing elementary school. When Kuwait expelled the Palestinians - as punishment for their support of the Iraqi conquest - Meshal and his family, which includes seven children, returned to Jordan.

He gained fame in 1997, when agents of Israel's Mossad espionage agency bungled an attempt to assassinate him in Amman - an episode in the wake of which the prime minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu, was compelled to release Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin from prison. In 2000, Jordan deported Meshal and four other Hamas leaders to Qatar, which agreed to allow them in temporarily. Meshal has not returned to Jordan and now divides his time between Syria, Lebanon and Iran.

He left the Cairo talks between his organization and Fatah when he discovered that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat was unwilling to send a representative of his rank to the meeting. At first the word was that Abu Mazen, considered Arafat's number two, would attend, but Arafat vetoed that option. He sent instead Mohammed Rashid, his former money man, whom he appointed to handle special assignments, and Palestinian cabinet minister Zakaria al-Agha.
The two were not authorized to reach an agreement of any kind, only to present the view of Fatah in favor of reaching a partial cease-fire - in other words, not to perpetrate terrorist attacks in Israel for an agreed period. The Egyptians, who in addition to hosting the talks were major sponsors of the meeting, and representatives of the European Union, who were the godfathers, aspired to achieve a year-long cease-fire. Fatah was ready to talk about three months - that is, until after the Israeli elections at the end of January. The Hamas representative, Mousa Abu Marzouk, who is Meshal's deputy, rejected any suggestion of a cease-fire.

Relations between Fatah and Hamas - since the Gaza-based organization was established at the end of the 1980s - have been highly charged. The ideological differences between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas were entrenched in the Hamas Charter, which was published in August 1988: " ... in spite of our appreciation for the PLO ... and despite the fact that we do not denigrate its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we cannot substitute it for the Islamic nature of Palestine by adopting secular thought. When the PLO adopts Islam as the guideline for life, then we shall become its soldiers, the fuel of its fire which will burn the enemies. And until that happens ... the position of Hamas towards the PLO is one of a son towards his father, a brother towards his brother, and a relative towards his relative" (translation from the Web site www.palestinecenter.org).

This ideological dispute was reflected at the operational level as well. In 1998, the Hamas spokesman in Jordan, Ibrahim Ghosheh, published an article in which he complained that pressure being exerted by Israel and by the preventive security forces of the Palestinian Authority had prevented a large number of attacks that Hamas had sought to carry out in revenge for the Israeli army's killing of the Awadallah brothers [Adel and Imad Awadallah, leaders of the Hamas military wing, were killed near Hebron in September 1998] and the attempted assassination of Khaled Meshal. "The Palestinian Authority knows every detail and they were the ones who laid their hands on the factories for manufacturing explosives in Beit Sahour, in Nablus and in Hebron," Ghosheh wrote.

Hamas leaders attributed the period of quiet during Benjamin Netanyahu's term of office as prime minister "to circumstances in the field, which make it difficult to carry out operations," as Mousa Abu Marzouk said in 1998, and not to any change of ideology. The "circumstances" referred in part to the Israeli security forces but in particular to the Palestinian Authority's forces, which "apparently wanted to conciliate Israeli and American opinion," according to Marzouk.

The rivalry between the two ideologies was also translated into rivalry in methods of operation during the period of the current intifada. Within a few months of the spate of Hamas suicide attacks, the Tanzim militia began to perpetrate similar operations. A senior figure in the Palestinian Authority told Ha'aretz that the similarity in the methods of operation were due not only to the "success" of the suicide bombing attacks but stemmed also from an effort to prevent Hamas from "winning the jackpot," the source said. "Apparently the Tanzim did not want to create a situation that would resemble the developments in Lebanon, where it was the Hezbollah organization and not the Lebanese government that became the hero of the hour and the great victor over the IDF. There was also concern that Hamas, with its suicide bombers, would turn the intifada into a religious holy war and ruin any possibility of making clear the difference between the national ideology of Fatah, according to which the aim of the war is to move the occupation back to the 1967 lines, and the religious ideology of Hamas, which seeks to remove the occupation from all parts of the State of Israel, but also to make Palestine a theocracy."

In May 2002, when Arafat delivered a speech to the nation following the terrorist attack on the club in Rishon Letzion, declaring his intention to carry out reforms, he angered Hamas. Arafat called for the boycott of those who harmed innocent civilians, "as they are damaging the Palestinian cause." His spokesmen issued condemnations of the "internal Hamas" and "external Hamas" leaders, alleging that they were doing everything in their power "to destroy the Palestinian Authority."

Arafat's move had an internal rationale as well. A few days before his speech, Khaled Meshal urged the Palestinian people to remove the Palestinian Authority from power and expel its leaders from the territories. Arafat's aide, Taeb Abed el-Rahim, likened Hamas to the extreme right in Israel, which also wanted to be rid of Arafat. "Hamas," he added, "has an agenda of its own to make itself the exclusive representative of the Palestinians."

The Cairo talks held this month between Hamas and Fatah "could not bridge the deep gaps between the two movements," a European diplomat who was involved in the reconciliation initiative said this week. "The Hamas representatives came with the feeling that they could dictate the agenda, that they are in possession of the ultimate weapon, and that they are dealing with an enfeebled Fatah, which is almost pleading for its life."

This view is reflected in an article written by a Hamas leader, Azat al-Ghashek, after the talks concluded. "The position of the Palestinian Authority was clear when it asked for a stop to the resistance operations within the borders of 1948 or 1967," he noted. "The PA adopted the method of negotiations with Israel and continues to insist on this, despite the devastation these negotiations have inflicted on the Palestinian people and despite Sharon's arrogance and his aggression against our people. Nevertheless, the PA sees no way to restore its status and dignity other than through negotiations and accepting every initiative that is proposed to the Palestinian people, however humiliating it may be ...

"The PA wants to drag Hamas into the negotiations rubric and stop the resistance, in order to prove that it is capable of ensuring the security of the Zionist entity. It is escaping into the style of negotiations with Hamas after having been unsuccessful in putting a stop to the resistance operations by force."

After the Cairo talks, the external Hamas leadership (Israel refused to permit the representatives of internal Hamas to attend the talks) adopted a single publicity line according to which no agreements concerning a cessation of the attacks had been reached, nor was there place to discuss this. "After all, people from the PA also perpetrate suicide bombing attacks and other attacks inside Israel, which means that opinion is divided among them as well," Mousa Abu Marzouk told Quds Press, the Palestinian news agency.
From Abu Marzouk's point of view, the major achievement of the talks - as opposed to the previous talks that were held between the two organizations - is that this time "they were conducted on general subjects and not specific issues. This time we are marching hand in hand with Fatah on the path of the resistance." Abu Marzouk also disclosed that the Americans have held talks with Hamas three times since the events of September 11, "but on each occasion it was the Americans who broke off the talks."

Abu Marzouk made an effort to portray the two organizations as having the same status and an identical agenda. From Hamas's perspective, the very existence of talks between the two organizations as equals makes Hamas a legitimate representative of the Palestinians. Marzouk finds proof of this in the auspices Egypt granted the talks.

An official of the Palestinian Authority who was asked to respond to Abu Marzouk's comments disputes his interpretation. "Hamas did not receive a status equal to that of Fatah and cannot claim such a status," the official said. "Our intention was to create national unity that will make it possible to pursue the political negotiations. We are ready to give Hamas a respectable place in a Palestinian government, but they must be aware of the parameters of the negotiations and of the condition of stopping the resistance operations against Israel, at least in its territory. Our differences were not resolved, not even in the standing committee that was established in order to manage the dialogue between the organizations. It is clear to us that after a Palestinian state is established, the PA will have to deal with the Hamas movement by political means or by another means."

Hamas believes that the PA, and above all Arafat's weakness, do not give Fatah a bargaining position. It also believes that it will set the agenda in the future, too, given the fact that there is no political plan on the horizon and that it expects a right-wing government to be elected in Israel. Hamas, which in its charter described the balance of forces between it and the PLO as "relations of a son toward his father," can continue to invoke this metaphor. This time, though, it feels it has assumed the father's role.