Hamas’s achievement is one of the few positive gains that ordinary Palestinians and Arabs can celebrate after generations of national mediocrity, incompetence and failure.
This is precisely why most Arab government dislike Hamas: It represents everything they fear, or have failed at. Hamas has fought Israel to a draw three times now. It enjoys large-scale public support at home and across the entire region. It has combined Islamic faith with nationalist passions to mobilise its people for action, including armed resistance. It has successfully resisted all attempts to control and weaken it – whether by the US, Israel Saudi Arabia, Jordan or others. And it insists on nationalist positions that defy the Israeli-American line, which no Arab governments have been able to manage. The simplistic view is that opinions about Hamas reflect a geographic or political split between supporters of countries such as Qatar and Turkey – who back Islamists such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood – and those who fear such groups and secretly share the desire of Israel and America to crush them. These include Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and the leaders of most Arab governments.
The reality is that an intense complex debate is going on among ordinary Palestinians and Arab across the region. Even as they celebrate, they are asking themselves a host of strategic, ideological and moral questions. Most notably: Do we fight to destroy Israel, or negotiate to coexist with it? Should Palestinians seek full national unity by reviving the PLO or operate through the current erratic Hamas-Fatah relationship? Should we rely on the diplomacy and promises of US