Can Hamas Be Tamed?

Michael Herzog

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006

Summary:  Optimists argue that Hamas' participation in mainstream Palestinian politics will spur the group to moderate its radical goals and terrorist tactics. But history shows that political participation co-opts militants only under very specific conditions -- and almost none of those exist in the Palestinian Authority today.

Michael Herzog is a Brigadier General in the Israel Defense Forces and a Visiting Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was formerly the senior military aide to Israel's Minister of Defense and the head of strategic planning for the IDF.

The debate over what to expect from Hamas has often drawn on supposed lessons of history. Optimists point to several cases in which illiberal movements or groups conformed to liberal norms once ensconced in democratic political systems. Such was the case with many European socialist parties after World War I and with erstwhile communist parties in many eastern European and former Soviet countries more recently. In recent decades, several political groups in Latin America on both the right and the left have managed to move past their antidemocratic and even violent histories to become normal political actors. Rice herself has cited Ireland and Angola as examples of countries in which unsavory forces have opted for ballots over bullets. Pessimists, in contrast, note that the Nazis initially played by the rules of Weimar Germany's democratic system and rode electoral success to power, only to turn around and establish a tyranny. The Italian fascists did the same.

A more useful analogy can be found in the modern history of the Muslim Middle East, with its assortment of relatively young independent states -- nations where there is no democratic tradition or culture and where the governments have been challenged by Islamist movements advocating for the imposition of sharia while brandishing swords. In Turkey, the Islamists have been co-opted successfully, to the extent that the leader of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been serving as prime minister since 2002. But Turkey is unique in the region in having sustained a secular public culture for more than eight decades and democratic institutions for more than five. Moreover, contemporary Islamist moderation there may also stem from a tradition of state repression and intervention that has set clear limits on political behavior. Since Turkish Islamist parties began to participate in government in the 1970s, they have been banned and outlawed four times, and the Turkish military, the guardian of the secular republic, deposed an Islamic prime minister in 1997.

Among Arab countries, Jordan presents a model of successful Islamist co-optation (although less so of democracy). Islamists in Jordan were recognized publicly and given a stake in the political life there from the country's founding, in 1946, and as a result they have led the most establishment-oriented and least violent Islamist movement in the region. The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan has channeled its energies into nonviolent activism and anti-U.S. and anti-Israel rhetoric, generally invoking sharia in moral rather than political affairs. Jordan's Islamists have stood by the monarchy's Hashemite ruling family in moments of crisis, such as the showdown with Palestinian armed groups in 1970-71 and the al Qaeda bombings in Amman last November. And since entering the formal political system by running in the parliamentary elections of 1989, the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan has occupied, through its political wing, the Islamic Action Front, an average of a third of the seats in parliament.

It has been more common for regimes in the region to deal with Islamists through repression and confrontation followed by partial and limited co-optation. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for example (established in 1928), which favored violence to the point of assassinating a prime minister in 1948, was outlawed in 1954. Decades of repression and political exclusion eventually split the movement into two branches. The radicals found their way into Egyptian Islamic Jihad and ultimately al Qaeda. The moderates moved toward the mainstream, focused their message on education and the "indoctrination of the heart," and renounced the use of violence in 1971. They were then allowed to enter the political field, and they began participating in elections in 1984 (although they have had to run as independents, since Egyptian law bans parties based on religion). Relying on strong organizational skills and the good reputation of its social and religious arms, and taking advantage of the government's poor performance, the Muslim Brotherhood is now Egypt's leading opposition group.

Lebanon offers yet another model, with a strong Islamist movement (Hezbollah) operating with sponsorship from an external power (Iran) within a weak and fragmented political system. Hezbollah now maintains the most powerful militia in the country, with control of a virtually autonomous area in southern Lebanon and a global terrorist reach that has often served Iranian purposes. It has also become a central player in Lebanese politics, drawing on its base in the Shiite community, the largest community in the country. Syria's departure from Lebanon last April created a new freedom in Lebanese politics, and after enhancing its parliamentary representation in the May 2005 elections, Hezbollah joined the government for the first time. It has indeed found itself under pressure to disarm but, thanks to its newfound political power, has been able to fend off such pressure so far. Joining the government did not prevent Hezbollah from undertaking a serious cross-border attack on Israel in late November 2005, nor has its ideological platform or political demeanor shown signs of moderation. Whether, when, or under what conditions it will ultimately disarm remains to be seen.

CONDITIONS AND CONTEXT

The most important lesson to be drawn from these cases is that co-optation through political participation is not a given, but rather depends on the existence of certain conditions in the local political context. No Islamist movement has renounced violence or moderated its ideology of its own volition; when one has done so at all, it has been for lack of a better alternative. It appears that at least three factors need to be present for co-optation to occur: the existence of a strong, healthy, and relatively free political system into which the Islamists can be absorbed; a balance of power tilted against the Islamists that forces them to play by moderate rules; and sufficient time for co-optation to take effect.

A strong and healthy political system is essential because only it will offer Islamists the incentives for proper socialization. Unless elections are free and fair enough for the results to accurately reflect the popular will, there is little reason for a party to compete for new constituencies or marginal voters rather than cater to its extremist base. And unless the political order is stable and the state enforces a monopoly on authority and violence, there is little reason for a party to disarm (and much reason for it not to).

An imbalance of power favoring the state and mainstream forces is vital, meanwhile, because without checks and balances, a party inclined toward radicalism will be able to capture the state apparatus and bend it to its will. The Turkish army and the Jordanian monarchy have thus contributed to the eventual moderation of their countries' Islamists by setting limits on the kind of behavior permitted.