Fatah sidelined, Hamas gains status as principal resistance

RAMALLAH, West Bank - On the wall of the Israeli government press office in Jerusalem is a stack of yellow Post-it notes pasted one on top of the other, with the number 10,048 scrawled on the top one. That is the number of Palestinian rockets and mortar shells fired into Israel from Gaza since 2001.

It is already out of date, and other Post-its will soon be stacked on top.

For Israel, the tally has prompted internal debate about how to counter the threat from Hamas's rockets and those of other armed Palestinian factions.

For Hamas, the very existence of that number in an Israeli office is an achievement. For anyone watching the plumes of smoke rising from Gaza in recent days, Hamas dominates the television news and newspaper headlines.

It is not only the publicity, but the status conveyed on Hamas as the Palestinians' principal resistance. Its secular rival, Fatah, sits on the sidelines, marginal to the violence unfolding in Gaza, from which Hamas expelled it at gunpoint in the summer of 2007.

The questions remain: Why did Hamas end its six-month cease-fire on Dec.19? Will it - can it - unleash suicide bombers into Israel in retaliation? And will the devastation make Palestinians fall into line behind Hamas, or will Hamas lose their support as Gazans count the escalating cost in blood and destruction?

Even knowing that retaliation was certain, Hamas seemed to have ended the cease-fire in part because of its long-standing discipline and consistency: For years it has preached to Palestinians the rejectionist credo that Fatah negotiated with Israel and got nowhere. The Hamas way of armed force, it argued year in and year out, was the only way.

And so it appears that Hamas turned its logic against its own cease-fire: Hamas supreme leader Khaled Meshal said on Dec. 27 the cease-fire had yielded few results. If there were no specific benefits, like freed prisoners, then the option, was a return to violence. It may also have calculated that the rockets into Israel, 60 in one day, would restore its status among Palestinians as the champion of resistance against the Zionist enemy. A question remains whether Hamas expected a shock-and-awe Israeli offensive that hit so many buildings at once, and left Gaza reeling.

The outcome, for the moment, is far from clear because neither side has yet to deploy the full arsenal available to it.

The key issue is whether Palestinians will blame Israel for raining fire down upon them, as Hamas hopes, or instead blame Hamas for provoking the reaction, as Fatah, Israel, and its Western allies hope.

Right now, Palestinians are certainly blaming Israel, loudly.

This weekend, the Palestinian newspaper Al Hayat al Jadida printed a front page with a headline: "1,000 Martyrs and Wounded in Saturday Slaughter."

More important is whether once away from television cameras and foreign journalists, Palestinians will say and vote the same way in presidential and parliamentary elections, both scheduled roughly within a year.

At Shuafat refugee camp on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem Sunday, masked Palestinian youths used slingshots to hurl stones at Israeli soldiers.

Mohammed, 13, predicted bloody Hamas reprisals. "Hamas will be the one that will bomb green Egged buses, and we will go back to the way it was," he said, with evident relish. He was referring to the Israeli bus carrier often targeted by bombers.

Others were more doubtful. Ahmad, 14, said he supported "neither one nor the other," complaining that Hamas and Fatah spent too much time fighting each other, not working for unity.

A few miles north in Ramallah, anti-Israeli and anti-American sentiments were high among a small crowd of protesters gathered, incongruously, beneath the Stars and Bucks cafe.

Even here, in Fatah's heartland, people said they admired Hamas for its willingness to take on a regional power.

Challenged on the point of firing highly inaccurate rockets from Gaza into Israel at huge cost in retaliation, one 30-year-old Palestinian, who refused to give his name, replied it was enough "just to say no."

He compared it to the impotent yet defiant gesture of the Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi, who has become a hero across the Arab world for throwing a shoe at President Bush.

Mustafa Saleh, 37, said: "I am originally Fatah, and my voice will always be Fatah. But Hamas is resisting, and we are a nation under occupation. I support the resistance."

Hamas hopes such sentiments will bring new supporters.

But as he watched the procession go by, Mohanad Salah, 42, said that emotions would calm down. Palestinians were capable of wanting Hamas-style "resistance" with their hearts, but peace talks with their heads, he said.

"You should know that even after Israel carried out this operation yesterday, if today it says, 'We want a political solution; let's reach an agreement,' it would be completely accepted by the majority of the Palestinian people," Salah said.