Hamas Makes a Political Comeback

KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip — It has boldly claimed responsibility for suicide bombings that have killed scores of Israelis. Its stated aim is to destroy what little is left of the Mideast peace process.

Yet the Islamic resistance movement Hamas is enjoying a political rebirth.

The organization, which is suspected of carrying out last month’s deadly market attack in Jerusalem, runs social and medical programs alongside its military operations and appears to Palestinians fed up with the flagging effort by Israeli and Palestinian leaders to forge a permanent peace and disillusioned by the lack of improvement in their lives.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, his own position weakened by a corruption scandal and the deadlocked peace talks, has resisted demands from Israel and the United States to crack down on Hamas and other radical Islamic groups following the July 30 market attack.

“He is too wise now to move against us and all our supporters,” said Abdel Aziz Rantissi, a founder of Hamas and its top political leader in the Gaza Strip. “He cannot arrest thousands and thousands of people.”

Indeed, to the anger of Israeli officials and the dismay of U.S. diplomats, Arafat appeared to be gathering the extremists closer about him this week with a two-day “national unity” conference in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

In Wednesday’s session in Gaza City, Rantissi and other militants listened approvingly from the dais as Arafat spoke the language of confrontation. Palestinians, he said, are prepared to return to the days of violent uprising that ended with the first Israeli-Palestinian accord nearly four years ago.

“All options are open to us,” the Palestinian leader said to rousing applause. He repeated his vow to defy Israel’s latest calls for sweeping arrests of Islamic militants and then publicly embraced Rantissi and other radical leaders.

Arafat’s police force also began enforcing a partial embargo on Israeli goods Thursday, keeping Israeli trucks loaded with fruit, appliances and milk away from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

At the same time, in seemingly contradictory actions, Arafat has voiced his commitment to the peace process and is allowing Palestinian security officials to continue meeting with their Israeli counterparts. Arafat even met this week with the head of Israel’s General Security Service, known as the Shin Bet.

Nonetheless, Israeli officials reacted strongly to Arafat’s dialogue with Hamas and the smaller group Islamic Jihad, accusing him of seeking to appease the militants. “He says he is against terrorism, and afterward he runs to hug the killers of women and children,” said Danny Naveh, an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In Washington, a State Department spokesman said Thursday the U.S. regrets Arafat’s remarks but continues to regard him as a partner in the elusive search for peace.

Palestinian analysts suggested that Arafat may have arranged the Gaza conference to co-opt his opposition at an opportune moment. Others said he simply needed a show of support right now.

The Palestinian leader’s tough words fell sweetly on the ears of Rantissi, whose group has preached a steady rejection of the peace process. “All of us are standing together now to confront the assault of Israel against our people,” the Hamas leader said after the speech. “This is good for the Palestinians.”

In an interview this week at his home in this impoverished Gaza city, Rantissi offered soft drinks from a lacquered tray, along with harsh statements about Israel and the unjust agreements he believes it has extracted from a weak Palestinian Authority.

Rantissi, a pediatrician who teaches at Gaza’s Islamic University, said the interim peace agreements, known as the Oslo accords, are now dead. He thanked God for the collapse of a process that he said should not have begun.

“We have been under occupation since 1948,” said the 50-year-old with a trim beard and dark hair just beginning to gray. “We cannot be patient forever. It is our full right to liberate our land, by all means.”

Hamas claimed responsibility for the July 30 attack--which killed 16 people including two suicide bombers--in a leaflet that was never authenticated.

Rantissi, a leader of the political wing that runs medical clinics, children’s camps and social welfare programs, said he could not confirm operations by the group’s underground military cells. But the leaflet and the lack of claims from other groups point strongly to its involvement, he said.

Last year, after a series of suicide bombings that killed nearly 60 people in Israel, Arafat ordered a sweeping crackdown on the Islamic groups. His security forces incarcerated more than 1,000 activists, collected weapons, restricted the flow of funds and forbade the most fiery of Gaza’s mosque preachers to speak at Friday services.

Now, Palestinian anger over the lack of progress in the peace talks and a worsening economic situation have combined to provide more fertile ground for the extremists. Increasingly, Palestinians are saying they see little reason to continue with a process that has yielded virtually no new territory in the past year.

The economic benefits of peace, including investment by the international community, never arrived. Thousands of workers are frequently idled, as they are now, by Israeli closures that keep them from reaching their jobs in Israel. A recent United Nations report stated that per capita income has plummeted almost 40% since the first peace agreement was signed in 1993.

Hamas appeals to Gaza’s poorest residents through a broad network of food distribution projects and free medical clinics. Rantissi said its Palestinian supporters now number 50% of all Gazans and a slightly lower percentage in the West Bank. Most analysts estimate its strength at about 30% of Palestinians, still making it the largest opposition group to Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.