Hamas Sees Peace as Weakness It destabilizes the Mideast with terrorism each time Arabs try to normalize relations with Israel. By Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib
I was 12 and living in Gaza City on March 27, 2002, when a Hamas suicide bomber from the West Bank blew himself up in a hotel in Netanya, Israel, killing 30 Israelis and injuring 140 others. This attack became known as the Passover Massacre. It was the deadliest incident involving Israeli civilians during the second intifada. I vividly remember the glee with which Hamas leaders, supporters, religious clerics and enthusiasts in Gaza celebrated this horrendous and unprecedented attack.
The attack, which sent shock waves through Israeli society, occurred a day before the unveiling of the Arab Peace Initiative by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at the Arab League Summit in Beirut. The proposal, which Hamas, and initially Israel, rejected, offered the normalization of relations between the Arab world and Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian and Arab territories to pre-June 1967 borders.
After the Passover Massacre, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, the largest military campaign in Palestinian territories since the 1967 war, which resulted in the current occupation of a large part of the West Bank. The Israeli government also constructed a security barrier, often called the separation wall, along its border with the West Bank, which isolated and effectively annexed some Palestinian towns and villages.
In the 1990s and during the second intifada, Hamas’s attacks put the Palestinian Authority in a difficult position. The Oslo Accords gave it a monopoly on the use of violence, especially to prevent terrorist attacks. Hamas’s attacks undermined the Palestinian Authority and prolonged the conflict, preventing the establishment of a secular Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state. The massacre overshadowed the fragile peace initiative and provided extremist Israeli political parties an opportunity to sideline the peace process and expand Israel’s West Bank settlements.
Hamas had accomplished its goal of sabotaging nonviolent political solutions to the conflict. Additionally, the group’s propaganda, which I experienced firsthand in Gaza, glorified its terrorism and demonized the word “peace,” claiming it was equivalent to betrayal, weakness, surrender and the embrace of Jews. It also focused on Islamizing Palestinian society, which had historically been secular.
I remember signing up for a summer camp in 2002, thinking it would be full of fun recreational activities. Though I hadn’t realized it, this camp was organized by Hamas propagandists who proselytized the virtues of armed resistance and being a good Muslim. I told my mom that I wouldn’t be attending the rest of the boring weeklong camp. Even as a child I saw through its cheap propaganda.
Through its indoctrination and Islamization of Gaza’s youth, Hamas was breeding future generations of radicalized Palestinians. I remember the “protests” that Hamas regularly organized: They took students out of class, bused them to border checkpoints and Israeli military positions, and had them throw stones at soldiers. These field trips would often end up with young Palestinian children being maimed by Israel Defense Forces fire. Hamas wanted scenes of dead Palestinians for its recruitment efforts and propaganda and to undermine the Palestinian Authority-led peace process.
The second intifada was an opportunity for Hamas to sow chaos. The group used Gazans as tools to undermine any political resolution of the conflict in pursuit of an unrealistic, maximalist goal to liberate all of Palestine and somehow expel all Jews from the region.
More than two decades after the Passover Massacre, Hamas launched an even deadlier attack on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,200 Israelis and provoking an Israeli counterattack that has thus far killed over 19,000 people, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. Hamas planned this attack to derail another pending political evolution: Saudi Arabia’s normalization of relations with Israel, which would have legitimized broader peace initiatives with Arab states.
The slaughter on Oct. 7 was meant to destabilize the region and fulfill the destructive aspirations of Hamas and its backers. The group counted on an overwhelmingly violent Israeli reaction to reinvigorate the spirit of resistance born out of Palestinian suffering. Hamas sought to hide its failures and inability to produce any progress in Gaza behind this brutal attack. Hamas counted on international sympathy for the unbearable civilian casualties—including dozens of my own family members—resulting from the Israeli offensive. Hamas bet that these deaths would shield it from criticism.
Many Palestinians and their allies, particularly outside Gaza, aren’t willing to condemn Hamas and acknowledge its undeniable role in the suffering of Gazans. Hamas has been a disaster to Palestinian aspirations for freedom and self-determination. It must be ruthlessly criticized and rejected, especially because it is serving the goals and interests of anti-peace Israeli factions.
How can Hamas claim to be a resistance group seeking the liberation of Palestinians when its Passover Massacre resulted in the occupation of the West Bank and its Oct. 7 attack will result in the full destruction and reoccupation of the Gaza Strip?
Weakening Hamas begins with normalizing criticisms of its ideology, its violent agenda and its subjugation of the Palestinian people.
Mr. Alkhatib is a nonprofit administrator and a writer on Middle East issues based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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