Early May, Israeli police stormed into the Al-Aqsa mosque, ostensibly to crowd control in the month of Ramadan and tame those who were allegedly pelting stones at Jewish worshippers praying at the Temple mount. They could not have been ignorant of the repercussions.
Their highhandedness was just what Hamas—a Palestinian group that has both an armed and a political wing, and is proscribed as a terrorist outfit by Israel, the United States, and Europe—needed to rise in the estimation of fellow Palestinians.
Hamas fired thousands of rockets on Israeli cities, including deep inside Tel Aviv and on Jerusalem for the first time. In response, Israel struck Gaza with a barrage of airstrikes and killed twenty times more Palestinians,
as many as 66 children, and demolished several buildings rendering thousands homeless.
But in the view of the Palestinians, Hamas was the last entity standing that still could challenge Israel’s might. President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian authority remained nearly absent and, in any case, is largely seen to have been taken for a ride by the Israelis on the peace process. His credibility has also dented over the years as he is accused of heading an inefficient and corrupt dispensation in the West Bank.
In the view of the Palestinians, Hamas was the last entity standing that still could challenge Israel’s might. President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian authority remained nearly absent and, in any case, is largely seen to have been taken for a ride by the Israelis on the peace process. His credibility has also dented over the years as he is accused of heading an inefficient and corrupt dispensation in the West Bank
Soon after the Egypt-mediated ceasefire was signed,
Palestinians praised Hamas by waving its flag during prayers at the Al-Aqsa mosque and expressed their support empirically in polls conducted. According to a poll released on
June 15 by the renowned Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, Hamas won the May 2021 confrontation with Israel. This view has triggered a paradigm shift in public attitudes against the Palestinian Authority under Abbas and in favour of Hamas as well as in favour of the idea of an armed struggle to achieve self-determination.
The poll said that around three-quarters of Palestinians viewed the Islamic group to have defeated Israel in the recent clashes. They felt that the group succeeded in defending the Palestinian claim over Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, as Israelis
tried to evict Palestinians from an East Jerusalem neighbourhood called Sheikh Jarrah, and taught Israel a lesson for desecrating Islam’s holy site. Furthermore, it added that 53 percent of Palestinian participants believed that Hamas must represent and lead the Palestinian people. Only 14 percent opted for Abbas’s Fatah party.
Hamas’s rise can largely be attributed to the 4,000 plus rockets it fired against Israel and gave the Palestinians a feeling that when their own leaders, the international community, even prominent Arab nations, seem to have abandoned the Palestinian cause, Hamas stood up for them.
Hamas’s rise can largely be attributed to the 4,000 plus rockets it fired against Israel and gave the Palestinians a feeling that when their own leaders, the international community, even prominent Arab nations, seem to have abandoned the Palestinian cause, Hamas stood up for them.
The backdrop of Hamas’s rise, however, was a sense of helplessness inculcated amongst the Palestinians during Trump’s presidency. Donald Trump not only relocated the American embassy to disputed Jerusalem but also offered a peace plan—dubbed the deal of the century—that did not call for a two-state solution, ignored the calls for east Jerusalem to be the capital of a future state of Palestine, refused the return of the millions of Palestinian refugees as well as withdrawal of Jews from Israel’s many illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Mahmoud Abbas’s refusal to conduct elections that were supposed to be held in May also impacted his legitimacy.
Abbas called off the first elections to be held in 15 years, he said, because Israel won’t allow voting in East Jerusalem. His critics, however
, slammed him as an autocrat and said the real reason was his fear that he might lose the elections.
In a previous poll conducted in March, the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research had given Abbas’s Fatah a slight advantage over Hamas, had the elections been conducted. “The Hamas Change and Reform List will gain 34 percent, Fatah, 38 percent, and all other lists that had participated in the 2006 elections will gain 8 percent in total, while 20 percent have not yet decided,”
the poll revealed.
Hamas’s rise is not just a setback for the Palestinian Authority but also for Israel and the US who have banked on Abbas to maintain peace. But their insistence on maintaining the status quo and dismissing Palestinian aspirations entirely under Trump weakened Abbas and abetted Hamas’s rise.
Now, the Biden administration is trying to revive Abbas’s image by channeling reconstruction aid for Gaza through the Palestinian authority. But it is still unclear when and what sort of political reconciliation the US would push for. The earlier the dialogue resumes, the better it is for Abbas to gain lost ground.
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