Can Militants Make Peace?

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There is little reason to think the Hamas victory will lead anytime soon to discussions with Israel. For one thing, Israel says it won't talk to Hamas until the group disarms, recognizes Israel and commits itself to peace. That's a long way from Hamas' current position. Party officials describe the Oslo accords, negotiated in the early 1990s and languishing ever since, as dead. They say Hamas will never sell out Palestinians' rights, as they believe Fatah did. "As long as we are under occupation, then resistance is our right," Hamas' Syria-based political leader Khaled Mashaal told reporters in Damascus last Saturday. But there may be some wiggle room. A few Hamas officials hinted before the election that the party could negotiate with Israel under the right circumstances. "We are not against the Jews. We are against occupation and oppression," Sheik Mohammed Abu Tir, an influential Hamas official, told TIME a week before the vote. The Hamas military commander who spoke with TIME also suggests that the party may be willing to bow to reality: "There are facts on the ground that we cannot close our eyes to. We are not going to tear up all the agreements" that have been negotiated.

That said, there hasn't been a lot of progress lately in the quest for peace. Abbas and the Fatah-dominated parliament were too weak to force radical groups like Hamas to lay down their weapons--a prerequisite for further talks. Israel under Sharon, meanwhile, had decided to go it alone, a policy that Olmert is expected to continue. Absent any breakthrough, Israel is likely to make some further withdrawals from the West Bank and then, perhaps, establish its borders unilaterally. That could force Hamas' hand. "What is going to force them to change their stance is the fact that if they don't participate in the negotiation process, the Israelis are going to make all the decisions, and they will find they've painted themselves into a corner," says Marina Ottaway of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The obligations of governing "may force Hamas to come to grips with reality and abandon this dream world they are in, that Israel is somehow going to be eliminated and disappear from the face of the earth." If Hamas can make that leap, Israel will find Hamas a tougher but more credible negotiating partner than Arafat ever was.

For many Hamas officials, however, dealing with Israel isn't so critical as focusing on domestic issues like fighting graft and getting a grip on the many Palestinian security organizations. "The international community wants to know what Hamas thinks about Israel and the U.S., but Hamas wants to work to its own timetable," says Abdul Sattar Kasim, a political scientist at An-Najah National University in Nablus. "They want to build a new Palestinian society. They're not going to talk about the road map. They're going to talk about the rights of Palestinian refugees. They're not going to talk about the security of Israel. They're going to talk about Palestinian security."