Why Iran Supports Hamas-Fatah ‘Unity’

By Stephen McDonald
Communications Consultant, Canada-Israel Committee

Earlier this week, Hamas and Fatah officials met to sign a commitment to form a unity government in the near future, which both parties quickly hailed as “historic.”

For its part, Israel has called on Fatah to make a clear choice: make peace with Israel or join forces with Hamas. For the two are mutually exclusive, in the same way that a man cannot marry one woman while claiming to be engaged to another. Well I suppose he can. But his loyalties will no doubt lie with one, and he is bound to lose the other as a consequence.

To extend the analogy, one key player has been overlooked in much of the media coverage – the Father of the Second Bride: Iran.
Iran has endorsed the Hamas-Fatah marriage. This despite claims by some that a unity agreement offers an opportunity for Hamas to be separated from its attachment to Iran. The logic being, when pulled out of isolation with the West, Hamas will no longer need the support of its paymasters in Tehran.

What evidence is there to support such a noble belief? The facts indicate precisely the opposite.

Take Hezbollah, the most successful Iranian experiment in fostering client forces abroad. When Hezbollah was brought into the Lebanese government in 2005, did Iranian influence wane? Hardly. Iranian Revolutionary Guard units continue to operate freely in Lebanon, arming and training their Hezbollah protégés.

Since joining the government, has Hezbollah moderated? Not in the least. The group continues to build up its massive arsenal for war (some 40,000 missiles now), making it the preeminent military force in Lebanon. In February, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened to invade and conquer the Galilee in a future conflict. And just this month, intelligence officials issued warnings that Hezbollah units abroad are poised to launch an imminent operation to kidnap or kill Israelis (or Jews for that matter) outside Israel. Iranian funds, weapons, and military experts continue to sustain Hezbollah. So why would Hamas be different?

In its ongoing war against Israel, Iran employs a coherent (and dangerously successful) strategy dependent on the use of surrogates. While those surrogates have flourished in Lebanon and Gaza, they have been largely shut down in the West Bank, due to a crackdown by Western-trained and funded Palestinian security forces. But all that is set to change in the coming months. Fatah is slated to release hundreds of Hamas prisoners as a part of the unity deal. In an upcoming election campaign, Hamas will no doubt be free to mobilize its supporters and revitalize its network throughout the West Bank.

As for the Western-backed Palestinian security forces in the West Bank, experts do not believe they will formally absorb Hamas. However, a key component of the deal will surely be a sharing of security duties with Hamas fighters, likely to be assigned all such functions in Gaza. We are talking about the same Hamas that, earlier this month, fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli school bus, killing 16-year-old Daniel Viflic. The deadly missile, manufactured in Syria, had been passed from Hezbollah to Hamas in Gaza.

We are also talking about the same Hamas that, in June 2007, threw Fatah officials from rooftops and shot others execution-style in the streets of Gaza. It was little shock to many that Hamas was ruthless in its treatment of Fatah, whose security leadership it saw as the tip of the Israeli spear in the territories. But if Hamas and Iran are to be believed, we must suspend all critical thinking and assume that bygones are bygones. This week’s move represents nothing more sinister than unity. It cannot be a power play by Hamas, which has been constricted in the West Bank and left managing ongoing chaos among factions in Gaza. That is, it cannot be a shift of tactics to advance its own organizational prosperity and the war against Israel. It must represent a fundamental, seismic shift of ideology. Right?

Make no mistake about it. This deal advances the interests of Hamas as much as – arguably more so – than Fatah. It provides a foothold in the West Bank, which may yet prove the necessary platform for a second coup. It allows Hamas to borrow against Fatah’s moral line of credit with the West, opening the door (no doubt) for further calls to accept Hamas as a legitimate player. This despite the fact that Hamas has no actual legitimacy, other than that of the sword – paid for by Iran and brandished against the Palestinian people in June of 2007.

Indeed, no one has more to lose from the legitimization of Hamas, advanced by the unity deal, than the Palestinian people. In remaining committed to permanent war with Israel, Hamas has isolated the Palestinian people, who now live under an increasingly Taliban-like regime in Gaza. Its incessant firing of missiles has deprived the Palestinian people of work by forcing Israel to close the border (though it has not deprived Gazans of humanitarian supplies, thanks to Israel and the UN).

We should be under no illusions. This is a zero-sum game, in which the Palestinians lose when Hamas wins. And Hamas won big this week in signing the unity agreement. No wonder Iran’s foreign minister applauded the Hamas-Fatah agreement as a “blessed, positive move” that will result in “great victories in confrontations with the ruthless occupiers.”

Both Iran and Hamas have everything to gain from the latter being incorporated into a Palestinian government seen as legitimate in the eyes of the West.

http://www.cicweb.ca/scene/2011/04/why-iran-supports-hamas-fatah-unity/