Zealous for peace?

In a New York Times op-ed today, Ahmed Yousef, a senior adviser to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and speaking on behalf of Hamas, proposed a hudna (long-term truce) with the Israelis. The concept of hudna demands a peaceful resolution to the conflict, Yousef wrote. “[It] is no ruse, as some assert, to strengthen our military machine, to buy time to organize better or to consolidate our hold on the Palestinian Authority.”

That “some” he references seems like a code word for pro-Israel and Israeli hardliners, right? After all, Israel Defense Forces Southern Command Chief Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant recently told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Hamas is developing a formal anti-tank unit.  But among those “some” is Musa Abu Marzouq, the former head of Hamas’s Political Bureau. In a 1995 interview he told Khaled Hroub, a Palestinian journalist and author of the 2002 book Hamas: Political Thought and Practice, that hudna is an acceptable means to achieve an “interem solution” that creates a Palestinian state in the occupied territories, but “the best method in practice to achieve progress beyond the interim solution … is jihad and armed resistance.” Hroub’s research shows that Hamas considers hudna a means to avoid direct conflict with Israel, while giving Hamas the chance “to alter the balance of power” in order to achieve its ultimate solution, a Middle East without Israel.   Hudna doesn’t guarantee the resumption of violence, but it also doesn’t take it off the table.

Now it is true, as Yousef wrote in his op-ed, that Hamas honors its cease-fires better than any other Palestinian organization. But until Hamas leaders retract their calls for the destruction of Israel and adapt the organization’s charter to include the acceptance of a permanent two-state solution, there is no reason to believe that their offers of hudna are anything but dubious.