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The real meaning of Hudna
by Daoud Kuttab
The Palestinian leadership
showed political creativity when it introduced the Arabic term
Hudna when speaking about the truce or
cease-fire agreement that was being worked out with the Palestinian
guerrilla movements. By using a term used more than once by the Prophet
Mohammed, the Palestinian Authority succeeded in providing the Islamic
movements with an ideological ladder to climb down from. But while the cessation of
anti-Israeli violence is the declared goal of this
Hudna,
the real goal should be the successful integration of these hard-line
groups into a pragmatic political process in which they can participate in
the decision-making apparatus with the responsibilities that this entails.
It has been known for some
time that groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad were split almost down
the middle between pragmatists and hard-liners. With the pragmatists
understanding the balance of forces and therefore trying their best to
maximize their gains within its possibilities, the radicals are only
hoping to obtain recognition and legitimacy by being recognized within
the process. In baseball terms the pragmatists are hoping to get on
base while the radicals are playing for the grand slam home run using a
miniature bat, and being excited just to be in the game. Ironically the
defeat of the Baathists in Iraq has reversed the roles of outside and
inside. The Damascus-based leadership used to take the more hard-line
positions seems to have quickly softened its stance due to external
pressure on Syria which seems to affect them. This leaves the only
party opposed to the cease-fire some of the more extreme elements
inside the Occupied Territories.
The real meaning of this
current Hudna must be in the
domestication of the Islamic movements by allowing them to participate
in the political process. For years, the Islamists have refused to join
the PLO or the Palestinian Authority while at the same time keeping
their eyes open for some political role without defining what it is.
Now they are invited to join a new political body, called by some the
Unified Leadership.
Palestinian community pressure, coupled with American, Egyptian and Saudi
pressure, has finally forced the Islamists to come up with political
answers to supplement their military struggle. Without the current
dialogue, the Islamists were able to keep their answers vague about their
political goals while saying they are against the Israelis and their
occupation of Palestine. During this period the entire spectrum of Islamic
opinion was expressed. From the hard-liner who spoke about a violent
struggle until all of historic Palestine is liberated (without much
discussion of where the Israeli Jewish population would go) to more
moderate Islamists who said that their military resistance would continue
until the end of the 1967 occupation and that after that their struggle
would be political. The
real meaning of this Hudna is therefore
the capitulation of both these positions. Egyptian participants worked
hard to wake up the hard-liners to the political reality in general and
especially after Sept. 11 and the end of the Saddam Baath regime in
particular.
For the Islamist moderates,
they needed less convincing. They were asked the simple question of why
continue in this violent cycle if you can reach roughly the same goals
using more political means. If you are for a Palestinian state in the
1967 borders, then the very minimum that you need to do is to give the
“road map” and President Bush’s vision a chance. If that vision fails,
then you can go back and use military means to accomplish this
political goal. This
might seem like a simplistic and highly optimistic understanding of the
Hudna agreement. After all, it has a finite
period of time and has many conditions and strings attached to it. One is
not certain that rogue elements within the Islamic movements will not
derail it. Neither can we guarantee that the Israelis will commit to their
promise to avoid assassinating political figures. Israel’s expansive
interpretation of a “ticking bomb” could render their promise worthless. What is even more important is
the success of the US and its “Quartet” partners to push the road map
without hesitation. Peace negotiations (hopefully conducted in secret)
should not stop until white smoke can be seen. Then the majorities of
Palestinians and Israelis can be formally asked to back an agreed-upon
package deal that provides Palestinians with their dream of independence
and democracy in a viable contiguous state alongside a safe and secure
state of Israel.
Such political success may
well turn this short-term Hudna into a
long-term peace deal. Much is still needed to get there, but the
ideological and psychological importance of this cease-fire goes much
further than the terms enshrined in it.
Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist from Jerusalem. He is the
director
of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University which owns and
runs
Al Quds Educational Television. In May 2001, Mr. Kuttab received the
International Press Institute's award as one of fifty press freedom
heroes
in the last fifty years. He is a regular contributor to
Media Monitors Network (MMN).
Source:
by courtesy & © 2003 Daoud Kuttab & Arabic Media Internet Network (AMIN)
by the same authror:
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