I rapporti su Hamas prolificano, uno dopo l’altro, con sempre maggiore frequenza. L’ultimo in ordine di tempo, firmato da Paul Scham e da Osama Au Irshaid, è importante forse più per il centro studi che lo pubblica, l’USIP, lo United States Institute for Peace, che ha tra i membri ex officio il segretario di Stato (Hillary Rodham Clinton) e il segretario alla Difesa (Robert Gates).
Il rapporto non esprime le posizioni dei suoi membri ex officio, ma le sue conclusioni – proprio dalla fonte da cui provengono – dicono che qualcosa sta cambiando.
If Hamas is part of the equation, then a cease-fire must be conditioned on allowing the flow of nonmilitary goods into Gaza under conditions similar to the inspection regime set up in November 2005. But the real test for Hamas can only come when the United States and Israel no longer oppose a unity government between Fatah and Hamas. Our prediction is that Hamas would allow a Fatah negotiating team to reach an agreement with Israel on a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem and not oppose it, provided there is ratification by a referendum. Whether Israel would agree to such a settlement is, of course, another question.
While this paper does not explicitly make policy recommendations, we believe
that a recognition of the perspectives we present should result in moves by Israel, the United States, and other Western countries that would test these premises in terms meaningful to Hamas and consonant with Israel’s security. That is the sole means of finding out whether Hamas could indeed move toward coexistence. We realize that some will read this paper as being “pro-Hamas,” or conclude that we naïvely believe that Hamas has given up armed violence.
We do not. Rather, we have tried to supply something that is rare in the voluminous literature on Hamas and other Islamist organizations, namely, a view of how the organization regards itself in its own terms—that is, from a Muslim perspective. We do believe that Hamas takes Islam seriously. Without looking at Hamas through an Islamic lens, no serious understanding of its motivations or actions, or accurate assessment of its future behavior is possible.