WASHINGTON - JULY 11 -In June, Hamas fighters forced the Fatah militias of Mahmoud Abbas out of the Gaza Strip. The move was a pre-emptive strike by Hamas, aimed at preventing the Fatah militias—which are armed and funded by the US and Israel—from using those weapons to crush the Hamas. As a result of the fighting, Gaza and the West Bank are effectively split, with Hamas governing exclusively in Gaza and Fatah confined to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The new situation leaves Palestinians at even greater risk of human rights abuses. In particular, people in Gaza face the threat of another Israeli military invasion.

What does this new situation in Palestine mean for progressive people in US? MADRE believes that a progressive response requires not reflexive solidarity with  people in Palestine, but strategic solidarity that accounts for the complexity of the crisis and moves us closer to the world we want to inhabit.

Our primary job remains the same: to bring an end to US support for Israel's 40-year-old occupation of Palestinian land. In fact, Israel's occupation and US meddling in Palestinian affairs are the root causes of today's crisis. But we also need to develop a position on political Islam, especially now that Hamas is in power in Gaza.

The question is: how do we support the people of Palestine without endorsing the Hamas leadership? Let's be clear: Hamas' long-term social vision is repressive. Hamas is a movement driven by militarism and nationalism. It aims to institutionalize reactionary ideas about gender and sexuality, and it uses religion as a smokescreen to pursue its agenda.

And there is another, equally important question: how do we put forward this critique of Hamas without reinforcing the Bush Administration's anti-Arab, anti-Islamic rhetoric? We do that by taking a stand for a sane and humane US policy in the Middle East. When we demand an end to both Israeli occupation and US attempts to control the resources and governments of the region, we refuse to be conscripted into Bush's "war on terror." 

Some people worry that criticizing Hamas means casting doubt on the legitimacy of its leadership. It doesn't. MADRE recognizes that Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council through a fair election and that Hamas must be part of any future negotiations. And MADRE acknowledges that Hamas has enabled many Palestinians to survive the ravages of Israeli occupation by providing healthcare, education, and other critical social services to families in need. We don't contest the legitimacy of Hamas' rule, but that doesn't mean that we are required to support them—any more than we are bound to support the new administration of Nicolas Sarkozy in France or any other elected government.

Some people say that it is wrong to criticize Hamas because it is the only Palestinian party that has not caved in to US/Israeli pressure to compromise on Palestinian national rights. That is arguably true, but it is a mistake to exalt Hamas as a liberatory movement just because it is opposing the US and Israel. Parts of the Left have made this mistake before. In the 1980s and 1990s, some US activists lionized nationalist leaders such as Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. These men were applauded because they opposed attempts by the US and Europe to dominate their countries. They were applauded despite the fact that they ran corrupt and murderous regimes that persecuted pro-democracy activists, socialists, pacifists, and other progressives.

Some people argue that the only way to support Palestinians right now is to end Israeli occupation. Afterwards, they say, questions about the rights of women, gays, lesbians, atheists, and anybody else who doesn't fit Hamas' vision of Palestinian citizenship can be raised. The problem with that argument is that there is no "afterwards." The world is full of examples of people who were told to wait until "afterwards" for their rights to be respected. Many of those people are now dead, in exile, or in jail. Just ask the feminists of Algeria or the socialists of Iran about waiting until "afterwards."

We've learned from the bitter experience of, for example, Iranian leftists and feminists who initially supported the anti-imperialist Islamists in their country, but were the first to be rounded up once the Islamists took power. What we've learned is that the political process of attaining our vision for society is not less important than the endpoint. In fact, there is no endpoint; there is only the ongoing historical process of changing—and hopefully improving—our societies.

That's why it isn't enough to have clarity about what we are opposing, or to reflexively or uniformly endorse anyone who opposes the same things that we do. We also need clarity about what we are working to create. When we act with an articulated vision of the world we are seeking, we can make more strategic choices about who to support and how. When we focus on our long-term vision for social justice, we can begin to identify those Palestinians who share our vision and support them in their work for a society in which the full range of human rights are protected for all people.

MADRE is an international women's human rights organization that works in partnership with community-based women's organizations worldwide to address issues of health and reproductive rights, economic development, education, and other human rights. MADRE provides resources, training, and support to enable our sister organizations to meet concrete needs in their communities while working to shift the balance of power to promote long-term development and social justice. Since we began in 1983, MADRE has delivered over 22 million dollars worth of support to community-based women's organizations in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the Balkans, and the United States.

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