A True Palestinian Pragmatist

By Barak Barfi

Saturday, August 30, 2003

The last time I visited Ismail Abu Shanab three weeks ago he was smiling. Stroking his daughter's head, he voiced cautioned optimism that the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire might lead to an end to the three-year cycle of violence.

Last week, three to six missiles fired from an Israeli helicopter extinguished that hope as well as Abu Shanab's life. His death affords a glimpse into the paradoxical life of a Palestinian pragmatist -- a person who backs peace while railing against it. Embracing this endangered species, reviled by Israel and respected by Palestinians, may be necessary if the two sides are to move past the violence and toward reconciliation.

Abu Shanab was no saint. He was a senior member of Hamas, an Islamic terrorist organization that has killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in suicide bombings. He served time in prison for the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. He denounced American imperialism and Washington's conspiracies against the Arabs. He often spoke of how the Zionist lobby controlled the United States. He once told me that the Palestinians might have to sacrifice a generation to secure their nationalist aspirations.

Yet he was not your average terrorist either. He tried to avoid praising suicide bombings and had difficulty justifying them. He never said that "every day is a good day for martyrdom operations," as his Hamas colleague Abdel Aziz Rantisi declared. He grudgingly offered himself as a martyr for the national cause, as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has on countless occasions.

Rather, Abu Shanab charted a middle path. He vacillated between supporting violence and embracing reconciliation. "We have the full right to react without any limitation against the state terrorism of Israel," he once proclaimed. Yet he also backed an end to the violence. He often said -- albeit in a circumlocutory manner -- that if the Israelis retreated to the June 4, 1967, lines, withdrew from East Jerusalem and allowed refugees from the 1948 war to return, peace would be possible.

Such a guarded approach is popular with ordinary Palestinians, who are outraged by the daily Israeli military raids into their towns and villages yet tired of the violence. Their initial support for the intifada has been eroded by the Israelis' dogged determination to refuse to capitulate to violence.

A recent poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducted before the cease-fire reflects these conflicting opinions. Though 80 percent of Palestinians backed an unlimited cessation of violence, a high 56 percent supported Hamas's right to continue attacks.

Shrewd Palestinian politicians are cognizant of the Palestinian street's pulse and cultivate this twofold discourse that resonates with it. The imprisoned leader Marwan Barghouti, who sponsored dozens of attacks against Israeli civilians, speaks much the same language as Abu Shanab did. He preaches fire and brimstone against the Jewish state, often declaring that its military operations have opened "the gates of hell" -- only to conclude by saying that peace will prevail once they withdraw from Palestinian lands.

Barghouti is no Nelson Mandela, as a recent Time magazine piece hinted, but he is a guerrilla leader with a diplomatic vision. Some Israelis appreciate the constructive role he could fill. Senior officials such as Avi Dichter, the head of Israel's internal security organization, and Gideon Ezra, a minister from the ruling Likud Party, have called on him in prison.

While Barghouti understands how to gauge Palestinian sentiments, other Palestinian leaders are not as attentive to public opinion. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas unequivocally denounces the violence. In June, with the Red Sea behind him and President Bush at his side, he condemned terrorism and rejected it as a legitimate tool in the Palestinian quest for statehood. Though Abbas catered to American and Israeli demands, he omitted any reference to Palestinian ones. When he returned home, his people scorned him. Demonstrators marched in Gaza calling him a collaborator.

Abbas's one-sided conciliatory approach has not ingratiated him with Palestinians, and he has very little legitimacy in their eyes. Though the Americans and Israelis view him as a pragmatist, his own people deem him a lackey who has sold out the Palestinian cause in favor of Western patronage.

Rather, it is Abu Shanab and Barghouti who represent the center of Palestinian politics and are the true pragmatists. By threatening Israel they gain legitimacy among their constituency. Yet by advocating reconciliation on the basis of a just peace, they equally curry favor with a disillusioned society that yearns for a return to normality.

Abu Shanab did not have the courage and conviction to wholeheartedly denounce violence or stand up for peace. As many Palestinians do, he hedged his bets and was admired for doing so. As long as wavering pragmatists like him are struck down instead of being embraced, the interminable cycle of violence in the Middle East will continue.

The writer is a visiting research fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a part-time producer for ABC News in Jerusalem.