Aid and a Bet

is a weekly columnist for The New Republic Online and the author of The New Iraq. In the wake of last week's Hamas parliamentary landslide, some Palestinian elites issued a threat of sorts to the United States. "You don't want to deal with Hamas?" Al Quds Al Arabi Editor-in-Chief Abdel Bari Atwan asked Americans via Al Jazeera. "Don't deal with Hamas. We'll go to Iran instead, and they'll deal with us." Columnist Yahya Bahar wrote in the Gaza daily Al Sabah that Iran could make a better ally than the United States. "The political rhetoric that the Iranian President Ahmadinejad is enunciating in a raised voice ... is concentrated around our cause and around the fundamental justice of this cause, " he opined, and he urged the Palestinian leadership to "follow [Iranian overtures] more seriously and not rely on the Americans and Europeans who have shown that they are unable to solve their major problems." Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashal, who, last month, met the Iranian president for the second time in as many months, defended his movement's cozy relationship with Tehran in an Al Arabiya TV interview. "[T]hat is a normal part of our management of Arab and Islamic relations.... This is not a blemish for us to be ashamed of. What we should be ashamed of is our relations with the Americans and the Zionists."Western donor states may be tempted to view these sentiments as arguments in favor of continued umbilical support for the Palestinian Authority (P.A.). Better to maintain financial leverage over a Hamas-led regime, the logic goes, than send it running, penniless, into the arms of a regional adversary. Over the weekend, Yuval Diskin, the chief of Israel's security service, advised the country's cabinet that Tehran was in fact contemplating an offer of aid to the P.A. in the event that American and European donors held back. Rather than be cowed by this prospect, however, the smart move for the West would be to reduce or refuse American and European aid to the P.A. Hamas is caught between two goals--it must continue its violent struggle against Israel, but, in the wake of the election, it faces overwhelming pressure from Palestinians to devote available resources to the survival of the local economy. Leverage, in this situation, is achieved not by maintaining high levels of grant aid but by curbing or cutting it--and thereby reducing the nascent regime's discretionary income. Without American and European aid, Hamas will be predisposed to spend whatever money it already receives from Iran on governance issues and economic wellness rather than on annihilating Israel. It would also be forced to turn to both Iran and the Gulf states for a greater chunk of the approximately $190 million per month that the P.A. will need to operate. Furthermore, pushing Tehran to ante up could have domestic repercussions in Iran. The mullahs have never shown much of an interest in Palestinian state- building, and some Iranians are already disaffected with Tehran's financial commitment to Palestinian factions like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs. For example, in 2002, the antigovernment Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran called on the country's leadership to "leave Palestine alone" and "think about us." Should Iran's rulers assume the burden of bankrolling the P.A., the commitment could cost them politically at home at a time when the semblance of national unity is vital to defend the country's nuclear program. And, if Tehran doesn't assume this burden, Hamas may wind up with empty coffers--and either a very short political lifespan or a more conciliatory overture toward Israel and the West. Perhaps the only regional fetish that attracts Tehran's leaders more than the destruction of Israel is their own pretension to Shia Islamist leadership of the global community of Muslims--who are predominantly Sunni. In Iran prior to the 1979 revolution, the Palestinian national cause was not the Technicolor billboard spectacle it is today. On the contrary, an Israeli flag flew over the Jewish state's embassy in Tehran--and, for centuries, the name of the caliph Umar bin Al Khattab, who conquered Jerusalem for the Muslims, has been cursed from Shia mosque pulpits for his alleged treachery to the Shia Imam Ali. Yet, ever since Ayatollah Khomeini turned over the Israeli embassy to Yasir Arafat in 1979, Iran's Shia mullahs have credibly competed with their Sunni Wahhabi rivals in Saudi Arabia as champions of the Palestinian cause--and won unprecedented esteem for Shiism among Sunnis globally as a result. If you're a historically persecuted minority Muslim sect, you can't buy advertising like the following endorsement from then-Hamas chief Ahmed Yassin, after his historic visit to Tehran in 1998: "[T]he Islamic Republic of Iran supports this ideal [of a Palestinian state] even more than the Palestinians themselves," he said, according to a report on Radio Free Europe. The secret of Iran's success has been to consistently support political violence in Palestine, a cause with overwhelming appeal among Sunnis in the region, while generally avoiding direct support for Palestinian institutionbuilding--a more suspicious project that, for many hard-line Shia and Sunni Muslims, reeks of conciliation toward the Jews. Thus, Tehran broke with Arafat over the Oslo accords but revived cooperation with arms shipments during the Al Aqsa intifada. It financed a Marxist revolutionary, Ahmed Jibril, in his group's war against the Jewish state in the '90s, but it withheld some support for Hamas as punishment for its temporary cessation of suicide operations declared last year. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Assefi, was, according to Radio Free Europe, quoted in the state news agency last week as "congratulat[ing] the great Palestinian people, the Hamas movement, all Palestinian combatants, and the great Islamic umma [Islamic nation]" for "the powerful presence of Hamas on the political scene of Palestine." Yet Iran's major financial recipient in the West Bank and Gaza, Islamic Jihad, boycotted the high-turnout Palestinian elections on the pretext of their illegitimacy under occupation, and it perpetrated a suicide attack on January 19. Broadly speaking, Iran is a fickle friend to Palestinian factions and the people they speak for; Tehran's commitment to the most uncompromising ideals of the broader Middle East region vis-a-vis Palestine easily trumps the pragmatic interests of the Palestinians themselves. Iran's history with the Palestinians is therefore a shaky basis for Hamas to expect reliable support from Tehran in any state-building project. Yet state-building is what Hamas wants, as surely as it wants eventually to annihilate Israel. Palestinian newspapers supportive of the movement have carried numerous opinion columns over the past week elucidating both of these distinct goals. On the one hand, wrote Hebron-based Islamist Yusuf Al Amayreh in the daily Falastin, it's vital for Muslim Brotherhood parties everywhere that Hamas, a Brotherhood offshoot, prove its mettle at governance, so "that it may lead the Palestinian people politically, administratively, civilly, and socially with success." On the other hand, warned the celebrated Jordanian columnist Yasir Al Zaatrah, the Muslim world demands that Hamas keep fighting: "Hamas must understand that the umma is watching them carefully, and the masses that granted them love and confidence will not accept from them any behavior that conflicts with their conscience. They must remember that there are five million Palestinians abroad who are more biased toward Hamas's choice of resistance than [are] the Palestinians of the interior." Hamas will learn from Israel over the next few weeks that it cannot have the security or space to pursue the former ambition as long as Palestinians act on the latter cry for blood. This principle applies whether or not the P.A. receives aid from the United States and Europe. Not only will Western funding do little to dissuade Hamas of the merits of terrorism to which its followers are committed; it is also evidently unnecessary to persuade Hamas to pursue a benign state-building agenda to which it is also committed. As such, it would be preferable for a Hamas-led civil administration to behave, of necessity, as a sponge for Iran's fungible capital, rather than for it to enjoy the luxury of using or disbursing that capital for terrorism. Iran can afford to keep a Hamas-led P.A. afloat, though the investment would not escape the attention of Iran's people. Of the $190 million per month that the P.A. is projected to spend in 2006, according to the International Monetary Fund's December 2005 estimates, approximately $40 million will come from its own revenue, and about $70 million is slated to be transferred by Israel (minus some deductions for the cost of goods and services provided to the P.A.). But, on Sunday, Israel's government announced its intention to withhold last month's remittances of about $50 million to the Palestinians pending a commitment by Hamas to recognize Israel, disarm, and disavow terrorism. Whether the Jewish state will hold back indefinitely remains unclear. Last year, Arab donors spent roughly $20 million per month, and the United States and Europe were expected to make up most of the difference. The IMF and World Bank have identified approximately $20 million per month in wasted expenses that a hard-nosed reformist administration should be able to cut. But, assuming Hamas makes good on its campaign pledges to cut waste (and depending on whether Israel withholds tax monies), this would still leave a shortage of roughly $40 to $90 million. In this situation, Hamas would approach Arab states and Iran for help. As Mashal told Al Arabiya television last week, "Our umma, which we are proud of, is our assurance and our support. It is a citadel.... It is our partner and a partner to the Palestinian people." Gulf states may be inclined to respond by ratcheting up their already formidable giving. But the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Patrick Clawson questions whether they will underwrite a great deal more of the debt themselves. (American and European pressure on Arab donor-states is a mitigating factor. What's more, several Arab governments are unenthusiastic at the prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood success.) Given Iran's monthly exportation of approximately 100 million barrels of oil, the Islamic Republic could sustain as much of the P.A.'s obligations as it is called upon to grant--at a cost of $0.10 per barrel of oil for every $10 million it wants to contribute. For a sense of scale, consider that the Hezbollah surcharge per barrel is around $0. 13 for that movement's total monthly budget of roughly $13 million. "Though it wouldn't break the bank, it could be something of a strain for Iran to provide this kind of funding to the P.A.," observes Clawson, "especially as President Ahmadinejad promised domestic improvements for Iranians." Any further encumbrance on Iran during the present standoff over Tehran's nuclear ambitions would be in the interests of the United States and Europe. This result would also be an asset to the country's dissidents, who could stir up popular resentment at Iran's profligate spending. In proclaiming their inclination to turn to Ahmadinejad's Iran for help, Hamas and its supporters have simply joined the ranks of earlier Palestinian leaders in their poor choice of allies. Last week's comments by Mashal about his meetings with Ahmadinejad in Damascus and Tehran evoke the Mufti Haj Amin Al Husseini's meetings with Adolf Hitler, generations of PLO training in Soviet Moscow, and Arafat's alliance with Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf war. If Hamas, too, wants to pick a loser, then at least let the interests of peace be served by the choice.

By joseph braude