Gaza:
The Cost of Dignity Denied
Hamas’ apotheosis on October 7 in the form of a brutal massacre and kidnapping of Israelis is unfortunately one more example of political despair and rage spreading through the Middle East and North Africa. Propelling these nihilistic feelings and associated violence is the denial of dignity to an ever-increasing portion of the region’s population. As population growth has outpaced economic expansion, resultant political pressures have contributed to the collapse of some states and the hardening of others. In cases both of near anarchy and of profound repression, economic and political dignity are denied large segments of the population. They are marginal in the political economies under which they live and made to know that on a daily basis. Not surprising then is their resentment and desire for revenge.
The case of Hamas and the Palestinians more generally is unique primarily in that they are subject to control by what to them is a foreign government, or at least one not emerging from their own society. Other Arabs suffer indignities under governments of their own people. It is true though that those governments are not as manifestly seeking to drive them out of the country, even if in some cases, such that of Syria’s Bashar al Asad, they clearly would prefer that.
The cases most comparable to Hamas’ emerging from Palestinian society are the Shi’i populations of Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. All were marginalized by their respective
governments, although in the case of Yemen the long serving president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was himself a Shi’a but was closely allied with Sunnis. The Houthis, named after the tribe of their original leader but whose formal name is Ansar Allah, or Supporters of God, emerged in the 1990s as a protest movement of geographically, economically, and politically marginal Shi’i in the north of the country. Lebanese Shi’i, traditionally the poorest of the Lebanese poor, were initially mobilized by Imam Musa al Sadr’s Movement of the Dispossessed founded in 1974, then much more effectively organized by Hizbullah from the early 1980s. Iraqi Shi’i were distrusted and repressed by Saddam, then precipitately thrust into power as a result of American policy in the wake of the 2003 invasion.
In all three cases Iran lurked at varying distances behind these Shi’i protest movements. Hizbullah was created by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which drew upon personnel formerly active in the Movement of the Dispossessed. The various Iraqi Shi’i militias that now in coalition dominate the government in Baghdad were either consolidated in Iran itself as catspaws to use against Saddam before, during and after the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, or in Iraq once the Americans transferred governmental power from Sunnis to Shi’i. The Houthis were of the three the most independent of Iran but following the uprising in 2011 and the weakening of Ali Abdullah Saleh’s grip on
power, they drew increasingly on resources provided by a very willing Iranian government to seize power in Sana’a, which included assassinating Saleh himself.
Perspective
Robert Springborg (CIV)
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