Sheik Yassin was a polarizing figure who advocated using violence to end the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon blamed the 67-year-old quadriplegic for attacks that killed 377 Israelis. But even Palestinians opposed to violence saw Yassin as a freedom fighter, respected for pushing back, says Middle East historian Rashid Khalidi. Indeed tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of Palestinians escorted Yassin’s body in a final procession through the streets of Gaza on Monday and local hospitals now report a rash of babies named after the sheik.
Repercussions from the assassination may even spread to the United States too. In a fax purporting to be from Hamas to the Associated Press, a self-declared spokesman says Hamas has declared all-out war on “the terrorist American administration” as well as Israel. The authenticity of the fax has yet to be confirmed, but there is little doubt that many Palestinians are angry about the White House response to the killing. While U.S. allies such as Britain were quick to criticize the strike, the Bush administration did not immediately condemn the targeting of a man it viewed as a terrorist mastermind. Later on Monday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the killing “deeply troubling.”
Rashid Khalidi, director of Columbia University’s Middle East Institute, has written extensively about the region. Speaking with NEWSWEEK’s Brian Braiker, Khalidi said Yassin’s assassination will turn the man into a martyr, end the Middle East peace process and make the Palestinian people angrier than they’ve ever been. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Who was Sheik Yassin?
Rashid Khalidi: This is one of the people who was the most responsible for the turn in the Islamist tendency within Palestinian politics from a nonconfrontational approach–which some people argued really involved collaboration with the Israeli occupation in the first couple decades after the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip–to a more activist, more confrontational, posture. He really was, even before Hamas was founded, one of the leading figures of the Muslim Brotherhood on the Gaza Strip [in the mid-1980s].
Will his death make him into a martyr?
Oh, yes, it does. He always said he was willing to be a martyr, and I think he always expected that were he killed it would have an enormous impact. I think he was right; it will have enormous impact.
What does his assassination do to the peace process, such as it was?
Any sane observer who lives outside the [Washington] Beltway knew perfectly well that there was no peace process. This will be yet another nail in the coffin of a moribund process, which wasn’t going anywhere anyway. The United States has refused to deal with the elected leader of the Palestinians; Israel has refused to deal with the elected leader of the Palestinians [Yasir Arafat]. You can’t go around that, so there’s not going to be a peace process.
Is Arafat a target?
If you read the Israeli press, there are voices focusing on Arafat. That is a possibility. I think the PA [Palestinian Authority] is threatened, not just Arafat. I think this is just a devastating blow.
Really? Was Yassin an icon or more like the brains of the operation?
I don’t think he was the brains. I think he was the symbol; he was the spiritual leader. He had a lot of influence; his impact was huge. I’m not suggesting that he was just some kind of figurehead. There were all kinds of tendencies in Hamas, and he only represented one. But he was the figure who tied the movement together in many ways, and it’s very hard to see how he can be replaced.
Do you see the reported threats to the United States as legitimate?
When I hear that [threat] made by a known Hamas spokesman, I will take it seriously. An anonymous fax to the Associated Press, to my way of thinking, has absolutely no value unless you get the same kind of things coming from people who are manifestly speaking for Hamas. I could have sent that fax, you could have sent that fax. The fact that it’s been picked up and played makes me wonder about how serious you people are about investigative journalism. There are Hamas spokesmen, and admittedly they’ve gone underground, but you go out and you dig them up and you say: “Does this represent your position?” I doubt that it does. Maybe, it’s not to be discounted. Time will tell.
What are the immediate important consequences of the assassination?
The possibility of the Palestinian Authority taking control of Gaza when and if the Israelis withdraw has diminished so considerably as to have almost disappeared. The possibility of an orderly transfer of power in Gaza, I think, has disappeared. The possibility of there being any kind of cooperation between Arab governments, the PA and Israel over the next phase of Israel’s unilateral decisions to do whatever it pleases have disappeared.
Did those possibilities exist a week ago?
Come on, the King of Jordan went to Israel on Thursday! The Egyptians were about to send a parliamentary delegation to Israel yesterday. The Israeli foreign minister was in Cairo last week. The most intense contacts between Israel and Arab world in three years had just taken place and the Israelis slapped everyone in the face. The Egyptians and the Jordanians were about to do Israel an enormous favor when Israel–acting entirely on its own, without consultation, in a manner that threatened everybody else’s interests–was about to make a move in Gaza. They were bending over backward and have now been made to appear like lackeys of the Israelis. The Jordanians are stunned by this, it’s a terrible blow to the Jordanians and it’s an insult to the Egyptians. The chances of these people helping the Israelis in the future are nil. The Europeans were about to pull the Israelis’ chestnuts out of the fire in Gaza by trying to set up some kind of security regime, which might conceivably have helped a transition to an orderly future in Gaza. Well, all of these things have gone up in smoke. People are as angry as they’ve ever been.
What are they angry about?
Israelis think of this in terms of all the horrible things that have happened to Israelis as a result of the attacks of carried out by Hamas–suicide bombers and other attacks over many years. The way in which Palestinians see it is that this is a crippled old man, helpless in a wheelchair, who was a symbol of resistance to occupation. They’ve had 3,000 people killed; Israelis have had 1,000 people killed. Overwhelming majorities on both sides are innocent civilians, unarmed. As far as the Palestinians are concerned, they are the victims; they are the subjects of an occupation that is in its 37th year and is not going to end in the foreseeable future. They have no right of self-determination; they have no political rights; they can’t move. Can’t go to school, can’t go to work, can’t go to the dentist, can’t go to church, can’t move. Their villages are sealed off. Even though clearly a majority of Palestinians do not subscribe to the tenets of Hamas, whether the Islamic orientation or the commitment to suicide bombing, they nevertheless respected this guy as a symbol of resistance to occupation in a situation where the Palestinian Authority was seen as pusillanimous, collaborators, weak, corrupt, inept. This guy was a symbol of saying we will not bow.
Israel claims he was also responsible for the death of hundreds of their people.
Some Palestinians see him as having done things that are wrong or bad and disagree with him. I will stress again and again that most Palestinians want a two-state solution. There’s not a poll that shows anything else. Never, whatever the lies that are run in the media about how all the Palestinians are bloodthirsty murderers who want to destroy Israel. Most Palestinians go back and forth on the issue of violence against Israeli civilians. This man was committed to violence, including violence against Israeli civilians. So in spite of the differences that overwhelming numbers of Palestinians have with the political positions of Hamas, he was deeply respected.
So what happens next?
I think people in this country are liable to underestimate the impacts of this. You have to see the way this is playing in the international media, in the Arab media and the Palestinian media. People who are not deeply affected by this conflict, or people who were not very political, have really been shaken by this. The enormity of it is hard to comprehend if you live in the little bubble that we live in in the United States. And it really may be opening a new phase. I’m not suggesting that everything’s going to change as of yesterday. How the conflict will evolve and whether there are prospects for resolution I think really do change as a result of this. I really think that the killing of this individual may well be the last nail in the coffin of the two-state solution.
What do you make of the White House response to the killing?
I think the White House lives in another world. Certainly the [initial] morning response from Scott McClellan and Condoleezza Rice makes one wonder what reality they’re looking at. The situation in the Middle East is going to get better? What do they see when they look at the Middle East? Are they totally living in a world of ideological fantasy? I have argued that this is an administration which has a faith-based foreign policy. But this is taking it to a ludicrous extreme. Most observers think [the assassination] is the worst thing that has happened in three and a half years in terms of what it means for a resolution of this conflict.
