Freezing Out Hamas No Longer Viable, Say Policy Heavyweights

By Ali Gharib, IPS News. Posted April 1, 2009.

While the USMEP report says recognition of Israel should not be a condition for taking part in the process -- as it currently is in the conditions laid down by the international "Quartet" of the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia -- it does list, among others, a recognition of Abbas as chief negotiator as prerequisite for inclusion.

The statement says the Obama administration should "cease discouraging Palestinian national reconciliation" and "shift the U.S. objective from ousting Hamas to modifying its behavior, offer it inducements that will enable its more moderate elements to prevail, and cease discouraging third parties from engaging with Hamas in ways that might help clarify the movement’s views and test its behavior."

In his column, Cohen wrote that Siegman had spoken to Damascus-based Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal. Cohen said that Meshaal had "put in writing" that Hamas would be willing to be in a unity government that made a referendum-approved peace agreement with Israel.

"De facto, rather than de jure, recognition can be a basis for a constructive relationship," wrote Cohen, stating flatly that Israel understood that arrangement’s benefits.

Hamas is seen as having ideological splits, which can be exploited. In addition to Meshaal, much of Hamas’s Gaza-based leadership has also spoken of at least a long-term ceasefire with Israel, particularly after the devastating recent war in the tiny, impoverished Strip.

The USMEP paper warns of the pitfalls of the "absenteeism" that dominated most of Pres. George W. Bush’s engagement with the Israeli-Arab peace process. The signatories go so far as to endorsing a NATO-led but internationally supplemented security force that could guarantee Israel’s safety.

"The one constant in all of this has been Israel’s insistence that it will not consent to two-state arrangements unless it concludes that Israel’s security will not be substantially harmed by removing the IDF from the West Bank," says the report. "The dilemma, however, is that West Bank security measures being implemented now by the IDF tend to produce conditions on the ground that prevent the formation of a coherent Palestinian polity with professional, capable security forces willing and able to cooperate and coordinate with Israeli forces."

The idea of an international security forces has gotten more mainstream attention of late, featuring prominently in the chapter on the Israeli-Arab conflict of a volume released by the influential Brookings Institution and CFR as a policy guide for the then-incoming Pres. Obama.

The report says that action is especially crucial because, while their power and abilities are not directly predicated on it -- nor their fates tied to it -- the continuing occupation allows U.S. adversaries like al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and the Islamic Republic of Iran to score points within Arab populations. In Iran’s case, the country gains influence. In al Qaeda’s, the terror group benefits by using occupation as a recruiting tool.

"A comprehensive Arab-Israel peace will not erase al-Qaeda," says the report. "Yet it would help drain the swamp in which the disease thrives and mutates."

"Israeli treaties with Palestine, Syria and Lebanon would bring the entire Arab League into the peace camp in line with the Arab Peace Initiative. An Iran still hostile to the U.S. and Israel would find the strategic advantages it has recently gained in the Arab world all but eliminated."

See more stories tagged with: obama, middle east, hamas, palestinian-israeli

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from World! Sign up now »