Opinions | Columnists
Israelis are missing a chance for peace
If Israel and its Western allies refuse to deal with Hamas, they will inevitably be faced with a far more violent enemy.
- By Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:00 February 20, 2006
Abba Eban, a former Israeli politician famous for his flatulent aphorisms, used to say that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Today, it is the Israelis who are missing a chance for peace, although it is staring them in the face.
Instead of seeking to boycott, starve and destabilise Hamas a wholly bankrupt and counter-productive strategy Israel should recognise the Islamic resistance movement as a Palestinian partner with whom it can do business.
The reasons are obvious. Hamas has massive grassroot support.
It has displaced Fatah as the legitimate representative of Palestinian national aspirations. This means that Hamas can deliver on any deal struck with it.
If the Israelis are concerned to end terrorist attacks, then Hamas is the one organisation that can guarantee it.
Hamas offers Israel and the Western world a unique chance to reach a negotiated settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict and thereby dry up the major source of Arab and Muslim anger.
If Israel's acting prime minister Ehud Olmert were a statesman, he would seize Hamas's offer of a long-term truce and prepare for serious final status negotiations in an atmosphere of calm and security.
If this chance is missed, then the road will be open to Al Qaida and movements like it. Hamas is not an ally or a precursor of Al Qaida: it is an alternative to it.
If Israel and its Western allies refuse to deal with Hamas, they will inevitably be faced with a far more violent enemy.
There is unfortuately no sign that this lesson has been learned. Quite the contrary.
Israel seems terrified that Hamas will achieve world-wide recognition as the representative of the Palestinian people and is doing everything possible to isolate and delegitimise it.
The problem is that Israel's current leaders and their friends in the West are trapped in the thinking of the past.
They seem unable to move beyond the paradigm laid down by Ariel Sharon, the stricken prime minister, namely that the Palestinians must be utterly defeated before any deal can be struck with them.
As General Moshe Ya'alon, the former chief of staff famously put it, Israel must "burn into their consciousness" that terrorism does not pay. To this day, he continues to advocate the same dead-end views.
Speaking on February 8 at the pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he declared that "the only way to address the problems created by a Hamas-led Palestinian [National] Authority is to undermine its authority as soon as possible."
Ya'alon seems unaware that the intifada of the past five years, crowned by the electoral victory of Hamas, has proved that this thinking is profoundly mistaken.
Nevertheless, Israel has persuaded the United States and some European countries that a Hamas government must be destroyed before it is even formed.
In the US Congress, a strongly pro-Israeli Representative, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, has introduced a resolution the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006 which aims to punish and isolate the Palestinians for having voted for Hamas.
Restrict US aid
The provisions of the resolution would restrict US humanitarian aid to the Palestinians; would designate Palestinian territory as a "terrorist sanctuary"; prohibit official Palestinian representation in the US; and deny Palestinians the ability to receive assistance through international financial institutions.
Last week, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution opposing any new US aid to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) unless Hamas revokes its call for the destruction of Israel.
The US has already asked the PNA to return $50 million in US aid because Washington does not want a Hamas-led government to have the funds.
Typical of the over-heated mood in Congress was a speech by Gary Ackerman, a Democratic Congressman of New York: "When Hamas looks at America, at the administration, at the Congress, they must see nothing but fierce, unrelenting and implacable rejection," he declared. "There can be no political absolution for this pack of killers ..."
At the same time, the US and Israel have put maximum pressure on Russia and Turkey, because of their suspected "leniency" towards Hamas.
A Hamas delegation, led by Khalid Mesha'al, visited Ankara in mid-February, and another delegation is due in Moscow in early March.
Behind all the rhetoric from Israel and its friends lies the old Israeli reluctance to negotiate peace with the Palestinians on anything like fair and reasonable terms.
Israel still wants land rather than peace. It knows that any deal with Hamas would mean giving up Arab East Jerusalem and withdrawing from most, if not all, of the West Bank colonies.
It prefers Sharon's policy of stealing more Palestinian territory, of imposing Israel's frontiers unilaterally by force and paying the price in terms of confrontation and violence in the belief that Israel still has the strength to win. But for how long?
Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs.
Share this article
Popular in Opinions
-
Opinions
Speak Your Mind: Cyberbullying
How can we protect our children from being Cyber bullied?
Opinion Editor's choice
-
Deal between US, India would provide impetus
If these two could agree, there would be real hope for progress in Copenhagen
-
Time for Irish to move on
The obsession with the Henry handball threatens to harm football far more than what Henry himself did
-
US and India should cooperate in space
Leaders must focus on a big idea that could lift relations into a higher orbit
