Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Talk to Hamas
Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Ignoring them didn't work. That leaves three choices: Keep ignoring them and trying to starve them from funds; invade again; talk to them. The first option will not work because the cry of humanitarian abuse will rise up, as it already has. The second will not work because, well, it didn't work for two decades. The third choice is the only viable option. Tricky, and maybe not with big, glitzy White House visits, but it's the only realistic way forward. Jimmy Carter is right on this one, if not for the reasons he states. Here's Dennis Ross.

Well, it is a fundamental challenge for Israel, because Israel is now going to face a situation where, on the one hand, it sees a potential Palestinian partner in the West Bank that it would like to deal with, and it sees a clear Palestinian adversary that it does not want to deal with, and it doesn't know what the future identity of the Palestinians is going to be because there's an ongoing struggle.

So it has to make a decision of how it's going to deal with each of them. And yet, at the same time, when it takes a look at Gaza, it certainly doesn't want rockets coming out of Gaza reaching more and more of Israel. It doesn't want to have to go into Gaza, because there's no easy or clear military answer if it does.

So even if it prefers to deal with Abu Mazen, it also has to face the reality that there could be a value from Israel's standpoint to reach some kind of modus vivendi with Hamas within Gaza. Certainly it has leverage, because it controls the access of electricity and water into Gaza. It has the military option that it really doesn't want to exercise.

Hamas, for its own part, has to be in a position where it now has to govern. It can't blame it on anybody else. If, in fact, they want to behave irresponsibly, they're going to find it's very difficult to get help from the outside. If they want the Israelis to make life easier for them, they're going to have to find a way to respond to them.

And Dan Levy:

It, of course, is not realistic. And in the very, very early days, we already see the need to avoid a humanitarian crisis. And I think so the heads will prevail, and at the working levels there will be arrangements made in Gaza between Israel and the new Hamas reality there.

In a way, the fundamental paradigm hasn't shifted. And we heard this today from the Israeli prime minister. It's still about a two-state solution. And it was encouraging to hear that, one, we're still talking about a two-state solution, not three states, not no states with two governments.

The question that Prime Minister Olmert will face, as Dennis suggested, is, what do you do with the Hamas reality? Now, President Bush today seemed to be suggesting you just have to push back against that, it's an ideological struggle.

But I think Olmert may want to take a leaf out of President Bush's book in Iraq, at least in the following respect: America in Iraq is talking to anyone who might be an ally in pushing back against al-Qaida. And I think Hamas may play a similar role to some of the Sunni forces that America is now dealing with in Iraq, and I hope that Olmert and the people around Olmert begin to consider that option.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 7:33 AM
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