Definitely worth reading:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton grabbed headlines with an
invitation to Iran to attend a conference on Afghanistan, but the
significant Middle Eastern news last week came from Britain. It has
“reconsidered” its position on Hezbollah and will open a direct channel to the militant group in Lebanon.
Like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah has long been treated by the United
States as a proscribed terrorist group. This narrow view has ignored
the fact that both organizations are now entrenched political and
social movements without whose involvement regional peace is impossible.
Britain aligned itself with the U.S. position on Hezbollah, but has
now seen its error. Bill Marston, a Foreign Office spokesman, told Al
Jazeera: “Hezbollah is a political phenomenon and part and parcel of
the national fabric in Lebanon. We have to admit this.”
Hallelujah.
Precisely the same thing could be said of Hamas in Gaza. It is a political phenomenon, part of the national fabric there.
One difference is that Hezbollah is in the Lebanese national unity
government, whereas Hamas won the free and fair January 2006 elections
to the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority, only to
discover Middle Eastern democracy is only democracy if it produces the
right result.
The United States should follow the British example. It should
initiate diplomatic contacts with the political wing of Hezbollah. The
Obama administration should also look carefully at how to reach
moderate Hamas elements and engineer a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation.
A rapprochement between the two wings of the Palestinian movement
was briefly achieved at Mecca in 2007. The best form of payback from
America’s expensive and authoritarian allies — Saudi Arabia, Egypt and
Jordan — would be help in reconciling Gaza Palestinians loyal to Hamas
with West Bank Palestinians loyal to the more moderate Fatah of Mahmoud
Abbas.
Resolve is not the most conspicuous characteristic of those three
allies. But Obama must push them to help. As long as Palestinians are
divided, peace efforts will flounder.
With respect to Hamas, the West has bound itself to three conditions
for any contact: Hamas must recognize Israel, forswear terrorism and
accept previous Palestinian commitments. This was reiterated by Clinton
on her first Mideast swing.
The 1988 Hamas Charter is vile, but I think it’s wrong to get hung
up on the prior recognition of Israel issue. Perhaps Hamas is sincere
in its calls for Israel’s disappearance — although it has offered a
decades-long truce — but then it’s also possible that Israel in reality
has no desire to see a Palestinian state.
One view of Israel’s continued expansion of settlements, Gaza
blockade, West Bank walling-in and wanton recourse to high-tech force
would be that it’s designed precisely to bludgeon, undermine and
humiliate the Palestinian people until their dreams of statehood and
dignity evaporate.
The argument over recognition is in the end a form of evasion designed to perpetuate the conflict.
Israel, from the time of Ben Gurion, built its state by creating
facts on the ground, not through semantics. Many of its leaders,
including Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni, have been on wondrous political
odysseys from absolutist rejection of division of the land to
acceptance of a two-state solution. Yet they try to paint Hamas as
irrevocably absolutist. Why should Arabs be any less pragmatic than
Jews?
Of course it’s desirable that Hamas recognize Israel before
negotiations. But is it essential? No. What is essential is that it
renounces violence, in tandem with Israel, and the inculcation of
hatred that feeds the violence.
Speaking of violence, it’s worth recalling what Israel did in Gaza
in response to sporadic Hamas rockets. It killed upward of 1,300
people, many of them women and children; caused damage estimated at
$1.9 billion; and destroyed thousands of Gaza homes. It continues a
radicalizing blockade on 1.5 million people squeezed into a narrow
strip of land.
At this vast human, material and moral price, Israel achieved almost
nothing beyond damage to its image throughout the world. Israel has the
right to hit back when attacked, but any response should be
proportional and governed by sober political calculation. The Gaza war
was a travesty; I have never previously felt so shamed by Israel’s
actions.
No wonder Hamas and Hezbollah are seen throughout the Arab world as legitimate resistance movements.
It’s time to look at them again and adopt the new British view that
contact can encourage Hezbollah “to move away from violence and play a
constructive, democratic and peaceful role.”
The British step is a breakthrough. By contrast, Clinton’s invitation to Iran is of little significance.
There are two schools within the Obama administration on Iran: the
incremental and the bold. The former favors little steps like inviting
Iran to help with Afghanistan; the latter realizes that nothing will
shift until Obama convinces Tehran that he’s changing strategy rather
than tactics.
That requires Obama to tell Iran, as a start, that he does not seek
regime change and recognizes the country’s critical role as a regional
power. Carrots and sticks — the current approach — will lead to the
same dead end as Hamas and Hezbollah denial.
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