As long as Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and Fatah controls the West Bank it is hard to conduct any kind of meaningful negotiations on the peace process. The Palestinians need one negotiating team and the Israelis need to know that that team can keep its promises. But when the Palestinians announce that Fatah and Hamas have resolved their differences and have arrived at a compromise that will allow for a unified interim government and future elections, the response is the same as ever.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that reconciliation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas could spell the end of the peace process. “You can’t have peace with both Israel and Hamas,” Netanyahu said, in remarks directed at Abbas. “Choose peace with Israel.”
One could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that peace is not a priority for Netanyahu.
And it’s not a high priority for Congress, either. The next step, here, will be to defund our financial aid package to the Palestinians because Hamas is again part of the government. This is what happened under Dubya when Hamas won free and fair elections.
I think it is a sign of political immaturity to freak-out over Hamas. It should be remembered that Israel rightly considered Fatah to be a terrorist organization right up until the moment they made an agreement with Yasser Arafat. Another thing that should be remembered is that Israel initially saw Hamas as a counterweight to Fatah and lent them encouragement. The following was published in the Wall Street Journal, not in some left-wing rag.
Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. [Avner] Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas.
You can read more about this history here. I don’t want to argue over decisions made long ago, but the lesson is that you can’t just declare that your opponents are “terrorists” and refuse to negotiate with them. Israel tried that with Fatah. It didn’t work. Now they want to do the same thing with Hamas. It won’t work.
I don’t accept his analysis, but Aluf Benn’s belief that a third intifada is imminent is interesting.
The third intifada is inevitable. It will erupt if the United Nations recognizes a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders because the decision will not be implemented automatically, and the Palestinians will go to war to demand their sovereign rights and to expel the Israel Defense Forces and the settlers from their territory. It will also erupt if the United Nation is deterred from declaring independence for Palestine or hedges its decision in an attempt to placate Israel. In that case, the Palestinians will start an uprising because of their frustration at the loss of international support.
Another wave of suicide bombings would halt all the Palestinians’ momentum and do Israels’ opponents of peace a giant favor. So, I don’t see that kind of intifada as being inevitable at all. But you do have to wonder how long Israel plans on occupying land that the UN has explicitly recognized as “not theirs.”
At some point, they have to realize that they are not going to be allowed to stay in the West Bank and that they are just growing more unpopular and isolated. They should celebrate news that the Palestinians are reconciled and ready to negotiate as one partner for peace. Instead, they yell “Hamas” and we’re all supposed to forget about peace for another five years.