Opinion
Who cares if Hamas recognises Israel?
Abbas, as head of the PLO, will be negotiating with Israel - not Hamas. So why
is Israel rejecting a unity government?
MJ Rosenberg Last Modified: 13 May 2011 08:17
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The media is full of conflicting reports about whether or not Hamas is ready to
recognise Israel. In some reports, Hamas spokesmen imply that it would. Others
reports have them saying "never".
This story encapsulates this contradiction in its headline: "Hamas accepts 1967
borders, but will never recognise Israel, top official says".
But why does it matter whether Hamas recognises Israel or not, so long as it
agrees to permanently end attacks against Israel? Who needs its recognition?
The issue of Hamas recognition of Israel would be valid if Israel was about to
enter negotiations with it. Those negotiations would, in fact, be meaningless
if Hamas ruled out recognition as an end-result of negotiations - as
meaningless as if Israel ruled out withdrawing from the West Bank.
But no one is proposing Israeli/Hamas negotiations. The issue now is whether
Israel and/or the United States should consider dealing with a government that
includes Hamas. Does the Hamas presence rule out negotiating with that
government?
It shouldn't, not when both Fatah and Hamas say that it will be president
Mahmoud Abbas, as head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, who will be in
charge of relations with Israel. Abbas is fully committed to peace with Israel.
He opposes all forms of violence. His forces have worked with Israel's to
thwart "terrorism", earning the Israeli government's praise as a "partner for
peace".
Hamas as an excuse
In fact, since the death of his predecessor, Yasir Arafat, Abbas has made the
establishment of a Palestinian state at peace with Israel his number one goal.
Why does it matter what Hamas thinks about negotiations when it will be the PLO
that will be conducting them? All that is necessary from Hamas is that it
pledge an end to violence, and keep it.
Hamas' presence in the Palestinian government should no more rule out
negotiations with it than the presence of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu
party in Netanyahu's coalition makes negotiations with Netanyahu beyond the
pale.
Lieberman, after all, opposes negotiations with the Palestinians and favours
"transfer", a version of ethnic cleansing, under which Palestinians would be
forcibly moved to Arab lands. Unlike Hamas, which would have no role in foreign
policy in the proposed unity government, Lieberman is Israel's foreign minister.
But that should not matter, the same way Hamas' presence should not matter.
Governments have all kinds of partners in their ruling coalitions; what matters
is the policies the coalition adopts - not the views of its various components.
If Netanyahu and Abbas agree to negotiate, the views of Hamas and Yisrael
Beiteinu are beside the point, again with the caveat that all forms of violence
are utterly and completely proscribed.
That is why both Israel and the United States should drop its demand that Hamas
recognise Israel in advance of negotiations. First of all, Hamas is not going
to do it. The only card it has in its dealings with Israel is the recognition
card and it is not going to play it in advance of negotiations. Demanding that
it play it now is like demanding that Israel not freeze, but dismantle,
settlements prior to negotiations. It won't happen.
And it doesn't matter.
Politics vs peace
It appears that the Obama administration may understand this. Asked about the
implications of the unity agreement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was
equivocal:
There are many steps that have yet to be undertaken in order to implement the
agreement. And we are going to be carefully assessing what this actually means,
because there are a number of different potential meanings to it, both on paper
and in practise.
Congress, of course, responded the way it usually does, with an AIPAC-authored
letter warning Palestinians not to unite. No one could expect anything else in
the midst of the pre-2012 fundraising season.
But then Congress has never given much evidence of caring whether the Israelis
and Palestinians come to terms - while the White House has. Besides, it is the
president who needs to worry about the implications of a deepening
Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the national interest. Maybe Congress should
too, but it rarely, if ever, has.
Unfortunately, if past is prologue, the White House will ultimately join the
Israelis in ignoring the possibility that Hamas may be ready to live in peace
alongside Israel - even if it won't explicitly say so. It will do the same
thing both the Bush and Obama administrations did with the unprecedented Arab
League initiative which offered Israel full peace and normalisation in exchange
for territorial withdrawal. It will ignore it and, with the Israelis, hope that
it goes away.
And it will.
The point is that opportunities for peace vanish if the people who matter
refuse to seize them. Had the United States expressed serious interest in the
Arab Initiative - and pushed Israel hard to explore its possibilities -
Israelis and Palestinians might be on their way to peace by now, rather than
still languishing in deadly stalemate.
Israel, in particular, needs to recognise that time is not on its side. While
the Palestinians are unifying and preparing to declare a state, Israel is now
more isolated than ever before in its history. With Mubarak gone, Turkey no
longer friendly and the ever-cautious Assad regime on the brink, Israel needs
to recognise that the best time for a deal is right now.
Ignoring any peace feelers, from anyone, is just plain dumb.
MJ Rosenberg is a Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network.
The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media
Matters Action Network.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily
reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Source:
Al Jazeera
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