MB Civic

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/8622b5ee-f68a-11da-b09f-0000779e2340,s01=1.html
Financial Times June 8, 2006

The writer is a senior fellow on the Middle East at the
US’s Council on Foreign Relations and a visiting
professor at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London.

The issue is not whether Hamas recognises Israel

By Henry Siegman

What hope there may still be for avoiding a complete
meltdown in the Palestinian occupied territories, not
to speak of the hope of ever achieving a two-state
solution, lies not with the initiative by Mahmoud
Abbas, Palestinian Authority president, to put the two-
state formula to a popular referendum but with the
ruling Hamas movement’s refusal to play by Israel’s old
rules. Those rules have in effect eliminated the
prospect of viable Palestinian statehood and were
intended to achieve that end.

Hamas is determined that Palestinian recognition of
Israel will not come about without Israel’s recognition
of Palestinian national rights, and that only an end to
the occupation and Israel’s acceptance of the principle
that no changes in the pre-1967 borders can occur
without Palestinian agreement (a principle enshrined in
the road map that Israel pretends to have accepted)
will constitute such recognition.

The most widely respected Israeli security expert,
Efraim Halevy, believes Israeli and American efforts to
overthrow the Hamas regime are misguided. A hawk who
headed Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, under five
prime ministers and served as Ariel Sharon’s national
security adviser, Mr Halevy is convinced these efforts
damage Israel’s vital interests.

His view shocked members of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations when
Mr Halevy addressed them recently in New York. He has
held it for some time. In September 2003, he said
Israel should signal to Hamas that if it “enter[s] the
fabric of the Palestinian establishment, we will not
view that as a negative development. I think that in
the end there will be no way around Hamas being a
partner in the Palestinian government”. At that time,
when Hamas had the support of only a fifth of the
Palestinian population, Mr Halevy said: “Anyone who
thinks it is possible to ignore such a central element
of Palestinian society is simply mistaken.” How much
more so today, when Hamas enjoys majority support.

Asked last week on Israeli television how he could
justify advocating engagement with a terrorist
organisation that does not recognise Israel’s right to
exist, Mr Halevy ridiculed the stale assumptions that
underlie that question. Do not look at Hamas’s
rhetoric, he said, look at what it does: Hamas declared
a truce 18 months ago and has committed no terrorist
acts against Israel since. In spite of Hamas’s refusal
to change its theological rejection of Israel, Ismail
Haniyeh, prime minister in the Hamas-led government,
ordered his ministers to seek practical co-operation
with their Israeli counterparts. Mr Haniyeh also
confirmed that Hamas’s self-declared truce is open-
ended.

[from Ed: As we’re aware, Hamas just ended the self-
imposed truce, in reaction to the upsurge in assassinations
and deadly shellings of Palestinian civilians and militants by
Israel.  In all likelihood, much as Sharon’s triggering of the
current intifada by his personally-led raid on a holy shrine,
these actions by Israel were designed to allow the killings
to now be justified and to dampen the rapidly-growing global
opposition to Israeli tactics and policy.  In any event, Halevy
and Siegman’s analyses hold, largely unaffected by current
events.]

Why should Israel care whether Hamas grants it the
right to exist, Mr Halevy asked. Israel exists and
Hamas’s recognition or non-recognition neither adds to
nor detracts from that irrefutable fact. But 40 years
after the 1967 war, a Palestinian state does not exist.
The politically consequential question, therefore, is
whether Israel recognises a Palestinian right to
statehood, not the reverse.

Using Mr Halevy’s criterion of looking at what a
government does, not what it says, it is clear that –
its many declarations to the contrary not withstanding
– Israel does not recognise a Palestinian right to
statehood in the West Bank and Gaza. The position of
Ehud Olmert’s government is that Israel’s right to
annex at will any parts of Palestinian territory east
of the pre-1967 borders supersedes any Palestinian
rights. This is implicit in the Israeli government’s
decision that a Palestinian government that even wishes
to place on the agenda of a peace negotiation the
territorial changes made unilaterally by Israel in the
West Bank, or the question of the Palestinian refugees,
cannot be a partner for peace.

Israel’s “concessions”, such as the withdrawal from
Gaza and isolated West Bank settlements, are intended
to serve narrow Israeli interests. As noted by Peace
Now’s Settlement Watch, Israel is continuing to thicken
its existing settlements and expanding the settlements’
territorial boundaries for yet further expansions. In
these circumstances, what is puzzling is not Hamas’s
refusal to accept Israel’s dictates but the support
given by the international community – particularly by
the European Union – to Israeli efforts to isolate and
overthrow Hamas.

Israel’s government has left no doubt that even if Mr
Abbas’s promised referendum passes by a large majority
(indeed, even if Hamas were to sign up to it), Israel
will not accept it as the basis for a peace process and
will proceed to set its border with the Palestinians
unilaterally. Should that turn out to be the case, will
European leaders continue their support of Washington’s
incurable pandering to Israel’s rightwing policies, or
will they muster the political will to re-engage with
the Palestinian Authority and provide the needed
political and economic support for the Palestinians’
achievement of their national rights? The answer to
that question may well determine the future of the
entire region.

***

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“Our German forbearers in the 1930s sat around, blamed their rulers, said ‘maybe everything’s going to be alright.’ That is something we cannot do. I do not want my grandchildren asking me years from now, ‘why didn’t you do something to stop all this?” –Ray McGovern,  former CIA analyst of 27 years, referring to the actions and crimes of the Bush Administration