Parliamentary Report on Hamas

Via Daniel Levy, the UK House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs looks back at the West's recent handling of the Israeli-Arab conflict:

We conclude that the decision to boycott Hamas despite the Mecca agreement and the continued suspension of aid to the national unity Government meant that this Government was highly likely to collapse. We further conclude that whilst the international community was not the root cause of the intra-Palestinian violence, it failed to take the necessary steps to reduce the risk of such violence occurring.

Given the failure of the boycott to deliver results, we recommend that the Government should urgently consider ways of engaging politically with moderate elements within Hamas as a way of encouraging it to meet the three Quartet principles. We conclude that any attempts to pursue a 'West Bank first' policy would risk further jeopardising the peace process. We recommend that the Government urge President Abbas to come to a negotiated settlement with Hamas with a view to re-establishing a national unity Government across the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

That seems completely sound to me. Even if you disagree, there's no denying that there's something bracing -- from an American perspective -- about exercises like this one, or like the one the Knesset undertook after the 2006 war in Lebanon. The Bush administration has shifted its policies around here and there since 9/11, and the press has always been eager to exaggerate the scope of these course-corrections, but none of the efforts to change direction -- even the real ones -- have involved any kind of serious effort to come to terms with the errors of the past.

Comments

It's like George Packer said about the Iranian regime. Hamas sucks, and we should talk to them.

Posted by Freddie | August 16, 2007 5:20 PM

I think we need to start a dialogue with Osama bin Laden. Our Osama boycott really has not been a great idea. Sure, it's true that all he wants to do is kill us, but I bet if we close out eyes and wish real real hard, he may coe around.

Posted by Dave | August 16, 2007 5:33 PM

I think we need to start a dialogue with Osama bin Laden. Our Osama boycott really has not been a great idea. Sure, it's true that all he wants to do is kill us, but I bet if we close out eyes and wish real real hard, he may coe around.

You know, this sort of thing-- the utter refusal to understand nuance, complexity, and realpolitik-- makes it incredibly hard for this country to have an effective foreign policy.

Posted by Freddie | August 16, 2007 5:41 PM

Interestingly, the next line of the report, which Matthew didn't quote, is as follows: "We urge Hamas and President Abbas to give all Palestinians a pony."

Posted by Al | August 16, 2007 5:45 PM

Freddie:

"You know, this sort of thing-- the utter refusal to understand nuance, complexity, and realpolitik-- makes it incredibly hard for this country to have an effective foreign policy."

Thanks - I would say "makes it impossible to have an effective foreign policy."

Posted by Jennifer | August 16, 2007 5:56 PM

Here's the quality of expert opinion they used in deciding against a West Bank First policy:
'They argue that Fatah is no longer ideologically or organisationally "coherent" as a movement.'
Newsflash - Water No Longer Flammable.

In fact, they just cite three people opposed to the policy but don't as far as I see actually engage the issue.

Posted by rilkefan | August 16, 2007 5:58 PM

Hamas goal is the destruction of Israel. Not even a two state solution that along the 67 aristice lines with the non starter 800,000 palestinians "returning" to Israel would satisfy it. So those of you who favor the total destruction of Israel, which one commenter on the Martin Kramer thread below does, then it makes sense to support talking to Hamas.

Posted by Dave | August 16, 2007 6:05 PM

Dave, you are a hate-dripping moron and I write that as an Israeli.

"So those of you who favor the total destruction of Israel...."

Only a moral maniac could write such an intimidating phrase, but you are a maniac.

Posted by Jennifer | August 16, 2007 6:13 PM

Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He's wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He's always on trial for just being born.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him.
He was supposed to feel bad.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He's the neighborhood bully.

He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that's enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one's command.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What's anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin', they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully.

Posted by ILP | August 16, 2007 6:23 PM

FWIW, Many Israeli security experts - some of them associated with the Israeli right - favor engaging Hamas:

http://www.forward.com/articles/10055/

Posted by Peter H | August 16, 2007 6:36 PM

Jennifer,
Explain to me how hate has anything to do with not engaging with Hamas. I have no problem engaging with Palestinians, Fatah, the PLO, etc..' to negotiate peace, but Hamas does not want to negotiate. It simply wants to destroy Israel. Read it's charter. What is the point of engaging with a group that wants nothing more than your end?

"Dave, you are a hate-dripping moron"
"only a moral maniac could write such an intimidating phrase, but you are a maniac."

I think from your post, it's pretty obvious where the hate/mania is comming from.

Posted by Dave | August 16, 2007 7:22 PM

"Many Israeli security experts - some of them associated with the Israeli right - favor engaging Hamas"

Note that your link is to an article in February, a lot of history ago.

Posted by rilkefan | August 16, 2007 7:45 PM

Dave, of course, is clueless.

What Hamas has in their charter is utterly irrelevant to their behavior, just as Dubya's remarks about "freedom and democracy" - not to mention our Constitution - are irrelevant to his behavior.

And it's irrelevant what Hamas wants or what Fatah wants. What's relevant is what the Palestinian people want. And they want Palestine back and the right of return to that Palestine. Neither Hamas nor Fatah represent the Palestinian people - just factions of those people, and probably not the majority at all. I believe most polls of the Palestinian people have showed that they'd be perfectly happy with the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, the removal of the crap cutting them off from each other, and complete separation from the Israelis. They'd have little interest in killing Jews IF the Jews had less interest in pushing them out of Palestine.

Once they get that, they won't give a damn about five or six million Jews standing around wondering what the hell happened. Both the Palestinians and the Jews will be too happy that the war is over.

Oh, sure, you'll still have a bunch of Jewish settler flakes and a bunch of Islamist terrorist flakes. So what? Countries are not made of them, they're made of more ordinary people. Countries don't even get ruined by such flakes unless the ordinary people start listening to them and concerning themselves about what they say.

Of course, none of this is going to happen. Israel and the US are going to continue to beat the Palestinians down until some smart Arab elsewhere figures out that stealing an Israeli nuke and lighting up Tel Aviv is the way to go. Once that happens, the international community will forcibly disarm Israel of its nukes and probably force Israel to pull back to the 1967 borders - if not the 1948 borders - and forcibly create a Palestinian state. Israel is not going to get a say because they were stupid enough and rogue enough to build a nuclear weapons arsenal in the worst place in the world to have one.

Israel has probably less than ten or twenty years before this happens. It could happen any day. They should act accordingly.

But they won't. That's a guarantee. You heard it here first.

And, yes, when Tel Aviv glows in the dark, I'm going to sit here and say, "I told you so."

That doesn't mean I "despise Jews", as Josh Marshall thinks. It means I despise morons regardless of their ethnicity, religion, nationality or sexual orientation.

I am an equal-opportunity despiser of morons.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 17, 2007 12:42 AM

It simply wants to destroy Israel.

After I figured out that letting Arabs back into historic Palestine destroys Israel, it was a real let down. It seemed really dramatic before that.

It's not even about maintaining a Jewish majority, as anachronistic and morally dubious as that is. They let in the Russians and if you go to a development town you see shops with dancing pigs in the window, pork sandwiches and half of them are wearing crucifixes. That suits the Israeli's just fine because whatever the Russians are they came from somewhere else and don't like Arabs and apparently that's the real criteria.

Posted by Ed Marshall | August 17, 2007 1:56 AM

The Palestinians are saintly.

It's just a coincidence that they always have these homicidal creeps(Arafat,Hamas)
leading them.

Posted by David | August 17, 2007 2:47 AM

The Palestinians are saintly.

Palestinians, like Jews, are an ethnic group, and assigning a moral character to all of them is bigoted and hateful. If I said the same about Jews-- if I said "The Jews are saintly", while making it plain I meant the opposite-- I would correctly be condemned as an anti-Semite. You can't have it both ways. You can't say that Palestinians are simply wicked, while at the same time saying that it is evil to judge all Jews by the actions of some Jews. One of the saddest elements of this whole sad business is the fact that members of the pro-Israel lobby seem so intent on making bigoted, generalizing statements about all Palestinians while at the same time condemning, with righteous fury, those who would make bigoted, generalizing statements about all Jews. Anti-semitism is a horrific evil. Racism against Palestinians and Arabs is exactly as bad.

Posted by Freddie | August 17, 2007 9:36 AM

Richard Steven Hack,

Considering your desires are the exact same as Hamas, I am not surprised by your view.

"I'd go further - in my view the Israeli state should be utterly dismantled"

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/08/criticisms_i_wouldnt_have_made.php#comment-426193

Posted by Dave | August 17, 2007 11:50 AM

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Posted by zbyndu uqanvis | August 27, 2007 4:18 PM