To wend a bit of a middle path between Messrs. Klein and Chait, I think it's perfectly reasonable for an American president to say that he wouldn't have any diplomatic talks with Hamas as long as that's Israel's position as well -- after all, what would they talk about? Hamas can't make concessions to the United States nor is there much of anything the United States would concede to Hamas. So in that sense, Barack Obama's refusal to expand his generous meetings policy to Hamas is both defensible policy and a good cheap talk way of saying something that "pro-Israel" folks like.
The more meaningful question facing an American administration would be what kind of counsel/pressure/whatever they give to the government of Israel regarding holding talks with Hamas. The Bush administration, in line with their general approach to the world, has always signaled unconditional support for Israel's preconditions for dealing with Hamas, even though it was the Bush administration that engineered Hamas' rise to power. It seems to me that the reasons it's smart for the U.S. to, as Obama suggests, negotiate in a meaningful way with countries like Syria and Iran are roughly the same as the reasons why it would be smart for Israel to negotiate with Hamas without preconditions. Whether or not Obama agrees with that or communicates those sentiments to the Israelis is the more substantial issue.
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Heads in the Sand
Nobody in Israel is going to accept that it might be smart to negotiate with Hamas "without preconditions," due in no small part to the fact that Hamas doesn't want any such negotiations either. It would not be smart for any U.S. president to pursue a fantastical policy that has no chance of working.
What would make sense is for a U.S. president to push for some sort of negotiations with realistic preconditions. It is not realistic, nor reasonable, to expect Israel to accept direct negotiations with Hamas unless Hamas agrees to forgo violent attacks as a policy. But it would be pretty reasonable to get rid of another precondition that Bush has accepted: that Hamas should recognize Israel before any negotiations begin. It would also make sense to stop opposing any efforts to reconcile Hamas and Fatah into a Palestinian unity government, which the Bush administration has actively tried to undermine at various times.
Obama has occasionally made comments that indicate a willingness to support indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas to reduce violence, but he has also stated his support for demanding that Hamas recognize Israel up-front. Whether he would be willing to forgo that precondition is probably the key point in this whole debate.
Posted by Haggai | April 11, 2008 4:10 PM