Global Policy Forum

By Gideon Samet

There's no need to be a great prophet to predict that talking with Hamas will be difficult and maybe even barren. One can guess that without intelligence and defense stalwarts who prepared us, as we remember, for Hamas' failure in the Palestinian elections. Nor was there any surprise about the number of standing ovations received by the prime minister when, in his speech to the U.S. Congress, he lashed out at those terror plotters. It was a well-crafted speech polished by the trusty hands of Eli Wiesel. But the entire Israeli move toward Hamas reeks of banality, lack of sophistication, and paralyzed thought, and is grimly reminiscent of past lessons.

Something worse comes up through the moralistic lecturing of Israeli and American leaders regarding Hamas. The basic mistake, to the point of utter folly, is that the profound refusal to speak with the organization hurts Israeli interests. The orthodoxy of rejection even contradicts Olmert's tactics, which are said to be testing the potential for negotiations with the Palestinians before going to the great promise of evacuating most of the West Bank.

How does the prime minister intend those statements to be persuasive if no such attempt is made with the Hamas government, without giving it an opportunity to express its nay? Indeed, there also was a rhetorical flaw in all the talk about reaching out an outstretched hand to the elected Palestinian president, as Olmert made certain to refer to him in Washington, while he doesn't take Mahmoud Abbas' outstretched hand for negotiations.

Those who closely followed Yitzhak Rabin's political shift cannot be particularly impressed by the demonization of Hamas these days. In its day, the PLO was considered a much greater evil. Abie Nathan was thrown into prison for talking with members of the leading political movement in the territories. Ezer Weizman was warned that he would suffer the same fate if he met with them again, as he did once in Rome. The voices were no less loud about Arafat's Satanism than those of the chorus of refusal toward Ismail Haniyeh today.

This flame of resistance by the Israeli tribal camp stamps out all other thinking. But it also is aimed at an organization that was legally elected, and without which there won't be any chance for any kind of agreement. Therefore, Israel regarded the May 11 document of agreement drawn up by senior Palestinian leaders as a cheap trick. Its 18 articles do not include recognition of Israel. There's no forsaking of the right of return. As if there ever was an organization that when fighting for independence volunteered up front, before any negotiations, to give up all its principles. Therefore, the unprecedented opening proposal from the Hadarim group, for a state of Palestine beside Israel based on the 1967 borders, was squashed and thrown into the trash.

Ephraim Halevy, the former Mossad chief, thinks the document is important, that Israel should talk with the Hamas, and that Israel does not need a Hamas mantra of recognizing us at this point. If the question is properly framed (and certainly if Olmert gave even the slightest hint that the possibility is not contemptible), it is very possible that polls would find an Israeli majority for talking with the Haniyeh government just as a majority was formed for getting out of most of the territories. American agreement to include Hamas in the negotiations would be very helpful, but is not necessary. Europe will support it, and we've already seen how Israel bends U.S. administrations on less justified matters than talking with a leader who won power through the vital democratic method so important to Washington for the sake of a new Middle East.

There have to be some rational conditions for Israeli agreement. Yet, it is avoiding formulating them to determine whether they might be acceptable to the other side. Or maybe it is convenient for this government, like all its predecessors except for Rabin's and Barak's to put its refusal to negotiate in concrete. Next week, President Abbas might execute his ultimatum to Prime Minister Haniyeh to go to national referendum if Haniyeh does not accept the prisoners' document. Let's assume there is a referendum and the principles of the document are approved. Is it possible already now to dare make a wild guess as to what the Olmert government would say about it?

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