'Part of the solution too?
Leader
Wednesday June 8, 2005
The Guardian
The emergence of Hamas as a central political player in the Palestinian territories is a development which nobody can any longer seriously deny. That is why the sparring yesterday between the British foreign secretary and Israeli officials over British contacts with recently elected Hamas mayors was two-faced on both sides: on the Israeli side because their own security people are already dealing with the Hamas mayors on a range of practical matters, and on the British side because the argument for the inclusion of Hamas in the broad political equation in the territories has been gaining ground in British and European Union policy discussions for some time.
Jack Straw made a point of saying, shortly after arriving for a two-day visit to Israel, that Britain will not talk to the top Hamas leadership until they abandon violence. The truth is that everyone knows that armed movements never cleanly or swiftly make the transition to a purely political role or completely renounce their original objectives. Hamas has moved to the point where it has supported a ceasefire which has brought relative calm in recent months, and it has shifted ground ideologically toward an acceptance of Israel's existence as a practical reality. But it is unlikely ever to formally go the whole way, to divest itself entirely of its weapons, or to give up its right to fight.
Yet no settlement with the Israelis is possible without at least the acquiescence of Hamas, which is why Mahmoud Abbas, like his predecessor, has sought to bring them into the political process. The Israelis know this too, at least as far as the planned disengagement from Gaza is concerned. After that it gets murkier. With Hamas in the background or even at his side, if it should come into his cabinet after elections later this year, Mr Abbas could never accept less than was offered to Yasser Arafat in a West Bank settlement. Hamas, in other words, is a guarantee that a settlement, if it came, would be about the whole West Bank, give or take a few agreed swaps.
The suspicion must be that the real Israeli objections to Hamas are not that it is a terrorist organisation or that they do not trust its reformulations on Israel's right to exist, although anxiety on both scores is understandable. If Ariel Sharon does not want a West Bank settlement worthy of the name he may see Hamas as the most formidable obstacle to imposing one that is manifestly unfair. That it would also constitute an excuse for refusing serious negotiations suggests that statements about Hamas will continue to need careful decoding.'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1501434,00.html
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