The Hamas conundrum

While EU decisions need to be respected, pressure is mounting in the West to engage with Hamas, says Leo Brincat

While one has to admit that the Hamas election to power in the West Bank and Gaza set the Middle East peace process back by almost 20 years I do not believe that a dead end has been reached.

Hamas is in the same position the PLO was in before it got round to fully accepting the State of Israel.

The Labour Party's position is unequivocal. We support a two-state solution which recognises the Palestinians' sovereign rights as well as Israel's right to live in peace with its neighbours, behind secure borders.

Although as an EU country we are bound to respect the EU decisions on Hamas, particularly in view of its refusal to recognise Israel and its reluctance to renounce terror, there have been developments to which we cannot turn a blind eye if we really want a just and equitable solution to the Middle East crisis.

Various Western sources, ranging from the British The Daily Telegraph to the Council on Foreign Relations, have been carrying editorials and online debates suggesting that rather than isolating Hamas, we should consider engaging with it (Council on Foreign Relations) while the Telegraph stated editorially that although no one would say that the West and Israel face an easy task in dealing with a Hamas government in the Occupied Territories, "America, the EU and Israel should deal directly with Hamas, in the hope of steering it towards the renunciation of violence. The fact that it has engaged in the electoral process - it issued a fatwa against the first Palestinian polls in 1996 - has held to a ceasefire and proposed a long-term truce with Israel is evidence of change. Building on that is the wiser course. Ostracism will merely further radicalisation."

In an online debate carried by the Council on Foreign Relations, Nadia Hijab claimed that engaging Hamas, a strategy initiated by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has already paid off. In a radical political evolution, Hamas has upheld a unilateral ceasefire for 15 months, excluded from its electoral platform recovery of all Mandate Palestine and indicated willingness to support a two-state solution within the 1967 borders (22 per cent of Mandate Palestine).

While everybody would ideally like to see Hamas renounce violence, recognise Israel and embrace existing agreements, the question being asked is whether it would be far more productive to respond to Hamas' evolution.

Hijab made the point I made earlier, namely that Hamas's path to moderation is strikingly similar to the PLO's. Both expressed support for a two-state solution before formal agreements, both used violence against civilians in response to the violence of Israel's occupation, and both implemented ceasefires when it looked as if justice might be achieved through negotiations.

Gamal Soltan, a senior research fellow at the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, argues that the Hamas election can prove to be a serious opportunity for peace.

While Hamas's excesses need to be contained, we must be alert to the threat that certain Israeli elements could be planning to keep huge West Bank settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley.

A point I made to Israeli Ambassador Ehud Gol, who was in Malta recently, was that although Israel is arguing that it does not have a partner in Hamas, it did have a partner in Abbas - much respected by the United States - but it never seriously engaged with him. Israel left Gaza unilaterally and kept it under siege even before the Hamas election.

Negotiations make peace between enemies.

Whatever the Palestinian negotiating party, Israel will eventually have to give up the occupied territories.

Let us make sure that Israel will not give in to the temptation of feeling strong enough to have both land and 'peace' by needing a Hamas as isolated as Abbas was, to keep half the West Bank and truncate the rest.

I am not saying that the Olmert government will follow this course but if this proves to be the case then it will be a recipe for more chaos and bloodshed, not peace and justice.

By the time of writing I am not yet aware whether Hamas formally backed the joint platform forged by senior jailed members of Hamas and Fatah which included acceptance of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but it was encouraging to note that Abbas, the moderate leader of Fatah, said he backed the draft, which authorises him to lead peace talks with Israel.

His precise words were: "This document is very important. I adopt the position of those 'heroes'. It includes a deep and realistic political vision that to a very large extent represents my point of view ...and thus I adopt it."

Henry Siegman, the Jewish Council on Foreign Relations expert on Israeli-Palestinian affairs, wrote two important pieces on Hamas. One was an interview he gave to Bernard Gwertzman, the consulting editor of the CFR, while the other was a much lengthier article in late April for The New York Review of Books.

Siegman's main point was that the US and Israel should recognise that Hamas can deliver a peace agreement, saying he believes that there is a strong potential for Hamas to transform in the direction of moderation and responsibility and away from violence and terror.

Apart from claiming that there are indications that such a transformation is taking place, he said that what we should not to be doing is to undermine the moderates and strengthen the extremists. He even claims that Hamas is trying, behind the scenes, to persuade terrorist groups like Islamic Jihad to stop suicide attacks on Israel just as Hamas has done for the past year.

Siegman believes there are certain things that we think we ought not do about Hamas and he is clearer about that than about what we should be doing with Hamas.

Although some Israeli elements believe in a reformed Fatah again ruling Palestinians, Siegman has a different view, in the sense that if a peace process did get under way, the Palestinian people would not trust Fatah enough to support the compromises that would be necessary.

The main challenge that the international community - including Israel - has ahead of it is how to fight Hamas terror while encouraging it to become part of the political process.

It is a mistake, now that Hamas has joined the political process and has finally stopped the violence, that instead of encouraging Hamas moderation so that Israel might have a credible interlocutor - a real partner for peace - Israel is boycotting Hamas and even worse, trying to bring it down.

This despite the fact that no one in Israel doubts that Hamas is the one and only political force in Palestine that can end the violence and reach a peace accord if it decides to do so, and that President Abbas alone cannot do this.

While there are many elements in Israel - even in the new coalition - that might want a peaceful breakthrough, there are other elements that have no interest in encouraging moderation in Hamas.

To do so would be a very dangerous falsehood as happens when some critics equate Hamas with Al-Qaeda.

Some experts have even compared this apparently insoluble problem to the situation in 1972 when only a right-wing American President like Richard Nixon could open the door to China, which in fact he did.

So, for a change, let us give history a chance to repeat itself!

Mr Brincat is the main Opposition spokesman on Foreign Affairs and IT.