A future with Hamas

[csite]

Thank you. I appreciate it. Now what is wrong with that? And by the way, you only showed evidence that Israel helped train Kurds in Iraq, hardly the statement that Israel "funds and trains Kurds who conduct terrorist activities too in Iraq, Iran and Turkey!"

Kurds use terrorism against Iraqi forces and Iraqis for a long time, Kurds in Turkey are famous for their brutal terrorism actions and Turks are also famous of oppressing them, Kurds also used terrorism in Iran.

Kurds want to achieve Kurdistan, to do that they have used all means, i have seen plenty of videos of Kurds firing at any car that goes through their territory without consideration if it's civilian or not. Israel's training of the Kurds was to give Iran and Iraq a pain in the . They are like Chechens in Chechnya against the Russians, but slightly more brutal.

The whole ideology that we are goody goody and you are a bady bady is nonsense, most countries support terrorism for their own interests whether political, economical or military. CIA has a long long history of supporting terrorism, Israel's hands arn't very clean either, nor is Iran, Saudi Arabia, Britain etc.

[csite]

Actually, Israel has been gaining foreign investment in the last two years, not losing it.

Most foreign investment is from America, most countries don't tend to invest in israel, i have some gap cloths made in Israel which is a surprise because China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and India have far bigger industries and cheaper labour in these fields. Israel's economy is driven by IT, medicine and diamond cutting.

[minusthejihad]

Kurds use terrorism against Iraqi forces and Iraqis for a long time, Kurds in Turkey are famous for their brutal terrorism actions and Turks are also famous of oppressing them, Kurds also used terrorism in Iran.

I'm sure you appreciated when they were gassed by Saddam then?

[QUOTE=csite]Israel's training of the Kurds was to give Iran and Iraq a pain in the .

I know! Isn't that just brillaint? I love it, almost as much as giving both Iran AND Iraq weapons during their wars.

The whole ideology that we are goody goody and you are a bady bady is nonsense, most countries support terrorism for their own interests whether political, economical or military. CIA has a long long history of supporting terrorism, Israel's hands arn't very clean either,

umm, hmm. Whatever you say dude! You must be right! And I don't think we are goody goody and you are baddy baddy, I think we are good, and I don;t really think much about you anyway, as you are not really imporant in my world. After all, I don't drive your cars, use your computers, insulate my home with your products. Oh sorry, I smoke the Hooka occasionally and listen to middle-eastern music, but those of course, aren't necessities either are they? Look, let's make a deal, you all focus on catching up with the rest of the world in the important stuff, and then I'll actually pay attention when you speak? Capish?

[minusthejihad]

Most foreign investment is from America, most countries don't tend to invest in israel, i have some gap cloths made in Israel which is a surprise because China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and India have far bigger industries and cheaper labour in these fields. Israel's economy is driven by IT, medicine and diamond cutting.

Thanks for information I already know, this is ISRAEL forum after all. I like how you added Diamond Cutting as if it's their third highest export or something.

[physics]

I don't care what the UN considers Hamas & Hezbollah but these are groups that only know violence and nothing else. They don't know how to invest money properly, especially for infrastructure.

So much money has been given to the PA over the years, and what the helk happened to it?

[Mediocrates]

It's not clear that Hamas even has the mechanical ability to receive aid semi transparently. Do they deal with banks and financial intermediary NGO's? Do they have a World Bank rep? Clearly most aid to Hamas would wind up as baksheesh.

[redcake]

The Kurds are known for being the best fighters in the region, with their own style, developed around the terrain. There's been a mutual relationship between Israel and the Kurds at times, but we're talking about a group who are notorious for working as hired mercenaries. Israel can't take too much credit.

[Jorge]

Daniel Levy writes a very incisive article on the alternative options open to Israel in its relation to Hamas ( “Now for some Hard-Headed Realism” Haaretz, Feb 24) The full article may be accessed at:
Haaretz, 2,24

I’d like to comment on some parts of that article, starting with his quote of H. Kissinger (IHT Feb. 15):

"whoever governs Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the parties will be impelled by propinquity to interact on a range of issues."

Whichever party is going to govern Israel in two months time, it will have to “interact” with Hamas, since Hamas is going to govern the P.A. The point is we cannot ignore Hamas and pretend it doesn’t exist; we can neither eradicate or erase it (as we thought we could up to a year ago). Our future government will have no choice but to “interact” with the future P.A. in the same way that Hamas has no choice but to “interact” with Israel.

The thing is, since we’ll have to deal with Hamas we should apply ourselves to look for some constructive approaches instead of formulating as our strategic policy the task of “convincing Khaled Meshal and friends to adopt the central tenets of Zionism” (D. Levy). To deal is not at all the same as to negotiate. Hamas, in any case, is not at all interested in negotiating a peace agreement with Israel so, even if we wanted to negotiate, that road is closed for the time being.

As usual the right wing has a clear-cut solution: to suspend the passage of goods between the PA and the outer world, to convince American and European Govs., to withdraw their financial support of the P.A. and to set the IDF to the task of making Palestinian’s daily life even more unbearable. This strategy, the right-wing maintains, will erase the support of the Palestinians for Hamas “they’ll see the error of their democratic choice and embrace the warm hug of Fatah moderation” (D. Levy again).

Nice and clear-cut. Unfortunately it ignores that the same policy of “hitting them hard on the head” resulted in the spectacular growth of Hamas in the last five years, from a fringe group to an organization supported by the vast majority of Palestinians.

To be continued…

[Mercury]

I’d like to comment on some parts of that article, starting with his quote of H. Kissinger (IHT Feb. 15):

"whoever governs Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the parties will be impelled by propinquity to interact on a range of issues."

We should listen very carefully to the words of this great man. After all, it was the prophetic vision of this Peace Nobel Prize winner that lead to the peace agreement with the communists in 1973, which secured peace, freedom and democracy for South Vietnam.

we should apply ourselves to look for some constructive approaches instead of formulating as our strategic policy the task of “convincing Khaled Meshal and friends to adopt the central tenets of Zionism”

policy of “hitting them hard on the head” resulted in the spectacular growth of Hamas in the last five years, from a fringe group to an organization supported by the vast majority of Palestinians.

Totally right. Instead of meeting violence with violence we should open our hearts to the people who elected Hamas. By finding a compromise which is acceptable to them, we'll secure peace for our lifetime. Just think about it -

If only 70 years ago the goverments of UK and France had stopped exacting unjust reparation payments from the poverty stricken germans, returned to them the german-speaking regions of Saar, Austria and Sudets and lifted the humiliating limitations on the german army, 50 million people would not have lost their lives in WWII.

[turkjew]

Hamas are a threat not just to Israel but to Turkey as well
and im ashamed that as both a jew and a turk , that the current government of Turkey has had the audacity to hold talks with them
they are after all one of the supporters of the undermining of the hard work done by Ataturk to make Turkey a progressive country .

[Annaliese]

Hamas are a threat not just to Israel but to Turkey as well
and im ashamed that as both a jew and a turk , that the current government of Turkey has had the audacity to hold talks with them
they are after all one of the supporters of the undermining of the hard work done by Ataturk to make Turkey a progressive country .

They are a threat to Jews in the Diaspora everywhere, yet my country's State Department has always been anti-Israel. I don't feel ashamed; just frustrated and a bit angry. "Don't mourn: Organize!"


Beilin of Israel's Meretz party presents a similar dilemma for the Jewish State. Do you think Israel should be ashamed? I don't...it's inherent in the nature of freedom to have these disagreements (or problems, depending on one's POV) ... just look at all the bickering on this very board!


PS Welcome to Israel Forum, turkjew!

[Jorge]

Continued from my Post # 38 :

An alternative option open to Israel in its dealing with Hamas is explored by Mr. Levy in the article cited in Post #38; I quote from him:

“Another option is to test the limits of Hamas' capacity for political co-optation and moderation. To be credible, the performance benchmarks for Hamas must be tough but fair. No free pass, but no premeditated failure. The test, initially at least, should focus on actions, not words, with an emphasis on the security realm and maintenance of the cease-fire. …Third party channels to Hamas will be important in exploring possibilities, intentions, and yes, limitations. Hamas will only really be challenged to reform if the targets set for them make sense, and if a political endgame horizon is finally put on the table. Israel may soon discover, paradoxically, that even unilateralism requires a predictability of behavior on the other side, and it clearly has an interest in understanding better what is feasible in a new Hamas era.”

This seems to me the best of the options open to us. It springs from an assessment that the road to a peace agreement has been closed for the time being. Sadly, we missed the boat, not much point to keep “crying over spilled milk”. No point in sitting down waiting for Hamas to change its outlook; we have little to do, but even that little should be done right and we shouldn’t persist in pursuing policies that were shown retrospectivily to be utterly clumsy.

A “test of their moderation” will be if Hamas extends the hudnah for the foreseeable future and not whether they change the tone of their rhetoric. As long as they keep their side of the cease fire, we should keep ours. Punitive actions or killings of Hamas leaders, as a reprisal for not refraining the Jihad or other groups, ought to be avoided.

On the other hand, we should not fall into the trap of confusing moderation with “good will”, as the Russian government seems prone to do. Moderation is dictated by tactical considerations, because of a gap between what you’d like to achieve and what’s feasible to achieve. Of good will towards Israel Hamas has none and it would be an absurd government policy to try to pressure them into declarations of good will or brotherly peace.

[Sumud]

Of good will towards Israel Hamas has none and it would be an absurd government policy to try to pressure them into declarations of good will or brotherly peace.

And vice versa, Jorge.

Though I doubt your advice of even minimal moderation of policy towards Hamas is likely to win favor.

[Womble]

For me it sums up in a single quote by Ze'ev Jabotinsky: you do not meet half-way those who do not want to meet you at all.

That Daniel Levy article made me cringe. More than once. His credentials in the end of the article say it all: he is a loser's advisor. Oslo B, the Taba talks, the Geneva fraud.

He passes a few too many lies for facts in that article, and it is these lies on which his conclusions stand.

Let me fisk this nonsense point by point:

Judging by recent Israeli government statements, our strategic foreign policy goal now revolves around convincing Khaled Meshal and friends to adopt the central tenets of Zionism.

Fallacy number one. Our strategic foreign policy does not revolve around Khaled Meshal, around the Hamas or around the Palestinians. Our strategic foreign policy involves relationships with the US, Europe and the rest of the world, and in that regard nothing changed. The only thing that now revolves around Khaled Meshal is out relationship with the Palestinians, and there is nothing absurd or unrealistic about it. He is, after all, the head of their ruling party.

Leave aside for a moment the absurd notion that any proud Zionist might require the Hamas kosher stamp of approval to legitimize our national rights.

A spectacular strawman, really. Who and when had ever said such a thing, and who exactly does Levy criticize here? We don't need Hamas' stamp of approval. It is them who needs ours, because it is their people who depends on us for economic survival

For more than a year, the Israeli official message was simple: Abu Mazen and his Fatah friends' sugar-coated words were irrelevant - we wanted to see action, deeds. Suddenly, the equation has been turned on its head. The disciplined adherence by Hamas to the cease-fire is irrelevant - all we have become interested in is their words. In a psychological reverse somersault, the declarations of Arab leaders are now everything.

Anyone who has been paying any attention during this so-called "cease-fire" remembers that there never was any. There was no "disciplined adherence" to anything and the Hamas never stopped attacking. We pay attention to their word not because there was a change, but because there WASN'T.

The one [option] currently making the rounds is for Israel, the U.S., some of Europe, and perhaps moderate Palestinians to join forces in precipitating the collapse of a Hamas-led PA. The Palestinian public, deprived of donor aid, and such bankable "promises" as an airport, seaport and Gaza-West Bank link one day (but in their lifetime?) would see the error of their democratic choice and embrace the warm hug of Fatah moderation.

In their lifetime? How about next year? The PA is ALREADY incapable of paying salaries unless foreign aid arrives. Their entire fuel supplies come from a single Israeli company; their electricity comes from us; most of their products end up at our markets.

But to pull this one off, we would have to calibrate policies that make sense in Palestinian terms, to a Palestinian audience. This requires a degree of sophistication and goodwill that we have blatantly failed to display in the past. Somehow the corrective effect on the Palestinian public psyche of endless collective punishment and tough love has been found wanting.

It requires a degree of guts and decision making confidence, not goodwill. It requires a government that can actually show the world the middle finger and ignore the worldwide whine while the Palestinian cars rust on the roadside for lack of fuel, their work earns no pay and their TVs uselessly gather dust. It requires a show of economic force and an observable demonstration that our threats are not hollow anymore. But he does have a point there: our present government might not be up to the task.

The combined sense of despair, injustice, and anger at U.S.-Israeli hypocrisy will feed the hard-liners and encourage the Palestinian public and body politic to take a further lurch to the extremes. Hamas and the Palestinians are not Ahmadinajad, the Taliban or Al-Qaida, but more displays of Israeli and U.S. expertise in winning hearts and minds, and we may send them there.

Hamas may not be Ahmadinejad, but they are already taking his advices on how to run the state. They may not be Al-Qaeda, but they blow people up just the same. They were just elected by a huge margin- what, pray tell, can the Palestinian public do to "lurch to MORE extremes"? Practice cannibalism?

Oh and what hypocricy? We never liked Hamas before, we don't now. That ain't hypocricy, buddy, that's consistensy.

A second option is centered around working with and through Abu Mazen as the PA President and PLO Chair. Abbas becomes, excuse the expression, the "shabbes goy" for establishing arrangements and even reaching agreements with the Palestinians.

Because we all know, what we really need at this point is signing some more agreements, that will work just as wonderfully as the previous ones.

This may also offer the best shot at reviving the flagging fortunes of Fatah, and theoretically at least, could at the same time offer Hamas a convenient way out of some of their own new dilemmas.

Now why would we offer them a way out in the first place? So they could claim any achievements as their own, and blame us for the failures? Nope, they made their bed, let's see them sleeping in it.

It would, though, require an Israeli willingness to negotiate in good faith with Abu Mazen and to take a leap of faith regarding his capacity to deliver.

Abu Mazen's capacity to deliver is, of course, absolutely phenomenal. Abu Mazen himself constantly uses his inability to deliver as a universal excuse for why he doesn't do squat- and we are to "take a leap of faith"?

The third option, which does not necessarily stand in competition with the second, is to test the limits of Hamas' capacity for political co-optation and moderation.

"Test" their capacity for moderation? Why, haven't there been enough tests yet? Is there any hint whatsoever that they are willing to moderate themselves? Is there any example of an Islamic terrorist gang growing moderate? If the Hizbullah is any indication, it ain't going to happen. Not in our lifetime.

The test, initially at least, should focus on actions, not words, with an emphasis on the security realm and maintenance of the cease-fire.

Notice that this suggestion is founded on what I have already noted above: Levy's false claim that the Hamas actually observed the cease-fire.

When Hamas leaders visit Turkey, for instance, Israel should be seeking to influence the content of the conversation, not obsessing with the diplomatic niceties of who exactly receives them.

Why, does one somehow contradict the other? On the contrary, by showing our displeasure at the very fact of the invitation we ARE influencing the content of the conversation.

Hamas will only really be challenged to reform if the targets set for them make sense, and if a political endgame horizon is finally put on the table.

That's funny. Until now I believed that rectifying the miserable economic situation in the territories was a target that made perfect sense. Perhaps Levy means that these targets should make sense in the context of the infamous Hamas charter? Let's offer them the destruction of Israel, shall we? THAT should make sense to them. Not much else will though.

Israel may soon discover, paradoxically, that even unilateralism requires a predictability of behavior on the other side, and it clearly has an interest in understanding better what is feasible in a new Hamas era.

Hamas so far has been anything but unpredictable. They killed, they are killing and they intend to keep killing. What is feasible in a new Hamas era? Why, more killing, obviously.

Let's stop pretending there are easy, unilateral options. Reaching out to Abbas while actively exploring Hamas' capacity for moderation should represent the hard-headed realist's choice.

Let's stop pretending at all, shall we? Let's stop pretending that Abbas can ever deliver, or that Hamas will moderate itself tomorros if we feed them enough sweets. There are no easy options, unliateral OR bilateral. We're in for a long stand-off, and the only option is the ugly one- maintaining the status quo until the Palestinian sanity returns. If ever.

[Sumud]

There is little difference for Palestinians whether they have a Fatah or Hamas led government. Some of the thinking about Iraq, was that by removing Saddam, the PA would be weakened and so would have to bow to Israeli dictates. The fact that Hamas rose to prominence instead of some mythical moderate, hasn’t changed Israeli goals. Now instead of having a leadership which will comply with Israeli demands, it has one it believes will be weakened so much Israel can just enforce it’s wishes.

Same goal, just a different means.

Thee doesn’t seem a great deal in Levy’s article to get upset about, is just the usual approach dressed up with some nice words. In any case, Hamas is just the Palestinian equivalent of the Likud, so members here should understand it quite well.



And Womble, ‘Oh and what hypocricy? We never liked Hamas before, we don't now.’
Have you forgotten Israels support for the Islamist movement in the 1980’s? Israels ‘Arab experts’ advised that supporting the Islamists would be a good idea as they would be too busy praying to fight the occupation, and would also oppose the secular PLO.