Isolating Hamas

[Gentle Giant]

It's about time Israel's only Arab peace partners joined the discussion. There can be no resolution to the Israel/Palestinian Authority issue unless the other Arab countries buy into it because though it's a small area there are large geographic and demographic consequences. And the first step has to be to isolate Hamas and render it politically irrelevant.

Neighboring powers to meet with Abbas
Talks to show support for Fatah leader
By Scott Wilson, Washington Post | June 22, 2007

JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority president, will meet in Egypt on Monday for talks with two neighboring Arab leaders alarmed by Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip.

The meeting will be hosted by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and attended by King Abdullah II of Jordan in the Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Israeli and Palestinian officials said yesterday. Hamas leaders will be excluded from the four-way meeting, which is designed to show Arab and Israeli support for Abbas, a leader of the secular Fatah party, and other moderate Palestinians now running a government in the West Bank that has no apparent authority in Gaza.

The political separation of Gaza, an impoverished coastal strip that borders Egypt, from the West Bank, a more prosperous territory adjacent to Jordan, has troubled the leaders of the two neighbors -- the only Arab countries that have peace agreements with Israel -- over the potential consequences of instability on their borders.

Egypt's invitation represents a particular rebuke to Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, whose government in Gaza has not been recognized by any foreign country. Mubarak sponsored the military training of hundreds of Fatah forces loyal to Abbas this year under a program now supported by a $40 million US aid package.

Mubarak's intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, also spent months as the primary mediator between the Palestinian parties, only to see Hamas fighters fire on the Egyptian diplomatic mission in Gaza during their takeover. Egypt has since transferred its ambassador to the Palestinian Authority to the West Bank, withdrawn its security delegation from Gaza, and effectively sealed its border with the strip.

Hamas is an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, a 79-year-old Islamic political movement that constitutes Mubarak's chief opposition. Israeli analysts say Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood operate independently, but Arab analysts warn that Mubarak must be careful not to inflame Islamic activists in his own country as he deals with Hamas.

"He's worried about his regime -- he doesn't like the Islamists, period," said Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian sociologist and democracy activist. "He can't try a moderate approach to Hamas when he also doesn't with his own Islamist problem."

Mubarak's most pressing short-term concern is Egypt's border with Gaza, a stretch of about 8 miles that was patrolled by Israeli forces until they withdrew from Gaza in the fall of 2005. Egypt is limited in how many troops it can deploy along the frontier, a prime weapons-smuggling route into Gaza, under the terms of the 1978 Camp David peace accords with Israel.

In the past, Palestinians in Gaza, hemmed in by Israeli-controlled passages and security, have pushed over the barrier and flooded into the Sinai by the thousands. Another such exodus could be far larger and more chaotic, Israeli and Palestinian analysts say, if humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate for the 1.4 million Palestinians who live in the strip.

Jordan's Abdullah also faces a potential problem arising from Gaza's separation from the West Bank. Some Israeli leaders have said that Jordan, most of whose residents are of Palestinian descent, should become the Palestinian state.

In the week since Hamas seized control of Gaza, Israeli officials have called for Jordan to consider a "confederation" with parts of the West Bank. Jordan's Hashemite royal family, destabilized in the past by Palestinian political groups, has long dismissed the idea.

Olmert has called Abbas's break with Hamas, an armed movement that does not recognize Israel's right to exist, a new opportunity to begin negotiations toward the creation of a Palestinian state.

"We will ask the Israelis to immediately resume talks on a final-status agreement and end the occupation," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior adviser to Abbas.

Abed Rabbo said Abbas will also ask Olmert to remove some of the hundreds of Israeli roadblocks and barriers in the West Bank, which the Israeli military says it maintains for security. He said doing so would "make Palestinian life more normal" and allow Fatah security forces greater freedom of movement.

Abbas dissolved the Hamas-led unity power-sharing government June 14 after the Islamic group completed a five-day rout of Fatah security forces in Gaza that left more than 140 people dead. He appears unwilling to reconcile with Hamas any time soon.

[Gary Sisco]

Good luck rendering Hamas "irrelevant." Since it has very substantial support the only way to do that would be to kill a great many people.

I remember warning -- to a universal shrug or condemnation -- when people were so busy demonizing Arafat and Fatah that they weren't paying attention to what all else was happening "on the ground," that there would come a time when people would look back on his and the PLO's days as "the good old days" by comparison to what would follow in his wake. Everyone was then insisting that to deal with the PLO was to deal with the devil itself. Well, here we are.

Welcome to the past.

Hamas's rise to prominence was not only predictable but predicted. And it rests not on violence alone but on many years of real grassroots organizing and the making of clinics, schools and so forth that provided real benefit for the people, and weren't being made by others, the PLO included.

[Gentle Giant]

First, point taken, but I'm going to beat up on your semantics. While he was just a clown near the end of his life, the height of his reign will never be known as good old days:



In other words, as you well know, Palestinian terrorism is not a 21st-century innovation.

Still, I'd be very surprised if Hamas still has true popular support, or if they ever did (i.e., they shouldn't get brownie points for being perceived as the lesser of two evils). Power and influence comes from having a seat at the table, and right now that seat's been taken out from underneath them.

[guy]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

Good luck rendering Hamas "irrelevant." Since it has very substantial support the only way to do that would be to kill a great many people.

I remember warning -- to a universal shrug or condemnation -- when people were so busy demonizing Arafat and Fatah that they weren't paying attention to what all else was happening "on the ground," that there would come a time when people would look back on his and the PLO's days as "the good old days" by comparison to what would follow in his wake. Everyone was then insisting that to deal with the PLO was to deal with the devil itself. Well, here we are.

Welcome to the past.

Hamas's rise to prominence was not only predictable but predicted. And it rests not on violence alone but on many years of real grassroots organizing and the making of clinics, schools and so forth that provided real benefit for the people, and weren't being made by others, the PLO included.

Yup.

If Israel is actually interested in making Hamas irrelevant (aside from closing their eyes and repeating the mantra "I wish it were so, I wish it were so"), then they'll attempt to make real, substantial progress on improving the daily lives of Palestinians and on the diplomatic front with the Fatah administration in the West Bank. This will have to go beyond cosmetic measures, monthly photo-ops with Mahmoud Abbas and funneling weapons to Fatah thugs.

I'm guessing this won't happen.

Guy

[Gary Sisco]

You'd be guessing correctly.

[Gentle Giant]

Israel releases Palestinian funds to aid Abbas
He will meet other Mideast leaders today
By Amy Teibel, Associated Press | June 25, 2007

JERUSALEM -- Israel agreed yesterday to release desperately needed funds to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a day before the moderate leader planned to meet the heads of Egypt, Israel, and Jordan in a summit meant to bolster him in his struggle with Hamas.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel sought to play down expectations for the meeting in Egypt with Abbas, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and King Abdullah II of Jordan .

An Olmert aide said it was premature to begin talks on a final Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, despite urging from Fatah and other Arab countries to take immediate advantage of the Hamas militants' expulsion from the coalition government.

"We have an interest in having this meeting, but I don't want anyone to think we're on the brink of a dramatic breakthrough," Olmert told his Cabinet, according to a meeting participant.

Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, deposed Palestinian prime minister, speaking in Gaza, called hopes for the summit "illusions" and a "mirage."

He said, "The Americans won't give anything. Israel won't give us anything. Our land, our nation will not come back to us except with steadfastness and resistance," a code word for attacks against Israel.

The Israeli military said that one of its aircraft had targeted a car carrying an Islamic Jihad rocket squad on its way to an attack in Gaza City in the first such attack since Hamas overran the Gaza Strip this month.

One person was killed and two wounded, hospital officials said.

Islamic Jihad said the vehicle was carrying its members on a "holy mission," code for an attack on Israel.

Hamas TV footage showed the burned car, which contained at least one rocket.

In one of a range of measures it is weighing to support Abbas, Israeli Cabinet members agreed in principle to start giving him $550 million in frozen Palestinian tax money.

Israel has withheld the funds -- mostly customs duties that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians -- since January 2006, when Hamas swept Palestinian parliamentary elections. Israel considers Hamas a terrorist group.

The freeze left previous Palestinian governments unable to pay full salaries to government employees, who support one-third of Palestinians . Olmert told his Cabinet that the unlocking of the tax revenues was meant to support the new Palestinian government. Abbas expelled Hamas from the government after the group took Gaza.

Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, said that details of the money's release would be discussed at today's summit and then again by the Israeli government.

Participants in the Cabinet meeting said the proposal passed by an overwhelming majority: Two hard-line ministers voted against it.

Israel said it withheld the money to prevent Hamas from using it to finance terror attacks.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri called on Abbas's new prime minister, Salam Fayyad, to spend the money on Palestinians in Gaza as well as the West Bank.

"This is the money of the Palestinian people and everyone has the right to this money," he said.

Olmert also met with top security officials yesterday to discuss removing some of the hundreds of roadblocks Israel has erected in the West Bank.

Israel says the travel restrictions are necessary security measures. Palestinians say they are excessive and crushing their economy.

Although no decisions were made, Olmert told his Cabinet that removing the roadblocks would be a necessary risk.

"We are strong enough to take calculated risks," he was quoted as saying.

In return, Israel will demand in Egypt that Abbas confront militants -- something he had been reluctant to do before Hamas's Gaza victory.

"We shall present there our expectations from the opposite side, our demands on the issues of security and the war against terror, but definitely also our readiness to cooperate with the new government," Olmert said in televised comments before the Cabinet meeting.

[Gary Sisco]

Rice now says that they "didn't see it coming" referring to Hamas' victory at the polls.

Millions of "ordinary" people saw it coming.

The most extraordinary thing about this admin has been its ability to not be able to see things coming that millions of other people not only saw but warned against.

[Gentle Giant]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

Rice now says that they "didn't see it coming" referring to Hamas' victory at the polls.

Millions of "ordinary" people saw it coming.

The most extraordinary thing about this admin has been its ability to not be able to see things coming that millions of other people not only saw but warned against.

Yes, and from day one, when they apparently decided, "This thing'll just work itself out on its own. No need to get all involved in it like Slick Willy did."