Europe retreats on Hamas (yes, already)

Posted By Mitchell Reiss Thursday, January 29, 2009 - 4:11 PM Share

By Mitchell Reiss

The European Union has made a gesture towards accepting a Palestinian unity government that could include Hamas, a move it hopes can help heal a rift between the Islamists and their Western-backed rivals, Fatah.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, speaking to reporters in Jerusalem on Wednesday, used new language to describe the conditions under which the bloc would be prepared to work with a new coalition, should Hamas and Fatah manage to agree to one....
Instead of spelling out three long-standing conditions, also adopted by the United States, that Hamas must renounce violence, recognise Israel and accept existing interim peace accords, Solana said only that a new Palestinian government that included Hamas should commit to pursuing a two-state solution.

Perhaps Solana was misquoted, perhaps he was selectively quoted. Otherwise, he surely must have known that this statement undercuts the new president and secretary of state, who only days ago repeated publicly the three conditions for the United States engaging with Hamas: renounce violence, respect previous agreements, and pace Reuters, not "recognize Israel" diplomatically, but simply accept Israel's right to exist.

More broadly, Solana's statement sends a signal to those in the region, including Iran, that the Europeans will always look for the lowest common denominator when negotiations get difficult rather than adhering to commonly agreed principles. This message also undermines those in the region, especially other Palestinians, who are trying to moderate Hamas’s extremist positions. It is far more likely to prolong conflict, not shorten it.

EXPLORE:EUROPE, ISRAEL/PALESTINE, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

(1)

HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE

SETH EDENBAUM

8:53 PM ET

January 29, 2009

Foreign policy [is] for adults

"Solana's statement sends a signal to those in the region, including Iran, that the Europeans will always look for the lowest common denominator"
Really?

Originally, in the weeks right after the late-January election, Hamas wanted to form a relatively moderate government that would include a large number of political "independents" under the leadership of Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh as Prime Minister. But as I know-- because I was the conduit of one of these threats-- threats of lethal violence were sent by the Israelis to any Palestinian "independents" who might be even considering joining a Haniyeh-led government. As a result, none of them did; and the government that Haniyeh ended up forming was 100% Hamas.

Does this interest you at all?

Israel initially encouraged the rise of the Palestinian Islamist movement as a counter to the Palestine Liberation Organization, the secular coalition composed of Fatah and various leftist and other nationalist movements. Beginning in the early 1980s, with generous funding from the U.S.-backed family dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, the antecedents of Hamas began to emerge through the establishment of schools, health care clinics, social service organizations and other entities that stressed an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam, which up to that point had not been very common among the Palestinian population. The hope was that if people spent more time praying in mosques, they would be less prone to enlist in left-wing nationalist movements challenging the Israeli occupation.
While supporters of the secular PLO were denied their own media or right to hold political gatherings, the Israeli occupation authorities allowed radical Islamic groups to hold rallies, publish uncensored newspapers and even have their own radio station. For example, in the occupied Palestinian city of Gaza in 1981, Israeli soldiers -- who had shown no hesitation in brutally suppressing peaceful pro-PLO demonstrations -- stood by when a group of Islamic extremists attacked and burned a PLO-affiliated health clinic in Gaza for offering family-planning services for women.
Hamas, an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement), was founded in 1987 by Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who had been freed from prison when Israel conquered the Gaza Strip 20 years earlier. Israel's priorities in suppressing Palestinian dissent during this period were revealing: In 1988, Israel forcibly exiled Palestinian activist Mubarak Awad, a Christian pacifist who advocated the use of Gandhian-style resistance to the Israeli occupation and Israeli-Palestinian peace, while allowing Yassin to circulate anti-Jewish hate literature and publicly call for the destruction of Israel by force of arms.

For recent conflicts Nancy Kanwisher of MIT runs the numbers

Thus, a systematic pattern does exist: it is overwhelmingly Israel, not Palestine, that kills first following a lull. Indeed, it is virtually always Israel that kills first after a lull lasting more than a week.

Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.