‘We’ll Have to Talk’
In spite of escalating violence, a growing chorus of Israelis have begun calling for negotiations with Hamas.
When paramedic Yerach Tucker arrived at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem last Thursday night, gunshots were still cracking through the halls. As he inched closer to the front door, a stream of young men frantically poured out of the Jewish seminary, their shirts stained with blood. Tucker ducked behind a bus, waited for the shooting to stop, and then crept with his team through the front gates. Inside the school's library, he found students lying slumped at their desks, heads collapsed over their books. "You couldn't see the floor," Tucker recalled. "It was covered in red." Outside, news filtered through the growing crowd that militants in Gaza had celebrated the shooting with their own bursts of gunfire. "We bless the operation," Hamas said in a statement. "It will not be the last." Tucker looked on as an angry mob of ultra-Orthodox men broke into a roar and began to shout, "Death to the Arabs!"
With eight students dead and nine more wounded, the attack was Jerusalem's worst in four years. Tucker, like most Israelis, says he hopes his military will hit back hard--even if it's not clear whether the gunman, an Arab from East Jerusalem, was working on his own. Yet when it comes to longer-term policy toward the Islamists, the paramedic just sighs. "Hamas controls everything in Gaza--we can never finish them off," he says. "They run the place. I don't want to talk to terrorists, but what can you do? Eventually we'll have to talk to them." In the United States, the notion of face-to-face talks with Hamas, which the State Department classifies as a terrorist organization, has long been a political third rail. Yet in the Jewish state a growing chorus of security officials, academics and regular Israelis like Tucker have begun calling for negotiations with the Islamists. In a Haaretz-Dialog poll last month, 64 percent of Israelis said they supported direct talks; among those who belong to the country's dovish Labor Party, 72 percent favor negotiations. Yet even among those surveyed from the hawkish Likud Party, almost half--48 percent--said they favor a face-to-face dialogue. Already in recent weeks, even as the two sides have traded some of the most ferocious bombardments in months, a number of nongovernmental channels have opened between Israelis and the Islamists.
The numbers are a reflection of the Israeli public's growing frustration at what they see as a failing Gaza policy. Since the Islamists won power in parliamentary elections two years ago, Israel and the United States have enforced a punishing embargo on the coastal strip, hoping support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his moderate West Bank allies could help turn public opinion against Hamas. Yet the Islamists have survived and learned to effectively play the spoiler, sabotaging Abbas's peace talks with a few well-placed attacks. Israeli military raids into Gaza have similarly backfired. After Israeli troops killed more than 50 Palestinian civilians in Gaza operations last week, international public opinion turned sharply critical. "Hamas is not going to disappear," says Shlomo Brom, a former Israeli military chief of strategic planning. "They're not Al Qaeda; they're a national political movement." Brom, who favors indirect negotiations with Hamas, says he believes a dialogue could help moderate the Islamists. Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told NEWSWEEK last year that his organization would also be open to direct talks, as long as there are no preconditions.
Yet the fragility of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's governing coalition makes any high-profile contacts unlikely. Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University who supports direct negotiations, says that there's "a huge gap" between current Israeli policymakers and public opinion on the issue. Part of the problem is that Olmert, whose approval ratings are hovering in the single digits, depends on the support of right-wing parties like the Sephardic Orthodox Shas bloc to stay in power.
Rather than direct talks, the government has quietly blessed Egyptian efforts to arrange a ceasefire between the two sides. Abbas, too, is conflicted. He has refused to discuss a unity deal with Hamas, arguing that the Islamists took over Gaza illegally last June and must submit to his authority first. Any deal that excludes his Palestinian Authority may weaken Abbas's standing among Palestinians, and his ability to continue longterm peace talks with the Israelis.
Even if Israel did choose to hold direct talks, there are a number of practical obstacles. The Hamas takeover of Gaza last June has sharply divided the Islamists, fracturing the organization into a number of independent power bases. "When you talk to Hamas you don't have one address," says a former Israeli intelligence operative who has held direct talks with the Islamists in the past, and requested anonymity before describing the sensitive talks. "You have to deal with several figures in order to achieve approval for anything."
- 1
- 2
- Next Page »
Loading Menu
Member Comments
Posted By: tina1111 @ 03/12/2008 9:33:51 AM
Comment: disagree
Posted By: getzel @ 03/11/2008 8:19:24 PM
Comment: krock: There is no such thing as "moderate Islam".... As Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said the other day, and I quote, "There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it".... Islam is in pursuit of dominance. It wishes to exact its imperialist agenda by force on a worldwide scale (8:39).
Koran in Sura 2, verse 85, that those believers who do not believe in everything the Koran states will be humiliated and receive the severest punishment; which means that they will roast in Hell. In other words, people who call themselves Muslims but who do not believe, for example, in Sura 9, verse 30, which states that Jews and Christians must be fought, or, for example, in Sura 5, verse 38, which states that the hand of a thief must be cut off, such people will be humiliated and roast in Hell.
The Trojan Horse.
No, the USA should not take actions that result in the implementation of a Sharia terrorist government; in Kosovo, the West Bank, Gaza, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, et al. A representative government is fine provided the people of the area want one; not fine at the point of a gun. Kosovo is a Sharia terrorist government today: bad policy. The Hamas independent government in Gaza is a Sharia terrorist government; likewise West Bank; likewise Lebanon if Hizbully gets it, Likewise Iran since Jimmy brought the Ayatollah, watch out or you get one in Pakistan; et al
It is never the moral high ground to assist in imposing a Sharia terrorist government on people that always includes: honor killing, hanging gays, women as chattel: virtual slaves, legal to murder & rape & pillage non -Muslims; that is the moral low ground. Yes, these throwbacks to the seventh century should be confronted or you get a burqa, will bow to Mecca or be killed.
Arabs and Persian Sharia people are at war with The West because Arabs and Persian Sharia people believe Islam can not survive against a free market, free speech, republic with women???s rights & no honor killing: murdering women is legal in Sharia.
Arab, if only Israel; is only an excuse, propaganda, for Islamic terror; as we see that wherever the Mohammedans bump against another culture the Mohammedans say the same thing they say about Israel. In India: same thing, in Kosovo: same thing, In Israel: same thin, In Darfur: same thing. In Thailand: same thing, the Philippines: same thing. Wherever the Moslems are contiguous with another people/culture: Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jew, African tribal villages, secular, religious; The Moslems say the same thing they say about Israel: If only???Sharia???and no freedom of speech to criticize Islam.
If Israel, G-d forbid, goes: America will be on the Mohammedans front line of attack: your wife and daughter in burqas or dead. Hitchcock would love the irony: all those Jew haters in burqas if anything happens to Israel.
Intelligence analyst: Getzel
Posted By: getzel @ 03/11/2008 8:18:32 PM
Comment: to A. muslim Al Qaeda:
krock: There is no such thing as "moderate Islam".... As Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said the other day, and I quote, "There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it".... Islam is in pursuit of dominance. It wishes to exact its imperialist agenda by force on a worldwide scale (8:39).
Koran in Sura 2, verse 85, that those believers who do not believe in everything the Koran states will be humiliated and receive the severest punishment; which means that they will roast in Hell. In other words, people who call themselves Muslims but who do not believe, for example, in Sura 9, verse 30, which states that Jews and Christians must be fought, or, for example, in Sura 5, verse 38, which states that the hand of a thief must be cut off, such people will be humiliated and roast in Hell.
The Trojan Horse.
No, the USA should not take actions that result in the implementation of a Sharia terrorist government; in Kosovo, the West Bank, Gaza, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, et al. A representative government is fine provided the people of the area want one; not fine at the point of a gun. Kosovo is a Sharia terrorist government today: bad policy. The Hamas independent government in Gaza is a Sharia terrorist government; likewise West Bank; likewise Lebanon if Hizbully gets it, Likewise Iran since Jimmy brought the Ayatollah, watch out or you get one in Pakistan; et al
It is never the moral high ground to assist in imposing a Sharia terrorist government on people that always includes: honor killing, hanging gays, women as chattel: virtual slaves, legal to murder & rape & pillage non -Muslims; that is the moral low ground. Yes, these throwbacks to the seventh century should be confronted or you get a burqa, will bow to Mecca or be killed.
Arabs and Persian Sharia people are at war with The West because Arabs and Persian Sharia people believe Islam can not survive against a free market, free speech, republic with women???s rights & no honor killing: murdering women is legal in Sharia.
Arab, if only Israel; is only an excuse, propaganda, for Islamic terror; as we see that wherever the Mohammedans bump against another culture the Mohammedans say the same thing they say about Israel. In India: same thing, in Kosovo: same thing, In Israel: same thin, In Darfur: same thing. In Thailand: same thing, the Philippines: same thing. Wherever the Moslems are contiguous with another people/culture: Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jew, African tribal villages, secular, religious; The Moslems say the same thing they say about Israel: If only???Sharia???and no freedom of speech to criticize Islam.
If Israel, G-d forbid, goes: America will be on the Mohammedans front line of attack: your wife and daughter in burqas or dead. Hitchcock would love the irony: all those Jew haters in burqas if anything happens to Israel.
Intelligence analyst: Getzel