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The South African invitation to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is a very sensible and positive move, in keeping with the best traditions of peacemaking whereby one must speak with and politically engage all parties to a conflict if one hopes to resolve it peacefully.
It is not politically fair or intellectually honest to make a straightforward comparison between Hamas and Fatah in today's circumstances. Fatah has held power for nearly 40 years in the Palestinian national community, and Hamas has shared power for just over a year under conditions of an international financial and political boycott and an Israeli military and economic siege. We don't know what Hamas can or might do when it can exercise power under normal conditions.
Blair should consider the lessons of his successful peace-making efforts in Northern Ireland and the failures of the Quartet's efforts to date in the Middle East, and re-launch a peace-making effort that includes all the principal parties in the talks.
The US and Israel absolutely should engage and negotiate with Hamas, just as the US, UK and Irish engaged with the IRA, which was viewed by them all as a terrorist group. The terror in northern Ireland ended when political talks resolved the conflict. The same is likely to happen with Israel and Palestine. Hamas is a major and legitimate player and was also democratically elected. It cannot be avoided.
Its unsavory behavior, such as suicide bombings, must be addressed in a wider context that comprises two crucial elements: 1) Hamas and the Palestinian people must see that they can achieve their legitimate goals (i.e., the goals that are universally accepted) via diplomacy rather than military resistance and attacks, and, 2) the criminal acts of Hamas must be judged alongside the criminal acts of the state of Israel or Israeli rogue terrorists among the settlers. It is hypocritical to shun Hamas because of its military actions when the US negotiated with the Viet Cong, the IRA and others who were equally violent or killed Americans.
Hamas' offer of a long-term truce seems like a no-brainer for Israelis, who should jump on it and call Hamas' bluff.
Israel and its foundational ideology of Zionism have always had a structural problem with how to accommodate Arab and Jewish nationalism in a single country. Most of the world believes that the best answer is two Israeli and Palestinian states side by side, with a negotiated and fair resolution of the Palestine refugee issue that is the core of the conflict for Palestinians and Arabs. Some Israelis feel the solution is to expel Palestinians within Israel, and treat those living under Israeli occupation as residents but not as citizens with equal rights. Few Israelis accept the principle that Palestinians and Israelis should enjoy fully equal rights in two adjacent states, with the Palestinian refugeehood issue resolved through negotiations on the basis of UN resolutions and prevailing international law.
The Current Discussion: Are Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama on a collision course over Iran and the Palestinian problem? What would be the consequences of a breach between the United States and Israel?
Netanyahu's policies are clear - and widely rejected by virtually the entire world because they smack of Zionist colonialism that perpetuates the European colonialism of the 19th century. Obama's policies vis-a-vis Israel-Palestine, on the other hand, are less clear, because he has not articulated them in any depth beyond saying he favors a two-state solution. This conforms to the prevalent international norm and UN resolutions, but does not indicate much else about whether the U.S. will lean on Arabs and Israelis alike to move towards this goal, or how the U.S. views options to address the central issue in the conflict from the Arab perspective, which is the fate and rights of the Palestinian refugees.
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