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Jewish World Review March 17, 2009 / 21 Adar 5769 How Hamas became ‘kosher’ By Caroline B. Glick
First, last Saturday, the Boston Globe reported that Paul Volker, who
serves as US President Barack Obama's economic recovery advisor and several
former senior US officials have written a letter to Obama calling for the US
to recognize Hamas. As one of the signatories, Brent Scowcroft, former
national security advisor under president George H.W. Bush explained, "I see
no reason not to talk to Hamas."
Scowcroft further argued, "The main gist is that you need to push hard on
the Palestinian peace process. Don't move it to end of your agenda and say
you have too much to do. And the US needs to have a position, not just hold
their coats while they sit down."
Congressional sources claim that Obama has selected Scowcroft to replace
Chas Freeman as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council.
The second reason that it is becoming apparent that the Obama administration
is poised to recognize Hamas is because on Thursday Egyptian intelligence
chief Omar Suleiman held talks at the State Department with Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton enjoining the administration to support the
reestablishment of a Hamas-Fatah unity government to control and reunify the
Palestinian Authority in Gaza and Judea and Samaria.
This is significant because it is becoming apparent that top administration
officials only meet with people who tell them what they want to hear. Case
in point is IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi's trip this
week to Washington. Ashkenazi went to the US to brief top administration
officials on Iran's progress towards a nuclear bomb. Defense Secretary
Robert Gates and Ashkenazi's counterpart Admiral Michael Mullen both managed
to be out of town. Defense Ministry sources say that Ashkenazi only met with
National Security Advisor James Jones, who reportedly wished to speak
exclusively about the Palestinians, and with Clinton's Iran advisor Dennis
Ross, whose role in shaping US policy towards Iran remains unclear.
Hamas for its part prefers the unconditional recognition recommended by
Scowcroft and Volker and their colleagues (who include unofficial Obama
advisors Zbigniew Brzezinski and Lee Hamilton), over the option of forming a
government with Fatah. After all, why should Hamas agree to share power with
Fatah to gain international acceptance if Washington power brokers close to
the administration endorse unconditional recognition of the terror group?
Scowcroft's statement that recognition of Hamas is necessary because "you
need to push hard on the Palestinian peace process," is indicative of how
Obama's milieu views the peace process. For them, pushing hard on the peace
process is more important than ensuring or even caring if the Palestinians
involved in the said process are genocidal terror groups or not, or ensuring
or even caring whether the said peace process has any chance whatsoever of
leading to peace.
And the Obama view is not particularly new. After Hamas won the 2006
Palestinian elections, in the interest of the peace process, the US and the
EU placed certain conditions on Hamas which they claimed it would have to
meet before the West would recognize it.
The US and Europe said they would recognize Hamas if it announced that it
foreswore terror, accepted Israel's right to exist, and committed itself to
carrying out previous agreements signed between the PLO and Israel. The
Americans and the Europeans undoubtedly viewed these conditions as a low bar
to cross. After all, the PLO crossed it.
The West's conditions were given with a wink and a nod. Everyone understood
that the only thing it wanted was for Hamas to say the magic words. They
didn't have to be true. If Khaled Mashaal and Ismail Haniyeh would just tell
the US and Europe what they wanted to hear, all would be forgiven. Hamas —
like the PLO before it — would be removed from the US and European terror
lists. Billions would pour into the bank accounts of Hamas leaders in Gaza
and Damascus. The CIA might even agree to train its terror forces.
It is obvious that all that the West wanted was for Hamas to lie to it,
because that is all it ever required from the PLO. After Arafat said the
magic words, the Americans and the Europeans were only too happy to ignore
the fact that he was lying.
When immediately after signing the initial peace accord with Israel on the
White House lawn on Sept. 13, 1993 Arafat flew to South Africa and gave a
speech calling for jihad against Israel, no one cared.
When Arafat destroyed the free press in Judea, Samaria and Gaza and
transformed the Palestinian media into propaganda organs calling for the
eradication of Israel and the Jewish people, the world yawned.
When he launched his terror war against Israel and his US-trained forces
began plotting and carrying out bombings of Israeli civilians, the US
announced its chief goal in the Middle East was to establish a Palestinian
state.
And when Arafat's successor Mahmoud Abbas announced that Fatah didn't accept
Israel's right to exist and considered terrorism against Israel legitimate,
he was declared the indispensable and sole legitimate Palestinian leader.
Indeed, when his US-trained forces surrendered to Hamas in Gaza without a
fight, the US showered an additional $80 million on Fatah forces.
On Tuesday, Fatah strongman and the West's favorite son of Palestine
Muhammad Dahlan tried to explain the facts of life to Hamas. In an interview
on PA television, Dahlan became the first senior Fatah official to openly
admit that Fatah has never accepted Israel's right to exist. Dahlan denied
reports that in the negotiations towards a Hamas-Fatah government, Fatah
representatives are pressuring Hamas to recognize Israel. In his words, "I
want to say in my own name and in the name of all my fellow members of the
Fatah movement, we are not asking Hamas to recognize Israel's right to
exist. Rather, we are asking Hamas not to do so because Fatah never
recognized Israel's right to exist."
Dahlan went on to explain how the fiction worked. Arafat was the head of the
PLO but also the head of Fatah. While as chairman of the PLO he recognized
Israel and pledged to end terrorism and live at peace with the Jewish state,
as head of Fatah he continued his war against Israel. Dahlan even bragged
that to date, Fatah has killed ten times more Palestinians suspected of
cooperating with Israel's counter terror operations, (the same operations
the PLO committed to assisting), than Hamas has.
Dahlan explained that all Hamas needs to do is to follow in Fatah's
footsteps. It should say that the PA government accepts the West's terms but
in the meantime, those terms will remain inapplicable to Hamas as a
"resistance group." In that way, Dahlan explained, Hamas will be able to
receive all the West's billions in financial assistance.
As he put it, "Do you imagine that Gaza's reconstruction is possible under
the shadow of this bickering between us and the international community?
[Gaza reconstruction] can only be dealt with by a government… that is
acceptable to the international community so that we can… benefit from the
international community."
Not surprisingly, Dahlan's statement went almost completely unnoted. Only
the Jerusalem Post and one or two other Jewish publications and a few
anti-jihadist blogs made note of it. The US, European and pro-peace process
Israeli media all ignored it. No government spokesman anywhere in the world
commented on it.
Unfortunately though for the likes of Dahlan and his admirers in the West,
Hamas isn't interested in joining Fatah's fiction. It refuses to say those
magic words. So now the West looks for ways to lower its bar still further.
The West's non-response to Dahlan's statements, like its growing eagerness
to treat with Hamas despite Hamas's unabashed refusal to even lie about its
intentions tells us something important about what the West is actually
doing when it says that its paramount interest is to advance the so-called
peace process. It tells us the same thing that the West's attempted
courtship of Damascus and Teheran tells us about what the West means when it
speaks of peace processes.
Syrian President Bashar Assad this week told Italy's La
Republicanewspaper that he and outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
were just a stone's throw away from a peace deal last year. Last week Assad participated
in what was supposed to be an anti-Iranian conference in Saudi Arabia.
Both of Assad's gestures were meant to make the Americans feel comfortable
as they renew their diplomatic relations with Syria, cast aside their
backing for the UN tribunal set up to investigate Syria's assassination of
former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, begin pressuring Israel to
surrender the Golan Heights, and recognize Hamas.
And just as Arafat understood that after he said the magic words the West
would ignore his bad behavior, so Assad knew that Washington and Paris would
pay no attention when upon returning from Riyadh he announced that Syria's
relations with Iran will never be weakened. He knew they will never question
his false account of his indirect negotiations with Israel. He and Olmert
couldn't have been a stone's throw away from a peace accord because Assad
refused to have any direct contact with Israel.
If Damascus is the state equivalent of the PLO then Teheran is the state
equivalent of Hamas. Today, as the mullahs sprint towards the nuclear finish
line, the Obama administration is pretending that the jury is still out on
whether or not the Islamic Republic wants a nuclear arsenal. As with Hamas,
so with Teheran, the Americans have dropped even the pretense of requiring a
change in Iran's rhetorical positions as a precondition for diplomatic
recognition. The US now pursues its diplomatic reconciliation with Iran with
the sure knowledge that this peace process will lead to Iran's emergence as
a nuclear power.
So the question is, if the American and European pursuits of peace with
Fatah, Hamas, Syria and Iran have not caused them to change their behavior
one iota, what are the Western powers talking about when they say that it is
imperative to push the peace process or engage the Syrians and the Iranians?
After all, Western leaders must know that these processes are complete
farces.
Sadly, the answer is clear. Western leaders are not pursuing peace in these
processes. They are pursuing appeasement. They call this appeasement process
a peace process for two reasons. First, they know their countrymen don't
like the sound of appeasement. And second, by claiming to be championing the
noble goal of peace in our time, they feel free to attack anyone who points
out the folly of their actions as a warmongering member of the Israel Lobby.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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