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thedrifter
10-24-07, 08:22 AM
October 24, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

Engaging the Enemy
Hamas seeks power, not peace.

By David J. Feith & Andrew M. Steinberg

Will the United States soon put hopes before reality by partnering with dangerous and unreliable Palestinians — again?

Yes, if it were up to some giants of the American political establishment. In a letter released this week, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, Lee Hamilton, and other former high-ranking officials called for the U.S. to engage in “genuine dialogue” with Hamas, the terrorist organization currently in power in the Gaza Strip.

This recommendation echoes statements made this summer by Italian prime minister Romani Prodi, a group of British parliamentarians, and Colin Powell, who said, “as distasteful as I find some of their positions . . . Hamas has to be engaged.”

Hamas, too, has weighed in, asking for Western diplomatic attention in a series of rosily worded oped pieces published in American newspapers over the summer. Yet despite what Hamas would have Westerners believe, the terrorist organization has always been clear on its view of diplomacy and compromise: Its charter promises to “obliterate” Israel “through Jihad [as] initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.

Why, then, are these prominent figures — some of whom advise leading presidential candidates — still calling for such diplomatic engagement? The belief behind these calls seems to be that the legitimacy of international engagement can turn Hamas into a reliable negotiating partner.

Hamas, for its part, would very much like international recognition, but not because it is willing to renounce suicide bombings or its war against Israel’s existence. Instead, it recognizes that its ability to launch attacks in Israel while ruling in Gaza would be improved with increased international acceptance and aid money.

To entice international engagement, Hamas has been trying to soften its image, to be the terrorist organization that so many Westerners wish it would be. Hence, the opeds its officials wrote this summer in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times cynically present the terrorist group as a partner for peace.

Hamas official Ahmed Yousef claimed in the Washington Post that Hamas wants only “the same thing Western societies want: self-determination, modernity, access to markets . . . and freedom for civil society to evolve.” “Our sole focus is Palestinian rights and good governance,” he added in the New York Times.

In fact, three months of Hamas rule in Gaza has demonstrated that the terror group’s “sole focus” continues to be the consolidation of power and the destruction of Israel. Its notion of “self-determination” opposes freedom and pluralism: Hamas scorns basic principles such as the rule of law, freedom of speech, women’s rights, and power-sharing. In August, Hamas security forces beat hundreds of demonstrators guilty merely of chanting “We want freedom!” on the streets of Gaza.

Hamas’s spokesmen argue that shunning their group is tantamount to “crushing new democratic institutions,” but Hamas has always been an avowed anti-democratic force. Hamas’ 2006 election victory was — like its publication of opeds in American newspapers — a manipulation of democratic means for anti-democratic ends. It has never held internal elections, is not creating democratic institutions, and eliminates internal opposition by means of summary executions — for example, by shooting political rivals and tossing them from rooftops.

Yousef complained in the New York Times of “attempts . . . to pass Hamas off as an extreme and dangerous force.” Yet in its Arab-language media efforts, Yousef’s group boasts openly that it is extreme and dangerous.

Hamas publications such as Filastin al-Muslimah, directed from Damascus and circulated worldwide, glorify suicide bombers as heroes. On television, Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar refuses to cede to Israel “one inch” of land, while in a Sudanese mosque senior spokesman Ahmad Bahr promises that “America and Israel will be annihilated.” In cyberspace, Hamas publishes 20 websites in 8 languages — giving it far greater reach than the Palestinian Authority ever had. It has also turned its local Al Aqsa TV station into a satellite network powered to reach the whole Arab world and even parts of Europe.

These media endeavors have a consistent message: Israel will be destroyed, the West will be defeated, and terrorism is the religiously sanctioned force that will achieve those ends.

If the gap between Hamas’s true nature and its oped self-portraits sounds familiar, it should. Throughout the 1990s, Yasser Arafat gave Americans a first-rate education in bilingual deception, denouncing terrorism in English and celebrating it in Arabic.

If the failure of the Oslo process taught us anything, it was to judge Palestinian groups by their actions, not by their soothing words to the West. The signatories to the pro-engagement letter ignore this lesson by providing only hopeful formulations about “dialogue” and the need to include all factions.

False trust can be fatal — and legitimizing Hamas by engagement is a risky, bloody proposition.

Ellie