BRUSSELS, Belgium, 8 March 2008 — To defuse the threat from Gaza fighters to Israel and President Bush’s Mideast peace program, the US has decided that the ends justify the means.
Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, is considered a terrorist group by Washington. US law forbids official contacts. Nonetheless, the Bush administration is giving quiet support for Egypt’s attempt to broker a deal with Hamas for a truce in Gaza.
Under this approach, which US officials and Mideast diplomats confirmed, Hamas would halt rocket attacks from Gaza. Israel would agree not to launch the kind of military incursions that nearly wrecked the US-sponsored peace talks last weekend and would ease its blockade of Gaza.
“It’s better to have a stable situation right now than to have Hamas doing what Hamas was doing, which was pulling the thread,” a senior US official said yesterday.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive policy shift that gained momentum when Mahmoud Abbas, the US-backed Palestinian president, canceled peace talks to protest the deaths of more than 120 Palestinians in the Israeli assault.
Any progress is tenuous, as seen on Thursday with the fatal shootings by a Palestinian gunman at a library of a rabbinical seminary in Jerusalem. It was the first major attack in the city in more than four years.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But Hamas followers in Gaza praised the shooting and thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of Gaza to celebrate.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after NATO meetings in Brussels, was asked about Egyptian-brokered truce talks. “I talked with the Egyptians and we fully expect the Egyptians to carry out the efforts that they said they would carry out to try to bring calm to the region, to try to improve the situation in Gaza,” she said.
She said Egypt was a firm ally in Bush’s peace push, begun last fall in Annapolis. “I trust what the Egyptians are doing is exactly in that course,” Rice said. “It is extremely important that the negotiations continue” and calm is restored.
Ignoring Hamas Has Not Worked
Representatives from Hamas and Islamic Jihad traveled from Gaza to the Egyptian city of El-Arish on Thursday to confer with Egyptian intelligence officials about a possible truce. David Welch, the US Mideast envoy, also was in Egypt on Thursday to meet with the foreign minister and intelligence chief about the mediation.
The US dislikes the terms truce or cease-fire because they lend political legitimacy to Hamas. Rice talks in public only about the need for calm. But during stops in Israel and the West Bank this week, she did acknowledge Hamas’ influence, saying the group has the power to halt rocket attacks. The US support for a truce acknowledges the obvious: Hamas is not going away and ignoring or insulting the fighters has not worked.
