Today, there ought to be no noise in the skies above Gaza other than birdsong. No rockets whooshing uncertainly toward Israel from Hamas positions. No artillery or tank fire from Israelis, no screaming rockets from their helicopter gun ships, no guided smart bombs from their warplanes. Just the start of six months of peace in which, without the daily backdrop of bloody violence, progress of some sort might be made toward a just settlement in the Middle East.
The spin from Israeli government circles yesterday when Hamas announced the confirmation of the cease-fire deal was that it was inevitable. The breakaway faction in Gaza must have some agreement because of the terrible state of local public services and the economy. That may be so, but Palestinians have lived for more than 60 years with an Israeli occupation often as humiliating and brutal as today’s. Gaza may have been turned by the blockade into an impoverished ghetto but the world is becoming increasingly disturbed at the way that the Israelis are prepared to inflict collective punishment on an entire population. Thus Israel needs this cease-fire and the loosening of restrictions, every bit, if not actually more, than the people of Gaza.
Though this deal was brokered thanks to a great deal of hard work by the Egyptian government, it is nonetheless between Israel and Hamas. In this respect Hamas has won a significant victory albeit at a high cost. Until now, Israel and the United States have refused to talk to Hamas because it is deemed a terrorist organization and therefore proscribed internationally. The European Union and Russia chose to go along with this crass analysis. Now Israel has spoken to Hamas and de facto accepted that there can be no solution to the Palestinian question unless all Palestinian parties, including Hamas are involved. In its dotage, the Bush administration may still imagine Hamas can remain isolated and ignored. But even its hawkish Israeli friends now appreciate the madness of such a policy.
Hamas ought to have been just what Bush said that he wanted for the Middle East. It was a political group that, as the Provisional IRA did 10 years ago with Washington’s approval, said it was prepared to eschew violence and take part in the political process. But then Hamas won a free and fair election throughout the Palestinian territories, defeating the tired and too-long-in-power Fatah and set out to form a government. In the sort of principle reversal that has come easy to the present White House, Bush refused to respect the democratic choice of the people of Palestine and, in so doing, threw away perhaps his administration’s single best chance of brokering even-handed talks over a future Palestinian state.
It was this Bush decision that was illegitimate and not the decision of the people who chose Hamas. In principle at least Israel is now facing reality and talking to Hamas in a low-risk strategy easily abandoned if too much progress toward peace is actually made.
