Hamas on a roll?

Well, guess who’s in Cairo, talking about security issues in Gaza?
According to Reuters, Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas, is.
Mashaal is the guy whom the Israelis tried to kill, using poison darts, in Jordan, back in 1997. I’m assuming his security people have gotten some solid-looking commitments from the Egyptians that the israelis won’t be allowed to try the same thing again this time?
The Reuters story, by Nidal Mughrabi, says:

    Sources in Hamas, an Islamist movement behind many suicide attacks on Israelis, said the Cairo talks would seek to clarify Egypt’s offer to send up to 200 security advisers to Gaza.
    Egypt, one of only two Arab states to have a peace treaty with Israel, wants to help prevent any collapse into anarchy or an Islamist takeover on its borders after Jewish settlers leave.
    A Hamas delegation led by Khaled Meshaal, the exiled Hamas politburo chief who survived an Israeli assassination attempt in 1997, arrived in Cairo Monday to prepare for the talks.
    “Each side will seek clarification from the other on a number of Palestinian, regional and international issues,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters by telephone from Gaza.
    “The discussion will touch on (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon’s Gaza plan, (possible) roles of Arab countries such as Egypt, and the latest crisis in the Palestinian territories.”
    There was no immediate comment available from Egyptian officials on the talks.

Of course, all this takes place in the context of the continuing turmoil within the ranks of the (mainly secular) Fateh and allied Palestinian movements.
This would not be the first time that the Egyptian government–or, indeed, the Israeli government–has sought to strengthen the role of Palestinian Islamists as a way to countering the power of Palestinian secular nationalists…


But this time, the circumstances are significantly different from the earlier times they tried that game. This time, Hamas is not just a relatively small and containable irritant in Gaza that can be used to tweak the Arafat leadership. These days, it is poised to pose a serious challenge to him– in Gaza and also possibly in other Palestinian communities inside or outside the homeland, too.
So from one point of view, the Egyptians are “playing” with serious fire when they give legitimacy to Mashaal in this way, at this point.
But from another, they may be following the only wise course that they can see.
Egypt has had a long and intimate connection with Gaza. The two territories are adjacent, and many family, trading, and political/cultural links have traditionally crossed what, soon after WW-1 was to become an “international” border. Then, from 1948 through 1967, Egypt “administered” Gaza under some kind of an indefinite arrangement there. Many Gaza people remember those days fondly. The Egyptians established a “free zone” there, and Gaza’s economy did better than that in most of Egypt…
The Mubarak government’s proposal to provide security help to the Palestinians in Gaza in the event of Sharon following through on his proposal to withdraw has been very controversial in Egypt. The last thing Mubarak could bear would to be seen as providing anti-Palestinian “kapos” to police and pacify Gaza–and to prevent the Palestinian continuing to launch attacks against Israel– and to do so completely on Israel’s terms.
But a negotiation with Hamas to explore the modalities of a possible ceasefire in Gaza? Well, that could be attractive to Mubarak. It would certainly help to prevent his own Islamists from criticizing his role.
It’s possible there would be something in it for Hamas, too. (Most Hamas people really loath Yasser Arafat, very deeply.)
But as I noted the last time I posted something here about Mashaal, Hamas is still on the US government’s “terrorism” list.
That could of course change.
Who knows what kind of a deal might be cut? I guess I need to get more info and think about all this a little more…

11 thoughts on “Hamas on a roll?”

  1. As you’ve said to me on at least one occasion, there’s no alternative but to come to terms with Hamas given its power and support in Gaza. I agree with that conclusion although not without some reluctance; a government that includes Hamas would have more credibility and would incidentally force Hamas to be accountable.
    I suspect that Mubarak is not only negotiating with Hamas on his own behalf but on behalf of Sharon; that way, Hamas and Israel can keep up the pretense of not talking to each other. Eventually, though, they’ll have to drop the veil.

  2. Egypt and Israel continue to play geopolitical chess games with the security and rights of Palestinian people. A one-state solution is the only solution. However, both current major party candidates for President in the US support the Rightist Israeli policy of annexation without equalization — therefore, any one-state solution is probably a non-starter for the moment.

  3. As they couldn’t get along while beginning to move toward a two state solution in the nineties, what makes one think that a one
    state solution would be any more sustainable?
    In geophysical terms, there have been far fewer suicide bombing operations under the forced two entitity approach dictated by the security fence, compared to the one entitity terrain that preceded it which invited repeated deadly incursions.
    It is easy for us armchair statesmen thousands of miles removed to decide what’s best for people caught up in generations of hate who exercise little restraint on their blood lust.

  4. It seems to me that a one-state solution is a nonstarter for the time being. It isn’t a good idea to take two groups of people who hate each other like poison and put them in a single country against their will, and it especially isn’t a good idea when one group will be a market-dominant minority and the other will be a politically-dominant majority.
    The track record of one-state solutions elsewhere isn’t particularly good. To my knowledge (although I could be wrong), there are three places – Cyprus, Somalia and Bosnia – where the international community has supported the unification of two de facto independent enclaves as a form of conflict resolution. All three of these, unlike Israel and Palestine, were actual unified nation-states at one point, but that isn’t even the most important cautionary factor. The international response to the Cyprus conflict appears to be moving toward a two-state solution now that the Greeks have made clear that they don’t want reunification on any basis acceptable to the Turks, and Somaliland is also gaining support for de jure separation from Somalia. A unified state was re-established in Bosnia, but it requires a full-time commitment of peacekeepers. A one-state solution in Israel-Palestine would be at least as high-maintenance if not more so.
    Elsewhere, one-state solutions aren’t even being seriously considered. As far as I know, few if any people are arguing that the Kashmir conflict should be solved by reunifying India and Pakistan, that the Balkans can be cleaned up by reuniting Yugoslavia or that the situation of the Russian minorities in Central Asia and Latvia could be solved by recreating the Soviet Union. It’s pretty clear (at least to me) that the costs of such a solution would far outweigh the benefits and wouldn’t really address the underlying conflict.
    The fact is that we live in a world of nation-states, and national sovereignty provides certain rights and protections that minorities or cantons within nations don’t have. Given that Israelis and Palestinians need as much protection from each other as they can get, it seems that the two-state solution is the optimal one, and that’s even without considering the moral issue implicated by taking away their right to national self-determination.
    Maybe a one-state solution will be possible one day if the Israelis and Palestinians both want it. If so, I’ll wholeheartedly support whatever arrangement they make among themselves. For now, though, I’d say that any serious movement in that direction is at least a generation away, more probably a century.

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