Palestine: A New Beginning?

US Vice President Joe Biden warned last year that then President-elect Barack Obama would early in his term be tested by a foreign policy crisis. The crisis came quicker than even Biden may have expected and tests the very tenants of US foreign policy. The war in Gaza poses a multitude of challenges. How Obama responds will influence the president's ambition to restore US credibility, particularly in the Muslim world as well as efforts to resolve the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

• Converting the halt to fighting in Gaza into a sustainable, more permanent arrangement. The stakes for the Obama administration are high. Obama this week signaled his understanding that failure to engage would embolden both Israeli and Palestinian hardliners and reinforce widespread perceptions in the Arab and Muslim world that the US continues to uncritically support Israel and therefore is not an evenhanded mediator. He will have to underline his sincerity by investing significant political capital to push for a two-state solution.
  

  
   

  The current ceasefire is likely to hold for some time as Israel focuses on its Feb. 9 election and Hamas seeks to exploit its survival of the Israeli onslaught and empathy for the Palestinian plight generated by the images of the carnage to ensure that it is granted a seat at the negotiating table on terms more favorable to the Palestinians. The appointment of Senator George J. Mitchell as Middle East envoy warrants the assumption that the Obama administration may seek, however cautiously, to come to grips with the post-Gaza war reality of the Middle East. Mitchell demonstrated diplomatic agility as well as toughness and fairness in his successful mediation of an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland by bringing the Irish Republican Army and Protestant militias to the negotiating table. Already, one major American Jewish leader has expressed concern that Mitchell may be too fair and evenhanded and not sufficiently pro-Israeli.
  

  
   

  The United States has a critical role to play in defining the terms of a more durable ceasefire, monitoring its implementation and providing incentives for both sides to stick to it. To do so, Hamas will have to be a party to any arrangement made. A failure of efforts to reunite Palestinian ranks could complicate efforts to stabilize the ceasefire. Prospects for reunification are dim given that the Palestine Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas has by its own admission been marginalized by the Gaza war. Hamas, despite playing lip service to Palestinian unity, may conclude that Abbas has been so discredited that reunification no longer is an option. Speaking at a news conference this week, Abu Ubaida, the spokesman for Hamas' military wing, the Martyr Izz al Din al Qassam Brigades, asserted that Hamas rather than Abbas' Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had become "the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people".
  

  
   

  The Obama administration as well its partners in the Quartet – the European Union and the United Nations who refuse direct talks with Hamas – can work indirectly with Hamas through Egypt and Russia, the fourth party to the Quartet, which maintains relations with Hamas, to bring it further into the fold by initially focusing on humanitarian and security issues. A likely Israeli demand that Hamas release Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured in 2006, as part of any deal to lift the blockade of Gaza, offers another opportunity. A further, more significant avenue to create needed incentives would be a quid pro quid that is difficult to swallow for Israelis and Palestinians: a commitment by Palestinian security forces must commit to doing everything in their power to prevent attacks on Israel in exchange for an Israeli halt settlement construction on the West Bank and support of humanitarian relief and economic development in the West Bank and Gaza.
  

  
   

  Speaking at the State Department on Thursday, Obama reiterated conditions for direct talks with Hamas: recognition of Israel's right to exist, renunciation of violence and adherence to past agreements made by Palestinian authorities. He stressed that aid to Gaza would be channeled through the Palestine Authority in a bid to revive its credibility as the only acceptable interlocutor for the international community. Obama did however say that Gaza's border crossings need to be open to support aid and commerce, a demand being touted by Hamas as a condition for perpetuation of the Gaza ceasefire that will be welcomed by ordinary Gazans and exploited by Hamas as more evidence of the success of its steadfastness.
  

  
   

  Middle East peacemaking has a track record for finding ways for parties who refuse to talk to one another to sit at the same table without necessarily acknowledging the fact. Richard Murphy, a Council of Foreign Relations fellow and former Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East and US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, draws a comparison to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)'s participation in the 1992 Madrid peace conference at a time at which Israel still refused contact with the Palestinian movement. "There is the same strong Israeli opposition to (Hamas) as there was toward the PLO. But Israel found a way to deal with the PLO. Israeli Prime Minister [Yitzhak] Shamir with great unhappiness put up with the PLO presence within the Jordanian delegation at the Madrid conference in 1992," Murphy recalls.
  

  
   

• Addressing the political fallout of the Gaza war in the Arab and Muslim world. President Obama and a prominent Saudi on Thursday expressed two dramatically different views of the future of US relations with pro-US Arab governments. In his remarks at the State Department, Obama stressed Israel's right to defend itself, expressed empathy for Palestinian suffering and reiterated the need for a peace process leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. He called on Arab states to act on their peace plan drafted by Saudi King Abdullah, endorsed by the Arab League and embraced by Israeli leaders as a basis for negotiation by normalizing their relations with Israel.
  

  
   

  Obama's remarks contrasted starkly with a warning to the United States by Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, chairman of the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies and a former director of Saudi intelligence and ambassador to Britain and the United States. Obama may be getting off with Saudi Arabia on the wrong foot. Saudi King Abdullah was not listed among the Middle Eastern leaders Obama was reported to have phoned nor did he include the kingdom on his swing through the region last July. Al-Faisal warned in his article for the Financial Times that "unless the new US administration takes forceful steps to prevent any further suffering and slaughter of Palestinians, the peace process, the US-Saudi relationship and the stability of the region are at risk… (Saudi) King Abdullah spoke for the entire Arab and Muslim world when he said at the Arab summit in Kuwait that although the Arab peace initiative was on the table, it would not remain there for long. Much of the world shares these sentiments and any Arab government that negotiated with the Israelis today would be rightly condemned by its citizens. If the US wants to continue playing a leadership role in the Middle East and keep its strategic alliances intact – especially its "special relationship" with Saudi Arabia – it will have to drastically revise its policies vis a vis Israel and Palestine.
  

  
   

  "The incoming US administration will be inheriting a "basket full of snakes" in the region, there are things that can be done to help calm them down. First, President Barack Obama must address the disaster in Gaza and its causes. Inevitably, he will condemn Hamas's firing of rockets at Israel. When he does that, he should also condemn Israel's atrocities against the Palestinians and support a UN resolution to that effect; forcefully condemn the Israeli actions that led to this conflict, from settlement building in the West Bank to the blockade of Gaza and the targeted killings and arbitrary arrests of Palestinians; declare America's intention to work for a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, with a security umbrella for countries that sign up and sanctions for those that do not; call for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Shab'ah Farms in Lebanon; encourage Israeli-Syrian negotiations for peace; and support a UN resolution guaranteeing Iraq's territorial integrity," Al Faisal said.
  

  
   

  In a stunning revelation, Al-Faisal suggested the major divide in the Middle East between pro-US Arab governments such as Saudi Arabia and Israel on the one hand and Iran and Syria on the other hand may become a casualty of the Gaza war. Al-Faisal disclosed that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad last week in a letter to King Abdullah recognized Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds and called on him to take a more confrontational role over "this obvious atrocity and killing of your own children" in Gaza. "The communiqué is significant because the de facto recognition of the kingdom's primacy from one of its most ardent foes reveals the extent that the war has united an entire region, both Shia and Sunni…So far, the kingdom has resisted these calls, but every day this restraint becomes more difficult to maintain…Eventually, the kingdom will not be able to prevent its citizens from joining the worldwide revolt against Israel. Today, every Saudi is a Gazan, and we remember well the words of our late King Faisal: "I hope you will forgive my outpouring of emotions, but when I think that our Holy Mosque in Jerusalem is being invaded and desecrated, I ask God that if I am unable to undertake Holy Jihad, then I should not live a moment more," Al Faisal said.
  

  
   

  By contrast to Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah of Jordan may be charting a very different course. The monarch replaced in early January Muhammad Dahabi, who as head of the General Intelligence Department (GID) had initiated a dialogue with Hamas, as well as his top aides with Muhammad Raqqad, The move signaled a return to the GID focusing on its core business: internal and external threats to the kingdom." "Raqqad's appointment may be an indication that the government has decided to end its brief flirtation with Hamas and turn inward to protect its domestic front. The suppression of demonstrations around the Israeli embassy in Amman and the severe beating of the Amman-based correspondent of al-Jazeera satellite TV who earlier had spearheaded an anti-Israeli campaign are evidence of this policy change. Ultimately, it is unclear how this security change will affect the issue of civil liberties and reform in Jordan. There is little doubt that the new GID director is a professional who will confront the Hamas challenge in the kingdom. It is less certain, however, whether Raqqad envisions how to balance the requirements of security with the demands for reform," says Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow Matthew Levitt.
  

  
   

• Balancing Obama's ambition to restore the credibility of the United States as a nation of values with political realities in the Middle East. Sacrificing democratic reform in Jordan for a hardening of attitudes toward Hamas highlights the contradictions Obama will need to resolve attempting to achieve his goals of improved US credibility and Middle East peace. As does Hamas' claim to legitimacy by virtue of the fact that it won a democratic election universally accepted as free and fair.
  

  
   

  The dilemma is reinforced by what Rami G. Khouri, editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, describes as "the deeper reality that plagues the Arab world," namely "that the average Arab citizen faces an unsatisfying choice between a brand of Islamist-nationalist military resistance that triggers enormous Israeli attacks and Arab death and destruction, and a brand of Arab autocratic governance that breeds mediocrity, corruption and perpetual vulnerability and dependence. The choice is stark: Hamas or Fatah in Palestine; Hizbollah or Hariri in Lebanon; Mubarak & Son or Muslim Brothers in Egypt -- and the list continues through every Arab country. The slow gravitation and polarization of the modern Arab state system over the past three generations into two broad camps of status quo conservatives and resistance fighters is more apparent than ever, and equally frustrating.
  

  'Resistance' rings powerfully in the ears of ordinary Arab men and women, as we can witness on television screens throughout the region these days. Resistance will continue as long as oppression and occupation persist. But perpetual resistance means constant warfare and repeated Israeli destruction of Lebanese and Palestinian society, given Israel's superiority in conventional weapons and its barbaric willingness to inflict severe pain on civilian populations. The world's powers largely turn a blind eye to, or tacitly support, Israel's savagery against Palestinians and Lebanese, as we witnessed in 2006 and today. Europe and the United States actually joined Israel in its long-term material blockade and political strangulation of Gaza after Hamas' electoral victory in 2006," Khouri says.
  

  The inability of Arab governments to come to grips with Israel in war or peace as well as their inability to establish a modus vivendi with the Islamist opposition renders governments effectively paralyzed. Islamist movements thrive on this. The Gaza ceasefire perpetuates the choice confronting ordinary Arabs. With Hamas likely to resist pressure to make the full transition from a militia to a political movement, its perceived victory will reverberate throughout the Arab world.
  

  The dilemma for Obama is that America needs to be seen to be true to its own values to restore its credibility. But like in Palestine, pressing even delicately for greater freedom and democratic reform in the Middle East means engaging with Islamists and realizing that the legacy of support for autocratic regimes means that the people's will may not be to Washington's liking.
  

• Exploiting competition between rival internationalist and nationalist Islamist factions. The aftermath of the Gaza war highlights divisions in the Islamist movement between those pursuing nationalist goals such as Hamas and Lebanon's Hizbollah and those with a global agenda aimed at the United States, European nations, Israel and Arab governments. "There is nothing to negotiate with the global jihadists, but the Islamo-nationalist movements simply cannot be ignored or suppressed," says Olivier Roy, a research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research and lecturer at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. "Hamas is nothing else than the traditional Palestinian nationalism with an Islamic garb. The Taliban express more a Pashtu identity than a global movement. The Iraqi factions are competing not over Iran or Saudi Arabia, but over sharing (or monopolizing) the power in Iraq."
  

  
   

  Roy argues that former President Bush's failure to distinguish between Islamists with global ambitions and those seeking to achieve national goals had stymied any effort to seek a political rather than a military solution to national conflicts such as the Israeli Palestinian dispute. He notes that the political approach proved successful in Iraq where it drove a wedge between Al Qaeda and other armed Sunni insurgents by recognizing them as political actors pursuing an Iraqi rather than a global agenda.
  

  
   

  Adopting the principle of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the International Herald Tribune reasoned in an editorial that the "deep-seated hostility between the Al Qaeda current of Islamism and the more nationalist tendency represented by Hamas suggests that Israel, the United States, and others might do well to shape policy with these distinctions in mind. If Hamas acts as a barrier against something much worse - the undeterrable fanatics of Al Qaeda - then the political eradication of Hamas might not be a desirable goal,"
  

  
   

  The rivalry between global jihadis and Islamist nationalists is clear in their responses to the Gaza war and Obama's taking office. Al Qaeda this week called for attacks on Western nations and their Arab supporters, in retaliation for Israel's offensive in Gaza. "It's high time that this criminal country, I mean Britain, paid the price of its historic crime," Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi said in a video posted on an Islamist website, holding Britain responsible for Israel's creation. "There is no child who dies in Palestine ... without this being the outcome of the (country) that handed Palestine to the Jews ... Britain…"Make them taste the bitterness of war and the tragedies of homelessness and the misery of horror," he said in a call to militant fighters. "They should not be secure while our people (Palestinians) are scared. "O, mujahideen (holy strugglers) everywhere rise like an angered lion ... do what you can to make the infidel capitals of the West and America and the Arab Tyrants taste what our brothers and weak folks in Palestine have been tasting," Al-Libi said in the 31-minute video.
  

  
   

  The Arab world may well be where the global jihadis seek to make their mark. Ibrahim Eissa, editor of Al-Dostor in Cairo warns in an editorial entitled 'The Coming Terrorism' that the Gaza war is likely to fuel religious extremism as younger, more religious Arabs conclude that their government's tacit siding with Israel and rejection of Hamas amounts to opposition to Islam. "The people are repressed. They will not raise their swords against their governments but their hearts will be stronger than their swords," Eissa says, predicting that terrorism will adopt a new form. This could well be scattered, uncoordinated attacks perpetrated by people with no connection to Al Qaeda or other globalist jihadi groups and not exposed to discussion on Jihadi Internet forums.
  

  
   

  Some moderate Islamists are willing to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt. Mohammed Essam Derbala, a leader of Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya, which employed terrorism from 1981 to 1997 to topple the Egyptian regime, urged Al Qaeda in a statement to declare a four-month truce with the United States in response to Obama's call to improve relations with the Islamic world.
  

  
   

  In a similar vein, Damascus-based Hamas Political Bureau chief Khalid Mashaal this week sought to exploit the aftermath of the Gaza war to ensure that Hamas would be included in diplomatic efforts to achieve a durable ceasefire with Israel. "I tell European nations ... three years of trying to eliminate Hamas is enough. It is time for you to deal with Hamas, which has gained legitimacy through struggle." Describing the Gaza wars as the "first and great real war that our people won" in which "Hamas and the resistance emerged as an indispensable part, Mashaal said. He said "there are (still) two battles to gain. Those of the lifting of the blockade and the opening of crossing points, including Rafah, which is our window on the world."
  

  
   

  Speaking barely an hour after Obama's appearance at the State Department, Hamas spokesman Osam Hamdan welcomed Mitchell's appointment, saying he believed the former senator "could make a change" and that his appointment was "a good sign." Hamdan was careful not to reject Obama's conditions but said Obama should have also demanded that Israel recognize Palestinian rights. "To achieve a peaceful solution, we need to talk about recognition of Palestinian rights and a clear definition of the realization of those rights," Hamdan said.
  

  
   

  Hamas is certain to hold on to its mantra of resistance. But popular sentiment in Gaza may be pushing it to focus on politics rather than resistance. While a majority of Gazans hail its steadfastness in public and would probably vote for it in an election, in private they may be less willing to sacrifice in the wake of the Gaza war. Jordanian counter terrorism expert Abdul Hameed Bakier suggests that the fact that Hamas launched few suicide attacks against Israeli forces while they were in Gaza is an indication that the Islamists have difficulty recruiting volunteers.
  

  Retired Col. Shmuel Zakai, who commanded Israeli forces in Gaza until 2004 and in the 1990s was sent to Britain to study counter-insurgency in Northern Ireland, argues that the groundswell for Hamas could have been predicted. Winning hearts and minds is as import as battlefield victories in the struggle against Hamas, he says. "We just keep creating bigger problems. Military power alone is not enough. We should be the first ones on the ground helping to rebuild Gaza and making sure Hamas isn't."
  

Perhaps, the biggest challenge to Middle East peacemaking is the need for a fundamental shift in the way Palestinians and Israelis look at one another. For Palestinians, this means accepting that Jewish Israelis are a people that have struck roots in Palestine and are there to stay with the attributes of nationhood and national identity that come with that. Israel can play a major role in changing Palestinian perceptions. "We Israelis must begin to realize this simple fact: the Arabs are not metaphysical creatures, but human beings, and human beings have it within themselves to change. After all, we Israelis change our positions, mitigate our opinions, and open ourselves up to new ideas. So we would do well to get out of our heads as quickly as possible the illusion that we can somehow annihilate Hamas or eradicate them from the Gaza strip. Instead, we have to work, with caution and good sense, to reach a reasonable and detailed agreement for a lasting ceasefire that has within it the perspective that Hamas can change . Such a change is possible and can be acted upon. Such fundamental changes of heart and mind have happened many times in the course of history," says A. B. Yehoshua, one of Israel's most prominent literary figures.

A Sliver of Hope in the Rubble

An emerging rift in the Hamas leadership between those bearing the daily brunt of the Israeli assault on the ground in Gaza and those based comfortably in Damascus could offer an opportunity for both Israel and the United States to draw more moderate elements of the Islamist group into a peace process that would ultimately lead to independent Palestinian statehood alongside Israel and enhanced security for the Jewish state.

If history is a guide, the carnage in Gaza could produce the ability to negotiate a long-term Israeli Palestinian arrangement that, if not initially cemented in a peace treaty, would put an end to violent confrontation, focus Israeli Palestinian relations on furthering economic development and kick start a process that would lead over time to formal diplomatic relations and agreed peace.

Recognizing the opportunity takes bold vision and courage and at times is an exercise in reading tea leaves. It is s a tall order for Israeli leaders, competing in forthcoming elections who have staked their immediate political future on breaking Hamas' back. The key to helping Israel and the Palestinians capitalize on what now may be no more than a sliver of hope emerging from the carnage lies in Washington. With President-elect Barack Obama only days away from taking office, it is an opportunity being cautiously discussed among those who may form the core of the new president's Middle East policy team.

The history of Israeli PLO relations offers a roadmap for how death and destruction can be turned into constructive political dialogue and lessons of how to accelerate that transition. Israel's offensive against Hamas, the walk-up to the latest violence, the torturous and convoluted language of Hamas, the Islamists' adherence to Lenin's principle of one step backwards for every two steps forward and the perception that Israelis and Palestinians are locked into a zero-sum game are in their essence mirror images of the violent road that led from secular Palestinian terror to the creation of the Palestinian Authority.

Israel's refusal to deal with the PLO from its inception in 1965 until the late 1980s and its determination to destroy the guerrilla group's ability and will to fight the Jewish state mirrors its effort to break Hamas' back. It is a policy unable or unwilling to recognize subtle shifts in Palestinian attitudes crying out for a helping hand; shifts away from rejection of any long-term, if not permanent arrangement with Israel, towards an accommodation on the principle of live and let live, if not full-fledged peace – a policy that sees declared Palestinian positions as carved in stone rather than fluid, dynamic and malleable and fails to prick through offensive symbolism.

Hard line Palestinian leader George Habash rejected Arafat's initial tenuous steps in 1977 towards acknowledgement of Israel and surrender of Palestinian claims to pre-1967 Israeli territory as well as his efforts to forge a dialogue with US President Jimmy Carter, the first American leader to publicly accept the Palestinians' right to a homeland. Those efforts were couched in language open to interpretation rather than in an unambiguous proposal for peace. In effect they were trial balloons testing whether Israel and the United States would respond to moves suggesting Palestinian compromise.

Much like Hamas's pre-Israeli offensive call for a 10-year truce with Israel – in effect an offer to replace violence with economic and political development that would create the necessary vested interest in peaceful co-existence – Arafat at the time indicated his willingness to accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel, saying the Palestinians were willing to establish "a national authority on any occupied territory from which Israel withdraws or which is liberated." A medical doctor and strategic thinker, who headed the rejectionist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), recognized that Arafat's initiative was likely to change the very essence of the PLO. "If I today accept Arafat's proposal for purely opportunistic tactical reasons, I know that tomorrow this tactic will become my strategic role. If I accept the concept of a national authority today, tomorrow I will recognize Israel and abandon the armed struggle. It's a trap, I have no intention of walking into," Habash told this reporter at the time. Hamas' call for a long-term truce mirrors Arafat's national authority.

Israeli leaders point to Hamas' charter and the virulent and despicable anti-Semitism often expressed by its leaders to argue that the group cannot have a seat at the negotiating table. In the past, Israel employed the same justification for its rejection of the PLO. Yet, symbolism representing a dream rather than a political goal is something Israel shares with Hamas. Israeli maps continue to show the West Bank as part of Gaza despite the government's declared commitment to a two-state solution. An Israeli hawk-turned-dove, Ezer Weizman, a former commander of the Israeli air force, defense minister and president, recognized the insignificance of symbolism as opposed to political process when he stood almost 30 years ago in front of the Likud's emblem incorporating a map of Israel stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River and said: "Everyone has the right to dream, I have the right to dream, they (the Palestinians) have the right to dream."

In the sixteen years from the very first Palestinian nationalist attempts to reach out to Israelis till Arafat's recognition of Israel – attempts that were mired in the blood of innocent victims like the 28 school girls killed in a Palestinian terror attack in 1972 in the Israeli town of Ma'a lot when Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) leader Nayef Hawatmeh sought to reassert his militant credentials after becoming the first Palestinian guerrilla leader ever to address Israelis directly with a call for peace – Israel employed the same brutal military tactics it uses against Hamas to destroy the PLO or break its political will: carpet bombing of urban centers like Beirut, occupation of Arab land as in the case of Lebanon, targeted killings of senior leaders and mass detentions. It took a Palestinian call in 1983 for peace negotiations with Israel and years of secret talks with the United States before Arafat publicly recognized Israel and denounced terrorism in exchange for US recognition of the Palestinian guerrilla movement and the opening of the door for a Palestinian seat at the negotiating table.

The torturous and blood-stained road may well have been significantly shortened had US and Israeli leaders in 1977 called Arafat's bluff and in quiet and secret diplomacy explored the PLO's sincerity and his ability to transform his militant guerrilla movement into a political entity with which Washington and Jerusalem could do business. That would have involved recognition of the need to nurture and encourage a fledgling sprout struggling to balance its legitimacy as a militant proponent of rejectionist armed struggle with the need to produce tangible results that would give Palestinians hope, the ability to build normal and prosperous lives and claim that they had achieved national aspirations. Hamas' call for a long-term truce amid its firing of primitive rockets into southern Israel offers another opportunity to nudge Palestinian militants who enjoy credibility and popular support down a road they hesitantly signaling they would be willing to travel. With Palestinian surveyor's estimating the damage to Gaza's infrastructure at $1.4 billion, Hamas more than ever will need in the wake of a ceasefire to focus on the strip's economic and social recovery from the Israeli offensive.

Perhaps because the PLO had effectively been moved away from Israel's immediate borders with their expulsion to Tunisia in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the subsequent taking of matters in their own hands with the first intifada in 1987 by Palestinians living under Israeli occupations, Arafat moved albeit cautiously forward with his efforts to achieve his goal of becoming the accepted Palestinian negotiating partner. Once there, he proved incapable of finalizing a deal with Israel that would have involved full-fledged peace and the creation of a viable, independent and sovereign state. His inability to capitalize on Israeli proposals put forward over a period of more than a decade coupled with his refusal to surrender personal power to the strictures of a state bureaucracy and widespread corruption in the ranks defeated the very purpose of the road he had embarked on in 1977.

If the 1982 war and the intifada opened the door to Israeli negotiations with a credible Palestinian counterpart, the war in Gaza despite efforts to arrange a ceasefire threatens to close that door. With Egypt nearing agreement on a ceasefire, the roles between Israel and Hamas are reversing. Historically, Israel has sought long-term arrangements cemented in peace treaties with its Arab enemies that guaranteed peace, stability and security while Palestinians were at best willing to accept short-term arrangements in advance of a new round of confrontation. In the current negotiations, Hamas has dropped its proposal for a 10-year truce and is says it is willing to accept only a one-year silencing of the guns at best while Israel is now willing to entertain a 10-year truce rather than a definitive solution of its dispute with the Palestinians.

The door to a long-term truce that would produce the economic, political and social dynamics over time for a definitive Israeli Palestinian peace treaty may no longer be as wide open as it was, but it also has not been slammed closed. It offers Obama the opportunity to apply his slogan, 'Change We Can Believe In,' to the Middle East in a way that would engage credible Palestinian representatives as well as Israel. That may be easier said than done. It involves recognition of the altered balance of power in Palestinian politics with a weakened Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas and a strengthened Hamas, reconciliation between the feuding Palestinian factions, negotiation of a long-term ceasefire as a first step towards gradual achievement of real peace, tangible improvement of the lives of ordinary Palestinians, including economic development, lifting of debilitating Israeli restrictions on the freedom of movement of Palestinians on the West Bank and thye flow of goods into Gaza, a halt to Jewish settlement of Palestinian territory and the nurturing of a credible and empowered Palestinian government that can cater to its people's needs.

As the ceasefire negotiations progress in Cairo, there is little doubt that in Palestinian eyes Hamas will emerge victorious by virtue of its sheer survival as a defiant Palestinian force. Israeli hopes that the war may have shattered Hamas' political cohesion so that it can be replaced by more moderate Palestinians – either the Palestinian Authority or a new entity that emerges from Gaza's rubble – are likely to be dashed. More likely is that if Hamas is unable to recover its cohesion and capitalize on its stature, it will be replaced by more militant Islamists who see the war in Gaza as evidence that armed struggle and terrorism are the only way to realize Palestinian aspirations. Whichever way Palestinian politics develop, failure to engage Hamas now will only lead the Middle East further down the road of escalating violence, destruction and death – an unnecessary cycle of violence that if history is a guide demonstrates that what will be achievable at the end of that cycle will fall short of what could have been achieved today.

An Arab or Iranian US Negotiator for the Middle East?

US President-elect Barack Obama appears to be missing a unique opportunity to demonstrate that his efforts to bring peace and stability to the Middle East will differ from substantially those of his predecessor. That would be to include an Arab-American and possibly an Iranian-American in his line-up of Middle East negotiators – a move that would largely break with tradition which hitherto involved almost exclusively negotiators with a Jewish or Christian background.

Granted, such a move would immediately set off alarm bells in Jerusalem and probably in The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington, already uncertain of what the Obama administration means for US Middle East policy, but it would send a signal to the Arab and Muslim world at a moment that unconditional US support for Israel's Gaza offensive has fueled public anger at a United States that is fighting an uphill battle to win hearts and minds.

International Herald Tribune columnist Roger Cohen jokes that he has the scoop on Obama's line-up: Shibley Telhami, Vali Nasr, Fawaz Gerges, Fouad Moughrabi and James Zogby, all widely respected, prominent Arab and Iranian Americans whose views on the Middle East may not be pro-Israel but are certainly moderate and even-handed. "…forget the above, I've let my imagination run away with me. Barack Obama has no plans for this line-up on the Israeli-Palestinian problem and Iran. In fact, the people likely to play significant roles on the Middle East in the Obama administration read rather differently," Cohen writes.

In fact, Obama's line-up as described by Cohen and others, including, Steve Rosen, a controversial former AIPAC official and driving force behind the lobby who was indicted on charges of passing classified information to Israel. Rosen monitors the shaping of Obama's Middle East team and policy on his blog, Obama Mideast Monitor. Obama's team is likely to include Dennis Ross, a veteran Middle East peace negotiator for past Democratic and Republican administrations and a consultant to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, University of Texas Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs dean James (Jim) B. Steinberg, former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel Daniel C. Kurtzer, long time Obama aide Dan Shapiro and former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk.

"Now, I have nothing against smart, driven, liberal, Jewish (or half-Jewish) males; I've looked in the mirror…. They're knowledgeable, broad-minded and determined. Still, on the diversity front they fall short. On the change-you-can-believe-in front, they also leave something to be desired," Cohen says, focusing on the fact that Ross has little success to show for years of attempting to mediate peace between Israelis and Arabs. "I don't feel encouraged - not by the putative Ross-redux team, nor by the nonbinding resolutions passed last week in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The former offered 'unwavering commitment' to Israel. The latter recognized 'Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza.' Neither criticized Israel."

To be sure, Obama has had to stress his support for Israel during the election campaign to overcome widespread doubts and questions in the Jewish as well as the non- Jewish pro-Israel community in the United States. There is no doubt about his support, particularly on the fundamental issues: Israel's right to exist within secure borders. Yet, Obama seemed to signal a break with the Bush administration's policies when during the campaign he said: "I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we're not going to make progress."

To the degree that Obama intends to change US policy in the Middle East, he will have to contend with a US public that is overwhelmingly sympathetic to Israel as evidenced in the resolutions Cohen mentions that were passed by the US Congress. Critics and opponents of Israel like to blame that on the power of AIPAC. No doubt AIPAC sways significant influence. That it is able to do so is in part a testimony to its success but equally a testimony to the dismal failure of Arabs and Palestinians to do what it takes to create a credible voice of their own in Washington.

That is beginning to change and the track record of Cohen's suggested names of Arab and Iranian Americans who could be included in Obama's Mideast team bears witness to that. But changing deeply ingrained public perceptions and sentiments does not occur overnight. For too long, and even today if one looks at the torturous and convoluted language of the likes of Hamas that is similar to the process of change of concept and terminology Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) went through, Arabs and Palestinians refused to express themselves in clear and unambiguous language. Too often, they were unwilling to spell out or think through in public convoluted and veiled messages they were sending, wrongly hoping that by moving a millimeter someone would send them the life raft they would need to reach land. They were too afraid of giving away the store before having an assurance that the pay off would be acceptable and too frightened of reaction in their domestic constituencies to a policy that would lead to recognition or at least acceptance of Israel's existence.

The value of having an Arab or Iranian American on the team is illustrated in Cohen's quoting of "Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East" written by Kurtzer and Scott Lasensky. The book describes the problems that arose at Clinton's Camp David peace negotiations encountered by US negotiators because they lacked the expertise on Islam and an Arab perspective. To bridge that gap, negotiators had to call in the State Department's top Arabic translator because "the lack of cross-cultural negotiating skills was so acute."

The Gaza war may not have tipped the balance but the daily reporting from inside the strip and the images of the carnage and suffering of innocent men, women and children is casting doubt on the proportionality of the Israeli response to Hamas' rocket attacks and undermining the moral benefit of the doubt that Israel has long enjoyed in the West. The cost benefit analysis of the damage the war has done to Israel's image versus what it ultimately will have achieved on the ground has yet to be done. That may make it easier for Obama should he really wish to change US policy. "The fact remains … that the growing human tragedy in Gaza is steadily raising more serious questions as to whether the kind of tactical gains that Israel now reports are worth the suffering involved," says the Center for International and Strategic Studies' Anthony H. Cordesman.

Changing US policy involves addressing issues that Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs and many Americans passionately care about. It will involve taking into account the aspirations and needs of all the parties to the conflict rather than looking at the region through the post-9/11 prism of the war on terror, the fate of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, Israel's policy of seeking to destroy or silence Palestinian voices more sensitive to Palestinian national aspirations than Israel's perception of its security needs and an effort to bring in through reconciliation with the Palestine Authority representative groups like Hamas which shares with many, if not most, Israeli and Palestinian politicians a heritage involving the use of politically motivated violence. That is no mean fete and one that demands delicate maneuvering. Including an Arab or Iranian American in Obama's team would be noticed in the Arab and Muslim world and would send a signal that would make waves but not immediately rock the boat.

Pushing for a speedy reconciliation between Hamas and the Palestine Authority could shield Gaza’s battered civilian population from renewed internecine violence once the guns in the Israel Hamas war fall silent. Fatah, the political faction headed by Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, hopes that the Israeli offensive will provide an opportunity to regain control of Gaza lost to Hamas in 2007. In addition, the Israeli offensive bolsters more radical forces in Gaza and on the West Bank, including supporters of Al Qaeda. In seeking to regain control of Gaza in the absence of reconciliation with Hamas, Fatah will have to tread carefully so that it is not seen as riding in on the wings of Israeli tanks. It has already suffered significant damage to its credibility because of its apparent siding with Israel in the first days of the offensive with Abbas holding Hamas responsible for the assault, his inability to effectively aid the Palestinians in Gaza and his failure prior to the war to produce tangible results in talks with Israel. Meanwhile, Palestinians in both Gaza and on the West Bank are likely not to emerge from the crisis broken in spirit as Israel had hoped but even more resolved to achieve statehood at whatever cost. “There will be disappointment if Fatah stops being a resistance movement after this war. Hamas will be more and more strong and this atmosphere will give Al Qaeda a real chance to start strongly in Palestine,” Hassan Qader, a long standing Fatah member on the West Bank told Al Jazeera International.

In an analysis on the website of the Brookings Institution, Martin Indyk, director of the institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy and a candidate for Obama's Middle East team, spells out his view of what the terms for an Israel Hamas ceasefire should be. The terms indicate what the Obama administration probably will look for in a Hamas Palestine Authority reconciliation. "The terms of a new truce will need to include: no rocket fire on Israeli civilians, no offensive Israeli operations, an international mechanism for enforcing a ban on smuggling offensive weapons, Palestinian Authority (PA) involvement in the control of open passages, and large-scale humanitarian and reconstruction assistance funneled through the PA rather than via Hamas," Indyk says. Indyk reference to Palestine Authority involvement rather than control of the border crossings, a reference primarily to the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt appears to leave open the possibility that Hamas would not be excluded from policing the passage.

Indyk notes that achieving a ceasefire along those lines is urgent because "Islamic extremists--from al-Qaeda to Hizbollah to Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--have gained great advantage from the anti-American anger in the Arab and Muslim world that the Gaza crisis has brought to a boil. They had feared that Obama, with his appealing narrative and middle name, would calm the waters and so dilute their influence. They now see an opportunity in the Gaza crisis to brand Obama as no different from Bush. A commitment to resolve the Palestinian problem also takes on new urgency because the potential Arab partners in this effort--from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia--need to demonstrate to their irate populations that pro-American moderation and reconciliation can actually provide a better future for the Palestinians."

If Hamas Palestine Authority reconciliation is urgent, so is tackling the settlement issue on the West Bank. The settlers' growth spells out the urgency. In 1993, when the Oslo process began, 116,000 Israelis lived in the Gaza Strip. By 2003 that number, according to the Israeli Interior Ministry, had increased to 236,000. A year after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the evacuation of all settlers from the strip, the settler population on the west Bank numbered 253,000. By last year their numbers had jumped to 290,000, living alongside 2.2 million Palestinians. Another 187,000 Israelis live in annexed East Jerusalem next to 247,000 Palestinians.

"To a large degree, the Israeli and Palestinian publics have accepted the need for a two-state solution. But time, and the construction crews, are working against it. No one knows exactly where the point of no return is—when so many Israelis will have moved into so many homes beyond the pre-1967 border that there is no going back. But each passing day brings that tipping point nearer. If a solution is not achieved quickly, it might soon be out of reach," writes Gershom Gorenberg in this month's Foreign Policy magazine.

"The settlers’ growing power makes it harder for any Israeli leader to act. The head of the Shin Bet security agency recently described “very high willingness” among settlers “to use violence—not just stones, but live weapons—in order to prevent or halt a diplomatic process.” He was articulating a country’s half-spoken fears: Withdrawal involves more than the social and financial costs of moving hundreds of thousands of people. It poses the danger of civil conflict, of battles pitting Jews against Jews. The more settlers, the greater the danger. The longer the wait, the more settlers. The more settlers, the more hesitant politicians are to talk about evacuating them, much less do anything else about them. It’s anybody’s guess where the point of no return lies.... So, time is in short supply. As U.S. President Barack Obama enters office, he might be tempted to put off dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But delay may mean finding the road to a solution closed," Gorenberg says.

Obama may talk to Hamas

Incoming US President Barack Obama, in what would constitute a welcome break with the Bush administration's war on terror and lack of even handedness in the Israeli Palestinian conflict, is willing to establish a line of communication with Hamas, The Guardian reports quoting sources close to Obama's transition team. Like past administrations used US intelligence channels for their contacts with the Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Obama is likely to use the CIA to talk to a group which features as a specially designated terrorist on the US Treasury's list of terrorists. The US Congress in 2006 banned US contacts with and funding of Hamas in the wake of its electoral victory.

The initiation of clandestine contacts with Hamas stems from a belief among Obama advisers that isolating the group is proving counter-productive. The move would constitute a welcome signal that Obama may be willing to take a fresh approach to Middle East peacemaking, the Bush administration's war on terror, and the US reluctance to engage with Islamists rather than Jihadis, who significant chunks of public opinion across the region. It would also at least implicitly call into question the rationale of Israel's refusal to engage at least more moderate elements within Hamas as well as it policy that led to the offensive in Gaza. It would also heighten concern among Israeli leaders that they may no longer enjoy the kind of uncritical US support they did with the outgoing Bush administration. Steve Rosen, a controversial former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) official and driving force in the Israeli lobby in Washington who was indicted on charges of passing classified information to Israel, says on his blog, Obama Mideast Monitor, that he has been reliably told that Obama would not violate his campaign pledge not to talk to Hamas as long as it fails to recognize Israel and disavow terrorism. Although initially clandestine, US Hamas contacts would contribute to repairing the United States' damaged international reputation, which Obama has vowed to repair.

Confirmation of news reports that Richard Haass, a former National Security Council official and head of the Council of Foreign Relations, will be appointed Obama's special Middle East envoy would likely be seen as confirmation that Obama may be willing to engage Hamas. Haass has advocated low-level contacts with Hamas, provided there is a ceasefire in place and Hamas achieves reconciliation with Fatah, the group that dominates the Palestine Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. "This is going to be an administration that is committed to negotiating with ­critical parties on critical issues," The Guardian quoted one of its unidentified sources as saying.

Haass together with Martin J. Indyk, a former Steve Rosen-protégé, US ambassador to Israel and director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution whose has been mentioned as a candidate for a senior Middle East-related position in the Obama administration, argue in an essay entitled Beyond Iraq: A New U.S. Strategy for the Middle East that "the Bush administration's boycotting of Hamas after it freely and fairly won the Palestinian elections enabled the United States' opponents in the Arab and Muslim worlds to raise the banner of double standards," a reference to the US refusal to engage Hamas after it won a landslide in elections in the West Bank and Gaza in 2006 that were judged free and fair. The essay notes further that "in the war of ideas, Iran and its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, have made some headway with the argument that violent radicalism is the way to liberate Palestine and achieve dignity and justice for Arabs and Muslims."

Although the essay was written prior to the Israeli offensive against Hamas and assumes the existence of the Israel Hamas ceasefire that broke down last November after Israeli forces killed a Palestinian in Gaza, Haass and Indyk note that "given Hamas' control of Gaza and its support among at least one-third of Palestinians, a peace process that excludes it could well fail." They argues that as the governors of Gaza, Hamas' leaders should have to choose between launching rocket, mortar, and terrorist attacks on southern Israeli towns and meeting Palestinians' needs by establishing order and taking the steps necessary to attract aid (including ending the use of tunnels for arms smuggling and returning the Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit). The cease-fire agreement that Egypt negotiated is holding for the moment precisely because the Hamas leadership has effectively policed it, choosing to place the needs of Gazans ahead of Hamas' interest in 'resistance.'"

"The United States should encourage such developments but leave it to Egypt, Israel, and the PA (Palestine Authority) to handle their relationships with Hamas. If the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas continues to hold and a Hamas-PA reconciliation emerges, the Obama administration should deal with the joint Palestinian leadership and authorize low-level contact between U.S. officials and Hamas in Gaza. If the cease-fire breaks down irreparably and the Israeli army reenters Gaza, the United States should then work with others to create and insert an Arab-led international force to restore PA control and bring about Israel's withdrawal. Obviously, it would be highly desirable to avoid such a scenario. One way to do this would be to ensure the kind of progress in the negotiations that would create a dynamic in which Hamas feels pressured by Gazans not to miss the peace train that is beginning to move in the West Bank." Parallel to this, the two former diplomats call for increased US focus on Israeli Syrian peace talks, noting that if successful this would weaken external support for Hamas or at least for its more militant tendencies," the essay goes on to say.

In a separate Memo to the President: Renew Diplomacy in the Middle East, Indyk and former National Security Council Kenneth M. Pollack www.brookings.edu/experts/p/pollackk.aspx last week suggested that the war in Gaza offered Obama an opportunity to jump start his Middle East policy and implied that this could involve a role for Hamas. "Hamas would prefer to avoid losing control of Gaza. By offering a sustainable ceasefire that ends rocket attacks on Israel, leads to Israeli troop withdrawals from Gaza, prevents smuggling of weapons into Gaza and includes international monitoring of the flow of goods and people, you may be able to convince both sides to de-escalate. A ceasefire in Gaza might also create pressures on Hamas to reconcile their differences with Fatah, enabling Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to speak again for all Palestinians," the memo says.

In a New York Review of Books review of separate memoirs of past Middle East peace negotiators, including Indyk and Daniel C. Kurtzer en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_C._Kurtzer, a former senior State Department official and US ambassador to Egypt and Israel whose name is mentioned as a possible candidate for a Middle East role in the Obama administration, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley say that Indyk "shows sensible pragmatism in suggesting a different approach toward Hamas, arguing that if it abides by its cease-fire with Israel, the US should support efforts at reconciliation among Palestinians. At a US Institute of Peace this week on Israeli Palestinian peace, Kurtzer suggested that once the guns in Gaza fall silent “there will be an unacceptable situation on the ground, no matter how this particular phase” wraps up, because Israel and Hamas are like “that Monty Python sketch with the 100-meter dash with runners for no sense of direction." Kurtzer said it was hard see how the ceasefire would “lead to a conclusion where a mutuality of interest will emerge from it.” Carefully couching his words, Kurtzer said the proposition of negotiating an Israeli Palestinian peace settlement as long as the Palestinian leadership was divided had not yet been fully tested. In speaking about the leadership, Kurtzer did not specify whether he meant the Palestine Authority, Hamas or both. But by suggesting negotiating a peace agreement that would then be submitted to a referendum, Kurtzer appeared to be suggesting that at least initially Hamas should be circumvented. That approach nonetheless would not rule out clandestine US contacts with the Islamist group.

I don’t think we have fully tested the proposition” of negotiating an agreement with the Palestinian leadership — he doesn’t come out and say Fatah, but it’s probably what he means — and then subjecting it to a Palestinian national referendum. Clearly, he’s thought about working around Hamas.

With a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza finally in place, how Hamas responds in terms of adhering to a ceasefire once it takes effect, including a likely mechanism to prevent it from replenishing its arms stocks, is certain to influence the Obama administration's attitude towards contact with the Islamist group. Israel will view a ceasefire that effectively cuts Hamas off from military supplies – although it may continue to find ways to build its largely ineffective home-made rockets – as evidence of success of its military campaign. Nonetheless, the history of Israel Hamas relations resembles a dance in 1981 that Israel and the PLO engaged in, which ultimately was part of the process that led to direct albeit failed peace talks between the two.

At the time, Israel agreed to a ceasefire mediated by the United Nations and the United States with an enemy it had assiduously sought to delegitimize and place beyond the pale of permissible engagement by others. Like Hamas, the PLO at the time was involved in a torturous and often contradictory effort to formulate a position that would lead to peace negotiations based on a two-state solution. Hamas' current position is a far cry from officially acknowledging Israel but its repeated call for a ten-year ceasefire with Israel is an indication of where Hamas could be heading as are past defeated calls from more moderate forces within Hamas for a halt to the armed struggle. Like the 1981 ceasefire with the PLO that was followed by subsequent military clashes that culminated in Israel's expulsion of the Palestinian guerrilla group from Lebanon in 1982, Israel agreed last year to the ruptured ceasefire with Hamas because of an appreciation of its enhanced military capability modeled on Hizbollah, which Israel failed to defeat in 2006.