Negotiating with the PA, Talking with Hamas: Part 2
Michael Lame, posted September 12, 2009
“No Pre-Conditions”
Once the mental and emotional threshold of being willing to meet with “the enemy” has been crossed, there remains the question of pre-conditions. Each party to a difficult negotiation would like to force the other party to make unreciprocated concessions prior to the start of talks. If you can make the other party fulfill your pre-conditions without having to fulfill theirs, then you have obtained something for nothing. You have successfully hoarded your bargaining chips.
The imposition or attempted imposition of pre-conditions is a bargaining tool. Yet, just as many people become exercised about speaking to “the enemy” at all, some will hold high the banner of “no pre-conditions” and call it a moral stance.
Whenever politicians – Americans, Iranians, Israelis, Palestinians, or others – call for talks “without preconditions,” you can be confident that they believe themselves to be in a strong bargaining position at the moment. It may sound like a principled stand, but it can also be explained in more Machiavellian terms. If Ahmadinejad calls for talks with the U.S. “without preconditions,” in effect that means that Iran will not slow down or stop its nuclear development program while it talks. The relevant sports term for that sort of behavior is “running out the clock.”
The stronger party will often insist on pre-conditions and will hold out for their fulfillment, if it can, by refusing to talk until and unless these conditions are met. But if the negotiation is of critical importance to the stronger party and the weaker party won’t give in, then some way needs to be found for the stronger party to climb down from its untenable position.
That is my interpretation of the current status of negotiations between Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell and the Netanyahu government. Mitchell and Obama went out on a limb to insist that Israel freeze its settlement activity. If Israel agrees, then Obama wins points with one of his target audiences: Arab and Muslim nations.
As you may recall, in his Cairo speech Obama stated that “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”
The Palestinian Authority (PA) government of Mahmoud Abbas is refusing to resume negotiations until and unless the Israelis cease all building activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. If, through U.S. pressure, Israel agrees to a freeze, even a partial one, then Abbas’s stock goes up in the Palestinian community for having stuck to his guns and produced results. Strengthening Fatah and the PA makes for a weaker Hamas, at least in the West Bank. But the PA only rules in the West Bank, and a settlement freeze there does nothing to help the people of Gaza. (More on this later.)
In negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israelis almost always have the upper hand. And they will use that power differential to try to extract as many concessions as possible before negotiations begin, e.g., Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, renunciation of violence, a commitment to arrest terrorists, an end to media incitement, a stop to smuggling, disarming militants, giving up the right of return.
As best they can, the Palestinians will resist giving up anything without a quid pro quo. Nor are the Palestinians completely powerless in this game. Hamas still has many potential recruits for martyrdom missions/suicide bombings as well as an arsenal of missiles which can be launched into Israel. And Abbas says he will not participate in talks while the settlements continue to expand. Therein lies his leverage: Israel wants normalized relations with a wide circle of Arab countries, especially in the Gulf. An Arab pre-condition for expanding such commercial dealings is progress on the Palestinian track.
Negotiations currently in process with the Israelis will apparently soften the U.S. stance. Given the opposition to a building halt in Netanyahu’s coalition government, a full-out freeze is unlikely to occur. Some temporary semblance of a partial freeze may be agreed upon to allow Obama and Abbas to publically assert that they got what they wanted. Then the talks can begin again, without anything fundamental having changed.
To Talk or Not to Talk: That is the Question
For Israelis, the simple way of answering the question of whether to talk to Hamas is to dismiss all counter-arguments: “You don’t make peace with your friends; you make peace with your enemies, so let’s talk.” Alternatively: “They want us dead, so why talk?”
Talking has consequences, and one consequence is the perception of enhanced credibility and legitimacy bestowed by the act of formal contact. When delegates of a previously-shunned party – whether a state or a non-state actor – are photographed shaking hands with or sitting at a table opposite U.S. diplomats, that party’s international prestige rises. Its ability to recruit new members increases. It now has “a seat at the table.”
Not everyone should have a seat at the table.
The U.S. government has its own set of pros and cons regarding dialogue with Hamas. In 1975, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger committed the United States not to recognize or deal with the PLO until it met three conditions: acceptance of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, recognition of Israel’s right to exist, and renunciation of terrorism. Thirteen years later, in December 1988, after years of messages passed back and forth and internal PLO debate, Arafat expressly met these conditions. Secretary of State George Shultz acknowledged it, and an official dialogue opened between the PLO and the U.S.
Might the same happen with Hamas? Could the pre-conditions insisted upon by the Quartet – Russia, the E.U., the U.N., and the U.S. – provide some impetus, along with other factors, to spur a transformation of Hamas’s political position? And, if so, how long might that take and how much suffering must the people of Gaza endure while the U.S., Israel, and Hamas play out this waiting game?
Or will Hamas’s ideological roots in the Muslim Brotherhood and its own interpretation of Islam prevent it from ever accepting one square inch of sovereign Israeli territory in any part of Palestine?
We don’t yet know the answers to these questions, but as long as the stalemate on the ground continues, we should keep asking.
Several writers have recently argued that Hamas has already significantly evolved and that it no longer espouses the harsh ideology expressed in its notorious charter of 1988. It has become a pragmatic political party, they assert. Others say: Don’t be fooled; Hamas leaders are merely putting on a more moderate face for western audiences.
My guess is that schizophrenia reigns in Hamas circles, though not of the clinical kind: Yes, all of Palestine is ours, yet Israel is here to stay. No, Israel cannot be accepted, yet Israel cannot be defeated. Belief in such apparently contradictory positions can easily result in emphasizing different themes at different times, without any of the statements being false.
Gaza and the West Bank
Of course, there is a cost of not talking to Hamas, and that cost is largely borne by the people of Gaza, trapped by an Israeli blockade, subsisting on a limited diet, unable to repair the extensive damage from Israel’s incursion during Operation Cast Lead in January.
Israel will not allow the building materials necessary for reconstruction to be brought into Gaza. It claims that at least some of those supplies could be diverted to support Hamas’s arms’ buildup and construction of tunnels and bunkers. So, one purpose in initiating a direct U.S. dialogue with Hamas would be humanitarian – to help alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians locked up in the Gaza Strip.
A second purpose for talking to Hamas might be to encourage Hamas to reconcile with Fatah, join a unity government and jointly agree to hold open elections in both Hamas-controlled Gaza and the Fatah-controlled West Bank.
Many commentators insist that a unity government is the only way in which negotiations with Israel have a chance of success. They claim that Hamas as Fatah’s partner in a single Palestinian polity is far preferable to a Gaza/West Bank split or to Hamas remaining outside the government, where it could snipe and undermine any deal reached without its participation.
There is a counter-argument: Negotiations have proven difficult enough between the Fatah-dominated PLO and Israel. The inclusion of Hamas in a Palestinian government would seriously complicate the process and likely move the Palestinian negotiating position further away from one which any Israeli government could accept.
If the Quartet talks to Hamas without Hamas first meeting the pre-conditions, then Hamas will be seen to have won a battle of principled steadfastness in the face of severe international pressure. It will be strengthened as a result. Fatah will be weakened. The Quartet will look irresolute and fickle.
If Hamas meets the pre-conditions and then the talks begin, Hamas gains international recognition and credibility. But by acquiescing to the West’s demands, its reputation for refusing to compromise on matters of principle will be tarnished in the eyes of many Palestinian erstwhile supporters. And as we have seen recently in Gaza, Hamas needs to be concerned not only with fending off Fatah on one side of the political spectrum but also with threats from more radical Islamist organizations on the other. Just last month, Hamas used lethal force to suppress a challenge from one such group, Jund Ansar Allah.
In the West Bank, meanwhile, Israeli and American officials work with their Palestinian Authority counterparts on both a political and a military level. With Mahmoud Abbas as president and Salam Fayyad as prime minister, the PA is making significant strides forward on economic and security fronts. Whether this path will lead to Palestinian statehood, either de facto or de jure, is another matter. It is too soon to say.
Certainly this is a process that the Obama Administration wishes to encourage, and if a Palestinian election is to be held in January, 2010, as currently scheduled, then the U.S. would not want to take any action that could adversely affect the chances for Fatah to defeat Hamas at the polls. One such prejudicial action would be to open a public dialogue with Hamas, especially if Hamas did not first agree to the Quartet pre-conditions. Since the election, if held, is only a few months away, the argument for the U.S. holding its course probably outweighs all others.