Any meaningful Israeli-Palestinian peace effort cannot exclude or ignore Hamas. If the process is to have a chance of achieving a meaningful conclusion, Hamas must be brought in, regardless of the potential drawbacks of such inclusiveness.
After so many years of disappointment, it would be preferable to risk failure than to proceed with an incomplete peace process, flawed from the outset by only partial Palestinian participation. That exclusionary approach would virtually guarantee vigorous and violent opposition from an excluded Hamas, resulting in almost certain collapse.
Western calls for democratization in the Arab world have been tainted by the West’s rejection of the 2006 Hamas electoral victory, regardless of how undesirable that outcome may have been. Yet Hamas’ victory was predictable: polling over the past 10 years has shown that the Arab public tends to be more anti-Israeli, anti-American and more Islamist than most Arab leaders, despite the recent positive bounce from the so-called “Obama factor.” As a result, it should have come as no surprise that the isolation of Hamas by Israel and the West has proven fruitless and is unlikely to cause Hamas to buckle to Western demands.
President Barack Obama is well-positioned to depart from past policy toward Hamas. With Washington in the lead, the international community, including Israel, could enter into a limited truce, or hudna, with Hamas, according it no permanent legitimacy, only a role in the peace process for the duration of useful engagement. This would include a temporary end to Gaza’s isolation from outside aid and trade – excluding military aid – as a further incentive to cooperate as fully as possible.
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