Diplomacy must include Hamas

Diplomacy must include Hamas

Tuesday’s carnage in Gaza, after Israel bombed three United Nations-flagged schools sheltering refugees from its offensive against Hamas, may well be the “Qana moment” in the present crisis – replicating the bombardment of refugees at a UN base in south Lebanon that brought the Israeli incursion of 1996 to a halt amid an international outcry.

Israel’s efforts to impose a media blackout on its operations in Gaza failed to prevent these images emerging in most of their horror. Of the estimated 700 Palestinians killed in the past 12 days, the UN reckons nearly 220 have been children.
A diplomatic process of sorts has begun: starting with a three-hour daily lull in Israeli bombing to allow desperately needed food, fuel and medicine into Gaza. This is a huge relief. But it is not sufficient.

Israel’s friends in the US and Europe must urge it not just to cease fire but to commit to an outcome that lays the ground for a comprehensive solution to the battle between Israelis and Palestinians over how – or indeed whether – to share the Holy Land. Therein lies the only real security for Israel, as well as justice for the Palestinians.

The fear is that Israel may only be going through the motions of engagement, prolonging the assault on Gaza: to try to put the Islamists out of business for as long as possible; to restore the potency of its deterrent power; and to persuade the world what is at bottom a conflict over occupied land is really part of the global “war on terror”.
There are problems, too, with the Franco-Egyptian plan, even if Israel is taking it as seriously as Nicolas Sarkozy says. It fails to identify who will police the Egypt-Gaza border against Hamas arms smuggling; and it is between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, meaning Fatah, which was trounced at the polls by Hamas three years ago and kicked out of Gaza last year. If the goal is a solution, there is obviously a disconnect between conducting a diplomatic process as if Hamas did not exist, and carrying out a military operation as though its continuing existence were an existential threat.

Any eventual resolution to this conflict will need to bind in Hamas, – within rules that proscribe attacks on civilians. Hamas must also commit to recognising Israel once a Palestinian state is created on the West Bank and Gaza. If Israel wants a two-state solution, it should exercise some restraint. Overwhelming force is an understandable military response, provided it is used against a recognisable military enemy. To use it inside a densely populated and blockaded urban arena, where civilians make up the majority of casualties, is disproportionate.

source:The Financial Times ,U.K

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