Frustrated Israelis increasingly favour peace talks with Hamas

Vita Bekker, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 14. 2009 11:33PM UAE / November 14. 2009 7:33PM GMT

TEL AVIV // Israelis, whose leadership has long considered Hamas to be a terrorist organisation that should be shunned, are starting to show signs of favouring talks with the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.

Such indications signal a growing frustration with the deadlock in peace negotiations that Israel has conducted with the western-backed Fatah faction that once dominated the Palestinian national movement, and may pressure the Israeli government to engage Hamas.

According to a poll published over the weekend by Haaretz, a liberal Israeli newspaper, 57 per cent of Israelis would support holding peace negotiations with Hamas if the group “abandons terrorism and recognises Israel”. More significantly, the survey showed that 53 per cent of the voters in the right-wing Likud party of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, would back such discussions.

The poll was published just days after Shaul Mofaz, a former defence minister and currently the number two politician in Israel’s leading opposition party, the centrist Kadima, caused waves in Israel’s political world by making a rare call for possible talks with Hamas as a way to reignite the stalled peace process.

Such a call may be supported by statements made by Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel’s army chief, over the weekend that Hamas has suspended its rocket launches against Israel since the country’s onslaught in the Gaza Strip in December and January. “For now, at least, I can say that the Hamas movement is holding back, and is holding back the others,” Mr Ashkenazi said, referring to other militant factions in Gaza.

With the help of pressure from Israel, the US and other western countries have in the past said they would engage Hamas only if the group rejected violence, recognised Israel’s right to exist and accepted interim peace deals with the country.

The Israeli government has long refused any direct contact with Hamas, which it holds responsible for having committed numerous suicide bombings against Israelis, firing thousands of rockets at its southern communities from Gaza and taking hostage an Israeli soldier more than three years ago.

Israel has tightened a blockade on Gaza since the group violently ousted Fatah from the territory in 2007, and its attacks in December and January killed some 1,400 Palestinians in the enclave and destroyed much of its infrastructure. Israel has also refused to talk to Hamas directly about a possible prisoner swap to return its kidnapped soldier, instead opting for indirect negotiations through Egypt that have so far yielded few tangible results.

Mr Mofaz’s call came as a surprise because he is seen as more hardline than many of his fellow Kadima members on security issues and is responsible, in his former roles as army chief and defence minister, for the military carrying out assassinations against Hamas leaders. Israeli commentators said that Mr Mofaz raised the prospect of talks with Hamas as part of a peace plan that is meant to help catapult him to his party’s number one spot and eventually to the country’s leadership.

As his idea dominated headlines last week, Mr Mofaz said during a visit to a town that has been a main Hamas target for rockets: “I will also speak with the devil, if it will bring peace to the state of Israel.” He added: “If Hamas is chosen in elections to head the Palestinian Authority … I am ready to speak with them.” Mr Mofaz has pressed ahead with the plan, briefing the US ambassador in Israel on its details and consulting experts on the legal aspects of initiating talks with Hamas.

Ben Kaspit, a well-sourced Israeli commentator, wrote of Mr Mofaz’s plan yesterday on the website of Maariv, Israel’s second-biggest newspaper: “The plan is not bad … it could turn into an important political tool that may turn Israel from the side that is dragged to the side that initiates … its main problem is that it has no partner on the other side.”

Hamas, however, has condemned Mr Mofaz’s call, accusing him of taking advantage of a deep split in the Palestinian national movement between the group and Fatah to promote himself in Israel’s domestic politics. Hamas also rejected his peace plan, which proposes the establishment of a Palestinian state with temporary borders on 60 per cent of the West Bank within a year.

Mahmoud al Zahar, a Hamas leader in Gaza who had been injured during an Israeli attempt to assassinate him under Mr Mofaz’s watch as defence minister, dismissed Mr Mofaz’s plan as statements empty of meaning “of a man who is no longer in power”.

Still, some Israelis warn that shunning Hamas may lead the group to expand its militant actions against Israel and establish closer links to more radical organisations. Arik Diamant, an activist who urges for engaging Hamas, wrote in a column last week: “If we don’t talk to Hamas today, who will we talk to in a decade? Al Qa’eda?”

foreign.desk@thenational.ae