Hamas: U.S. Diplomacy's Final Frontier

Beinart in TIME, here

"...But if Israel's new government is making the Obama team anxious, it's nothing compared with the government that could be coming together next door in the Palestinian territories — where President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party may join hands with the Islamist militants of Hamas. That's a problem, since the U.S. won't have anything to do with Hamas or any government in which it takes part. A few months ago, when Hamas was at odds with Abbas and at war with Israel, that was an easy position to take. But now it's becoming harder. And sooner or later, the U.S. may have to come to the same painful realization it has arrived at in Iraq and Afghanistan: the only thing worse than talking to terrorists is not talking to them.

In a way, Hamas is the final frontier. After 9/11, the Bush Administration vowed it would not negotiate with terrorists — not just al-Qaeda but national terrorist movements and the regimes that sponsored them. More than seven years later, that hard line has melted. The Bush Administration negotiated with North Korea despite listing it as a state sponsor of terrorism. In Iraq, it not only talked to Baathists who had been killing other Iraqis and our troops, it paid and armed them. And the Obama Administration has gone further. It has advertised its willingness to negotiate with the governments in Damascus and Tehran,...

The U.S. still doesn't talk to Hizballah, but we do talk to the Lebanese government, in which Hizballah plays a — prominent role.

So far, the U.S. and Israel's strategy has been to keep Hamas-ruled Gaza poor while improving life in the West Bank, which is governed by Fatah and Abbas, in the hope that Palestinians — seeing the contrast — will desert Hamas, thus forcing it to capitulate to our demands. But the strategy has failed for three big reasons. One is Fatah, which is still widely considered incompetent and corrupt. Another is Israel, which hasn't given Abbas what politically he most needs: a halt to — or reversal of — West Bank settlement growth. The final reason is Hamas itself, which has an incentive to foil our plans. All the organization has to do is what it did late last year: lob enough missiles into southern Israel to provoke an Israeli response. When that happens, the sight of Abbas standing idly by while Palestinians die pretty much wrecks his credibility...

After all, what is the alternative? Trying to keep the Palestinians divided when their people desperately want unity? That will only make Abbas look like a U.S. and Israeli stooge; keep Gaza a festering, terrorism-breeding hellhole; destroy much of Barack Obama's goodwill in the Muslim world; and foster war between Hamas and Fatah, and Hamas and Israel. ..."