Hamas snarls peace plans

As Rice heads for the Middle East, the group that rules Gaza leaves her with few options

WASHINGTON -- Ever since the militant Islamist organization Hamas took over Gaza eight months ago, President Bush's peace plan for the Middle East has been to prop up the more moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the hopes that Palestinians would rally behind him as man who could bring them statehood and make Hamas irrelevant.

But Israel's military and economic pressure on Gaza, the increasingly menacing rocket fire from Gaza into Israel and the ensuing chaos that reached new heights this weekend have highlighted a fundamental tangle in that plan: As long as Hamas controls Gaza, it can subvert negotiations between Israelis and moderate Palestinians whenever it sees fit.

As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads to the region today, a trip that has been planned for weeks, she has very few options for achieving President Bush's stated goal of peace between Israel and a new Palestinian state that includes both the West Bank, where Abbas' government sits, and Gaza.

"She's walking into a buzz saw," said Aaron David Miller, author of "The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace." "You cannot make peace with half of the Palestinian polity and go to war with the other half."

In many ways, the latest crisis, in which Israeli aircraft and troops have attacked Palestinian positions in northern Gaza after long-range rockets from Gaza hit the large Israeli city of Ashkelon, looks like the Lebanon war of July 2006, when Israel bombed Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

The Israelis are facing criticism similar to that made during the Lebanon war -- that their response is disproportionate to the threat and has killed many Palestinian civilians, including children. And just like with the Israelis and Hezbollah, the United States finds itself with a dwindling set of choices, none considered attractive.

Pitfalls everywhere

Rice could encourage Israel to increase the strikes against Hamas in the hopes of destroying its leadership in Gaza. But Israel tried that with Hezbollah in Lebanon and failed, leaving Hezbollah leaders to assert when the war was over that they had stood up to Israel.

Even if Israel goes all out to defeat Hamas in Gaza, the problem of what comes after would remain. For instance, would Israeli forces stay in Gaza, or would they be replaced by an international force from the already stretched NATO or the United Nations?

Rice's other alternative -- encouraging Israel to negotiate a cease-fire with Hamas -- has its own pitfalls. Doing so would further legitimize Hamas, which the United States and Israel consider a terrorist organization. Martin Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said that a negotiated cease-fire between Hamas and Israel would further undermine Abbas and make it look like Hamas is the entity with which Israel and the West should be negotiating.

"Excluding them doesn't work, and including them doesn't work, either," Indyk said. "So what do you do? This is a situation that does not lend itself to a sensible policy."

With the rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza, Hamas has demonstrated that it has the power to threaten peace talks simply by inciting a strong Israeli response and making it impossible for Abbas to sit by and do nothing.

Indirect pressure

As with Hezbollah, Rice is standing behind Israel's right to defend itself. Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said late Saturday that the United States wants to see "an end to violence and all acts of terrorism directed against innocent civilians." But, he noted, "there is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and action in self-defense."

As with the Lebanon war, Rice is, at the same time, trying to prop up a besieged "moderate" leader -- this time, Abbas instead of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. But she cannot stop the rocket attacks into Israel from Gaza, because the United States does not talk to Hamas.

So Rice will try to pressure surrogates to lean on Hamas -- including Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza, administration officials say. She will sharply criticize rocket attacks on civilian Israeli targets and publicly charge Hamas with hiding behind civilians in Gaza. And she will meet with Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank, and with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni.

Ali Abunimah, a research fellow at the Palestine Center, a Washington-based advocacy group, derided the American strategy of ignoring Hamas: "You can't talk to them, you can't deal with them, you just cover your ears, close your eyes and pretend they don't exist."

But the alternative strategy -- pushing for a negotiated cease-fire with Hamas, or (even less likely) negotiating directly with Hamas -- could leave Rice, Israel and Abbas in an even worse position, Indyk counters. "The cease-fire option is one in which Hamas achieves a victory," he said. "And everybody she's been working to strengthen is weakened and undermined."