Just over a month ago, Khaled Meshaal, the Damascus-based leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, referring to Barack Obama’s commitment to Israeli-Palestinian peace, declared: “I promise the American administration and the international community that we will be part of the solution, period.” Reading between the lines of the New York Times interview where he delivered this remark, Meshaal’s position was far less flexible than his statement of intent. Still, there is something interesting about Hamas’s recent rhetoric.
Indeed, Meshaal, who travelled to Cairo on Tuesday to meet the Egyptian head of intelligence, Omar Suleiman, who oversees the moribund reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah, may be on a rehabilitation tour, trying to stay relevant to a peace process that is gaining momentum by the day and from which he is still excluded. Mr Suleiman was recently in Washington to agree with the US administration on a strategy and two-year deadline to make Palestinian statehood a reality.
Showing his better self from Cairo, Meshaal insisted: “Hamas would be a positive element in helping with a solution that is fair to the Palestinian people and enables them to realise their rights. Hamas will not be an obstacle. Everyone knows that the obstacle is Israel.” The not-so-subtle attempt to insert Hamas into peace diplomacy and rekindle his relationship with Egypt, after months of accusing the Egyptian authorities of blatant collaboration with Israel and one-sidedness with Fatah, suggests much about how squeezed Hamas must feel.
What else accounts for their change in tone? Simply the fact that the Obama administration has managed to turn the tables by focusing energy and political capital to solve this enduring conflict. The US administration’s intransigent line on Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories has certainly helped to build US credibility.
Suddenly, the fact that the US is serious about peace and that life in the West Bank under a more competent Palestinian Authority is vastly better than in the open-air prison that is the Gaza Strip places Hamas in a very uncomfortable position. Hamas has reason to feel ostracised. When talks with Fatah broke down, the president of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, formed a government headed by Hamas’s bête noire, the nonetheless respected Salam Fayyad. Hamas still questions the legitimacy of the Fayyad government, but can do little about it. And when it escalated its rhetoric, its Syrian patron, desperate to rebuild relations with the US, intervened to restrain it. Even when Hamas boasts of its alliance with Iran, many Palestinians retort that the cause is their own, not Tehran’s.
Everyone understands that only a national unity government can make real headway on peace talks with Israel, but the much-vilified “West Bank First” strategy is succeeding in empowering the more moderate Palestinian elements and putting pressure on the more radical Hamas. This certainly is good news. The international community has asked that Hamas accept three conditions: that it renounce violence, recognise Israel and abide by previous agreements. Hamas has rejected all three. Unless it shows some flexibility on these issues, its softer rhetoric will lead it nowhere, just as mere words from the US president Barack Obama, without determined actions, will not lead to peace.
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